I was an Avionics Technician and Maintenance Officer in the Navy with most of my time in Aviation Squadrons.  Each day “Ops” came out with the daily Flight Schedule.  We always joked that the flight schedule was only a plan to deviate from since it often did not go as planned.  Well our RV plan is looking like a flight schedule right now!  Our adventure out on the road is being delayed a bit, and I’ll explain more in a later post.  During my career there were many times when you had to adjust to an extremely dynamic situation. You had to be like a fluid to match the ever changing environment.  Reflecting on this made me think of one of my kids favorite sea stories that I told, and it does involve fluid….lots of fluid.

Set the Stage

So I need to lay some ground work first.  In Navy Squadrons, the officers, who are mostly pilots and NFO’s (Naval Flight Officers) all get call signs, or in civilian terms, nick names.  Unless it’s a formal occasion, like being called in front of the Skipper (Commanding Officer), everyone is referred to by their call sign.  Call signs are given for all kinds of things.  Sometimes it’s something you did and sometimes it’s a play on your name.  For instance we had a guy whose last name was Suer, pronouncer like “sewer”.  His call sign was Pipe.  Another guy had the last name of Drew, so his call sign was Nancy, and one of my Skippers was named Chum…you can guess what action lead to this call sign…it wasn’t because he was friendly. 

In this story you will hear about Huggy Bear (Huggy for short), Cheeser, and Chow.  There were many of us on that fateful night, but these are the three main characters of this sea story.  Huggy was everybody’s friend and very likeable.  Everyone loved Huggy and Huggy loved everyone back.  Cheeser was from Massachusetts and had that Boston accent.  I have to try and explain what Chow looked like.  If you’ve ever seen Heart Break Ridge, and you remember “The Swede”, then you know what he looks like!  He looked just like Swede…a big muscular intimidating dude.  Another character that Chow resembled is Ivan Drago from the Rocky 4 movie.   He even had the same haircut.

Swede? I thought your name was Chow

Liberty Call!

So we were deployed to the Med (Mediterranean Sea) on the USS Kennedy, and we had a port call in a town south of Barcelona Spain.  One day while in port a bunch of us decided to hit the town and have a BCD (Big Chicken Dinner). That is code for drinking as much Sangria and eating as much paella as possible.  Also, Spain is one of the countries where you can buy actual Cuban cigars, so we had all replenished our stock of these fine smokes. 

Part of the BCD adventure was relaxing after dinner with a fine cigar and just chillin.   There was probably 10-12 of us, and we departed the ship in late afternoon.  We found a nice open court “square” that had multiple eating establishments around the perimeter with seating mostly outside in the square area.  It was very nice and relaxing, and soon the sangria was flowing….and flowing…and flowing.  By the time dinner was over it was dark outside and we had done our best to drain the ever flowing sangria tap.  It was now time to light the smoking lamp, so we busted out the cigars and lit em up. 

Light em if ya got em!

Now here is where it gets interesting.  By this time Huggy was feeling no pain and had gotten up to wander around our table, hugging his fellow Aviators.  Cheeser was sitting directly across from Chow, and Huggy had already tried to get “amorous” with Chow.  Chow basically said, “Don’t even think about it” to Huggy, so Huggy meandered over to the other side of the table.  Cheeser saw Huggy approaching and he was also in the middle of lighting his cigar, so when Huggy leaned over to plant a big wet kiss on Cheeser’s head, Cheeser just kind of reached up with his lit lighter to try and ward Huggy off.  What actually happened was that Cheeser caught Huggy’s hair on fire. 

I mean it started small but within seconds it was starting to really flame up.  Huggy had no idea he was on fire.  Chow sprang into action and jumped up, reached all the way across the table, and WHACKED Huggy on the head a few times, putting out the flames.  Now remember, Chow is a BIG guy and he whacked Huggy pretty good on the head.  Huggy got kind of mad and said, “Why did you do that dude”, to which Chow replied, “Dude I just saved your life!”  So when we decided to call it a night we walked back to fleet landing all the while we were all singing (Rather loudly as a bunch of drunken sailors are like to do) the song FIRE! By The Ohio Players. 

Huggy wasn’t injured too bad, nothing a close haircut couldn’t fix…besides when he was working (flying in the aircraft) he wore a helmet so nobody could even see the slight scorch mark on his forehead.  Every time I hear that song it brings me back to the BCD.