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 You Holland Club Guys, Remember?Moderators: Jump to page : 1 Now viewing page 1 [25 messages per page] | |
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dex armstrong |
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COMSUBBBS Posts: 3202 Location: Alexandria, Virginia | Subject: You Holland Club Guys, Remember? You old Holland Club coots, Remember twenty five cent drafts? Seventy five cent pitchers? Nickle Slim Jims? Three for fifty cents Trojans? Thirteen button nut hugger doeskin blues...$29.95 with rate, hashmarks and boat designator tossed in as a freebee? Remembrer nickle a pack sea stores? True, Saga, Mens Adventure and ACE magazines? "Nightstand" and "Fabian" paperback skin books? Days when old salty bastards wore halyard clips suspended from a dungaree belt loop with six and a half million keys hanging on it....keys to every lock on the tender, Naval Supply and that fit the back door lock of every ugly woman within a fifty mile radius of the DesSub Piers? Do you remember when lads enlisted and were only given bus tickets and TR's to the Lakes, 250 innoculations, an original issue of mothball stinking left over WWII uniforms, a two ton all wool peacoat...green canvas seabag...and the opportunity to begin building a fortune at the rate of $34 every two weeks less "deeeducks"....Remember S&FD pay? Sub Skins? GemsCo and Balfour Dolphins? Greyhound buses with no heads and seats that looked like they had been used as leper colony shuttles? Remember when tender haircuts cost sixty-five cents and left you looking like a Ubangi tribesman? Remember peeing down the pit log well or in the bilges after they set condition BAKER at "battle stations" stations when the Gun Boss was in the room and the penalty for a raghat using the the wardroom head was 150 lashes with non-collapsable hose? Remember the term "Suck me silly with a handy billy?" Remember when all the guys who stood the Hydraulic Manifold Operator watches had at least eight hashmarks, at least one hula girl tattoo...wore raggedy ass steamer chiefs hats that looked like they had been used to wipe down the inside of a tincan boiler firebox? Remember when one of the non-negotiable professional barmaid requirements was the DD cup bra? Remember Coors, Boh Beer, Banner Beer, Knickerbocker Beer...Sly Fox the fine wine aged at least twenty minutes and the favorite of Norfolk based E-3's...known connoseurs of ninety eight cent a bottle outstanding vintages....Sly Fox the fluid that if spilled on a set of whites, instantly turned them into Fairbanks wipe down rags......Remember submarine barracks?...Those five-star locations where the single lads congregated to take two hour post patrol showers, listen to Johnny Horton records, play games of chance, read literature of no intellectual value whatsoever, tell lies to each other and whistle at passing wimmin from the third deck windows? Remember when personal maturity was not required until you made E-5? Remember $25 dollar female personal services providers that required YOU to pay cab fare and hot sheet rate?....This transactual arrangement beat trying to establish a romantic relationship with local girls whose mothers, fathers, minister, Sunday School teachers and Aunt Charlotte had warned them for years that any fellow who crawled out of a submarine hatch had only one thing in mind that began with seperating them from their undies......Remember cramming ten innebriated bluejackets in a cab and yelling out a pier number to the driver...and tipping the bastard ten bucks because you were singling up and heading out at 0800 the next morning for four weeks ping time? Remember when you frequented places where the lyrics of jukebox were clear, perfectly understandable. romantic and made you want to lay alongside of something soft, sweet, and smelled like gardinias? Remember chilling down a six-pack using a CO2 extinguisher? Taking stains out of your whites with carbon-tet out of an extiguisher" Remember, "A little dab'll do you" and Lucky Tiger hair foo-foo? Remember extended battle stations where the oxygen level got so damn low you couldn't light a smoke and at some point you started spreading lithium-hydroxcide to absorb the eloevated CO2? Remember when Dolphins set you apart from the herd...the days before they haned out all the gahdam meaningless pocket geedunk and obcene enlistment bribes to get the "what's in it for me?" generation to meet their manly obligation? Remember when we had no foriegn legion...no hired mercenaries...no men carrying weapons on behalf of the U.S. that were beyond the UCMJ, the sacred protections of the Geneva Convention and common decency expected of Americans wearing the uniform universally recognized as being for truth, courage and straight shooting? Remember when American service fought wars...and won them? When we financed our own wars through selling bonds to our citizens that kept the interest benefits in the hands of our citizens rather than filling the coffers of our traditional enemies? Remember when there was no way to use the words TORTURE and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA in the same sentence? Remember when standing topside and watching the fleet run up the flag at 0800...sent an electric spark through you because unabashed patriotism was the singular reason you were living in a steel cigar that smelled like a gorilla armpit and gave you less personal living space than they gave Charles Manson. Remember when most of the places where we tossed over our lines or swung the hook....loved us? Gentlemen, one of the greatest honors in my life will be joining you.....There was no HOLLAND CLUB when the skipper pinned my silver fish over my soaking wet dungaree pocket.....The old scarred and dinged up vikings had Vallhala, and all we had was corner bars. residence patios....Waffle Houses, Bob Evans and IHOP where we could sit in cramped booyhs and talk about the OLD NAVY...the wonderful days where guys hung on platforms attached to the periscope shears and froze the doo-dads off...drank coffee that would bounce bridge rivets....and were fuelled by pure pride. If I die before I make the HOLLAND CLUB....embalm me, spray me with eight coats of KRYLON and sit me at the inductees table next to John Wynn...He's promised to piggy back me past the finnish line. I'm two years away...but I'm starting to get that feeling five year olds get two weeks before Santa's annual chimney visit. The HOLLAND CLUB is one of life's good things...Whoever came up with the concept gave us all a wonderful gift. Thanks DEX | ||
| Gil Shaddock |
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| Great Sage of the Sea Posts: 557 | Subject: RE: You Holland Club Guys, Remember? Yes Dex, I remember all of that. I look forward to have you join "our club". | ||
| dex armstrong |
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COMSUBBBS Posts: 3202 Location: Alexandria, Virginia | Subject: RE: You Holland Club Guys, Remember? Gil, At my age, a lot of the thrills, anticipation, expectations and CrackerJack box prizes have either been already realized and explored or simply no longer matter. The urgency of youth that led to risk, exploration and the joy of first time experience have faded. Looking in the rear view mirror of life, I have lost sight of the days when I was unwrapping my first time experiences and tossing the cellophane they came wrapped in, over my shoulder to be obscured by the dust created by the tail of my comet.....The bad memories have a tendency to fade...as years pass and the pain level diminishes...the good ones, take on a life of their own...You polish them, embellish them...laminate them with bulls**t...and cherish them for what they represent...the good times...times shared with what you will discover late in life, were the beyond a doubt, the finest men you would ever know.( During the time Cora and I were exchanging long range harpoons and I was trying to drop copperheads past her bloomer elastic, I got a call from a real honest-to-God shipmate..."Hey Dex, Cut her some slack...You owe it to Elmer. He was a Qualified Man...and you know what they always said,"Boatsailors ONLY have each other."" I tried to tone down the rhetoric and quit trying to sneak the cheese out of the snap traps. Qualification in Submarines is, as they say,"A gift that keeps on giving"....I have no idea how the selection process worked but in the end they came up with Martini, Gentry, Raynor, Conlon, Wynn, Gumba, Householder, Roche, Stone, Ron and Art Smith, McLaughlin, Old Gringo, The wonderful Harrisons, Miller, the old stove-up bastard Puffer....Chief Clear, you know, the old rapscallion Millie filed horns off of..The bad thing about doing this is you might miss somebody...say somebody like Doc Gardner and his mobile screaming cats machine....of Doc Beeghly who was so damn rotten he had to leave the country to find a nice lady who was unaware of his reputation, to marry him...You notice that the Texas Beagle Doctor didn't go to the Med to find a bride...they still have his photos on Post Office walls. At a stage of life when the road of life is about to run out of pavement, it's nice to have your own personal pot of gold at the end of your longevity rainbow...getting in the Holland Club and joining the other geriatric miscreants....it must be like being accepted into the National Association of Master Class Clowns and the Bulls**tters Union as a master craftsman. I can't remember ever looking forward to something other than getting my little blue-eyed Norwegian to an altar...like I am looking forward to being given the OPEN SESSEME code to Mr. Holland's Magical Cave. At 67, two years is exactly what two weeks before Christmas is to a five year old.....It's like a 24 month pregnancy would be to an eighteen year old. John Wynn and I are going to do it together...and dammit, I hope the guys a 40 School Street bring back those wonderful pipers.....There is nothing like the pipes to stir the emotions and shovel coal on the inner fires of a man's heart. Me, I would like to arrive riding on an elephant behind the Navy Band and Radio City Rockettes, while Billy Bob Lary was shooting off a $300,000 fireworks display and all the Macy's Christmas Parade balloons came up I-95....Wynn's elephant would be in front with a chief's hat. Seriously it's great having soimething to look forward to. That in itself is absolutely wonderful. Dammit, Jim Christley...damn near forgot him... That's what I mean, you start naming folks and you're tapdancing in a pile of dynamite caps...Oh yes, can't leave out Blue and POD.....Thanks Gil. | ||
| Doc Gardner |
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Master and Commander Posts: 2254 Location: Foothills of the Ozarks | Subject: Give me the date and I'll try to show up with my pipes I played with the Mystic Highlanders last year and would be honored to do it again. We'll make 40 School Street louder than Monday morning on the lower base. I have to wait 7 years to join the club having qualified in 1965 at the age of 20.  Edited by Doc Gardner 2008-08-06 5:51 PM | ||
| crystal |
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Master and Commander Posts: 2191 Location: Port Ludlow, WA (the Olympic Penninsula) | Subject: RE: You Holland Club Guys, Remember? I wonder what the magical year that the "bell curve" represents for USSVI major boat qualification? I know that Ron & Dan Martini and I have known each other since 1960 and we all qualified in '61 which seems "close" to that majority... Any data crunchers out there have an answer? Mr. Householder? Don? | ||
| Flapper |
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Master and Commander Posts: 1107 Location: Tucson AZ | Subject: RE: You Holland Club Guys, Remember? crystal - 2008-08-06 5:33 PMI wonder what the magical year that the "bell curve" represents for USSVI major boat qualification? I know that Ron & Dan Martini and I have known each other since 1960 and we all qualified in '61 which seems "close" to that majority... Any data crunchers out there have an answer? Mr. Householder? Don? Chief, a few years back we did a sorta-survey (in the pre-poll days) on Rontini's BBS on average age of posters. I've long lost my data, but you are pretty close. The peak of the bell curve for age at that time was early 60s, so assuming qual at age 19 or 20 as a median (give or take) it would have put the median qual year at sometime in the early 60s. 6 more years to go for me, personally. | ||
| Boy Throttleman |
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Old Salt Posts: 431 | Subject: RE: You Holland Club Guys, Remember? Dolphin wearing shipmates, life wouldnt be as much fun without the. Flo and I had a houseful of Carp sailors and wives tonight. Tomorrow morn we all head north in to PA to meet Chris and hs wife for the weekend. Chris stands out as maybe the worlds only Amish/Mennonite raised sub sailor. Dex when you are inducted into the Holland Club I want to be there. So dont try to sneak past me. Remember when personal maturity was not required until you made E-5? Dang I knew I had skipped over something important, personal maturity what an interesting idea. Someday Ill have to look into that. John Winn 2013 for Holland Club, so start stocking School St bar with rum now. | ||
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