A Sea Story

This is a sea story.  I was once a sailor in the United States Navy. In four years I managed to circumnavigate the earth twice. It was not my intent, it was simply the direction the ship took. I was not consulted. Actually, at my pay grade I was rarely consulted about anything. However, at my paygrade I had little responsbility, which in itself gives a certain amount of freedom. I'm not quite sure why I am telling you about this since it has little to do with this story. 

First let me say a bit about Navy tradition. When a young man completes basic training, which in the Navy is known as boot camp, he is usually asigned to a ship . Those sailors on the ship usually refer to these new shipmates as "boots". After you have been to sea you relish welcoming new boots, because the you are no longer considered a boot.  When I was a boot on the crew of the USS Bon Homme Richard, I and my fellow boots were the butt of many practical jokes. However, later in the voyage, other boots joined us and we were the admistrators of the practical jokes. Some of the jokes were very simple and usually involve some facet of naval life. For example, we would send the boot to find some much needed relative bearing grease for the ship's navigator. Or, for batteries were needed for the sound-powered phones. They could be ordered to procure one hundred yards of shoreline. 

While these jokes were rather simple we did have one that was the creme de la creme.    We had a new practical joke. We would take the new boots to see Pappy. Pappy was a yeoman in Main Com (Main Communications)  A yeoman is sort of like a secreatary in civilian life. Typing and paper shuffling, things like that.  Pappy was a rather rotund fellow with many years in the Navy. His buzz cut hair was gray. There were three hashmarks on the left sleeve of his jumper indicating over 12 years  of service. But the patch on his left shoulder was the three small bars of a seaman, the rank usually achieved in about two years. You could safely surmise that Pappy was not the sharpest knife in the drawer but had that personality that everyone liked. Pappy  did have one unusual feature though. He had a glass eye!  And he could do something very unusual with that eye. He could remove it and put it in his mouth. He would open his mouth just anough for the eye to be visable. Yep, it would freak out most people. I remember once in a bar in Olangapoe City, P.I. he was sitting at the bar when he had to go relieve himself. Not wanting anyone to disturb his drink he took his eye out and plopped it into his drink.  When the Filipino barmaid saw it she let out a shreik the shook the bamboo rafters of Noni's Bar. Of course we howled with laughter.

 It became regular procedure to expose all new boots to Pappy's eyeball in the mouth trick after getting underway on a cruise. And we did this until there was an incident that terminated Pappy's unique presentation of his mind's eye. We usually built a lot of hype around the event before the boots actually experienced it. 

We had picked up two new boots at Subic Bay in the  Phillapine Islands and were steaming north to the war zone, the South China Sea. The boots were fresh from electronic technician school. One, the larger of the two was Denubio, an Italian lad from Boston. With a big nose and jet black hair, he was immediately christened, "Boston Butt".  The other was his opposite; thin,  with buzz cut red hair and he spoke with the accent of the Appalachian highlands of his home in Tennessee. We called him "Cornbread". Time would reveal that Cornbread was something of an electronic genius, particularily if he had access to his seemingly endless supply of illegal Jack Daniels whiskey.  

I was a seaman assigned to the Electronics Division and had been to Navy "A" school to be an electronics technician at the time. My job involved servicing the electronic equipment in Main Com. Security was tight around Main Com. You would ring the doorbell and a little window would open and Pappy would appear. Upon identifing you he would unlock the door and let you in. We would call him and tell him we were bringing a new boot to see him and he would open the window appearing with his glass eye in his mouth. On one particular day when we took our boots to see Pappy he was in perfect form that day with a big cheerful smile on his face with that glass eye peeking out from between his smiling lips. The boots' jaws dropped with  gasps according to plan. At that very instant a chief radioman slapped Pappy on the back and announced in a booming voice, "How's it going, Pappy?"  Surprised , Pappy gulped and swallowed his glass eye!

That was the end of that particular practical joke. I don't know how Pappy got his eye back or if the eye I saw him with months later was the same one. I really did not want to know. But for a while it was a great joke to play on boots.