1956 USS Arikara 1959

Hello Old Shipmate:


I departed the good ship ARIKARA when it arrived in Subic Bay in August 1959. At the time, I was a Second Class Engine man. From Subic I made my way to San Francisco where I was discharged from the Navy and happy as hell!

I returned to my home in Cortez, Colorado, where I tried to sustain the lifestyle I had grown accustomed to. Unfortunately a paycheck was necessary to do this and I eventually found a cold, dirty job that paid $1.50 an hour. Remember those days?

My Navy training, i.e. chasing women and drinking booze, was the only thing I could apply to my life in Cortez. This led to my getting drunk one cold snowy Saturday night and wrecking the '58 Ford I had purchased three months earlier. After getting out of jail, common sense took charge and I realized that if I stayed in Cortez, a few things were inevitable--

1. 1. I would wind up dead
   2. I would wind up married
   3. I would never have as much fun as I had while in the
   Navy
   4. I had grown to totally hate the frigid cold and snow
   which takes up about 5 months of the year in that part of the world.
   
   So I paid the local Navy Recruiter a visit. I re-enlisted for four years as a Second Class and went to Engineman School, Great Lakes, Illinois, where I learned all about Boeing Gas Turbines. Twenty years later, I had yet to see one of the things!!
   
   From there, I was assigned to service craft at Norfolk, Virginia. The duty was considered sea duty because the units were almost constantly under way, albeit never out of sight of land.
   
   My first two craft were Yard Oilers. We carried on board about a million gallons of Diesel Fuel and delivered it all around the Chesapeake Bay to the various ships. I lived this life for a year before I was promoted to First Class.
   
   With this accomplishment I was reassigned to one of the new harbor tug
   boats the Navy was purchasing. My position on board was Chief Engineer.
   I had an electrician and three enginemen working for me. Life on board
   one of those work boats was easy but long tiring days and nights were
   common. I still found enough time to sustain my first and foremost
   occupation-drinking and women!
   
   
   In 1963, I fell into Heaven!! I found a job as bartender at one of the
   Navy clubs on base.
   This club was a couple of blocks from where my tug tied up when it was
   not working ships so it was easy to get to and from. The club was a
   block from the women's barracks where there was a bunch of women always
   looking for a good time. What else could one hope for???
   
   
   My life in Heaven lasted for about three months when one of those Wave's
   seduced me with her charms and we wound up as a married couple! One problem arose from this; the Navy would not allow its women to get married and stay in the service. So when Karen's three years tour was over, she was discharged. My four year tour was over a month later so I too, took a discharge.
   
   The Navy didn't want to send me where I wanted to go to (back to the West coast) so I said 'To hell with you!'
   
   Karen and I packed up all of our meager belongings and headed into the sunset. Karen was from Lyons, Kansas. A small town in the middle of that state. We stopped along the way west and I got introduced to all of her relatives. Then it was her turn to get introduced to my relations in Colorado.
   
   We made it to Salt Lake City before we ran out of money so I went to the Navy Recruiter again. This one found me an opening at the Naval Station, San Diego.
   
   We arrived in San Diego with no ship to go to. We found out Karen had been using aspirin instead of birth control pills and she was in the family way. I had suspected this all along; but the fact was confirmed.  A couple of weeks passed before I received orders to a wooden hulled ocean minesweeper home ported at Long Beach, California.
   
   We packed it all up and headed north.
   
   The minesweeper duty was about like the Arikara-a crew of 65. The ship was not as big as the 98 and being made out of wood, it as like riding a herd of bucking horses even before it got out of the harbor!! Out in the open sea was a real thrill!
   
   The ship (USS EXCEL MSO 439) was powered by four aluminum V-12 diesel engines, 2 each driving a reduction gear and a controllable pitch propeller. Top speed was about 12 knots in very smooth seas and a trip from Long Beach to Viet Nam required a stop at every island along the way and six weeks of steaming. I made four of these trips in the three years I was on board the vessel.
   
   After three years of this duty I had sired one son and had another on the way. I received new orders to the Navy Recruiting Station, Riverhead, Long Island, New York. In 1967 we traveled across country to the Big Apple!
   
   In 1968, I was advanced to Chief.
   
   In 1970, now with two sons, I received orders for duty on board a Nuclear Submarine tender home ported in Rota, Spain. Before we went overseas, we made a round trip from New York to California and back to visit all the relatives.
   
   Life in Spain was a blast. The ship (USS HOLLAND AS 32) was in port all the time, only going to sea when we had to dump radioactive water. This ship was powered by six diesel engines driving generators for a main drive electric motor. We provided all the services required of six nuclear submarines when they were in port. These were usually missile subs however we would have to accommodate a fast attack boat about three times a year.
   
   In 1973 the Holland was ordered to return to Weapons Station, Charleston, South Carolina. I could have transferred over to our relief but we decided we had lived in Spain long enough, so we moved to the sunny south. For two years.
   
   1975 brought the Holland to the Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Washington, through the Panama Canal. I rode the ship and enjoyed all the liberty ports. Karen drove with the two boys and a cat with 5 kittens. She got to see all of the relatives and give away kittens,  I got to see the sights!
   
   I stayed on the Holland for most of a years shipyard overhaul then was transferred to Inactive Ships Facility, Bremerton in late 1975. This is where all the old ships who have lived out their usefulness go to await their doom.
   .
   We lived in a pine forest we owned across a bay from Bremerton, for two years. I made Senior Chief in 1977. The Navy wouldn't let me stay another year in Bremerton so I put in my papers and retired on 1 April 1977 as a Chief..
   
   I started college at Puget Sound Junior College in Bremerton. Three month of this was all I could take so I went to work.
   
   Ingersoll-Rand Corporation is world known for pumps and compressors. I went to work for their Centrifugal Air Compressor division as a field service engineer. I had to move to the general vicinity of the manufacturing plant which is located in a small town, Mayfield, in western Kentucky.
   
   We sold out all of our assets in Port Orchard and moved to Murray, Ky. This put us 25 miles from the plant and 60 miles from the local airport in Paducah, Ky.
   
   I worked for I-R until 1994 when I was declared totally disabled by all the Doctors east of the Mississippi. In 1982, I was the recipient of one of the early quadruple heart bypass operations. I survived and continued working at my old pace until 1994 when I had a problem with the ticker.  Quit work or die was the verdict, so I took the cowards way out and became disabled. Since then, things have steadily gone down hill so now when I wake up and see daylight, I know I have beat the odds one more time.
   
   In 1990, the youngest son failed out of college for the last time. Karen was working at the courthouse in Paducah, driving 120 miles a day. I was still flying in and out of the Paducah airport so we decided to move. We bought property in another forest near Paducah, put a house on it and moved one more time. This is why I live in Kentucky.
   
   When I was working, I traveled all over the world for I-R. The only continent I never made it to was Australia. The only place I was ever in that I was afraid for my life was in Israel. Of the Israelites not the Arabs.
   
   Karen retired from the State of Kentucky three years ago. She got tired of looking at my smiling face every day so after a year, she went back to work part time at her old job. She has it in with her boss so she takes off when ever she wants to.
   
   We own a 35 ft. 5th wheel camper and pull it with a 1996 Ford F250 turbocharged Diesel truck. We do a lot of traveling--been in all 48 states more than once and most of Canada.
   
   Our oldest son lives a single life in Virginia Beach, Va. We go in that direction at least twice a year.
   
   Our youngest son lives a single life here at home. He works at a state penitentiary 45 miles down the road and lives here at home. When we are gone, he is in charge so it does have some benefit. 
   
   Neither son has ever been married nor will they likely find anyone who would marry them. So as far as it goes-the buck stops here!!
   
   Now you know the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey says.