Books and other essentials
What was your underway must have?
I was that guy on the boat, the one always reading something. Bible browsing, men’s adventure novel, or 3M manuals, I covered all the bases while underway.
Reading books helped me escape for minutes or hours. Drifting off to sleep with visions of dragons in your head or even scary clowns was better than pondering oil temps and midrats.
What else was good to have on long runs?
Playing cards takes my #2 must have on the boat. Long runs found us playing endless spades and pinochle tournaments. (okay, maybe on fast attacks we weren’t bright enough for cribbage) Bonus time with cards is you rarely played alone, though I just have spread the cards for solitaire hundreds of times.
Any creative outlets?
Writing took up a noticeable portion of my off time. It seemed I started more stories, and journals than a guy should admit to. There were poems, diary entries, and rants at people and God. (He gets His own post some day soon.)
Many shipmates were artists of sorts. I was amazed at drawings and sketches more than once. Art for me at the time was doodles during training.
What else?
Board games? Magazines? Collections? And what sort of books? Mens adventure? Love stories? How to guides? And not to be left out, how about you closet musicians?
dick wiley Said,
July 16, 2010 @ 09:44
hi-back on the tang [563] in ’62 on a west pac run-there were a couple of things…-first, in the after room there was a large jar of olives & several people had martinis almost every day-paperback books were passed around-the good ones in pieces, of course [the carpetbaggers was the most popular one]-our long “run” was the only time we kept a log for the poker game instead of actually using money-I got a hankering for lemon drops-of course there were none-”blindmans bluff” does a good job on these types of ops.
dick wiley Said,
July 16, 2010 @ 09:47
#2-forgot to mention that we got so good at hearts that everyone playing would get exactly 100 & go back to zero-this is the only card game I saw a fight erupt over-never for the ones involving money!
Todd Jordan Said,
July 16, 2010 @ 18:37
Card games rock. If not for them I’d have lost my mind more than once. Endless back and forth it seems now but just not enough things to do on the boat.
I wish I’d have been more disciplined with journaling/writing. it would have payed off in this incarnation of my life.
John Ahnen Said,
July 16, 2010 @ 22:31
When I was on Tecumseh (628-B) in the early 80s, my only must have was chewing tobacco or Copenhagen. That was also about the time the sony walkman came out and they were popular. Used to live the movies, playing spades or cribbage, and of course, sleeping.
ex-ET Nuke Said,
July 17, 2010 @ 02:42
I always loved reading. Once I was qualified I read lots of Sci-Fi and classical literature. I spent the whole of my ’96 Westpac reading Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Les Miserables, Dante’s Complete Devine Comedy, and The Stand. Once those were finished I still had 2mos left in the run, so I picked up a copy of 1984, and several Robert A Heinlein books in Japan to finish off the run. I also spent way too much time playing Pinochle and Spades on the messdecks.
Jack Sutherin Said,
July 22, 2010 @ 14:21
My wife would write a letter for each week we were expected to be gone. Put in a shoe box with gum, some candy and surprises. Read a letter each week. (Before email etc.) Didn’t have a lot of time to read non-tech manuals on SSN. We had department quals to work on. We had six enlisted EOOW’s. BTW the CO was a big man. Whitey Mack.