The Rock

Newest Stories are at the top!

1. From Price:  THE FISH

   One of my roommates, Rich Cincotta,  had an unusual ability for getting things into places where others thought they didn’t belong.  Sometimes Rich, aka, the Red Header, made no effort to hide anything.  A good example was the time when he brought a girl from the short-time house in the alley near the Imperial Club to the Air Force Christmas Party (this was the same guy who insisted upon putting up a Christmas tree in our Jientan apartment despite my complete apathy).  

   At other times, however, Rich resorted to smuggling—he was natural.  I can remember when he told me that he was taking a tour of Hong Kong and Singapore that was organized by the Navy Hospital.  I thought he was crazy—a single guy, Linkou Navy no less—going on a tour with a bunch of service wives.  Sure we knew service wives existed but if they didn’t hang out at the King’s Club or the China Night or the Imperial, they might as well be back in the States.  The trip sounded pretty tame for the Red Header.  When he came back into the ROC, however, he smuggled in several copies of the ROC’s number one banned book—Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book.  I know it wasn’t his main reason for going but if you think it makes a better story you can believe that.

   Banned books are one thing but I prefer someone who can smuggle raw odorous flesh into top-secret cryptographic facilities.  The Operations Officer (Lt. Murphy), a day worker with the rank of Lt. Commander, had a desk facing almost directly into the ditty bopping work space and file cabinets behind the desk.   I don’t remember the guy’s name but I do remember what Rich did to him.(Added comment, heard from Lt. Murphy about this incident, so we know it was him)  On a weekend eve watch, Rich smuggled a fish that he had purchased in a street market into our highly secured, top-secret space—he put it in his pocket and walked through the gate.  He then put the fish in the Ops Officer’s filing cabinet and opened the plastic bag  containing it just enough to let the smell out (but not enough to make a mess)—in Rich’s words “a clean (but stinky) prank.”  I’m told that by Monday morning the only thing that was obvious was the smell—and it took them a long time to find its source. 

2. From Axe:  Well the time has come to tell the story of the guy who for 13 months had to run, hide and hold his bowels in check by holding back the need to take a shit.  In case you have never experienced what it feels like to be seating down with your favorite reading material and start taking a dump, only to have some asshole throw a cup of water over the stall onto you.  Don't know where it started, but for the next 13 months it was an all out war to any and every one of us.   No place was safe.  We tried to learn to shit while having our legs straight out in front of us so they couldn't look under the stalls and see your feet.  We tried RUNNING 2 miles to the NCO club while on watch only to have someone get you 2 seconds into your shit.  Day or night, while in the spaces, barracks, NCO club, OR downtown.  No place was safe.  The ONLY place I found was the shiiter in the Imperial club, because it had no windows AND a good lock on the door so no one could get to you.  NOW as bad as that all sounds (I still have nightmares!), it gets even worse.  Remember what we would do toward the end of pay period when we didn't have money?  That's right we went to drinking Umajoe because you could get a whole bottle for about 35 cents and could sneak it into the clubs.  Well now you have the picture, drinking plum wine and not being able to take a dry shit.  Not once but EVERYTIME you had to take a shit.  It was down right cruel.  Don't think we'll ever have anyone fess up to being the originator of this practice, but they hopefully have never taken a solid shit the rest of their life!!
3. From Axe: Did the Zoomies think we were crazy?  One mid watch while seating around with little to do, but cause havoc, someone came up with an idea to lock our seats together and become a rowing team that rowed around the spaces as if we were going down a river.  I remember Harry Hobbs was the guy with his hat on backgrounds and a drinking cup with the bottom out of it so that he could yell STROKE, STROKE over and over again.  We started in the NSA area rowing around and you just knew we had to share this with our Zoomie friends. Well a couple of minutes later we took off to their area and proceeded to row up and down all of their stations a couple of times.  Then it was off to the army and do the same thing to them.  Then back to our area.  I would think all total we were rowing for well over 30 minutes around the whole building.  But it doesn't end there.  Because of the success of this activity several months later the "Rowing Team" was altered  to include Chuck Fredricks as Santa and the rest of us as elves and we starting throwing Christmas packages (bags of shredding) to all of zoomies on the way by. The thing I remember the most about both of these incidents are the fact that we never even got talked to from someone.  It just goes to show you the great group we had on the Rock including most of the officers, etc.
4. From Valkwitch: The NUG (New Guy)  "Get some time on the ROC!" was one of Dennis Bass' favorite retorts.  Well everyone of us was a NUG at some point.  And until someone else came along to take your place, it seemed that you would never get enough time and would continue to be the victim of some creative practical jokes.  I arrived on the ROC in Feb of 1971.  I was well acquainted with some of the Linkoites such as Rodger Olsen who is from my home town.  Within the first week of my arrival he told me the story of a Day Puke that arrived on the ROC several months ahead of his round eye wife.  She was waiting in Pensacola for housing arrangements to be made on the ROC by her hubby who was socializing with the locals.  Now shortly after his wife's arrival, he realized a severe case of the dreaded drip.  Of course he was in a state of panic, for not only did he have it, but feared he had infected his wife.  Our Zoomie hosts were very conscientious about not only curing our ailments, but also diagnosing the specific strain, genus, species, etc, by a tortuous method of acquiring samples with cotton swabs on barbed wire.  They would repeat the procedure until they were sure that your plumbing would never work again.  And if it did, it would feel like you were passing broken glass.   What they found in our hero's case was a strain that could have only come from the world, yup, little Mrs. Blue Eyes brought it with her.  When Olsen described the wife to me, I quickly realized that it was a woman that had regularly frequented the Navarine Club at NCTC.  I didn't know her other than seeing her around the Navarine quite often.

   End of Rodger's story, beginning of the Joke's on me.  Every time Delta rotated onto the Day watch, the victimized hubby seemed to have murderous intent for me, accompanied by some snickering from my Delta mates.  One night downtown he confronted me with being the great infector.  It turned out that my Delta "buddies" told him that I was.  Such was the sport of being a NUG.  I think I was also the victim of the most elaborate EMHO Log prank ever recorded.  Dennis assigned me to take the EMHO log to every intercept operator in the house about 0300 one mid watch.  This included NSA, ASA, and Zoomie positions.  In addition to having each operator record wave-length and band width, (which seemed to vary between 6" x 1" and 8" x 2") they would describe their contact in terms such as throbbing, pulsing, and squirting, but rarely drooping.  I was also directed to calculate the average frequency for every R390A receiver in the joint, which was quite a few.  Now keep in mind that was 1971, when the closest thing to an electronic calculator around was the abacus Chou Di-Di used to tally up beers tossed during the deusch parties at the Kings Club. The final assignment I was given was to have the EMHO Log signed and approved by the ranking officer of the watch.  This happened to be a Lt. WAF Dominatrix, who seemed pretty annoyed at my request for her autograph.  "Sorry, Just following orders Ma'm".   

   Coming soon - "Tap Dancing on the Bar" Or "I Bet You Can't Get Away With This In The World"

   Has anyone considered writing a screen play; a Navy version of "Animal House". 

   Suggest some titles to get this rolling - How about "Not an Officer or a Gentleman." 

   Jim Valkwitch

   
   
   
   
   

    

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