The Pickerel went into the yard at Hunters Point in 1968 after Westpac and thanks to Richard Nixon I got out about six months early from my two years of reserve active duty.

The enticement they used to try and get me to extend was the Pickerel was suppose to be going on a Unitas cruise and a Med cruise.  What exactly was a Unitas Cruise?

I don't think the Pickerel ever went on that Unitas.  Getting transferred to San Diego which the boat did after the yard would have enticed me - that's 140 miles from home.  However, I was a reservist and extending four years was not something I felt I wanted to commit to.  Because of Nixon's desire to cut expenses reservists like me got out almost six months early from our two year active duty commitment.

I would have loved to see South America on the Navy's dime, but the GI Bill afforded me enough money to go back to school and finish what I had started.   In 1966 I had dropped below twelve units at the local junior college and it seemed like within minutes I received my draft notice.  Getting into the Navy Reserve and submarines was probably a life saver.  My first orders when I went active was to go to survival training, riverboat training, and then Da Nang Viet Nam to report for riverboat duty.  Luckily I had volunteered for boot camp and sub school at Hunters Point (six weeks altogether) before I went active.  Consequently,  I questioned why they had not assigned me to a boat.  They pulled my folder and the big initials SG in huge bold letters on my folder is the only thing that got me reassigned to the Pickerel.

Scrivener was also at Hunters Point in the mid '60s.  If I remember correctly after we graduated from boot camp we got liberty in San Francisco on the weekends - I don't remember getting the whole weekend on liberty though.  I remember hitting the bars in San Francisco and it being a plesant experience.  Later when we went to yard there in late '68 I don't remember being treated badly by the denizens of that city.  Others have told me about getting spitted on in the airport and called baby killers.

I remember when we went active duty a lot of regular Navy guys tried to tease us about our two week boot camp and four week sub school.  We reservists kind of united and told them it only took us six weeks because we were smarter than them.  I would have been as pissed as them because after all I came aboard as a short timer compared to loudest antagonists.

To needle some of the guys I got a short timer's calendar right away.  I only had a little over five hundred days left when I came aboard, that was before I got out six months early.  I remember guys around me in the barracks that were still in the four digits on days remaining.