OK, so I lied… (Here is the correction)

[William42483]

OK, so I lied…

Yes, I lied, although I didn’t realize it at the time. I intend to correct that lie now.

Not long ago I made a post about my very first RV camping adventure. After giving the matter thought, I realize that the story I related wasn’t my first RV adventure. It was only the first in what I now think of as an RV.

My RV adventures began in 1974 in central Iowa. I had recently turned 16 and my parents had a second car which was too good to send to the junkyard, but only just. They gave it to me on the condition that I would pay all the associated expenses. This was to be my first RV that wasn’t peddle powered.

An RV after all is an abbreviation for Recreational Vehicle. It’s purpose is to use for having fun. That 1965 Ford station wagon was certainly recreational for me. I spend many happy hours cleaning it and fixing it up as best I could. By now, some of you may be thinking that I’m going to tell about putting an old mattress and some curtains in the back and topping things off with a stereo system, extra wide tires and lots of chrome, then having cool adventures at the lake with my friends as part of the cool crowd. If this is what you are thinking, you are wrong.

I was never part of the cool crowd. It was a small town and my family had only lived there for a couple of years. I was no sports star either, preferring to concentrate on things academic instead of physical. Of course it didn’t help that I was a scrawny little thing physically. To give my potential popularity the kiss of death, my father taught high school science in that very same building. I was a nerd and I accepted the role, albeit grudgingly at times. I was about as welcome in the cool crowd as a Satanist is at a Catholic mass.

I had little money as I worked part time washing dishes at one of the local eating establishments. That big old V-8 engine with it’s four barrel carb drank a lot of gas and it leaked oil at a substantial rate as well. I remember complaining when the price of gas hit eighty five cents a gallon. Everyone thought that was highway robbery.

I managed to keep the engine running but it still had a significant hesitation when you stepped down hard on the gas. Once it got over the few moments of hesitation it had enough power to easily get a young boy in trouble and it did exactly that a few times. I drove that car to school and back each day through the week and sometimes had enough gas left over to go out to the city reservoir and go fishing from the shoreline or to go uptown and cruise the town square on a Saturday evening while trying hard to be a bunch more cool than I was and hopefully impress a girl or maybe two. I wasn’t successful. At that age nerds seldom are, I guess-lol.

Whenever I thought I could get away with it, I drove way faster than was safe. Especially when on gravel roads. I was thrilled and excited driving 85 MPH on those hilly and sometimes curvy gravel roads. I was aware of the danger and I felt alive as I tested my nerve, my skill, my vehicle and mostly my luck. My heart would nearly beat its way out of my chest as the adrenaline coursed through my veins. I was powerful and yet I was powerless to slow down and act sane. I was almost an average teenager.

Regardless of my mega-nerd status, that old car was my baby. It was my mobility. It was my freedom. It gave me freedom and I gave it my money and my love. I could, for the first time ever, be the captain of my own ship (I had always liked boats but rarely had been given the chance to be in one) and take her wherever I pleased. OK, well at least within whatever my thin wallet could afford.

This was my first Recreational Vehicle but it was just to be one of many. I won’t recount them all to you as it would probably bore you to tears or at least enough to quit reading this. OK, moving forward a few years….

It was now the latter half of 1979. I was a proud young man with the official title of Hospital Corpsman Third Class. The title was bestowed upon me by the United States Navy, but the title that mattered to me was when the patients under my charge looked at me and called me “Doc.” I had just returned from a year on the Japanese island of Okinawa. I had been stationed there as part of a unit of infantry Marines. Yes, it is true that there is a semi-friendly rivalry between the Navy and the Marines. We shared in it often. We traded good natured barbs maligning each other’s service branch as to heritage, ability, usefulness, character and any other insulting things that we thought would be witty. The difference for myself and my peers was that our Marines loved and respected us and would gladly die for us. We also would do the same for them although we were less likely to have to simply due to there being a lot more of the Marines than there were Corpsmen. Ok, sorry about the sidebar there. I was under orders. I was being transferred aboard one of the biggest Recreational Vehicles in the world! I was going to an Aircraft Carrier!

The carrier was loaded with over a hundred aircraft and being longer than 3 football fields end to end. There was a lot of hard work to be done but there were also numerous ways to have fun. The carrier was home to 5400 sailors and it was mobile. It took us on journeys to foreign lands where we met interesting people and drank interesting beer. (among other activities like helping to build or refurbish schools) While at sea, we often played jokes on each other. The exact nature of the joke depended on the individuals involved. How gullible was the mark and how creative were those who had marked him? One of my favorites was when we convinced this new kid that there was a bowling alley in the aft part of the ship. We gave him the compartment number (a multi-part 6 to 8 digit number where each part indicated a distance from the center in a given direction) The compartment number we gave the kid, if such a compartment had existed, would have been about 50 feet behind the aftermost part of the ship. Yes, the carrier was a pretty big rig as RVs go.

Then came the smallest RV of my life. A 1979 Mazda GLC. I was recently divorced. Due to financial considerations, my only transportation was a moped which I had bought cheap and barely running. I fixed it so that it was as good as a moped would get. It was adequate for most of life as a single guy at Pearl harbor. (unless it was raining or you wanted to take a girl on a date) I was stationed at the base medical clinic but had been assigned to work in the liaison office at the big Army hospital there. It was a slow commute when you had a top speed of 30 MPH and a big long hill to climb to get to the hospital. One evening I was at my favorite bar with my friend who was the brother of my friend and mentor. We noticed the woman working behind the bar was in a foul mood that night. Well really it wasn’t foul, it was more like she was troubled by something. Since we were regulars and had gotten to know her, we asked what was bothering her. Her boss had given her an ultimatum about her car. She had driven it to work and it overheated blowing the head gasket. She had let the car sit there. It had been sitting there for a year now and the boss was out of patience. He had told her that if it wasn’t gone by Monday, he’d have it towed and dock her pay for the cost. She couldn’t afford the hit to her paycheck, but she had no way to move the car by Monday either. It was Friday night. We offered to help.

Well, we struck a deal. If we helped her get the car moved, we could have it, but her boyfriend wanted the tires on it which were better than the ones he had. We all met in the parking lot Saturday just before mid day. Together, we towed the car to the base auto hobby shop where we were able to have the tires swapped onto the rims for the boyfriend. I paid to swap the tires and she signed the title. When they drove away, all parties were happy. My friend and I had talked and because he didn’t have a job (he was living with his brother) he didn’t have the money to fix the car engine and didn’t think he would have any time soon. So it was mutually decided that the car would be mine. My friends taught me and helped me to fix the engine. I was practically ecstatic at having a real set of wheels again even it it was rusty and somewhat ugly. That Recreational Vehicle was my escape from the barracks and from everything Navy. I had the freedom to go anywhere on the island again. I was mobile once more and I could write pages about my adventures in that car but you get the picture.

The next noteworthy RV in my life was a small ship. Home ported at Pearl Harbor, the Fast Frigate had originally been commissioned as a Destroyer Escort. It was significantly smaller than a destroyer. Actually, only the only smaller vessels classed as ships were minesweepers and fleet ocean tugs. Anything smaller than those was classed as a boat. Even most submarines were bigger even though they are technically classed as boats. Don’t say that to a Submariner though or he might take violent issue with it-lol.

The Frigate was only a few feet longer than a football field and just 55 feet wide at its widest point. It carried a crew of 300 sailors. Halfway through my 20 year career, this RV would be a crucible and a proving ground for me. It would also be three years of the most fun I think I’ve ever had! To me, I had finally made it into the real navy. THIS is what it was all about. No longer was I on a big ship with a medical department consisting of five Doctors, two Dentists, a nurse anesthetist, 35 hospital corpsmen and 6 dental technicians. I was in the real navy. I was the junior of only two hospital corpsmen. We were the only medical staff aboard to care for the crew of 300 sailors. We had no x-ray equipment. We had no inpatient facility. we had no advanced cardiac monitoring equipment. We had a sickbay that measured six feet by fifteen, a gurney bolted to the deck and a small selection of medical supplies. We two, along with our knowledge, intuition and wits were all that stood between any member of the crew and his maker. There were serious and hard times, yet there was ample opportunity for fun.

I’ll never forget the swim call shortly before we crossed the equator in 1989. I had heard of this but thought it to be a myth. Navy ships were vessels of war and must be ready at all times. The stories of swim call were made up to boost morale, I had thought. WRONG! Guys were jumping off the ship from the highest point they could manage and then climbing up the cargo net to do it again as the duty whaleboat kept the shark watch. During our six month deployment into the southwest pacific, the ship stopped at many exotic ports that the carrier couldn’t visit because of its size. Onboard, I was more free to practice my trade and when on liberty to enjoy myself than I had ever been before. I also worked harder than ever before and by necessity took on responsibilities far beyond my training and performed them well. There were days that I hated myself for my performances and other days that I smugly congratulated myself for them. Yes, the Frigate was one of the TRUE RVs in my life.

Now we come to the tale that I posted earlier. If this hasn’t bored you enough, read my post about “My very first RV camping adventure” That one is about my first trip in a 1978 Winnebago, but in reality, it is simply the latest chapter in….

MY RV LIFE… (updates to follow as they occur)

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