Although not quite nineteen, twelve years of education had given me a rapier-like intellect. It took less than an hour to ‘figger out’ that the mess deck of the Receiving Station at the Philadelphia Navy Yard was not my idea of being a Communications Technician. I had no idea what a CT was, but I knew--rapier, remember--that this wasn’t it. Don’t these damn people know how special I am? In a word, NO!

Let me regress a moment. I joined the Naval Reserve (Surface) Division in Atlantic City, NJ when I was a junior in high school. After the results of my General Classification Test Battery came back, I was told that because of good scores--already I was special--the other unit wanted to talk to me. After spending an evening with the Naval Reserve Security Group Division, I was certain they were special. They proposed that, if I would volunteer for their program, they would guarantee: designation into one of the five branches of the Communications Technician rating, Class ‘A’ school and an overseas duty station. The word ‘volunteer’ scared me a little, but the word ‘guarantee’ had a nice sound. The secretive nature of it all was intoxicating. Even though this much information about my potential fate stacked only two millimeters higher than whale guano in the Marianas Trench, it was of course, more than most Seaman Recruits knew about their futures.

After graduation from high school (Class of ‘58) and a summer break, I reported to the Receiving Station in beautiful south Philadelphia in early September, "for further orders." As I passed through the main gate, full regulation seabag over my tender shoulder, my highly tuned cerebral neurons ‘figgered’ that in a few days, I’d be leaving. I’d soon be on my way for places and shenanigans unknown. I was more excited than a bride groom trying to open the motel room door on his wedding night. Naiveté. Sweet innocence of youth.

Did they allow me to slip quietly down the shipyard ways into the vast blue waters of Navy reality? Hell no!

"Mess deck. Tomorrow morning. Oh four hundred. Dungarees . . ." Is he nuts? At that point in my life, there was only two conditions under which I had ever risen at 0400: the first was to go fishing and the second was Christmas morning. A long story made short, when the calendar in the galley turned over to October, I ‘figgered’ I had been hijacked. I was right.

One afternoon the Scullery Captain beckoned. Pleasant fellow. Chewed garlic cloves, had a huge pot belly, had incredibly deep wrinkles on his face, reeked every morning of the chemical byproducts of metabolizing a case of beer, was an E-5 with four hashmarks, and had the disposition of a hungry junkyard dog. You know this guy? Anyway, it was the day after I had made an innocent inquiry of my status to my Reserve Division. It was also after the scullery was cleaned up following the noon meal. He too had a sharp mind. Pinhead.

"Get outa here and lay down to Sick Bay, NOW."

"What’ll I tell ‘em when I get their?" I asked. You see, the many days under the tutelage of this great ogre had caused my rapier to be diminished to a blunt tipped petard.

"Your name, idiot!" Don’t these damn people know how special I am? In a word, NO!

There was a WAVE languishing behind the counter at Sick Bay under the sign "SICK CALL CHECK IN HERE." She seemed to recognize my name, much to my surprise. She was the prettiest WAVE Hospital Corpsman I’d ever seen (sample size = 1). "Ohhh yesss," she said with a perverse tone. "Have a seat." I looked around the room. There was not one empty chair in the vast sea of woeful looking bluejackets. I leaned up against the wall and watched the WAVE. Poetry in motion. Where has she been lo these many weeks? Couldn’t I have gotten sick the second day aboard or something? Eventually, a Corpsman called out a name roughly resembling mine and broke the fantasia. He took me into a treatment cubicle and performed the usual check of vitals.

"Your eyes don’t look so good. I hope you’re feeling well."

Do I gamble and ask why? No you idiot. You’ve learned your lesson.

"I asked you a question. Answer me!"

Can’t win! "Yes, I’m OK. It’s just that I’ve been up since oh three thirty."

He shrugged his shoulders, opened a three-ring notebook, ran his finger around a map of the world which spanned two facing pages. Is he planning his vacation or what? The sage master of medicine turned to me and asked, "Where’s Japan? Do you know?"

Surely, I didn’t get orders there! It was my first choice for shore duty. Nobody gets anything on their ‘dream sheet’, according to the scuttlebutt at the receiving station. However, we CTs are special. That’s it. ‘They’ may not get what they ask for, but ‘WE’ do. My geography and history courses had obviously been far more rigorous than his; I put my finger on the island marked JAPAN. He muttered something about being in some particular region and turned the page. Under that ‘region’ was a list of seven medical terms; he wrote them down and left. You guessed it already, haven’t you? You’ve ridden this horse before, huh? He returned with six syringes and a vaccination kit.

"You’re not going to feel too good for the next couple days. We normally don’t give more than two of these without a few days separation. But you’re transferring tomorrow and we’re responsible for giving you these before you go. Get as much rest as you can." It was now clear why the WAVE put on such a cute but evil smile when she found my name on her list. Why couldn’t she have administered the punishment? If you’re gonna go, you oughta be able to go in style.

I shipped out the next morning for the airport. My arms were red, hot, swollen, rock hard and very sore. I was running a low-grade fever. My immune system was mounting the greatest war ever waged against the widest assortment of microbes ever encountered by a bipedal vertebrate. I could barely manage my stuffed gym bag, let alone my seabag. Taking leave of the cherub at Philly’s Sick Bay was difficult. Breaking lady’s hearts was something I suspected would become easier as I gained more experience. Negative aspects of this short notice deployment were masked by greater positives. I was so thrilled I could have carried the fat lady in the opera with those sore arms. My orders were for CTR Class A School, Imperial Beach, CA, FFT (for further transfer) to Naval Security Group Activity, Kami Seya, Japan. Is this man’s Navy great or what?

Imperial Beach sounded like a fitting and proper place to send the bluebloods of the CT ranks. In the legendary California, no less. The main gate at ‘Imperial Beach’ was not terribly impressive. Just a gate, a sign carrying the perfunctory warning of prohibitions, chain link fence, a dumpy gate shack and a road leading to possibly nowhere. Arrival at CT training Mecca was disappointing. I can remember seeing a few decrepit buildings near the gate shack. A long solitary road, stretched a mile or more before other buildings sprang from sagebrush and sand on the right. Nothing along the left side of the road but sand leading over dunes to blue water. The road was close to the beach, maybe three hundred yards to the Pacific Ocean. A beautiful aqua expanse, as far as the eye could see.

Ah, those buildings down there look nice from here. That’s where the good stuff is--that’s where I’m going. A jackrabbit flashed into view from around the back of a dune, hauling his fluffy tail at flank speed from one sandy place to another. I couldn’t get over the length of their ears and hind feet.

"Go around this way to the barracks, building number 66 (I think it was), and check in with the Master at Arms," said the Seaman on duty at the gate, pointing at a small cluster of obviously condemned buildings. Do you know the feeling of near nausea one gets when departing the 35th floor for the ground level on an express elevator? What is he, nuts? Don’t these damn people know how special I am? In a word, NO!

My yardstick for quality of junior enlisted quarters was the Submarine Chaser I rode for two weeks that summer and the boot camp barracks at Bainbridge, MD. Either one was palatial by comparison. I had never seen a cockroach before that fateful day. Although not scientifically based, I developed a hypothesis that Barracks ‘66’ was built over an ancient underground crevasse. This crevasse was the womb from which all cockroaches in North America evolved. What’s more, they had indeed evolved into a mutated form resistant to two things: shoe leather and DDT. Scuttlebutt had it that this remote barracks was where all the lepers (uncleared scum) hung by their thumbs until God passed judgment on their souls. And that yes, the good stuff was down the other end of the road.

"So, what’s the other barracks like?" I asked a fellow leper.

"Dunno, but they call it the Pink Hotel. You’ll see it down there on the left. It’s painted pink. Right near the beach. Gotta be better than this." He had a valid point. Scuttlebutt also had it that a new CT school was being opened in Pensacola, Florida. Furthest from my mind was the negative financial impact this might have on the facility at IB. I learned in due time.

My first meal at IB was a memorable experience. I walked the mile down the road to the mess hall. After the slow moving queue got to the serving line, my cunning, observant mind noted a potential problem--no stainless steel trays, no silverware. Seems that the scullery washing machine was broken down--as usual. Ever use those cheap, flimsy plastic utensils? You know, the ones that break when you plant the tines in anything more firm than mashed potatoes? Or cut anything more dense than string beans? And the paper plates; I was new at this and only took one. Before I got to my seat, the hot, damp food soaked into the paper and was burning my palm; the edges tended to wrap around my hand, spilling food over the gunwales. You must understand, my other hand couldn’t help, it was getting the hell burned out of it trying to hold a hot paper cup of coffee. I sat down and found my next experience was not too far down the timeline. Look up the word ubiquitous in your Funk & Wagnall’s. Hold that thought. The long mess deck tables provided just the perfect venue for a sporting event to which we eventually became accustomed--cockroach sprint races. Those huge, disgusting insects were everywhere. Special. Cream of the Crop. Yeah, right! What have I volunteered for?

One Friday morning at quarters, instead of getting dog- work assignments, a bunch of us were told we started school on Monday and were ordered to move out to--you guessed it--The Pink Hotel. I think it took us, oh, maybe five hundred milliseconds to pack our bags and start the trek down the road for the plush quarters we so deserved. No more long walks to/from the mess hall or the rest of the world for that matter. The only other thing I remember being close to Barracks ‘66’ was the firehouse. So, what did we find when we arrived at our new quarters? Another myth was shot to hell; the lap of luxury we hoped for so fervently disappeared into the ether. The outside paint was pink, but the inside was the same as good old ‘66.’ I’m not being fair; I think there were bigger lockers. And, there were juice, soda and ice cream bar machines at the Pink Hotel. Remember the crevasse? It appears that it ran parallel to the beach from ‘66,’ took a dogleg under the road to the mess hall, then angled back toward the beach and under the Pink Hotel.

Wait ‘til Monday. I’ll find out, once and for all, what a CTR is. I’ll learn all the secrets. I’ll know exactly what I’ll be up to when I go to Japan. It’ll be so cool, so overwhelmingly neat, that I won’t give a damn what the barracks is like.

Administrative minutiae out of the way, a CTR1 herded our robust group of fledglings into a classroom. I looked around. The headphones seemed to make sense with my inclination on what was in store. But, headphones plugged into a desk--and no radios--threw me a little. And typewriters? What in hell are they for? I don’t want to be a damn Yeoman. In a few minutes, Chief Hughes came into the classroom and introduced himself as our class instructor. He proceeded directly to the application of motivation theory.

"Men, turn around and look outside," he commanded. The door was propped wide open--no air conditioning--and there were windows as well. He continued, "Look at those greyhounds." I saw the profiles of several destroyers slicing their way through the azure Pacific. Hughes delivered the punch line, "If you don’t learn to touch type at twenty five words per minute, copy Morse code at twenty words a minute or if you fail the written tests of this basic CTR school, you’ll be transferred to the Deck Department of one of those greyhounds." Being a razor sharp student of Shipboard Organization class at the Reserve Center and a veteran of two weeks summer cruise aboard a ship of the line, I immediately captured the significance of his point.

During an overview of the curricula, Hughes mentioned that we’d learn the classified material system. "Chief, have you ever seen anything Top Secret?" asked the guy next to me.

A canary eating grin spread across Hughes’ face. With significant dramatic delivery he replied, "Men, I’ve had Top Secret documents right in my hands. Many times. Some day, you may too. If you make it through the barbed wire fence to Advanced CTR phase, you’ll be given Secret level information and you’ll learn exactly what CTRs do. Can’t say anymore right now. You’ll be surprised, I can tell you that."

Between the romance of Top Secrets and the specter of riding a tin can and chipping paint for a living, he had us eating out of his hand from that day on. The hook was set.

Aha! We ARE special. Is this man’s Navy great or what?