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COMSUBBBS
Posts: 3202
Location: Alexandria, Virginia | Subject: HOLLAND CLUB
We (Northern Virginia Base, USSVI) had our annual HOLLAND CLUB investiture dinner a week ago. Those dinners are one of my favorite times of the year. As a youngster, submariners were my heroes. To sit at a table in the midst of the heroes of my youth is a real honor and pleasure. Holland Club gatherings are one of the few places where old smokeboat riders can see each other and shuffle through memories of long ago. These are memories that only lads who breathed second hand smoke that comprised 50% of our dead air...hotracked on sweatty flashpads...and told time by the diameter of the underarm salt stains in our dungaree shirts... There are few things today that I look forward to in childlike anticipation...with the enthusiasm of the young-at-heart. John Wynn and I are going to be brought in, in 2010....Hopefully. Lord willing we are going to go in together at the NOVA BASE ANNUAL HOLLAND CLUB DINNER at Arlington's Army/Navy Club....My daughter has promised to attend...I had looked forward to having my little blue-eyed Norwegian by my side when I broke the tape at Mister Holland's finishline. She tried hard, but lost her valiant fight.. She would approve of me'n John crossing the brow together. She loved John and Lynn...She recognized that John and I share common DNA with the Devil and his entire wardroom. It seems that it is almost impossible to believe that it has been damn near 50 years since the animals aboard REQUIN tossed my worthless butt over the side (thirty minutes after all the boats nesting between Piers 22 and 23, had blown their sanitary tanks...When I hit the water there was stuff percolating out there that made hitting the water very similar to doing a double back flip into a Pakistani septic tank.). I can remember the extended hands of my mates and being hauled back aboard, and our skipper, Cdr. Ed Frothingham pinning my Dolphins on a sopping wet dungaree shirt. Newly qualified men being tossed over the side was a well respected longstanding Sub Service tradition back then....baptism in saltwater. There was no USSVI...no Holland Club...and any sonuvabitch approaching age seventy was considered to have been old enough to have messcooked for Noah on that animal hauling auxillary he skippered. Back in 1960, we were thirty feet tall, bulletproof...God's gift to women everywhere....and as cocky as a fighting rooster. No young red-blooded American bluejacket could see 50 years down the road. They didn't make optics good enough to see at that range..We didn't care. Why would we have? We were young...more interested bouncing barmaids on our knees...blowing the foam off mugs of beer....visiting exotic anitomical locations beyond undie elastic....tossing bar furniture....hooting, hollering, jumping-up-and-down and taking our bite of life right out of the middle of life's pie. Me'n Senor Wynn are going to cross the brow of the USS HOLLAND, salute the colors aft...pop one to the topside watch...yell "Permission to come aboard" and join the ranks of the old barnacle encrusted coots who carry the proud title of HOLLAND CLUBBER....Hell, I will get such a swelled head that some sonuvabitch will have to Crisco my ears to get me out the door at the conclusion of our Welcome Aboard handshake. No bastard has ever looked forward to being inducted into Mr. Holland's Band of Elderly Rapscallions more than mne....I had hoped that Warshot would have been around to buy me a beer aqnd welcome me aboard....If anything happens to me between here and the 2010 HOLLAND CLUB DINNER...toss my ashes in a coffee can and sit the bloody thing on the table next to John Wynn. Bless you all, DEX |
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Old Salt
Posts: 431
| Subject: RE: HOLLAND CLUB
Dex you done said it all. I will be there for yours and Johns. And if you are in that coffee can I demand the right to pour the first beer in on top of your ashes. Or maybe just part of it, Or maybe you wont mind if I strain it through my kidneys first. After all Warshot would look down from the Silver Pier and yell Hemming dont waste any beer on Dex.
I know it will be a proud day for you as it will for be me in 2013 |
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Old Salt
Posts: 431
| Subject: RE: HOLLAND CLUB
Dex you done said it all. I will be there for yours and Johns. And if you are in that coffee can I demand the right to pour the first beer in on top of your ashes. Or maybe just part of it, Or maybe you wont mind if I strain it through my kidneys first. After all Warshot would look down from the Silver Pier and yell Hemming dont waste any beer on Dex.
I know it will be a proud day for you as it will for be me in 2013 |
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Old Salt
Posts: 330
| Subject: RE: HOLLAND CLUB
Dex,
I'll save the coffee can I'm working on now - put your name on it, and you can 'be' with Ray & Tommy & (Joni &) me for 2010.
Why don't you start working on your speach now, and send a copy to me - I'll read it for you if you've gone on ahead...
Love you like a Brother,
Curt
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COMSUBBBS
Posts: 3202
Location: Alexandria, Virginia | Subject: RE: HOLLAND CLUB
Mike and Curt, You know, since the first dinner we had...the first HOLLAND CLUB INDUCTION DINNER, I've looked forward to my turn like a kid anticipating the arrival of Saint Nick....I've always been a guy who has anticipated all of life's pots of gold at the end of each adventurous rainbow. When I graduated from SubSchool I went down to the ship's service at the Dealey Center and bought a set of Balfour sterling silver Dolphins. At $34 every two weeks a set of raghat Balfour Dolphins represented a helluva wallet dent....I hauled those Dolphins around in my damn pocket until I qualified....Whenever I got sick and fed up, discouraged, started wondering if all the bulls**t you had to put up with from the qualified butt pains in ship's company was worth it...I would reach in my pocket, rub those Dolphins and an invisable ass kicking genie would appear and whisper in my ear..."You dumb bastard, if getting qualified was easy and all smooth sailing every sonuvabitch issuing sea prints at the Motion Picture Exchange would be wearing a pair of the sonuvabitches and the Naval Supply Depots would be handing them out to fork lift operators from the Geedunk Truck"....Those twin fish lurking in my pocket lint represented the anticipated goal...the finishline...the keys to the kingdom....and the passport to a world where you could park your worthless hippockets on a messdeck potato locker, read a skin book, watch movies and give non-quals moving fore and aft pluperfect hell as they came by.....But best of all they conveyed a sense of belonging never equalled in the remaining years of my life...and they gave me a family that has never deserted me. You want to know, why the HOLLAND CLUB means so much to me? THE HOLLAND CLUB lets a lousy lowlife, bottom feeder like me sit around the campfire with the tribal elders and be accepted as a co-equal...Since I have never been privvy to the secret signs, the secret handshake and the mystic goodies of the order...I have no idea if your ordination gets you an envelope of discount coupons for half price Depends....hen egg size Viagra....a free session with a fifty cent hooker in the backseat of a totalled taxi parked behind a body shop dumpster....or an autographed funeral home photo of Bella Abzug....I don't care, I'll be in there at that Convention HOLLAND CLUB breakfast, chowing down with the Kings, Dukes, Earls and long ago Goat Locker residents of the U.S. Boatservice....drinking coffee as strong as molten asphalt...telling bodacious lies....admiring waitresses bust configuration and fanny lines...and smoking cigars that are interchangable with similar looking things found on the floor of the monkey cage at the zoo....But best of all, I will be among my own kind and laughing, joking and wearing out my newly issued tom-tom and wearing those old Balfours...and Gentleman John will be right there beside me wearing the same mile wide grin. You tell me that that isn't a day to look forward to...you betcher butt. DEX |
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Old Salt
Posts: 431
| Subject: RE: HOLLAND CLUB
It will be the final high point of my life, I have done every other major goal I set. Just got to hang on while shipmates and school friends are dropping like flies
Marrying Flo and getting my Dolphins were the smartest thing I ever did.
My best days are spent with her and my shipmates from the past and present.
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COMSUBBBS
Posts: 3202
Location: Alexandria, Virginia | Subject: RE: HOLLAND CLUB
Mike, you always chose the right words...Your last post was MOT (Middle of Target)...I too was blessed in finding the right bride and qualifying and being sent to a wonderful boat. And, I'm sitting here in God's RecSta in TAD waiting for for my HOLLAND CLUB orders. I'm going to hit Old Goat for a beer and a shot (shot of Maker's Mark)....Maybe by that time I'll find me a lonely female senior citizen who needs a dependable old Torpedoman to holde her hand and take care of her....maybe a diesel boat sailors widow. DEX |
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HOLLAND CLUB
