Gonna jump a couple of years here,,,Boot Camp, BE&E School, Rate training,,,,C School out at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, lying to all the chickies out there about the secret sub base and training manuvers in Cherry Creek Reservoir.
Did get to learn to ski at Breckenridge.
I rolled into SF for the very first time in the fair August of '85 with everything I owned and hauling around with me stuffed into the back of my 77 Datsun 280Z (couldn't shake that Jap Car thang). What the hell did I know,,,??? The FPO address on my orders said San Francisco so I rolled on through the East Bay on 80, had no idea the ship and the base were actually on Alameda Island and ended where?
Lost... in SF...
Where's the best place to be lost in SF when you are a naieve young Navy man from Central Illinois and in SF for the first time???
The Safeway parking lot right in the middle of the Castro, where else?.
Guess what else I wasn't educated on as a yoot, right along with people not of the Black and White varieties??? Within 10 minutes I was no longer quite so naieve.....
Amazingly, in that first moment of slight discomfort when I saw two gentlemen walking down the street with hands on each other's buttocks (cue Forrest Gump voice here),,,,and kissing,,,,I did NOT channel the Fleetside Boys.
Now, I had flirted with a full WTF membership with the Fleetside Boys my Senior year in HS by putting the 73 Datsoon out to pasture and replacing it with a big, shiny, Bright Red Dodge Custom 100 Pick em up truck. It had a grill like Christine, smoked headlight covers, dual antennas (radio and CB),,,,proud and tall, waving in the breeze like proper Illinois stalks of sweet corn, big tires and chrome rims and, and, and,,,,
the anemic slant six with three on the tree... Waaaa, Waaaaa, Waaaaaaa...
that popped out of first at the most inopportune times...Waaaa, Waaaaa, Waaaaaaa...
Fuchin Poser.. No Skoal for me...
I credit the denial of my membership into the Fleetside Boys with the Save on that day. (I also played baseball in HS hence the "save" reference. By the way, that made me an automatic pussy in the eyes of our football coach and only one rung up from the cross country pukes
). Fuch you Johnson!
Let's face it, Florida (boot camp) for me back then was like Illinois but, more humid if you can stomach that!
Denver felt redneckish enough that I didn't break out in hives.
SF however,,,, toe...tally different animal. That inner Punk/Mod inside me that watched the first video aired on MTV while making out with Kathe on a beanbag chair???? Effen A! Turn me loose...
It was at that moment, before I had ever been to sea and had ever stepped foot outside of the Continental US, exploring different countries, that I started to become worldly.