There was an E3 I met when I first walked up the brow and stowed my seabag. He had a Mustang and every night he took the plugs out of it and cleaned them, put them under his rack and put them back in the next day before liberty..his car was fouling a lot. His day started with a smile and ended with one. I worked more hours with him than any one person during my entire tour. We were really the only two seamen in the storerooms during that time in the yards. We sweated and cussed and hid and painted and chipped and burnt up far below in the hull's storerooms. We were aft one morning and undogged a void lid. We slid it off and he crawled in smiling as always and really that was the way cause you couldn't do andything about having to do the job. It was easily 130 in storeroom "U", right below storerrom "S" which was directly below the Enginemen's berthing. We had a full five gallon can of petroleum based paint whose fumes could make a wino drunk.
He reached up over his shoulders and slowly pulled the full, open five gallons of paint to him while he was down in the hole. As he picked up the bucket the can hit the top of the lip of the hole and there he was, covered with five gallons of petroleum based paint. D***! We laughed, cussed and wondered how we were going to sop up so much paint. He was mostly P.O.'d about how HE was going to get cleaned up. Well, I did manage to get most of it up cause he really had to leave and get washed before the paint set up. It was hotter than forty h***s and as I walked out of that storeroom there he stood clean as a pin with clean clothes and a big dog smile showing all of his teeth.
"How'd you get cleaned up so fast?" Well a trick learned that day. There was a paint locker, main deck, fore of frame 118, starboard side and he had procurred some JP5, or as it was really known... jet fuel. I was really worried that day 'bout hanging around with him. One smoke lit and we'd both have wound up in Modesto or somewhere.
He was always talking about Viet Nam and how he wanted to really get in country and check things out. He signed the chit, was approved and that was the last I saw of him. Robert Pryor, E3, underdesignated, the BEST friend and a friend to many died there in Viet Nam, February, 1972. So here's to Robert Pryor and all the D*** work we did cussin and fussin and the whole skinny. There's probably more who will read this and remember Pryor, so now you know. Check the wall, he's there.