[John Rogers]

I crossed the equator the first time on the Enterprise when we moved from VA to CA after the refueling. The Marine detachment went first then any guests and one was a WW2 retired admiral with a wooden leg who had never crossed! Then alphabetical order and fortunately Reactor department was down the list aways BUT we still had to crawl from our berth compartment to the hanger bat then up an elevator then all around the flight deck! Too about a week for my hands to heal up (I had insulation under the knees of my dungarees) so my knees weren't too bad! The grease we had in our hair turned out to be water based so it washed right out with a fire hose!

On the USS Truxtun CGN35 we stopped dead in the water at the date line and equator so we could go swimming and also the whole crew be Golden Shellbacks, 99.9% already were shellbacks.
John