Saturday, April 30, 2011

GOOD SAILOR BARS

























Talk about walking (or crawling) down memory lane?  This is no doubt one of the best descriptions of a good sailor bar that I have ever read.  The man wrote this certainly knows what he was talking about.

Our favorite liberty bars were unlike no other watering holes or dens of iniquity inhabited by seagoing men.  They had to meet strict standards to be in compliance with the acceptable requirement for a sailor’s beer-swilling dump.

The first and foremost requirement was a crusty old gal serving suds. 

She had to be able to wrestle King Kong to parade rest.  Be able to balance a tray with one hand, knock sailors out of the way with the other hand and skillfully navigate through a roomful of milling around drunks.  On slow nights, she had to be the kind of gal who would give you a back scratch or put her foot on the table so you could admire her new ankle bracelet  that some "mook" brought her back from a Hong Kong liberty.

A good barmaid had to be able to whisper sweet nothings in a young sailor’s ear like, "I love you no shit, you buy me Honda??"

"Buy a pack of Clorets and chew up the whole thing before you get within heaving range of any gal you ever want to see again." 

And, from the crusty old gal behind the bar, "Hey animals, I know we have a crowd tonight, but if any of you guys find the head facilities fully occupied and start pissing down the floor drain, you're gonna find yourself scrubbing the deck with your white hats!"

The barmaids had to be able to admire great tattoos, look at pictures of ugly bucktooth kid’s and smile.  Be able to help haul drunks to cabs and comfort 19 year-olds who had lost someone he thought loved him in a dark corner booth.  They could look at your ship's identification shoulder tab and tell you the names of the Skippers back to the time you were a Cub Scout.

If you came in after a late night maintenance problem and fell asleep with a half-eaten Slim-Jim in your hand, they tucked your pea coat around you, put out the cigarette you left burning in the ashtray and replaced the warm draft you left sitting on the table with a cold one when you woke up.

Why?

Simply because they were one of the few people on the face of the earth that knew what you did, and appreciated what you were doing.  And if you treated them like a decent human being and didn't drive 'em nuts by playing songs they hated on the juke box, they would lean over the back of the booth and park their soft, warm tits on your neck when they sat two San Miguel beers in front of you.   

And the imported table-wipe- down-guy and glass washer, trash dumper, deck swabber and paper towel replacer guy had to have baggy tweed pants, a gold tooth and a grin like a 1950 Buick, and a name like "Ramon", "Juan", "Pedro" or "Tico".  

He had to smoke unfiltered Luckies, Camels or Raleighs.  He wiped the tables down with a sour wash rag that smelled like a Billy goats crotch and always said, "How are choo navee mans tonight?  

He was the indispensable man; the guy with credentials that allowed him to borrow Slim-Jims, Beer Nuts and pickled hard boiled eggs from other beer joints when they ran out where he worked.

The establishment itself?  The place had to have walls covered with ship and squadron plaques.  The walls were adorned with enlarged unit patches and the dates of previous deployments.  A dozen or more old, yellowed photographs of fellows named "Buster", "Chicago", "P-Boat Barney", "Flaming Hooker Harry", "Malone", "Honshu Harry", "Jackson", "Douche Bag Doug", and "Capt Slade Cutter" decorated any unused space.  It had to have the obligatory Michelob, Pabst Blue Ribbon and "Beer Nuts sold here" neon signs, an eight-ball mystery beer tap handle and signs reading:

"Your mother does not work here, so clean away your frickin trash."
 "Keep your hands off the barmaid."
"Don't throw butts in urinal."
"Barmaid's word is final in settling bets."
"Take your fights out in the alley behind the bar!"
"Owner reserves the right to waltz your worthless sorry ass outside."
"Shipmates are responsible for riding herd on their ship/squadron drunks."

This was typical signage found in any good liberty bar.

You had to have a juke box built along the lines of a Sherman tank loaded with Hank Williams, Mother Maybelle Carter, Johnny Horton, Johnny Cash and twenty other crooning goobers nobody ever heard of.  The damn thing has to have "La Bamba", Herb Alpert's "Lonely Bull" and Johnny Cash's "Don't take your guns to town".   

The furniture in a real good liberty bar had to be made from coal mine shoring lumber and was not fully acceptable until it had 600 cigarette burns and your ship's numbers or "F**k the Navy" carved into it.  

The bar had to have a brass foot rail and at least six Slim-Jim containers, an oversized glass cookie jar full of Beer-Nuts, a jar of pickled hard boiled eggs that could produce rectal gas emissions that could shut down a sorority party, and big glass containers full of something called Pickled Pigs Feet and Polish Sausage.

Only drunk Chiefs and starving Ethiopians ate pickled pig’s feet, and unless the last three feet of your colon had been manufactured by Midas, you didn't want to get anywhere near the Polish Napalm Dogs.

No liberty bar was complete without a couple of hundred faded ship or airplane pictures  and a "Shut the hell up!" sign taped on the mirror behind the bar along with several rather tasteless naked lady pictures.  The pool table felt had to have at least three strategic rips as a result of drunken competitors and balls that looked as if a gorilla baby had teethed on the sonuvabitches.

Liberty bars were home, and it didn't matter what country, state, or city you were in.  When you walked into a good liberty bar, you felt at home.   These were also establishments where 19 year-old kids received an education available nowhere else on earth.  You learned how to "tell" and "listen" to sea stories.

You learned about sex at $10.00 a pop -- from professional ladies who taught you things your high school biology teacher didn't know were anatomically possible.   You learned how to make a two cushion bank shot and how to toss down a beer and shot of Sun Torry known as a "depth charge."

We were young, and a helluva long way from home.  We were pulling down crappy wages for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a-week availability and loving the life we lived.  We didn't know it at the time, but our association with the men we served with forged us into the men we became. And a lot of that association took place in bars where we shared the stories accumulated in our, up to then, short lives.  We learned about women and that life could be tough on a gal.

While many of our classmates were attending college, we were getting an education slicing through the green rolling seas in WestPac, experiencing the orgasmic rush of a night cat shot, the heart pounding drama of the return to the ship with the gut wrenching arrestment to a pitching deck.  The hours of tedium, boring holes in the sky late at night, experiencing the periodic discomfort of turbulence, marveling at the creation of St. Elmo's Fire, and sometimes having our reverie interrupted with stark terror.

But when we came ashore on liberty, we could rub shoulders with some of the finest men we would ever know, in bars our mothers would never have approved of, in saloons and cabarets that would live in our memories forever.

Long live those liberties in WestPac and in the Med - They were the greatest!

"Any man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worthwhile I think can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction, I SERVED IN THE UNITED STATES NAVY."

JFK
August 1, 1963

Friday, April 29, 2011

Golf Course Sign




















(Why didn't y'all tell me I had Gold instead of Golf?
I didn't notice because I had to run as soon as I hit send.)

A Sign At The Gold Course:
1. BACK STRAIGHT, KNEES BENT, FEET SHOULDER WIDTH APART.
2. FORM A LOOSE GRIP.
3. KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN!
4. AVOID A QUICK BACK SWING.
5. STAY OUT OF THE WATER.
6. TRY NOT TO HIT ANYONE.
7. IF YOU ARE TAKING TOO LONG, LET OTHERS GO AHEAD OF YOU.
8. DON'T STAND DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF OTHERS.
9. QUIET PLEASE...WHILE OTHERS ARE PREPARING.
10. DON'T TAKE EXTRA STROKES.

WELL DONE.. NOW, FLUSH THE URINAL, GO OUTSIDE, AND TEE OFF. 

An Auzie And His Crock
















An Auzie drover walks into a bar with a pet crocodile by his side.

He puts the crocodile up on the bar, turns to the astonished patrons and declares, ‘I’ll make you a deal.  I'll open this crocodile's mouth and place my manhood inside.  Then the croc will close his mouth for one minute.  After the time is up I’ll make him open his mouth and I'll remove my unit unscathed.  In return for witnessing this spectacle, each of you will buy me a drink.'

The crowd murmured for a while, then agreed to the terms.  The drover jumps up on the bar, drops his trousers, and places his Johnson and related parts in the crocodile's open mouth.

The croc closed his mouth as the crowd gasped.  After a minute, the man grabbed a beer bottle and smacked the crocodile hard on the top of its head.

The croc opened his mouth and the man removed his genitals unscathed as promised.

The crowd cheered, and the first of his free Drinks were delivered.

After downing a few, the man stands up again and makes another offer.  ‘Now I'll pay anyone $100 who's willing to give it a try.'

A hush fell over the crowd.  After a while, a hand went up in the back of the bar and a blonde woman timidly spoke up,

'I'll try it - Just don't hit me so hard with the beer bottle.’

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Old Dirty Dancing

NO! This is not me and Judy!  They look like stick people compared to us'ens.



Gonna e-mail and FB it too.  So shut it!

Some Punnys For Your Wednesday




















1.      Energizer Bunny Arrested & Charged with Battery.

2. A pessimist's blood type is always b-negative.

3. Practice safe eating -- always use condiments.

4. A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.

5. Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death.

6. Marriage is the mourning after the knot before.

7. A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

8. Corduroy pillows are making headlines.

9. Is a book on voyeurism a peeping tome?

10. Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

11. A successful diet is the triumph of mind over platter.

12. Time flies like an arrow.  Fruit flies like a banana.

13. A gossip is someone with a great sense of rumor.

14. Without geometry, life is pointless.

15. A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.

16. When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I.

17. A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two-tired.

18. What's the definition of a will?  (Come on, it's a dead giveaway!)

19. A backwards poet writes inverse.

20. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

21. If you don't pay your exorcist, you get repossessed.

22. With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.

23. When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.

24. The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.

25. A grenade in a French kitchen results in Linoleum Blown-apart.

26. A lot of money is tainted.  It t'aint yours and it t'aint mine.

27. A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

28. He had a photographic memory that was never developed.

29. A short fortune-teller escaped from prison is a small medium-at-large.

30. Once you've seen one shopping center, you've seen a mall.

31. Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine .

32. An actress who saw her first strands of grey hair thought she'd dye.

33. Acupuncture is a jab well done.

Monday, April 25, 2011

One For Me, Too

And one for me sent by my pal and Navy association (and survivor of the sinking and went on to do 20 years in the Army) Rich Burk. 



Love me some Weird Al.

For My West Coast of Florida Peeps

This is for my two Florida peeps, Jim Latchford and Dana Wyzard.

I'm not a huge Florida fan, other than for some vacation beach time, but these two love it there.




Maybe some of you will love it enough to move there one day.
.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

ANZAC Day in Australia




Peeps, I have this lovely blogger pal from Australia who is also a huge US Military milsupporter.   

Mari Paxford is having a drawing on her blog, Marions Meepings , and all you have to do is leave a comment on today's post.

In Australia and New Zealand, today is ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) Day and is celebrated in April to honor the war dead.  Like our Memorial Day.
















Anycontest, she is offering to send one lucky commenter a lapel pin of an Australian Slouch hat (the one on the right.)  Very cool, indeed!  So head on over and give her a read.  She has published the words to Waltzing Matilda, too.  You don’t get that every day on the bloggersphere. 
.

Happy Easter

Why Does The Easter Bunny Hide The Eggs???























     Now You Know

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Some Goffy Pictures

How 'bout so goofy pictures to ease you through the weekend?
And have a fun Easter, but also remember what this Sunday is all about.