Bottom Gun BBSSubmarineSailor.com
Find a Shipmate
Reunion Info
Books/Video
Binnacle List (offsite)
History
Boat Websites
Links
Bottom Gun BBS
Search | Statistics | User listing Forums | Calendars | Quotes |
You are logged in as a guest. ( logon | register )


At random: The submarine was not generally recognized as a legitimate instrument of warfare until the Civil War.
Messcooking
Moderators:

Jump to page : 1 2
Now viewing page 1 [25 messages per page]
   Forums-> Submarine DiscussionMessage format
 
dex armstrong
Posted 2007-06-23 9:33 AM (#4741)


COMSUBBBS

Posts: 3202

Location: Alexandria, Virginia
Subject: Messcooking

I'm a newly arrived bottom feeder here. I keep reading "messcook" under the names of folks. That must mean (A) there must be a helluvalot of old Cook's Little Mary's turning up here. (B) Don must be running an Ethiopian messdeck with a Watch,Quarters and Station Bill a mile and a half long. (C) must be six years between watches.(D) Or some guy tirned up here and did his "loves and fishes" thing. DEX
steamboat
Posted 2007-06-23 12:25 PM (#4748 - in reply to #4741)
Master and Commander

Posts: 1835

Location: Boydton, Virginia
Subject: RE: Messcooking

Dex, I think ya gotta get something like 30 posts undre yer belt before you gett off "mess cooking". With your gift of gab, that shouldn't take long. Stick around, guy and tell us what it was like in the "days of yesteryear"
Steamboat sends
Warshot
Posted 2007-06-23 1:45 PM (#4753 - in reply to #4741)
WWII Sub Vet

Posts: 135

Subject: RE: Messcooking

I guess I was one of the lucky ones. Never spent one minute Mess Cooking.

Came aboard, threw my ditty bag in the ATR and started standing regular room watches, but I was just a striker the first War Patrol. Got my Crow on the second War Patrol.

NEVER MESS COOKED.

Bill Linne
Posted 2007-06-23 1:53 PM (#4755 - in reply to #4753)


Senior Crew

Posts: 102

Subject: RE: Messcooking

Warshot - 2007-06-23 11:45 AM

I guess I was one of the lucky ones. Never spent one minute Mess Cooking.

Came aboard, threw my ditty bag in the ATR and started standing regular room watches, but I was just a striker the first War Patrol. Got my Crow on the second War Patrol.

NEVER MESS COOKED.



Did my entire first upkeep Mess Cooking. In Guam, no less! Hot as hell, and all the trash and garbage had to be hauled topside, up and over the friggin tender, then about 500' to the dumpsters (seemed like half a mile!) Needless to say, I was glad when that was over. I did not mind washing dishes, setting tables, or serving meals. The rest of it drew a tremendous vacuum!

Bill
miss lumpy bumps
Posted 2007-06-23 6:02 PM (#4760 - in reply to #4741)


COMSUBBBS

Posts: 2540

Location: Wappingers Falls, NY
Subject: RE: Messcooking

Gentlemen,

You will be out of the "messcooking" in no time...it only took me 6 months to make "Old Salt"...

Patti
Donald L. Johnson
Posted 2007-06-23 11:20 PM (#4765 - in reply to #4748)


Great Sage of the Sea

Posts: 602

Location: Visalia, Ca.
Subject: RE: Messcooking

steamboat - 2007-06-23 10:25 AM

Dex, I think ya gotta get something like 30 posts undre yer belt before you gett off "mess cooking". With your gift of gab, that shouldn't take long. Stick around, guy and tell us what it was like in the "days of yesteryear"
Steamboat sends


Yeah, Gentry's got a chart around here somewhere tells you how many posts to make each level.

EVERYBODY goes messcooking on this boat!

It took me about 3 months to get to 50 and off messcooking, mostly because by the time I got home from work and logged on, all these retired old salts who log in at 0630 had already said most of the things I would have.

Yeeeeesh. Let a kid get a word in edgewise once in a while.


Bill Linne
Posted 2007-06-24 9:46 AM (#4768 - in reply to #4765)


Senior Crew

Posts: 102

Subject: RE: Messcooking

Donald L. Johnson - 2007-06-23 9:20 PM

Yeah, Gentry's got a chart around here somewhere tells you how many posts to make each level.

EVERYBODY goes messcooking on this boat!

It took me about 3 months to get to 50 and off messcooking, mostly because by the time I got home from work and logged on, all these retired old salts who log in at 0630 had already said most of the things I would have.

Yeeeeesh. Let a kid get a word in edgewise once in a while.


Looky here Johnson . . . watch how you sling that "o" word around, ya hear? :-)

Bill
Ron Wert
Posted 2007-06-24 3:45 PM (#4772 - in reply to #4741)
Crew

Posts: 75

Subject: RE: Messcooking

No big thing really, but you have to wonder. I've been posting here for years and I'm still messcooking. Must have been something Don put into effect while I wasn't posting that much. I've been called a LOT worse.

Ron
Donald L. Johnson
Posted 2007-06-25 12:00 AM (#4776 - in reply to #4772)


Great Sage of the Sea

Posts: 602

Location: Visalia, Ca.
Subject: RE: Messcooking

Ron Wert - 2007-06-24 1:45 PM

No big thing really, but you have to wonder. I've been posting here for years and I'm still messcooking. Must have been something Don put into effect while I wasn't posting that much. I've been called a LOT worse.

Ron


Ron, it started when he set up the current version of the BBS. Most of us restarted from scratch.



dex armstrong
Posted 2007-06-25 9:43 PM (#4794 - in reply to #4741)


COMSUBBBS

Posts: 3202

Location: Alexandria, Virginia
Subject: RE: Messcooking

I did so many tours pot wholloping, that I became a Master One and Two Way Trash Dumper, the senior spud peeler in the Second Fleet and a gifted SPAM can juggler. On Northern Runs, being a Cook's Little Mary was the best damn job on the boat. It was always warm on the messdeck (except when the WT Doors were on the latch and some clown heading forward opened the door to the Forward Engine House and the Fairbanks sucked pure Artic Air throuigh the boat at state five hurricane levels.) You got a share of the first tray of cinnamon buns that the Night Baker pulled out and you were never more than ten feet from a fresh cup of that submarine coffee...You remember, that stuff that had a hydraulic oil slick floating around on top of coffee that would float a blacksmith's anvil. That...bottom of the pot mid-watch stuff that was slowly making the metamorphic transition to asphalt...Coffee made from boiling Yugoslavian army socks and Olga Korbet's gym shorts. Once you've had Diesel Boat bottom of the pot Maxwell house you can drain the embalming fluid out of a dead Ubangi and drink it...Messdeck Maxwell House can turn a comotose 95 year old into Gene Kelly. Diesel Boat chow slinging was an honorable profession...the first step on the road to Admiralship....Bottom feeding in the boat service was not a bad life. The next step was the Deck Force...The Deck Force was like understudying Ali Babas forty thieves....Tender raiding, heavie stealing, paint locker pilfering and mastering the spray gun, MEK, number seven gray....Becoming a paint scraper and chipping hammer virtuoso....learning the technical capabilities of red lead and zinc chromate.....Then becoming a Torpedoman and learning how to become an animal of the Forward Room. Yes, snorkeling around at bottom feeder depth left you with some crakerjack memories. You won't find me objecting to being called "messcook"....I know exactly where to cut a Post individual cereal serving carton to surgically remove the Sugar Crisp and boxes of Grape-Nuts....You don't learn that at Harvard, MIT or Princeton...or how to store stuff so the guys in Hogan's Alley have direct access to the Crunchy SKIPPY. Ah, the fraternal secrets of the Dumpster Divers and chow shovelers. DEX
Ed668
Posted 2007-06-26 9:49 AM (#4804 - in reply to #4741)
Senior Crew

Posts: 124

Subject: RE: Messcooking

I messcooked in bootcamp for seven days. It was a 4:30 AM to 7:30 PM shift. After that I never messedcooked again on shore, skimmer, or sub.
dex armstrong
Posted 2007-06-27 10:51 AM (#4825 - in reply to #4741)


COMSUBBBS

Posts: 3202

Location: Alexandria, Virginia
Subject: RE: Messcooking

If you never messcooked aboard a ship, you missed a wonderful part of being a sailor. Later generations looked upon messcooking as something to be avoided...something that if it could be ducked, made you more of a man because you had not engaged in something "beneath you". In my day, it was looked on a something a non-qual could do that didn't require the ability to stand independent watches. It gave you the best opportunity that could be given you, to get to know the lads in your crew. It was step (A) along the road to welcome and acceptance as a part of ship's company and as a shipmate. In the smokeboat force...at least the smokeboat force I was a part of, we didn't look at anything required to operate a submarine as "beneath us". The simple fact that we had been selected, graduated from New London (yes, boys and girls, then it was called SubBase New London...not Groton.) and had been assigned to an operating boat as proof of your worthiness as a seagoing subsailor. Messcooking was just a required step along the road. It was not something that made you a subservient lacky...a worthless stepp'n fetch-it or some kind of subsurface organ grinders monkey. We looked on it in the same way lads look at having to be a tenderfoot before you can become an Eagle Scout. I'm extremely proud of having served chow, washed dishes, peeled spuds and having been accepted as a boatsailor by men who had done the same exact thing before me...some, during WWII. The concept of any duty performed on a U.S. submarine being of lesser importance...or beneath a sailor never arose on any smokeboat I tossed my gear aboard. Mr. 600 class sailor, you missed something if you never messcooked aboard a ship you loved. I feel sorry for you. To me your post was not a worthy boast, simply a statement that saddened me for what you missed. Somewhere subsailoring changed...glad I wasn't there. DEX
Darrin
Posted 2007-06-27 12:00 PM (#4833 - in reply to #4741)


Great Sage of the Sea

Posts: 561

Location: Belleview, Fl
Subject: RE: Messcooking

Dex,
while I too did my time in Deck Div chippin paint and being a mess cook and finally pushing Mk48's into the tubes, some of the men did not have to mess cook due to there rates and they were more then happy to tell those who had the fun of being a mess cook that they were better then we were. So for at least the Deck Div I was in we felt like the bastard children of the boat who weren't "smart enough" to chose a rate when we enlisted and accepted what ever job that the COB or a Division LPO would offer us to learn. Personally I think the choice to be a seamen subfarer was the smartest thing that I did when joining the Navy because it allowed me to learn multiple jobs and then chose which one that I liked the best. Hell I started out trying to be a QM but realized very quickly that standing around the chart table cleaning my nails and then buffing them to a high shine (PING) didn't suit me at all, and diving the San Tanks being a "turd rancher" didn't suit me either (although eventially I was made a MM) and I found my niche as a TM where I gladly spent my days at sea setting behind a launch console when not driving the boat, waiting for the call to do a snap shot on tube 1 or load the tubes and make them ready for bear.
Yes I am a nuke boat sailor, and yes I still remember mess cooking for 180 days (2 90 day rotations) and looking back on it 16 years later, it was one hell of a way to learn the crew and for the crew to learn how I worked and behaved and I don't regret any of it.
Thanks for the memories of a mess cook, keep up the stories of our youth.

Darrin
dex armstrong
Posted 2007-06-27 12:43 PM (#4838 - in reply to #4741)


COMSUBBBS

Posts: 3202

Location: Alexandria, Virginia
Subject: RE: Messcooking

Darrin, You and I seem to be alumni in the same whores union. Your post accurately reflected a mirror image of my career. Looking back with hindsight tempered by the passage of time...and filtered through ten layers of sentimental reflection, old coots nostalgia and senior citizen flawed memory...they were all good times. They had to be, because boatsailors have remained my most valued and loyal friends...boat sailors take you for what you are, hair and horns, bark and toad induced warts and all. You sound like a Nook with smokeboat DNA. DEX
Runner485
Posted 2007-06-27 12:55 PM (#4839 - in reply to #4755)


COMSUBBBS

Posts: 2693

Location: New Jersey
Subject: RE: Messcooking

Bill Linne - 2007-06-23 1:53 PM




NEVER MESS COOKED.



Did my entire first upkeep Mess Cooking. In Guam, no less! Hot as hell, and all the trash and garbage had to be hauled topside, up and over the friggin tender, then about 500' to the dumpsters (seemed like half a mile!) Needless to say, I was glad when that was over. I did not mind washing dishes, setting tables, or serving meals. The rest of it drew a tremendous vacuum!

Bill

Bill,

Weren't you messcooking when Farragut was still an Ensign?.....Just wondering!
Runner485
Posted 2007-06-27 1:01 PM (#4840 - in reply to #4741)


COMSUBBBS

Posts: 2693

Location: New Jersey
Subject: RE: Messcooking

Let's see if I remember correctly....
Boot Camp-Svc Week: messcooking
TAD Norfolk after boot camp, waiting for flight to CVA 42: Messcooking 4 days
CVA 42 messcooking 90 days in the Med
Sirago messcooking 60 days

So to you guys who never had the priveledge of messcooking I have two words for you and they ain't Merry Christmas or good morning!@)(*&^78I*&^*
Tom McNulty
Posted 2007-06-27 2:15 PM (#4841 - in reply to #4741)


Master and Commander

Posts: 1462

Subject: RE: Messcooking

Let's see, I report aboard the 599B, my first boat not knowing what my fate will be. Meet the COB who gives me a pep talk and my qual card then it's back to the missile house to meet my LPO. I stand a couple watches with the regular crew and the next day I'm standing my own watch as roving patrol and doing much ojt with the big firecarckers. No messcooking not by choice but by necessity being as how the MT gang is short handed. So I spend all my free time doing quals, with most of the crew being ex DBF and real serious about earning dolphins. I finish about 1/2 way through my second run along with being qualified to stand any watch available to an MT. When I received my dolphins it was quite the ceremony and I felt I'd earned the respect of the crew as I was treated as one of them and enjoyed every bit of my time aboard. But I didn't mess crank so I guess I'm just some kind of slug. I can live with that opinion.
dex armstrong
Posted 2007-06-27 8:04 PM (#4847 - in reply to #4741)


COMSUBBBS

Posts: 3202

Location: Alexandria, Virginia
Subject: RE: Messcooking

Tom, Please forgive me and chalk it up to being a prehistoric fossil who served in the neanderthal navy....(you see those caveman guys in the GIECO commercials? I served with their grand dads and dated their grandmother...She worked with Thelma at Bells). So help me out here, what in the hell is an MT? I can't remember MT's...Maintenance Techs? Machinist Testers? Master Thermometer-readers? I don't remember any MTs in SubRon Six when I was punching saltwater holes in the North Atlantic. I did eat in a New London...Ah, make that Groton SubBase messdeck. They had tablecloths, vases of plastic flowers on the tables...a dessert buffet and it was ALL handled by contract civilians. It was like eating in an IHOP...or an upscale Bob Evans. No big stainless steel milk dispenser...no stainless steel mess shingles with stamped out chow dents. No big hairy chested cooks yelling,"Keep it moving ladies...Dammit, you're not buying the damn stuff or takling it for a damn test drive, you're eating it. Take a load, and keep the damn line moving."...No career E-3s with sweat dripping off the tip of their noses in the salad. No low IQ slow talking guy, putting your blueberry cobler in with your collard greens. Maybe they were MTs...Mess Techs? No sir, we didn't have soft Muzak....gingham curtains with matching tablecloths....guys with pitchers of ice tea keepng your glass filled and slices of Aunt Sarahs coconut creme pie. We ate in messdecks that smelled like vinegar that they used to disinfect the tables...got our moo juice out of big stainless steel contraptions called "armored heffers" and were lucky if you didn't get a bloody fork with the four tines covering all cardinal compass points. You spent many meals attempting to identify the ingredients of navy meatloaf and hoping that a dogs rabies inoculation tag didn't show up in the middle of it. You ate mung...an abbreviation of the words "monkey dung" It was some kind of creamed hamburger...ground beef floating around in stuff bearing a remarkable resemblance to the contents of a lanced boil. If you complained, a sympathetic cook would advise you to "eat down the street"....When you were making turns north of Iceland, eating down the street presented a certain degree of difficulty. That's the navy I knew...in the days before MTs...ducking messcooking and being proud of it...plastic flowers...table linnen....piped in soft music...and guys named Willie who kept your ice tea glass filled. Yes, what you said was exactly right...we were fleas on a dying dog...time and modern technology had not only passed us by but was rapidly putting us out of business. We were riding the leftover World War Two still floating inventory....some of the wornout boats my generation rode still had visable repairs of depth charge damage and the bunks still smelled of liberty sloshed Mennens after shave, Kings Men and Seaforth colonge....Vitalis and that universal chick bait Old Spice...the life raft emergency provisions still had "Lucky Strike" greens (Warshot will explain that) and all the morphine styrettes had crystalized. At 412 feet we leaked like June Alyson selling DEPENDS. But we slept in the same racks the WWII meateaters racked out in. We butt buffed the same padded messdeck potato lockers...we watched movies on screens the size of a page out of your Sunday newspaper and drank coffee that could reverse the effects of embalming fluid. We loved our old antiquated boats, our skippers, our damn wonderful stew burners and being part of the greatest damn Navy that ever was. We had no idea what MT's were...didn't miss them and just wandered around in complete ignorance and total indifference...but, in the words of the late Tom "Old Gringo" Parks, "God Dex,It was a shining time." I sure miss that old, grab-the-bull-by-the-horns unsalvagable rascal. Old Gringo, Warshot, Rod Puffer and Art Smith...they don't turn em out like that any more. We all rubbed shoulders at dinged up messtables and wore Dolphins. DEX
Donald L. Johnson
Posted 2007-06-28 12:33 AM (#4848 - in reply to #4847)


Great Sage of the Sea

Posts: 602

Location: Visalia, Ca.
Subject: RE: Messcooking

dex armstrong - 2007-06-27 6:04 PM

So help me out here, what in the hell is an MT? I can't remember MT's...Maintenance Techs? Machinist Testers? Master Thermometer-readers? I don't remember any MTs in SubRon Six when I was punching saltwater holes in the North Atlantic. DEX


MT= Missile Tech. Vertical tube-shooters. Their tubes are in the middle of the boomers, between the messdecks and the engineroom. I think they all got changed to MMW (Machinist Mate-Weapons) along with the TMs, a couple years ago.


I, too, was one of those "moon-beam" sailors who didn't have to mess-cook. But in my case, it was a matter of necessity, and partly because of my rate.

I came out of the nuke pipeline as an IC Electrician, before they turned IC-men into ETs. When I reported to the USS Seadragon (SSN-584) as an IC3(SU), they were short-handed in both the IC gang and E-Div. So for the first 3 months onboard I got the thrill of working as an IC-man during the normal working day, and an EM in the evenings and on duty days. Long days, but it made SS quals a whole lot easier.

I also had the experience of working for 2 years prior to my enlistment as a cook and busboy in an Italian restaurant, so I had a real appreciation for what the mess-cooks did.

I did finally go mess-cooking as an EM1(SS) on my 3rd boat, USS Buffalo (SSN-715) in Pearl. We had almost everybody qualified, and all the 3rd-classes had done a turn in the galley, so I volunteered for a 3-week upkeep period. Took a lot of good-natured ribbing, never had anyone get nasty at me, and only once did I have to wave a full cup of hot coffee over some jackass's head to get them to lay off the other "cranks."

Yes, mess-cooking can be a positive experience, even in today's submarine Navy.

And yeah, I miss helping the night baker.
Fresh sticky-buns and a cup of hot coffee laced with cocoa. AHHHHHHHHHH.


Tom McNulty
Posted 2007-06-28 8:16 AM (#4853 - in reply to #4741)


Master and Commander

Posts: 1462

Subject: RE: Messcooking

Thanks for the consideration you old fossil. I don't think I'll ever forget the image of you with the Viking helmet complete with horns in Baltimore. Don explained what an MT was, and you can see there was no place for me on a DBF. I did my thing from 1963 to 1971 operating between NLON and Holy Loch so I'm darn familiar with the goings on in the lower base. We were all proud wearers of dolphins and mingled in the usual haunts. MT school was at Dam Neck. Va Beach. In those days I was partial to the Heidleberg. I hung around the Purple Onion near Little Creek until somebody altered my thought process one night with a coke bottle. Women, you can't always assume their calm nature. I was innocent as a lamb and took it as a great insult and decided to spend my money elsewhere. Oh, most of my Bank St soiree's were spent at Ernie's on the Thames or the Green Door. I think I must have been a glutton for punishment. They should have preserved Bank St as a national historical site. So you take care and maybe we'll run into each other at the Torsk. WEll, only if you learn about the Baltimore parking regualtions. Had to get that one in.
Darrin
Posted 2007-06-28 12:45 PM (#4863 - in reply to #4741)


Great Sage of the Sea

Posts: 561

Location: Belleview, Fl
Subject: RE: Messcooking

To answer your question about having a DBF pedigree and being a nook, yes to both accounts... I grew up on stories of my uncles submarine navy when he was home on leave from New London, he served a bit over 20 years with pride on submarines and he was and is still proudest of his time spent on the USS Sea Owl SS-405. Later I was fascinated to hear the stories of a former frogman and the Diesel's that he rode in the late 50's and into the early 60's, unfortunatly he went on eternal patrol a couple of years ago after a long night of "drinkin like a sailor" and gettin into an argument with some yahoo's. While the official report stated that he fell off of his porch and hit his head on the bumper of his van the locals who knew him didn't believe it and argued the point and finally had to accept it. So yes Dex I have a pedigree in Diesels and am also a nook, but to me I am a submariner who did his job just like the men before me and just like the men who have come after I left.

Darrin
Darrin
Posted 2007-06-28 1:19 PM (#4866 - in reply to #4741)


Great Sage of the Sea

Posts: 561

Location: Belleview, Fl
Subject: RE: Messcooking

What I forgot to mention, is that while my uncle rode the boats my father chased the boats around the North Atlantic flying in a Super Connie sub hunter looking for Ivan and yes he always kept a sharp eye out for a wayward US submarine.
My pride runs deep
dex armstrong
Posted 2007-06-28 3:33 PM (#4870 - in reply to #4741)


COMSUBBBS

Posts: 3202

Location: Alexandria, Virginia
Subject: RE: Messcooking

Vertical Tube Shooter...love it, great term. I only came across one missile in my six year undersea service career....pool ball thrown in a heated argument I wasn't a part of at the time in an establishment known in the yellow pages as Bells Bar and Grille, Hampton Boulevard just outside the Main Gate, NOB, Norfolk...was told later that it was, I think, a seven ball. I got clocked just above the eye as I stepped out of the head and woke up in the Base Dispensary (Sick Bay) with a lump that looked like I was attempting to grow an auxillary head. That bagan and ended my association with anything remotely resembling a missile. I must confess, nobody knows less about nuclear propulsion, nuke subs or life aboard anything powered by protons and other whiz-bang stuff...except what I have picked up on the Discovery and History channels and reading BLIND MAN'S BLUFF....When I was a kid, we had a guy in the Saturday Matinee serials called Buck Rogers (played by Buster Crabb)...he was a kind of space nuke and had a combination rocket/submarine contraption he used to track down the Wicked Ming...I've always looked upon the nuke Navy as a highly complicated Buck Rogers contraption force, that was far far beyond my level of understanding, comprehension and intellectual capacity. It's like robot conception...I have no idea how they do it, beyond the fact that they have aluminum reproductive organs and gestation takes place in a Hefty two ply bag in a Safeway dumpster. Never understood nuclear propulsion, except that you had to shovel a lot of "glow-in-the-dark, pixie dust into a giant hopper and hit the "go like hell" lever to get underway. From what I understand, THEY CAN GO 22 MILES DEEP....and make their own air and fresh water and get mermaid lingerie tangled in their stern planes. That's my complete mental inventory of all things nuke. Oh Yes...They make you sterile...shrink your testicles...make you go blind and march in gay parades...or at least that's what the Chiefs in Basic Enlisted Sub School told us in the late 1950's (Bates and Blocker)....It was all long ago, when Rickover was handsome, women wouldn't be caught dead getting a tattoo (not true, forgot Tugboat Annie) and gasoline was 15 cents a gallon. DEX
Flapper
Posted 2007-06-28 7:21 PM (#4873 - in reply to #4870)


Master and Commander

Posts: 1107

Location: Tucson AZ
Subject: RE: Messcooking

dex armstrong - 2007-06-28 2:33 PM
...When I was a kid, we had a guy in the Saturday Matinee serials called Buck Rogers (played by Buster Crabb)...he was a kind of space nuke and had a combination rocket/submarine contraption he used to track down the Wicked Ming...

...It was all long ago, when Rickover was handsome, women wouldn't be caught dead getting a tattoo (not true, forgot Tugboat Annie) and gasoline was 15 cents a gallon. DEX

Dex, firstly it was Flash Gordon that had Buster Crabbe dueling with Ming the Merciless ...
However Crabbe also played Buck Rogers, which was made by the same studio and even reused some of the same Flash Gordon sets.
Lastly, with Hyman G Rickover, 'handsome' is not a descriptor that comes to mind. As a moon-beamer nuke, I met the man but he didn't set my heart to fluttering, heh heh.

(By the way the right-hand planesman is Edward Teller, 'father of the H-bomb'; I don't know who the guy in the middle is.)
By the way, even though I never served on diesel boats I did do underways on them out of subschool (1963). All the guys who signed my qual card on Scamp were out of the DBF navy, and probably most of the Goat Locker and the senior Officers were WW II vets ... I guess I'm trying to say that we were both taught by the same kind of folks, and when it was my time teach the next generation of boat sailors I tried to pass on the lore and attitude that I learned from DBF guys.
dex armstrong
Posted 2007-06-28 8:04 PM (#4875 - in reply to #4741)


COMSUBBBS

Posts: 3202

Location: Alexandria, Virginia
Subject: RE: Messcooking

Flapper didn't Buster play both? I think he did...No I don't, you've accurately pinned the goat tail on my donkey...Weismuller was Tarzan...Duncan Realdo was Cisco...Leo Carillio was Pancho, William Boyd was Hoppy...Hoppy's horse was Topper, Gene had two sidekicks Pat Butram and some guy I'm having a helluva time remembering (Smiley Burnett)...Genes horse was Champion..."Have a little more Doublemint Gene...Well Thanks Smiley, but first I'll sing a little song with the Sons of the Pioneers, then we'll go get Little Mary Bell outta that burning barn.". Red Ryder's sidekick was Little Beaver played by Robert Blake. Tom Mix was brought to you by Instant Hot Ralston...Peter Pan brought you Sky King...Who'n the hell played Buck Rogers?...Hey, did you know that when Arliegh "31 Knot" Burke commanded his WWII Destroyer Squadron his call sign and Squadron insignia was Little Beaver? You can see his foulweather jacket and squadron insignia in the Naval Museum in the Washington Navy Yard. Buck Rogers had to be played by somebody....You're dead right about Ming...I spent a lot of Saturdays at the Rialto Theater in Chattanooga hoping Flash would kick Ming's worthless butt. In the process I ate seventeen tons of stale popcorn and pulled out six fillings with JU-JU Bees. Flapper, When I managed the buildings in Crystal City beginning in 1981, I had to deal directly with Rickover. He was tough, but when he saw my Dolphins in the lapel of my coat, he said,"By God were you in my N-A-V-Y?" "Hell no Sir...Every Thanksgiving I get on my knees and Thank God I wasn't in your NAVY. I was a diesel boat bluejacket." He laughed and we got along after that. Once I used the term,"Sir you don't want to do that...I'm trying to save you from yourself." He poured molten lava on me for the better part of five minutes..."Mister, I don't need you or any other light load GSA idiot to save me from anything." Having said that, the man was without a doubt the smartest, most informed man I ever met and could absorb everything he needed to know to make an informed decision, instantly. I can never understand what kind of patience and restraint his wife had to keep from strangling the sonuvabitch in his sleep. When he wanted to, he could be the oneriest (sp?) bastard on the planet. Flap, I was a diesel boat sailor...I knew less than nothing about nooks. I talk about nooks with the same level of sensitivity, knowledge and understanding I have for conducting symphony orchestras, performing organ transplants and driving in NASCAR races....Forgive me and allow me to jump up and down and pee-pee against the tide.It's what old men are supposed to get to do. DEX
Jump to page : 1 2
Now viewing page 1 [25 messages per page]
Printer friendly version
E-mail a link to this thread
Jump to forum :


(Delete all cookies set by this site)
Running MegaBBS ASP Forum Software v2.0
© 2003 PD9 Software