NAVY #01 - In the Beginning

Back around 1995 or so I got my first Internet capable computer. A bastard 486 clone machine with a huge 500 meg hard drive, 8 meg of ram and a 14.4 modem. I immediately discovered two things that would change my life: Internet porn and music discussion boards. I've pretty much grown bored of the porn, but the music has remained a major part of my life.

I've made many a friend who shared the same love for various styles of Hillbilly music that I possess. Back in those days, I was still active duty Navy. In order to stay in touch with people I would come home after being at sea and I would write up what had happened while I was out to sea, then I would e-mail it around to various people. Some of that stuff got forwarded around and around and around, and I ended up making even more friends in places that were far away and strange to me. Those various missives also ended up leading to a very poorly paying writing career.

This summer marks the 10 year anniversary since the last of the Navy missives. At several people's request, I have decided to revisit these essays. Some I will edit for basic grammatical errors. Some I will need to change a few names in order to prevent a future asswhipping if the wrong person should stumble across them, other than that, what you see here will be pretty much what I wrote back then. A lot of it is embarrassing. My story telling skills have improved vastly since that time, but oh well, It is what it is.

I hope you enjoy reading it half as much as I enjoyed living it.

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I grew up in Middle Tennessee. I have always been what my Grandma called a Rounder. From my earliest childhood, I just had to find out what was at the end of the road. When I was old enough to ride a bike without killing myself, my explorations grew. I knew every road and path withing several miles of my home. Then I finally got a drivers license. It wasn't long before I have been down every paved, gravel, and dirt road in Middle Tennessee. The joy in exploring is finding out what is at the end of the road, seeing what's around the next corner. It's in the journey, not the destination.

Most of my paycheck went to buy gasoline. Actually, gasoline and beer. After exploring most of middle Tennessee, I started buying less gasoline and more beer. Then I discovered ways to explore and travel without ever having to leave the house. My County Sheriff frowned on this type of behavior and started to encourage me to leave the county. Right about this time I quit my burger flipping job. It was really starting to interfere with my beer drinking. One morning my Daddy woke me up and asked me a question. He wanted to know where I wanted my mail forwarded to. I wasn't real smart, but I quickly figured out that this wasn't a good sign. He told me that if I wasn't going to work or go to college and if I thought that all I was going to do was drink beer, smoke dope, and chase women, that I could do it somewhere else. This was really not a good sign. Then he happened to mention that the Navy Recruiter has called earlier that day and that he and I had an appointment with him that afternoon.

Like I said earlier, I wasn't the smartest kid in the world and I was unable to put 2 and 2 together..

That afternoon my Dad and I are driving to downtown Nashville to go talk to the Navy Recruiter. I'm thinking that if we hurry, I can meet my friends down by the river later that evening. My Dad had other ideas. He looks over at me and says "You know, only one of us is coming back home tonight". Really? I asked him where it was that he was going. Young and stupid is no way to go through life.

We went in to see the Navy Recruiter and at first we heard the standard sales pitch. Money for college, job training, skills that would help me later in life, blah, blah, blah. I took the ASVAB test in High School and did real well on it. I bet I could have done better if I hadn't of taken it drunk. All the branches of the service have been chasing me since I first became a High School Senior. They had all promised me the world. I was going to be rich, I was going to be a high tech assassin jumping out of airplanes with a knife between my teeth killing commies for mommy and a bunch of similar bullshit.

My Recruiter must not of been in the recruiting business for very long. He took me into a back room and he showed me a movie about typical Navy life. It's basically your typical propaganda film showing a bunch of happy young guys drinking beer in various exotic locations with a lot of really good looking women in the background. I'm sitting there watching thinking to myself, "I can handle this!" Once the film was over I went back out front and sat down and talked to the recruiter. He asked me a bunch of questions such as "Are you a Drug Addict? Have you killed anyone this week? Do you like women more than men? etc, etc, etc. Then he asks me if I have any questions for him. Sure, I had questions. "Let me get this straight. You're going to feed me, give me a place to sleep, give me clothes to wear, teach me a job, Money for college, take me all over the World, and then pay me too?" This is starting to sound like summer camp with beer. "What's the catch?" I was told that the only catch was that I would have to cut my hair. Then I remembered my experiences with the Army, Air Force, and Marine recruiters. They had promised me everything under the sun if I would just sign up with them. So after listening to his sales pitch, I asked him what the Navy was gonna promise me. He got real quiet for a minute then he looked over at my Dad, then he looked over at me and said, "What's the Navy gonna promise you? A chance to catch the clap in 12 different countries".

Sign my ass up now!

A couple of months later, the day came for me to go off to Boot Camp. The recruiter gave me a plane ticket and pointed me toward the Airport. My Mama started crying and my Daddy looked like he was already making plans to rent my room out. I had never ridden on an airplane before, and I wasn't real comfortable with the idea at all. One of the guys I was headed to boot camp with, had a little weed on him, so we snuck down on the tarmac and set it on fire as we waited to board our flight. Up to this point in my life, I have never riden in anything that sooner or later didn't run over someone, need a push start, a set of jumper cables, run out of gas, or eventually require the services of a wrecker. I sat in the very back of the airplane so that when we ran into a mountain, I would get squashed last. at that time, beer was free on airplanes. I took advantage of that, as well as the cheap bourbon.

We eventually landed in Orlando, Florida. I was just about right. I had a really nice buzz going on when I got off that airplane. There were people from the Navy there to welcome us when we got off the flight. They were really nice too. They wanted to know if we had all of our stuff and if we were ready to be sailors. This is starting to sound like it's going to be fun. They walked us out to an old gray school bus and I got on board and joined 79 other guys from all around the United States. There were all kinds of people on that bus. Strange people. Puerto Ricans, Blacks, Mexicans, Asians, Yankees, you name it. I had been raised in a small semi-rural town that had very few minorities. This was a bit of a shock for me, especially the Yankees who I couldn't even understand, But we were all in this thing together. Everyone was real excited about becoming Sailors. We are all talking and looking out the window at all the tourist attractions that we wanted to go see. There was Disney Land and Sea World, and we were especially interested in the signs that advertised Exotic Dancers. We finally got to Boot Camp around midnight and everyone was still being really nice to us. They put us all up in a barracks and gave us our bunk assignments. It was about 2am when we all finally get settled and they turned the lights out. They told us to get some sleep as tomorrow was gonna be a very busy day for us. Cool. Tomorrow I would learn to be a sailor and tomorrow night......Exotic Dancers!!!!

At 4am the lights came on and I saw a large steel trash can go flying by my head. I am hoping I am still asleep and this this is just a dream. A very bad dream brought on by too much weed and too much alcohol. People start screaming and yelling at us. They are yanking people out of bed and telling us to line up on a red line. I'm still a little drunk and I am freaking out. "Where do you want me to stand? Is this okay? Am I in the right place?" "SHUT UP! EYES FORWARD!" I don't think I have ever been up at 4am in my life. Unless it was from the night before. Things quickly start to get worse. This very, very large man guy comes barging in and he is upset. This has to be the biggest, maddest, blackest man I had ever seen in my life. He is not very happy, and it seems that it was all our fault. He told us that it was his Birthday. He told us that his wife had fixed him his favorite meal. He told us that she had then put on something really tiny and sheer and sexy and that he was just getting ready to tear it off with his teeth when his telephone had rang. He told us It was the base Commander telling him that he had to return to base because we had just gotten there. He was screaming at the top of his lungs. His eyes were bulging out of his head. Little bits of spit were flying out of his mouth. I was waiting for his head to explode. He told us that he was just getting ready to get laid and that he was not happy. I'm thought about telling him that he should just go back home, get laid, and we would see him later in the morning. Thankfully most of my buzz had wore off enough for me to be able to keep my mouth shut. I decide that maybe for once in my life, I should just stand there and not say anything. It was a good decision. He then let us know that he is was still gonna do some screwing this night. And that we are gonna be the screwee's. I pray that if that's the case, we go in alphabetical order. I snuck a glance down at my plane ticket that for some reason I still had in my hand. Please let this thing be a round trip ticket, Please let this be a round trip ticket.

That was the start of a 20 year Navy career