Remembering the good times & the bad times.
Being a baby boomer I remember prices being much less when I was growing up during the 60’s and 70’s. I was still living at home up until Sep 77 when I went into the Navy. I wasn’t paying for anything living at home but I was when I went to boot camp in San Diego with the Navy. Talk about bad pay, yikes. I knew guys that had a family living in base housing and still didn’t make enough money to feed their family. Back then most military people didn’t want food stamps because of the stigma that went with it. Oh my goodness your serving your country and you have to depend on food stamps to get by, something is wrong with this picture that is for sure.
When I was at my first command in Norfolk, VA I still didn’t make a lot of money but I set up a savings account just the same so I might have some money some day. My room mate used to chide me about not having very much money out of my pay check because I put so much of it into a savings account. I was saving for a car and I would have to pay for the insurance on this car so there you go. Having a car in Norfolk was essential since the base was so spread out, either that or you rode the bus. The bus quit running at 11 pm. If you missed the last bus and didn’t have taxi fair you walked. Lucky for some of us beer drinkers there was a small bar about 7 blocks from the backgate of the Naval Air Station. The longest part of this trip was walking accross the Naval Air Station in the dark. I was more worried about getting run over than anything else. The Navy doesn’t stop operating when the sun goes down. Lots of aircraft movement even at night. You might not see them at first but you will hear them.
Our favorite thing was to visit the beer machine in the barracks. Beer was 50 cents a can. Bud, Bush, Miller and Schlitz. If you didn’t have a car you would have to walk over to the package store which really wasn’t that faraway but depending on how much booze you were planning on drinking that weekend depended on how well you could manage to get all of it back to the barracks without breaking any of it. Drinking age in Virginia was 18 for beer and wine and 21 for hard alcohol. I was 19 when I went to my first command.
A lot of the sailors that didn’t have a car and or weren’t very familiar with the bus system would visit the beach at Oceanview. We called it the poor mans beach because that was the only place poor broke sailors could go in order to visit a beach. Just watch out for all the broken beer bottles in the sand. I never saw any drugs or needles on it but there were a lot of broken beer bottles on it.
It had been an amusement park which was developed in 1900. Most everything was closed up by the time I visited it the first time in the Spring of 1978. They still had a wooden rollercoaster and it was in use everyday. It rocked and groaned in certain parts and we just knew it was going to send someone flinging off some curve on the top track. The owners decided to close the park in 1978 but it wasn’t until 1979 when that time came. They decided to blow up the wooden rollercoaster as it was being used in a movie called, “The Death of Ocean View Park”. Funny thing was all the dynamite and other explosives they put on it didn’t bring it down, they had to use a bull dozer to pull it down for the shot they were looking for. All those years we feared it would throw someone off or crash and burn on its own but it didn’t. Unfortunately the poor mans beach was developed many years down the way, the old beach houses had given away to Condo’s of all things. They ruined it for everyone else who had a view of the beach doing so but money talks.
The Iron Duke bar was just a little ways down the road. Being the fool hardy sailor that I was at that time I just knew I had to uphold the tradition of drinking as much beer as the guy next to me. Duh, was I stupid or what? Don’t answer that. I got so drunk one night at that establishment that I ran over the curb and flattened one of my tires. The next morning I woke up in my rack wondering how I had gotten there and if I drove my car back or not. A search of the parking lot said, No I hadn’t driven it back but I couldn’t remember where I had left it either. Yikes! My room mate returned a little while later and told me where I had left it. I tried to get him to go with me to get it and he said No. Fine see if I give you a ride the next time you want to go to Virginia Beach. I finally got a ride to my car and spent the next hour changing a flat. Man I was hard on tires and that car.
I hadn’t had that car 6 months and it had several dings in it. Driving and alcohol do not mix, trust me. I missed a turn to get on the interstate to go back to the base. Instead of turning the car slid past that entrance right across the concrete curb. I backed up and got on the freeway and realized I had not one but two flats. I was so mad I was out kicking the drives side door like it was the cars fault instead of my own. My buddies must have thoght I had flipped because they took off running down the freeway towards the base. Then when things couldn’t get any worse a police officer pulls up behind my car with his blue lights on. Damn, this is going to be ugly. Being UA, Unauthorized Abscence in the military can be a career killer really quick. I just knew I was going to jail for a DUI as it was called back then and was going to miss the morning muster. The police officer got out of his car and walked up to look at the front of my car and then looked at me. He said, “Going a little fast and missed the turn did you?” Yes sir. He said, “Don’t worry about it, you aren’t the first and I doubt you will be the last.” He said get in and I will give you a ride to the base, seems you have had a bad enough night as it is. I was shocked to say the least. Did this stop me from drinking, nope. Dummer and Dummer.
At my first command my leading Petty Officer was an E-6 who thought because I was headed to a ship that I needed to go to HF transmitter school. I had wanted this training when I was in Radioman A school in San Diego but was not given the opportunity to do so. So, off to school I go. It is right there on the base within walking distance of the barracks. I was hyped up thinking I was going to learn something new. I should have known better to get my hopes up so high. My room mate who would later be deemed an alcoholic by the Navy was drunk when I got back to the barracks after the first day of school. He had lost his room keys somewhere but he didn’t know where. He wanted me to take him to the Green Wheel, a country and western bar over off of Little Creek Blvd. I wasn’t a big fan of country music back then and I didn’t like that place because it was little bitty and you could have died from cancer from just the second hand smoke. I talked him into going across town to this other place. He lucked out as it had a country band that night. We drank a couple of beers and listend to the music. All of a sudden he said let me borrow your keys. I asked him for what reason and he said that he couldn’t find his wallet and thinks it is in my car. I gave him my spare door key because my regular keys had the ignition key on it as well. I would be stranded without my ignition key. Sure enough he left the bar never to return. I just sat there fuming because he had taken off. I was so mad that I didn’t grasp the concept of what time it was. 2 AM, I have lost my every loving mind. School muster was at 0730. I was going to be hung over for sure in this class. I knew I was in trouble when I pulled out of the parking lot and fell over into the seat. I came to my senses at McDonald’s over close to the base. I had no memory of driving there. I got a Big Mac and some fries thinking I could eat something to help being so drunk at that moment in time. Was I dellusional, you bet I was.
When I pulled out of the parking lot I turned left instead of right. I was driving around some neighborhood instead of driving back to the base. Somewhere along the way I hit some guys old car he was fixing up. I thought about just driving back to the base with a bent up hood but knew the security at the base would stop me at the gate. I went to the building the car was in front of and banged on the door. A man answered it and I told him I think I hit your car. He went outside hollering about his car. I realized at that point that I couldn’t breathe very well as my neck had hit the steering wheel. I laid down on the asphalt being more than a little dizzy. A police officer asked me if I needed to go to the hospital. Yes, I can hardly breathe. They took me to the clinic on the base and I ended up being sent to Norfolk General Hospital and then the Portsmouth Naval Hospital. I was very lucky. I could have been dead, I could have hit someone and killed them being as drunk as I was. When I was released to go back to my command I just knew I was dead meat at my command for missing 2 days of a 5 days class. A guy I knew from my duty section told me they told the command that I had broken my neck. Gee Whiz. My command had called my parents and they were looking to get the next flight out to Norfolk because of my broken neck. I called my parents from a pay phone at the barracks. My mother let into me about drinking again. Her father had been an alcoholic as were two of her brothers. My dad had served in the Army during the Korean War, he understood about military guys drinkng. He never was a big fan of alcohol.
My command didn’t say much. I was really surprised. I was given my orders 2 weeks later and off to a ship I went. Mr alcohol and I would tangle many times for the next year and a half. That was one of the reasons I got off active duty. I knew it would just get worse and more dangerous.
When I got home and couldn’t get a job nor draw unemployment money I was pissed. Drinking and my temper do not mix. I was headed home one morning from a night of drinking. I knew the roads I was on because I had grown up in this area. The police car I almost hit had just ran a stop sign. He had his lights on and I took off. I was 3 blocks from my parents house. By the time it was all over I had a ticket for DWI, Wreckless Driving, running 9 stop signs, and fleeing from arresting officers. I hadn’t been off active duty but 29 days.
I stopped drinking pretty much when I obtained my Commercial Drivers License in April 1997. I only drank after that when I went to the deer woods. I quit in July 2020 when I was having heart problems. After heart surgery at the end of August 2020 with the medicine that I was on I couldn’t drink anyway. I don’t miss it.
