The late night hours underway submerged became late in life,
gentle memories.
Night people have always been a different breed of cat. There's
something kinda special about people who own the middle of the night
... cab drivers; Waffle House waitresses; 'Dirty Apron Bill', the
short order cook at the I-95 truck stop; and midnight shift highway
patrolmen. Great people, great conversationalists ... there are few
competing distractions so you tend to pay more attention to what people
say during the hours most folks are sleeping.
Coffee always tastes better when it has percolated to the point of
massive liquid reduction ... stuff one step above hot tar. Coffee that
can pop rivet your eyelids to your eyebrows ... a concoction resembling
boiled Egyptian mummy wrappings or Pakistani bunion pads. Late night
submarine, bottom of the pot midwatch, wake the dead, put hair on your
chest jamoke can dissolve your adenoids
But, you never forget it ... and you never get any cup of coffee
that matches submarine midwatch coffee the rest of your life.
When you turn in to an after battery rack ... as you are corking
off you can pick up bits and pieces of messdeck conversation as on duty
crewmen pass through the crews' mess airlock door.
"Yeah ... Mary told him to ... "
Then the door would close.
"Back around 1952, my old man ... "
And then the door would shut again. You never learned what his
dad did in 1952. If it was one of those mid-western farm kids, his dad
probably bought a damn hay baler or married some big, corn fed gal with
John Deere tractor seat butt.
It was great layin' there in your hot sack rack picking up bits and
pieces of late night 'Go nowhere' pass the time, revelations.
Every smokeboat sailor had those gentle memories.
Aft of the After Battery berthing compartment was the enlisted head.
Here you could pick up entire conversations from guys using the
side-by-side, port and starboard sinks ... or between some using the
urinal and some socially convivial bluejacket with his butt parked on
a freckle maker head seat.
"Hey Pete ... That you?"
"Yeah ... it's me ... That you, Ralph?"
"It's me ... Hey, when we pull in tomorrow morning, you got the duty?"
"Naw ... Section Three has the duty ... I'm in two."
"You hittin' the beach?"
"Yeah, if the COB opens the Saltwater Savings and Loan."
Note: Slush Funds were totally illegal and outlawed by the United
States Navy ... they operated far beyond anything remotely resembling
Federal banking regulation, inspection or protection. It was a cross
between an Aboriginal headhunters' credit union and the booty split of
the brotherhood of pirates.
The Chief of Naval Operations and Secretary of the Navy had no
idea of the complexity of E-3 finances and the periodic difficulty of
financing a night of inebriated lust.
Our slush fund was run out of a beat-up 'Have-a-Tampa' cigar box in
the COB's bunklocker. Every payday, the animals tossed five bucks in the
box. You could borrow $10.00 for $11.00 or $20.00 for $22.00. Profits went
to beer ball games, ships parties aft of the conning tower fairwater,
Luaus, and flowers for deceased people ... and one baby crib for a
strapped E-3 new dad.
The Saltwater Savings and Loan was a great, faith based financial
institution, that saved more submarine sailors than Billy Graham.
All night long, the lads on duty in the maneuvering room and both
enginerooms sent men forward to get coffee.
Another set of sounds that originated from the crews' mess were
the rattle of silverware being washed and the banging of pots, pans,
aluminum trays and crockery. Messcooking was not a delicate art ... the
messcooks created racket like tossing horseshoes on a tin roof.
But the racket was a familiar sound ... one of those comforting
sounds that a boatsailor accepted as indicating all being right in the
underwater environment in which he lived.
Every time someone passed through the watertight door from the forward
engine room, you would get a momentary ear full of the pounding of a pair
of Fairbanks-Morse 38D rockcrushers ... then it would suddenly stop and
you would hear the click of the spring loaded latch.
Some nights, cooks and messcooks would play hell with your sleep when
they started rooting around the compartment in search of the location
of specific canned goods needed for future meal preparation.
"Jeezus, what in the hell's going on?"
"Lookin' for some gahdam cans of beans."
"You gotta disturb a working sailor's sleep to find a couple of cans
of lousy beans??"
"There isn't a sailor sleeping back here that would qualify as a
working sailor on his best day."
"Yeah ... nobody listens to a stupid, worthless canned food
heater-upper."
"Mickey ... don't bother to ask what's in the soup the next time
yours tastes like somebody peed in it."
Nonsensical, go absolutely nowhere conversation between men who would
have shown up for a kidney transplant if either needed one. The gentle,
no malice bullshit that was the common coin of diesel submariners.
No narrative of the nocturnal activities of the underwater kingdom
would be complete without mentioning the acid-eaten dungaree voltage
ferrets ... the main power electricians.
Those bastards would show up ... open a manhole hinged door in the
thwartships passageway and drop down into a world where they snaked
around taking battery temperatures and topping the cells off with pure
distilled water. In short, they feed the electron wizards that pushed
us through saltwater below snorkel depth.
In my tour in the boats, I never met a bad electrician. They, like
enginemen, machinist mates and other auxiliary rates were numbered among
God's most generous people.
I have no idea what late night sounds a modern day sailor will carry
with him into old age, but, I do know, having seen living conditions
aboard the most recent classes of the modern high-tech submersibles,
there are certain memories we will not share in common.
No modern day nuke rider will carry the memory of feet in stinking
socks stepping on him on the way to an upper bunk just below an air
conditioning condensate drip pan.
He won't have memories of waking up to a close-up view of a bare
butt when the Chief Corpsman was conducting a sick call crab check in
Hogan's Alley.
He won't remember the aromatic wonder fog that accompanies the
venting of #2 Sanitary Tank Inboard.
He won't remember midwatch cheese sandwiches made from Navy contract
self-healing, scab forming mayonnaise and sliced cheese that could patch
a tractor tire blowout.
He, or maybe she in the not so distant future, won't leave the
boatservice with memories of CPO dried armpit salt stains that would
deflect a 20mm round.
Each generation will collect memories to pass on to downline
generations.
These are mine ... the ones I carry in my heart of wonderful times
spent among the finest men I would ever know during the time I spent as
an oxygen thief on this planet.