We have discussed up though my high school years, brief though is was. Now lets go no the the vastly exciting years before the mast. {another nautical term, meaning sailing the oceans blue.}  Well left for Basic training on Mother"s Day, actually it was the first time to ever fly a commercial plane...   [Actually because one of our next door neighbors had a Beech craft Bonanza Aircraft, I learned to fly... Yes at age 12 pilot a plane...]  So off the the Navy did I go.. 

Basic {90 days of paid attention

} had its ups and downs, but what you learn to do or not do for over a sixty day period will be forever burned into your brain...  Gives you a new modus operandi...  Which means that you folks with "bad" habits can change if you really, really want to....  Sixty days of doing what is right or wrong will lead you in that path from then on...

Well my first duty station was aboard USS Greenwood DE679, stationed in Key West FL...  Gee joined the Navy and did not even leave the state of FL...  Key west was not one of the Gay capitals of the world then....  It was a nice small world, layed back kind of place...  The most famous thing was Hemingway had lived there, and way back when President Truman used to come stay...

The fishing was good, we could catch Tarpon right off the seawall....  And the skin diving was great... {By the way One of the Navy Underwater Swimmers Schools was there}  So the living was easy...  Little did I know what lay ahead..

Well we were detached to the Sonar School Training Command, In DES RON 601...  [stands for Destroyer Squadron]  Part of  The Caribbean Frontier Sea Command...   Watching for a Cuban invasion??  I think.....

We went up to Yankeeland to New Port RI, and were in the yards in a floating dry dock at Quonset Point RI...  That was fun...  {nada...}  The Navy gave me the opportunity to learn what real work was all about... Like minimum 18 hour work day, and then some...  Defiantly a young mans job...  

We removed and tested all the life rafts.... Learned that even though there all sorts of supplies in each life raft. NO ONE, AND I MEAN NO ONE SCREWED with the supplies in the life raft...  Is was a unwritten law / commandment don't screw with the life rafts... Because one day they could be the only thing between you and heaven or hell and the deep blue sea....  [BTW the blowup life rafts have a hydro-static release,] so that even if they were not released, before the ship sank, the water pressure will trigger them to release and inflate ....Ready to go...

It was cold November in yankeeland... Got to see Boston for the first of many times... Slept in a YMCA, bunk room that was very similar to berthing on the ship.. Just a brief view of berthing on the ship... We slept on hanging bunks, slung with chains, and hinged on the far side so they could be raised up during the day..  Being a "boot" (new boy on the block) I got the upper most rack, four up about seven feet off the deck.... Had to jump up and grab the over head vent pipe and doing a flying chine up swing into the rack...  The guys down below did not like you stepping on their bunks...  

Heard lots of sea stories, some war stories, and a lot of Brovo Sierra, if you know what I mean... Some were interesting, a lot were useful and the rest were just fluff...  This is where young men get a taste of life...  Not being a group follower this did not effect me that much.... But some guys became raging drunks, whore mongers, gamblers and other sort of worldly things...  Me I took pictures and just saw the world...   

I think if a person is grounded, and has a good set of morals that this will not change them...  I guess that the religious up bringing in south Georgia, (Where at the age of ten, during a service with Brother Barnell at the First Methodist Church in Hazlehurst GA,  I went up and confessed my sin(s) and accepted Jesus into my heart...  Amen!  I read the bible thru while I was in the fourth grade... So I knew... Doesn't mean I lived it...  But at least you know what you should be doing...

Just to show how the Devil lives, {I know that many people do not believe in the Devil, but believe in Santa Clause} Believe me; that there is a Devil, forget Santa... While in Key West {did not have a car while in Navy, because most of the time you were at sea or just gone} would go skin diving, fishing or swimming at the beach...  That was the first time I saw a couple getting it on out in the chest deep water... such is the world! 

 Well there was a small bath house there and I was getting back into street cloths, outside was a young woman washing her red Ford convertible... (found out why she was out there washing her car...)   When I came out going to walk back to town, she ask if I wanted a ride...   Being virgin and nineteen... I accepted, well she ask me to come home with her, found out her husband was out on a Navy sub, and would not be back for several months...  {It was not to play cards either} I thought it over, but it did not take long to see eternity...  I declined the offer... {had lots of opportunities such as this..} I had dreamed about sexua| intercourse, but did not want to get the grief of such an action...   I am glad I did not accept that offer...   Call me a square, or what ever, but it was my call.... 

Will get back to this ....

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