Underway

 In 2006, After a long, distinguished career my first ship, USS Oriskany, was retired and stripped to the bare bulkheads and hull,  then towed out  to sea to be sunk as an artificial reef. They call her “the great carrier reef”. I have always wished I could have been a member of that final tugboat crew that towed her into the gulf and sunk her.

 

Imagine me, a 19 year old Sailor in early June, 1967, less than a year off the farm... just off the bus from boot camp and Navy Radioman school, standing on the pier at the Alameda Naval Air Station in the SF bay area, looking up at this HUGE aircraft carrier in all it's intimidating glory. Then imagine my feelings nearly 50 years later as she was towed to sea for her final voyage...putting to sea, or as a sailor would say.... getting "underway" for the last time. This is a true story ... mostly.

Underway

It was "haze gray and underway"

a mantra from my youth

that turned me to this retrospect,

to lessons learned, in truth.

I was just nineteen that summer

when I first went to sea.

I’m lost for words to tell you, mate,

just what it meant to me

to walk that pier, approach that ship.

My heart was filled with fear

the first time that I saw her from

that Alameda pier.

The likes of Halsey, Doolittle,

had graced the quayside where

I stood in indecision, scared

half witless with despair.

Though over fifty years have passed

I can recall it still

as if it happened yesterday.

It took near all my will

to climb aboard, salute the flag

and face that grizzled chief

who took my papers, sized me up

and offered no relief

“Hold on a minute son, stand fast ...

we'll sort this here sh** out”

“I’ll call the watch in Radio.

Does Mom know you're about?”

“Come down and claim his a**”, he yelled

into the duty phone,

“Ya better hurry, mate, he's much

too young to be alone.”

A Chief was near to God above

to this, my younger self,

but I’d survive, report aboard

and find my "rack", a shelf

up near the metal “overhead”,

with “fondness”, I recall.

I slept in Sailor heaven 'twixt

a steam pipe and a wall.

A “bulkhead”, not a wall, I know,

at least I know it now.

I learned this fact and others but

don’t ask me when or how.

The mists of time hang 'round my head

in lost and foggy lines ...

the dark, exotic ports of call,

the taste of Spanish wines,

the days at sea, the months and years

of salty sailor lore,

the ports and bars I can’t recall ...

or won’t. A distant shore,

a sea of stories heard and told,

of truth and blatant myth,

I've scant recall of oceans crossed,

of mates that I sailed with.

Across the years the ocean breeze

has filled this sailor's sails

with gratitude and in the end,

in truth, it never fails

to fill me with amazement that

the timid lad I knew,

became a man who lived his life …

in shades of Navy blue.

But I digress, I lose my point …

I only meant to say …

I’d give my all, my broken heart,

to join her … underway!

~ Dean Neighbors ~