"Steady as She Goes" is a collection of stories of my life experiences as an East Tennessee farm boy who grew up thinking bib overalls were the only clothes made for kids, became a naval officer and retired thirty two years later as a captain.Stories from my tour aboard the aircraft carrier, USS Forrestal; of how proud I was to be an American, watching two F-4 Phantoms on afterburner going straight up into a clear blue sky; of standing OOD watches and visiting cities like Barcelona, Spain and Cannes, France; of gigantic swells in the Mediterranean and a storm in the North Atlantic that made the ship's expansion joints shriek and moan.
Stories of OCS in Newport, Rhode Island, where the first morning we had corn bread and baked beans for breakfast; of my upper bunk mate Jewish kid from Chicago who thought people in Tennessee did not wear shoes and of him taking me, the hayseed from Tennessee to Boston, where we spent the night in a fleabag hotel.
Stories of my tour in Aviation Maintenance Officers School in Memphis, where I took a girl on a date to a swimming pool/beach in Mississippi, only to discover she was only sixteen and her father was a deputy sheriff, and at the Cotton Carnival, where I attempted to win a large teddy bear for my date by tossing a nickle (covered with the sticky coating from her candy apple)onto a plate.
Stories of meeting my wife-to-be after my dad wrote the only letter he ever wrote me insisting I meet his nurse; of our two year honeymoon in Bermuda when I was assigned to VP-45; of the P5M seaplane on a flight to Puerto Rica that had an engine fire and landed in a river; of being a mediator between a couple whose marriage was on the rocks;and the Coast Guard detachment CO who taught our pilots how to land a crippled P5M at sea at night.
Stories of my tour with VT-2 in Milton, Florida, where a tornado missed us by one house; of the cat we lost in Tennessee finding us two years and 700 miles later; and of the pilot who on a landing approach delighted in forcing the crash crew to bail off their truck like frogs jumping into a pond.
Stories of my first civilian job as a newspaper national advertising manager, where I inundated the paper with whiskey ads; of counseling a young lady at Southern Airways on how she might improve her appearance, whereupon she thanked me for "putting her in show business."; of becoming the CO of a reserve squadron in Dallas for three months without ever being there, and of the trip I made to California when I was an engineer at Sperry to witness the environmental testing of a traveling wave tube.
Stories as a farm kid--making a gravel shooter--using it to terrorize the rats in the corn crib and finding out the hard way that hornets have an uncanny ability to locate a perpetrator and administer swift an painful justice when I shot a hole through their nest;of the bantam hen who hatched out a bunch of quail eggs and about went bananas when her chicks began flying; of an uncle who taught me to identify trees by their leaves; of he and I identifying aircraft and building models of them during WWII.
Stories of a host of characters--the retired Navy chief who owned 13 auto parts stores; of the weapons instructor at OCS who insisted each of us contribute a dollar to insure we pass his tests; of the company officer at OCS who told me at an inspection that my shoes were the worst looking he ever see in his entire Navy career; of the air boss on the USS Forrestal who was a fine officer and a great human being: of a lawyer in Milton, Florida, who when I was the treasurer at the First Presbyterian Church, tried to get me to divulge what members gave; and a roommate at the University of Tennessee who was a certifiable nut case.
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Stories of OCS in Newport, Rhode Island, where the first morning we had corn bread and baked beans for breakfast; of my upper bunk mate Jewish kid from Chicago who thought people in Tennessee did not wear shoes and of him taking me, the hayseed from Tennessee to Boston, where we spent the night in a fleabag hotel.
Stories of my tour in Aviation Maintenance Officers School in Memphis, where I took a girl on a date to a swimming pool/beach in Mississippi, only to discover she was only sixteen and her father was a deputy sheriff, and at the Cotton Carnival, where I attempted to win a large teddy bear for my date by tossing a nickle (covered with the sticky coating from her candy apple)onto a plate.
Stories of meeting my wife-to-be after my dad wrote the only letter he ever wrote me insisting I meet his nurse; of our two year honeymoon in Bermuda when I was assigned to VP-45; of the P5M seaplane on a flight to Puerto Rica that had an engine fire and landed in a river; of being a mediator between a couple whose marriage was on the rocks;and the Coast Guard detachment CO who taught our pilots how to land a crippled P5M at sea at night.
Stories of my tour with VT-2 in Milton, Florida, where a tornado missed us by one house; of the cat we lost in Tennessee finding us two years and 700 miles later; and of the pilot who on a landing approach delighted in forcing the crash crew to bail off their truck like frogs jumping into a pond.
Stories of my first civilian job as a newspaper national advertising manager, where I inundated the paper with whiskey ads; of counseling a young lady at Southern Airways on how she might improve her appearance, whereupon she thanked me for "putting her in show business."; of becoming the CO of a reserve squadron in Dallas for three months without ever being there, and of the trip I made to California when I was an engineer at Sperry to witness the environmental testing of a traveling wave tube.
Stories as a farm kid--making a gravel shooter--using it to terrorize the rats in the corn crib and finding out the hard way that hornets have an uncanny ability to locate a perpetrator and administer swift an painful justice when I shot a hole through their nest;of the bantam hen who hatched out a bunch of quail eggs and about went bananas when her chicks began flying; of an uncle who taught me to identify trees by their leaves; of he and I identifying aircraft and building models of them during WWII.
Stories of a host of characters--the retired Navy chief who owned 13 auto parts stores; of the weapons instructor at OCS who insisted each of us contribute a dollar to insure we pass his tests; of the company officer at OCS who told me at an inspection that my shoes were the worst looking he ever see in his entire Navy career; of the air boss on the USS Forrestal who was a fine officer and a great human being: of a lawyer in Milton, Florida, who when I was the treasurer at the First Presbyterian Church, tried to get me to divulge what members gave; and a roommate at the University of Tennessee who was a certifiable nut case.
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