I know this is an older post, but it's the one that I located you through. I was Googling USS Farragut blogs as I do every so often just to see who might be out there. Hell, it's lunch time here at work, what else I got to do?

First, let me say I'm always impressed by your memory of so long ago. I have trouble remembering 2001, let alone 1981. I envy you for that, even though it's probably my own fault for past deeds and all.

Anyway, I miss hearing from you even if it was only occasionally. The last thing I tried sending to the yahoo address I have for you was returned undeliverable, so I never tried again.

Hope all is well with you. I'm going to enjoy keeping up with your blog, now that I've found it. I love your story telling ability.

Well, lunch is just about over, so gotta "turn to".


Dan O
(Opie)

Glad you're here, Opie. Damned glad.

I remember D&S piers, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Yorktown. We lived in a little apartment over a garage, our first "home." I was a YNSA on the USS JOHN KING (DDG 3). It was 1974 and JOHN KING had just returned from the Gulf of Tonkin. LOL... I remember fall off the pier at night trying to board another ship for some duplictor supplies I needed to print the POD (Plan of the Day) and due to a trick of the lights I thought I was stepping on the gangway to the quarterdeck but missed it by a couple of feet. 20 feet almost straight... almost because I kept bouncing off the side of the ship and the pilings. My heavy boondockers made me sink at least 10 or 15 feet underwater... complete blackness and I didn't know which way was up, down or sideways. Thank god the watch threw a cargo net down for me to climb up.

I also rember our time at Yorktown offloading 3,000 rounds of 5"/54 projectiles. 3 days of lifting 78 pound bullets. I was so happy when someone announced this was the last shell... only to be crushed when the same guy said now for the cannisters. :-0

Lots of memories. The worst are of the 6 months living and working in the yellow haze of asbestos as they were cutting out the steampipes at NNSY and the rats the size of dogs. The best are of returning from a 6 month cruise to my wife and new baby daugther. Or coming in off midwatch in the North Atlantic/Artic Circle to midrats of sliced roast beef on fresh baked bread and hot coffee. Hmmmm.

Glad you came by to share your memories. I'm sure you did a few E5 and below worknig parties loading both wet and dry stores on an UNREP while the ship was doing twenty-five degree rolls.

Glad to meetcha!

Yeoman = Captain's phone talker on the flying bridge during UNREP. Very heavy rolls in the North Atlantic and Arctic Circle. We were hosting a photographer's mate from the carrier that we were steaming with. During a particularly brutal bit of heavy weather (ever wonder what those lines going across the bridge were for or why there are straps in the bunks?) we were watching the carrier going through the 50 foot seas, it's screws turn and flinging water as it was hitting one crest while still coming out of the trailing swell. We were under orders to open no watertight out doors but the PH unwisely opened on on the main deck and stepped part way out to take a dramatic picture of his carrior. A huge wave slammed the door in and crushed his head. Very sad.

But there were bright spots. As a Yeoman, we could usually avoid the three month tour of mess cooking because our cheif's were respected by the Captain and feared by the department heads, LOL. My senior chief from the Philippines was a friendly guy except when things went wrong... Like a YNSN leaving a huge cup of bug juice on a shelf above the master chief's brand new IBM Selectrict Typewriter. I was on my way to the galley before the last of the bug juice swooshed through typewriter and shot out from the keys.

But even then, the chief of the mess was a aging, pot-smoking lifer with a good sense of humor and a lot of war stories. Coming back Sweden and Norway with enough live lobsters to feed the crew twice and everyone on their birthday we enjoyed warming them up and having lobster races in the middle of the night. And just imagine, an 18 year old, $125 a week sailor feasting on lobster 3 or 4 times a week.

Or about our visit to Gotteborg, Sweeden. The reception committee threw bags of red paint and pig blood at us as we tied up. But then we were treated to little cone shaped paper bottles of cold, fresh milk after seven weeks of bug juice made with "ship's water" that tasted of oil.

I have even better stories from my years on the USS STERRETT (CG31) from '76 to '78 (hammerhead sharks eating Iranian sailors in Bandar Abbas, straffed by automatic weapons in Olongopo, trying to rescue our AS2H helicopter crew in a night time storm in the Sea of Japan, etc.) and the nuclear weapons vault at COMANSURFPAC in the early 80's (better save those stories for another 25-30 years.. LOL).

Great stories!

Oh yes, I remember what those straps on the rack were for. Not that they helped, really. There was no way you could sleep in weather like that. I took my boondockers and any other gear adrift, and jammed it all in the sides of the rack, but it didn't matter, you still swayed from side to side, and you never got to sleep. I once went five whole days without sleep in the Med from stormy weather.

My ship was long in the tooth- as were the roaches that lived in the bulkheads. When the engines and boilers were lit off, hundreds of thousands of them came up from the bowels, and pretty much took over. One time, I found a couple crawling out from my midday chow. I calmly got up, and dumped my tray in the trash, and decided to take my chances with the Navy Exchange Mobile Canteen.

Iranian sailors eaten by hammerhead sharks. That sounds appetizing!