All posts by Jim

A Tale of the Sea: A Sea Story from the Luce Med Deployment, 1972

Sea Stories

Before i get to the historic journey home, there are two sea stories while in the Med i want to share.

Some time after we got underway from Korfu, the third division crew told me a story that still makes me laugh. The Luce had been in a regular overhaul in the Philadelphia just before the deployment.

The officer i relieved was a good guy, a lieutenant who went to the Naval Academy, and got married while the ship was in the yards. Just before the wedding took place when he was the Command Duty Officer on the weekend, he invited his future wife and her parents on board for lunch and a tour of the ASW spaces.

They toured the ASW fire control and ASW spaces on the third platform. He took them to the forecastle and showed them the ASROC launcher. They then went back to the torpedo tubes on the starboard side.

The second class torpedo man was there. He was resting against the bulkhead next to the tubes. He was wearing the classic dungaree working uniform with his Dixie Cup sailor pulled down and resting on his nose.

The lieutenant pointed to the three tubes in a triangle and proudly stated to his future wife and in-laws, “Helen, Mom, and Dad, these are my torpedo tubes.

The torpedo man seemed startled. He stood erect, pushed his Dixie cup back to the top of his head and said, “Beg your pardon, sir, but these are my fucking torpedo tubes.”

They didn’t tell me what ensued, but the torpedoman was right.

Mose Nailed It

A Pocket of Resistance

Yesterday, we played nine afternoon holes of golf, took burgers from the clubhouse home for supper. We would have stayed and eaten there — after all, their clubhouse is my briar patch — but it was the cats feeding time. The Padre baseball game wouldn’t start for about two hours.

Planning to listen to the local weather report, which is never quite right, we ended up watching a snippet of news. Not my thing. Then, because we both were interested in hearing golfers talk about their game, we went to the golf channel with its coverage of the US Open. They had a tribute to Payne Stewart, a terrific golfer who died in a plane accident. It was well done. Then, Brandel Chamblee and four or five other “panelists” talked incessantly about how much they knew, describing the course, which is really irrelevant to playing it

Then the game came on. Being that watching the whole game is part of my religious vow, i did: walk off homer for my Padres in the bottom of the ninth. i prefer to listen to the announcers for the flavor of the game, but i’m getting close to swearing off. Don Orsillo, Mark Grant, and Bob Scanlan being som impressed with themselves and their useless information, including banter they thought was funny. They weren’t.

i sat there as the Padres’ catcher Kyle Higashioka leads off the bottom of the ninth inning with a “walk off home run,” which by the way, had nothing to do with what Kyle did: he didn’t sprint but his trot was closer to a run than a walk. However, anyone on the telly takes great liberty in exaggerating actuality.

i clicked off the electronics systems and sat there pensively. In 1976, Mose Allison nailed my evening of streaming. Every person who opened his mouth during my evening of watching perfectly fit Mose’s admonition in his song, “Your Mind Is On Vacation” (“but your mouth is working overtime).

Be sure and listen to the lyrics because it’s not just television where folks are nailed in Mose’s song:

Note: i have resorted to using YouTube. i have Mose’s album by the same name. i bought it when it came out. Jimmy Smith, my mentor, introduced Cy Fraser and me to Mose in 1963. But i am technically challenged and could not remember how to put that version here. With Walker Hicks, i will relearn how to do this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxZ-scE9mDk