On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 02:08:56 +0000, Larry wrote:

The hash on Everglades was kinda greasy, most of the time.

On the John King we were always out of eggs and fresh milk less than a
week out.
I hardly ever ate the powdered crap. SOS was edible, but I haven't
had it since. Hash browns were edible. If your belly ached from
hunger.
We had really lousy cooks. Sometimes I think 90% of my mates
never had a decent meal at home. Otherwise they would have joined me
in a mutiny.

They fed 4 meals a day (including midrats) on Everglades. I didn't miss
many of them, really making the taxpayers pay for my $68/month wages...
(c;

No midrats, and I missed every meal at sea I could within the bounds
of health.
The aft fireroom escape hatch door was along the food provisioning
work party route, and any time ice cream was brought aboard - it was
for officers/chiefs only - one of us "volunteers" would duck in there
and climb down into the hole with a 2-gallon container. All BT's
forward and aft would have their fill, and whatever was left would get
smuggled to the aft engineroom for the MM's.
I found a flaw in the galley counter swingdown doors one hungry night
after an 8-12, and began an occasional raid on the galley's reefer.
If the crew knew what the cooks were eating while they fed us slop
there may have been a mutiny, or at least some ass-kicking.
Of course the officers and chiefs had their special reefers too.
Good hard salami, sliced roast beef, cheddar cheese, etc.
My raids were simple. I'd enlist another BT getting off the same
watch. He would sit at a table in the mess deck where he had a view
of the fore and aft passages to the mess deck
I'd go to the aftmost galley swingdown and if he gave the all clear ok
I'd jimmy the door, swing it up, leap the counter with door in hand,
and noiselessly let the door back down. I was athletic, and my
aversion to the food served guaranteed I was slim.
Took me a minute or two to get four slices of bread, a tomato, cut
some slices of salami/cheese/whatever with my Buck, and put it all in
a ditty bag.
Scored strawberries a couple times. This was all before I saw the
Caine Mutiny, so I didn't think much of it, except they were
delicious!
My partner would see me through the door crack when I was ready to
exit, and when he gave me the all clear I was out.
We'd go topside and have a nice meal.
Probably did that 10-12 times over the course of a couple years.
Only after we at sea for a week.
The galley never got wise, because I never got greedy.
But I despised the commissary men. The only fat guys I ever saw in
the Navy.
One time we left Naples for operations, and I went to get some
cigarettes from the ship's store and found they had none.
First and only time in 3 1/2 years aboard there were no smokes.
NONE!
Word got out that the 1st class commissary man (head cook) had sold
them on the black market, dropping them off into a garbage scow.
Since he had kept the store cash balanced he was never charged,
but I don't think he showed his face ashore for a few months.
This was the same guy I had a run-in with once about weevils.
It had been rocking and rolling badly for days, and I got up bleary
eyed, tottered to the mess deck walking on alternate bulkheads,
and got some cereal, my favorite shipboard food, because it
was untouched by the cooks. We still had milk.
So I sat down across from a couple green-faced deck apes, dumped a
box of Raisin Bran in the bowl, and a cup of milk on that.
I was wolfing down the cereal, but watching the deck apes because
I didn't trust them not to barf on me.
I'm about half done with the cereal, and one of them - Shields, still
remember his name - starts gesticulating at me in green-faced horror,
his hand on his mouth, then pointing at my bowl, then he gets up and
runs away, followed by his buddy.
I look down at my bowl and see the raisins are swimming, and there's
WAY too many of them. I spit out what I had in my mouth, but I didn't
get sick, I got mad. Now these Navy "cooks" had f**ked up the only
thing I cared to eat on this GD ship.
I picked up the bowl and stormed into Alberte's little office off the
galley.
He knew what I thought about his "cooking."
I pushed the bowl under his nose and yelled at him "What are you going
to do about these f**king bugs in the cereal??!!"
He calmly put a finger to his lip, and said,
"Ssshhhh. Vic, keep your voice down. They're just weevils. Won't
hurt you. It's probably only a few boxes.
If you want to make a stink about it, I might have to throw all the
cereal overboard. Do you really want that?"
That lazy, crooked, can't-boil-an-egg fat-ass was right, and had
instantly taken the wind from my sails.
Man, I tell you, I never regretted doing my Navy tour, and in fact
joined the reserves 7 years later, but the happiest day of my life was
the last day of my enlistment. I blame it on the cooks.

--Vic