Funny things

When I joined the Navy, the culture of the Navy was different.  Shore duty was almost non-existent for most ratings.  You were lucky if you got one shore duty assignment in 20 years of service.  Single men, even Chiefs, lived on board the ship and in the barracks if they were on shore duty.  Many career sailors did not have automobiles.  They were not needed since the ship was underway most of the time anyway and you had to be an E-5 to park on the base.   No one below the pay grade of a Chief Petty Officer was permitted to have civilian clothes on a ship or wear them on liberty.  The streets outside of any Navy base was filled with bars, bad restaurants, locker clubs, and shyster jewelry stores.  With this culture, few career sailors got married.  If they did, few of those marriages survived a few years.  Mainly because sailors married for all the wrong reasons!  But, those are some of the funniest stories.

I remember when I was at Great Lakes as a student, a Chief, who was an instructor, and was married and lived in Navy Housing, had the usual problem of most sailors of that day.  He was a drunk!  I might interject at this point, the difference between a "Drunk" and an "Alcoholic".  The "Alcoholic" goes to meetings, the "Drunk" doesn't!  In any case he would go to work, leave at 1500, go to the Chief's Club, and drink until he did not remember his name.  He would then drive home, (yes drive!) and pass out on the sofa until it was time to get up to go to work the next day.  Naturally, his bride grew tired of this daily routine.  One evening, while the Chief slept it off on the couch, she swatted him in the face with a cast iron frying pan!  She then got worried about him, (it was probably all the blood he was leaking) and called the Base Police.  The Chief spent quite a while in the hospital, and she visited him everyday.  They reconciled and started living together again.  He promised to change his ways.

But, after a few months of being "good" he went back to his old ways.  Soon, he was back to sleeping it off on the couch.  One evening, his bride was fed up with the status quo again and decided to teach him another lesson.  Out came the trusty cast iron frying pan.  But this time, she boiled some grease in it and poured the boiling grease on his face.  She must have had issues with the way he looked, judging from the way she constantly attacked his face.  She was again, immediately filled with remorse and called the Base Police again.  After another protracted time in the hospital, the Chief decided they should go their separate ways!

The thing that always struck me, no pun intended, is, why did it take him two facial assaults to see that they were not made for each other?  Honest, hit me in the face with a frying pan and I will get the immediate revelation that you don't like me and I will be gone, for good.  But, that was a different time and a different culture.  Some things have changed for the better.