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Memories - December 23, 2004
All this activity on the Aldebaran group site in the last few days has me stirring around in a part of my memory bank that hasn’t been accessed much in a very long time. I must admit I have enjoyed it.
I can’t remember when I changed my socks last, but I usually remember well things that happened in my earlier years. I’m not sure why I have so much trouble remembering specifics about my time on the Aldebaran. I clearly enjoyed that time and found it to be a great experience. How many high school dropouts from rural Kentucky got to visit six or eight European countries and a lot of the Caribbean?
After I passed fifty I became determined to concentrate on the future and not the past. My personal motto is “Look straight ahead, where you’re going is more important than where you have been”. But it is kinda fun to look over one’s shoulder occasionally.
The small pointers I’ve picked up from some of you guys have helped me remember some about my Aldebaran days. But mostly I find I am remembering incidents and characters, not names.
We’re socked in with sleet, snow and freezing weather down here in the sunny south for a couple days, so I’m going to sit here and write down everything I remember about the Aldebaran.
I went aboard the Aldebaran in about June 1959 as a baby-faced nineteen year old MA2. I was the first “Machine Accountant” permanently stationed on a navy ship. In today’s jargon we would have been called computer programmers. I made three or four Med cruises, one trip to a Baltimore dry dock, Newport News ship yard, and Guantanamo. Before I left the ship in about August/September 1960 I was replaced by a young MA3 named Grassley, Grasso, or something like that. My wife and I had just gotten married, so I gladly transferred to NOB where I spent more time with her and was released from the Navy in December 1960.
A very pioneering IBM “Card-a-Type” system had been installed on the Aldebaran before I came. We used it for the first Med cruise I made, then it was replaced with a more powerful punched card system including a 402 accounting machine, sorter, etc. The Card-a-Type was a piece of junk and one of the few IBM machines that I knew almost nothing about. My first cruise was not fun from a work standpoint. We faired a little better after the 402 was installed. I had experience and training on it.
LCDR Joseph I. Keenan was the Supply Officer and my direct boss. There was a SK2 named Sharp that was the division petty officer on the first cruise. I recall an Ensign named Grogan, but I don’t remember much about him.
Sharp and someone else, a storekeeper named Thomas (I think) bunked in the Cargo Office. Sharp transferred after the first cruise and I moved into his bunk in the Cargo Office.
Charles A. “Chop” Schuler came aboard about the same time I did and he and I were best friends. He was a former basketball star for Kings College in Wilkes Barre, PA and an OCS dropout. He was a fine gentleman. At some point he moved into the other bunk in the Cargo Office. Last I heard from Chop he was living in Laurel, MD and working for the government GAO. I’ve tried to contact him in recent years, but have not been successful.
“Mac” McKinney was a big loudmouth storekeeper from New Orleans. Always crying and whining because he couldn’t get transferred to “NOLA” as he called it. I hope he ends up reading this because I really liked Mac a lot. Hiding underneath that entire rough exterior was a really good guy.
I bunked in the main crew quarters for the first Med cruise and there was a big guy in the bunk beneath me named Benfield. His shoulders were so broad that when he rolled over he would hit the bottom of my pipe and canvas bunk. I have a picture of him and a fellow from West Virginia standing next to the Aldebaran’s propeller. I think it’s posted on the group site.
There was a fellow named Zenna or Zenni who jumped into the nasty greasy water in Naples port to pull out a drunken sailor from another ship. Someone suggested it was the first bath he had taken in weeks.
Two young OCS Ensigns named Spearman and Duffy came aboard later during my tour. They were in the Supply Division and both were pretty straight shooters. I liked them a lot. Ensign Spearman was a “Good Ole Boy” from Ninety-Six, South Carolina. (Yes, there is a Ninety-Six, SC, look it up). I have a picture of Ensign Spearman, Chop, and myself at a rum distillery in the mountains outside Port-a-Prince. From the looks of the picture, I had mistakenly gotten into too much of the product.
In mid-1960 LCDR Keenan was replaced by LCDR T. C. Waller (I think the last name is correct). I know the initials are correct, because I dubbed him “Tango Charlie” and Keenan really got a bang out of that when he heard it.
Some of you have already written about the time the Roosevelt collided with the Aldebaran’s bridge. I also remember a time when an oiler almost collided with our fantail. It was so close we had already sounded the collision alarm. The big guy Benfield that I mentioned earlier was way down in number five hold. He had always claimed he was too big to go through the hatches and insisted that they lower and raise him on a pallet with the hoist. On that occasion Benfield passed several people on the way out from deep down in number five. He didn’t wait for a winch that day. |
