Leading Damage Control Petty Officer Bob Hill was all business but he was fair. Hill and I were from Tennessee but he did not connect that with my getting away with any s.details. This whole thing of being from the same state (I figured I may have a hole card) backfired and I think he expected more out of me than others....or maybe it sickened him that we both were people from the same state and I was giving him (a real sailor) and the entire geographic location of our mutually shared home state a bad name. I swear there were times I suspected that he enjoyed seeing me more gainfully employed than anyone on the ship and stayed awake nights thinking up more creative ways for me to clean stuff.

Then they turned really nasty and plotting on me.Smiling like two possums eating a cantaloupe, DC1 Hill and DC2 Russ Byerline set about giving me instructions using charts in Repair III on how to 'go see the beautiful Golden Spike' that Long Beach had received in her keel while being built.Getting carried away and embellishing their story as they described the treasure, on they went about what an honor to be privy to its exact location and how I would be one of the very few to ever gaze upon it. I was ready for this one because the lower rate network alarm system (LRNAS) (an underground communications network developed by pee-ons for the survival and mental health of lowly pollywogs), had already tipped me off to this ploy.and I hope to poop in your ditty bag, I was not going to fall for it. I let them continue. observing that they were beginning to suspect I was on to them but nevertheless I found it amusing to note just how practiced they were at their presentation and delivery skills. After they finished their pitch I demonstrated that I was fully aware of the mythology behind the "Golden Spike" and that I would not be needing a flame safety lamp to light my path through the corridors of bilges in pursuit of their own version of the Holy Grail at this point in time. Clearly they were disappointed in not being able to laugh me out of the fleet had I fell for their deception. Forty-one years later, I regret not playing along!

Shortly after the ugly "Golden Spike" incident came an occurrence that defies acceptable explanation in that it was not done solely for the purpose of counter-attack. Making good coffee in the Navy is an art.Besides national defense; it is what sailors do for a living. The Navy Way of coffee construction is really quite simple.you follow the manufactures instructions as to the required ratios of the material to water and then you just continue fill the interior receptacle of the urn up to the brim while packing it down with any suitable object at hand. With any luck.you may have gotten enough coffee in the receptacle to make it at least drinkable. Well lads.the big day had arrived, DC1 Hill decided to try me out on the coffee making detail.it was a very important day for me because if being from the same state didn't get me any kudus maybe making coffee fit for an Admiral would. I'll bet I asked Byerline how to make it 50 times before taps the night before I stepped to the plate.

On scene in Repair III the next morning just after reveille, I began: Clean, shiny, metal polished, pot.water from the deep sink at the end of the passageway...now the perfect quantity (heap it in), plug 'er up and let 'er perk. What a smell Navy coffee has. I suppose it is from concentrating it into the same density as lead. At approximately 0630 hours DC1 Hill enters Repair III: Coffee ready, Lane he asks. Yep, I hope you like it, I said as he took a drink... And then there was this hellaciously awful long pause.almost an eternity...Did he like it... Didn't he?... Was it at least OK? And then came the answer...the brown substance spewed from his mouth like water out of a fire hose ending up all over the place. Good God.Was it too hot? Had I killed him...what on earth? There were several petty officers mustered in the shop and I noticed no one was laughing and certainly not DC1 Hill as he gyrated around the table in the center of the compartment. This was no joke and it was surely the end of me. Time stood still, people moved in slow motion, minds were silently at work deducing possible scenarios... POISON!! I thought... We were at war...had I somehow poisoned him with coffee that had been tampered with. After regaining his military bearing Hill looked calmly at me from a position not 2 inches away. All the blood had long since left my face on the way to my boondockers when he grinned a big toothy grin and said "SALTWATER"!!

I had used the wrong spigot at the deep sink. Needless to mention, I was subject to even more good natured ridicule than I would have gotten had I gone off in pursuit of the "Golden Spike". The only mitigating factor is that I did not manage to do both. Stuff travels fast aboard ship. People from as far away as the Bo'suns Locker had gotten the word almost as soon as it had happened. It was a long long time before they let it rest.

One asks what in the hell could I possibly do next...could it get any worse.Well, I'll tell ya laddiebucks...it can and did get worse! But I will tell you in another story.

God Speed Bob Hill, wherever you are.and thanks for the memories.

Fred Lane, former DC1
CGN-9 1964-68