Coast Guard & Navy Days

[JeffL]

I received this from a Coastie buddy.

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TO ALL HANDS: With the deployment now underway and your family and friends wondering how you're doing or what you're up to, you can email this set of instructions for them to follow so that they have a better understanding of what we are subject to on a daily basis.......

HOW TO SIMULATE BEING ABOARD SHIP:

1. Buy a steel dumpster, paint it gray inside and out, and live in it for six months.

2. Run all the pipes and wires in your house exposed on the walls.

3. Repaint your entire house every month.

4. Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of the bathtub and move the showerhead to chest level. When you take showers, make sure you turn off the water while you soap down.

5. Put lube oil in your humidifier and set it on high.

6. Once a week, blow compressed air up your chimney, making sure the wind carries the soot onto your neighbor's house. Ignore his complaints.

7. Once a month, take all major appliances apart and then reassemble them.

8. Raise the thresholds and lower the headers of all of your doors so that you either trip or bang your head every time you pass through them.

9. Disassemble and inspect your lawnmower every week.

10. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, turn your water heater temperature up to 200?. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, turn the water heater off. On Saturdays and Sundays tell your family they use too much water during the week, so no bathing will be allowed.

11. Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling, so you can't turn over without getting out and then getting back in.

12. Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain. Have your spouse whip open the curtain about 3 hours after you go to sleep, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and say, "Sorry, wrong rack."

13. Make your family qualify to operate each appliance in your house dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc.

14. Have your neighbor come over each day at 5 am, blow a whistle so loud Helen Keller could hear it, and shout "Reveille, reveille, all hands heave out and trice up."

15. Have your mother-in-law write down everything she's going to do the following day, then have her make you stand in your back yard at 6 am while she reads it to you.

16. Submit a request chit to your father-in-law requesting permission to leave your house before 3 PM.

17. Empty all the garbage bins in your house and sweep the driveway three times a day, whether it needs it or not. (Now sweepers, sweepers, man your brooms, give the ship a clean sweep down fore and aft, empty all shitcans over the fantail.)

18. Have your neighbor collect all your mail for a month, read your magazines, and randomly lose every 5th item before delivering it to you.

19. Watch no TV except for movies played in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch, and then show a different one.

20. When your children are in bed, run into their room with a megaphone shouting that your home is under attack and ordering them to their battle stations. (Now general quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations.)

21. Make your family menu a week ahead of time without consulting the pantry or refrigerator.

22. Post a menu on the kitchen door informing your family that they are having steak for dinner. Then make them wait in line for an hour. When they finally get to the kitchen, tell them you are out of steak, but they can have dried ham or hot dogs. Repeat daily until they ignore the menu and just ask for hot dogs.

23. Bake a cake. Prop up one side of the pan so the cake bakes unevenly. Spread icing real thick to level it off.

24. Get up every night around midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread. (midrats)

25. Set your alarm clock to go off at random during the night. At the alarm, jump up and dress as fast as you can, making sure to button your top shirt button and tuck your pants into your socks. Run out into the backyard and uncoil the garden hose.

26. Every week or so, throw your cat or dog in the pool and shout "Man overboard port side!" Rate your family members on how fast they respond.

27. Put the headphones from your stereo on your head, but don't plug them in. Hang a paper cup around your neck on a string. Stand in front of the stove, and speak into the paper cup, "Stove manned and ready." After an hour or so, speak into the cup again, "Stove secured." Roll up the headphones and paper cup and stow them in a shoebox.

28. Place a podium at the end of your driveway. Have your family stand watches at the podium, rotating at 4-hour intervals. This is best done when the weather is worst. January is a good time.

29. When there is a thunderstorm in your area, get a wobbly rocking chair, sit in it and rock as hard as you can until you become nauseous. Make sure to have a supply of stale crackers in your shirt pocket.

30. For former engineers: bring your lawn mower into the living room, and run it all day long.

31. Make coffee using eighteen scoops of budget priced coffee grounds per pot, and allow the pot to simmer for 5 hours before drinking.

32. Have someone under the age of ten give you a haircut with sheep shears.

33. Sew the back pockets of your jeans onto the front.

34. Every couple of weeks, dress up in your best clothes and go to the scummiest part of town. Find the most run-down, trashiest bar, and drink beer until you are hammered. Then walk all the way home.

35. Lock yourself and your family in the house for six weeks. Tell them that at the end of the 6th week you are going to take them to Disney World for "liberty." At the end of the 6th week, inform them the trip to Disney World has been canceled because they need to get ready for an inspection, and it will be another week before they can leave the house.



Now you have an idea of what life aboard a ship is like.

[Tamaroa]

.....................and we liked it!!!!!

Bill

[cstfe]

Bill and Jeff

Can either one of you come up with a reasonable explanation to the question "why do sailors bitch, moan, gripe and complain and still want to board any ship they see, or if they hear a fog whistle get a tear in their eyes"? :cd:

My dad was afraid of freeways but felt right at home in a storm at sea..can't figure that out either because he could barely swim.

Do seamens brains get water logged.. :re:

Esther

[Tamaroa]

Esther, can't speak for anyone else but I would guess it has to do with the bond developed with fellow crew members due to enduring similiar hardships in addition to fond memories of the good liberty ports whether it be sights or brawls. After you have "done it" the next time you see a ship, cutter, boat or whatever, you instantly compare her, good or bad to your experience. Obviously, the flood gates are opened and the memories - 90% good ones - well up to the surface.

It has been 32 years since I was discharged. I associate the Coast Guard and my time on the Tam with good times, good friends, growing up, becoming a "salt" I was 19 then so it was not an "old" salt. I wouldn't exactly call a 205 foot behemoth of an ocean going tug a romantic notion of life at sea, but never the less I remember standing many a watch in a fog bound sea standing at the stem, listening to the water being sliced by the bow. I remember bone jarring assaults on my knees as I steered her through mountainous swells enroute to a search and rescue case. I remember forays into that evil world of liberty ports arm in arm with 3 or 4 other coasties, pennies in our pockets still being able to have a good time and I remember the good feeling you had when you knew you made a difference. All of these things combine to make you stop and look twice at another boat and ruminate because of the memories they trigger.

At any rate that's my nonsensical explanation to your question.

Bill

[sweet_n_sassy]

MMMm well that was a good way to describe life...now i know how my buddy on one of the cutter feels ......and am glad that i am down here in Aus and not on a Ship...lmao...thanks for the wonderful insight...


Jo...