Master and Commander
Posts: 1405
Location: Houston, TX (Best state in the US) | Subject: another memory of the Bash
I know that some of you don't read the two
main BBS sites that many of us use...so I'm
going to be sending out some emails to let
you know about some of the things CinCHouse
and I have said about the BASH...
and if you want to read for yourself, and see
the many pictures that have been POST'ed,
here are the two URL's:
Martini's BBS:
http://www.submarinevets.com/~rmartini/subboa
rd/ (subboard/) is entered as one word.
Don Gentry's BBS:
http://www.submarinesailor.com/bbs/
In the mean time, this was my first POST
about the BASH:
OK, I'm gonna try and see if I can get
through this, I tried yesterday but the
emotions were simply too much!
Please forgive the lengthiness of the POST.
Before the BASH, CinCHouse would tell me...
NEVER AGAIN!, and I'd say "Sure, Honey,
you're right, we'll
never do this again." But all the while I'd
be thinking, "she'll soften and within a few
months I'll be planning
the next one."
Friday I knew we were having fun, all were
really enjoying themselves. But Saturday.....
that was something
entirely different. In the late morning I
started really looking around at my guests
and shipmates, I mean
really looking at them, and paying attention
to their expressions, their demeanor, the
open armed greetings
and bearhugs, the tears in
the eyes, the animation of the conversations.
I watched Bob Taylor walk around with his
qual book from God
know when, and how guys looked at it, Roy
Ator had his QB from Diodon, and so it
went.......everywhere you
looked that kind of thing was happening.
Jim Peveler came here from Utah, I hadn't
seen him since 1977. We were both on Sterlet,
but he was there
10 years ahead of me. In 1976 he became the
President of a company I worked for in San
Francisco, and in
reading my personnel file he saw that I was
on submarines, and we discovered not just on
submarines, but
that we served on the same boat. Then, he saw
that Grant Riddle was here, one of the eleven
Sterlet alumni
here. He and Riddle actually served together,
and had not seen each other since 1956! This
story repeated
itself over and over again this weekend!
On Saturday, seventeen (and NTINS) different
people came up to me and said...."this is
like Woodstock for
boat sailors!" And they were telling me that
they were getting the same vibes (a Woodstock
word, for sure)
that I was.....
THERE WAS MAGIC IN THE AIR HERE!
I bought about 80 cases of beer for the BASH,
yesterday afternoon I still had over 20
unopened! I never saw
anyone drunk.... never saw anyone get angry
about anything......
Several told me that at the conventions (I
have never been to one, save the B-Girl
Reunion last year),
people see each other, say hello, and visit.
Here, they said, people were "connecting"!
Can you imagine going to a reunion or
convention of submariners and having 50 plus
people stand out in a
horse corral, in the hot afternoon, for over
an hour watching a horsehoeing demonstration?
It happened
here at the BASH! People who had never ridden
a horse in their lives, or for many, many
years, went on our
trial rides.
Our house was left wide open during the BASH,
and whenever I or CinCHouse would come in, we
would find
people we didn't know wandering freely
through it on self guided tours. After 3 days
of, in some cases,
complete and total
strangers helping themselves in and out of
our unattended house, nothing is broken,
nothing is disturbed,
and nothing is missing! Could that be
possible with any other group?
There were 3 Army veterans here, who came
with Subvets. I made it a point yesterday to
talk to each of them
yesterday to ask them how they were treated.
One of them, a Korean War Veteran, actually
broke down when
he told
me that he felt more welcome here than at
some of his own Army Unit reunions!
Since yesterday morning, when I stood up and
openly made a fool of myself by crying like a
baby as I tried to
thank everyone for coming, for making the
BASH happen, I have continued crying as I try
unwind
emotionally. I was just a very few minutes
ago trying to tell CinCHouse about my
feelings, and I couldn't
finish a sentence! She watched me blabber
again, and simply said, "this BASH really
meant a lot to you, didn't
it?"
Yes, Shipmates, it did. For those of who
didn't make it here, you missed something
that would forever burn
bright in your memories and heart! For those
of who did get here, Doug Weston all the way
from Cairo,
Egypt, for example....from the very bottom of
my heart:
THANK YOU!
|
another memory of the Bash
