USS Midway

The USS Midway was launched in 1945 and decommissioned in 1990.  It is now a museum, berthed in San Diego.  My 2 sons (Tod and Adam) and I toured it last weekend.  It was mind boggling.  The sheer size of the thing and its crew, the complex coordination and timing required to operate an airbase on a ship, the awesome power - it's hard to get your mind around it.

Top speed was 35 knots (40 MPH) but fuel economy was lousy: 20 feet per gallon.  You could water ski behind it but carriers can't turn on a dime, so if you did a face plant into the water, you were gonna be there a few hours.  Pack a lunch and take shark repellent.

Speaking of lunch, 225 cooks prepared 10 tons of food per day for the 4500 personnel on board.  Everyone says the Navy eats well.  Reminds me yet again that I chose the wrong branch of the service.  Nobody ever said C-rations were 'eating well.'  Where's my Tobasco sauce?

Berths for enlisted men measured about 30" W x 66" L x 36" H.  All clothing and personal items were stored in the trays below the bunks.  Cozy.

Anchor chain links weigh 156 pounds each.  Dropping anchors produced one hell of a racket.

Boiler room gauges and controls.

This picture was taken from one of the huge elevators that move planes from hanger deck to flight deck.  Note the giant-sized sculpture of a sailor planting a lip lock on his girlfriend, lower left.

The flight deck had about 20 planes on display, each with it's own 2-minute audio story.

The Phantom F-4.  When I called in air strikes in Vietnam, a pair of these usually delivered the goodies (napalm, rockets, cannons).  I'd pop smoke, give the flight leader the distance and direction to the target, sit back and enjoy the fireworks - provided my unit wasn't taking fire at the time.

This shot shows the catapult connected to the front landing gear.  The 2 steam-powered catapults took a plane from 0 to 170 MPH in 3 seconds or less.  Whoopee!  Launch timing had to be perfectly coordinated with the rise and fall of the ship on the ocean swells.  Mess up the timing and launch the plane when the ship's bow is down in a trough, the plane and flight crew would be propelled straight into the water - and on down to Davy Jones' locker.

Communications center.  Urgent messages were printed out and sent to appropriate areas on the ship using the brass vacuum tubes on the right.  Just like department stores back in the day.

Flight deck personnel wore different colored tops to designate their crew and duties.  Adam (L) and Tod (R) opted to pose with the cute little female sailor on the far left.  They're out of uniform but that wasn't always the case: both served in the military.

Today's US carriers (Nimitz Class) are nuclear-powered and are the largest military ships in the world.  The first of the next-gen carriers (Ford Class) is scheduled to launch this year with highly automated systems that will reduce crew size by 1000+.  They'll cost about 10.5 billion $ to build and 1 million $ a day to operate.  A billion here, a billion there.......

Kitchen Sink

Since buying our LHC home in late 2009, we've replaced or painted everything in the kitchen, everything but the kitchen sink, that is.  A few days back, while consuming my morning banana, I checked my email and read a new one from Mama, aka Trish.  What do you think it said?  Yep, you guessed it: she wants a new kitchen sink, and a new faucet as well.

And I thought the kitchen remodel was all done.  Silly me!  You'd think I'd know better by now.  But wait: Mama said she'd spring for it.  Okay, I'm all over it!  And, while we're at it, I'll replace the garbage disposal.  It's 11 years old, which is about 90 in people-years.  So, we ordered all the stuff, Amazon and Home Depot.

Mama asked me if I would do the installation.  No way, Jose'!   For starters, cast iron kitchen sinks weigh upwards of 130 pounds. Yeah, I've installed numerous sinks, faucets, whatnot, but I hate plumbing with a passion.  Seems like every other time I do a plumbing job, I get everything connected, turn on the water, check for leaks, and finding none, put away my tools.  Next morning, sure as hell, there's water on the floor.  I swear, some nasty gremlin or gnome or leprechaun sneaks in when I'm asleep, loosens up a supply line and sneaks off again.  I'd dearly love to catch the little sumbitch in the act, stick his head in the toilet and flush it several times.

Looked at faucets lately?  The latest thing is a touch-on/off feature.  For only $100 more, you get a faucet that turns on every time you accidentally touch the darn thing whilst reaching for the sponge, dishrag, soap dispenser, RO - or just cleaning the sink.  Whoop de friggin' do!  This fine invention is nearly as asinine as a couple other plumbing-related 'innovations', the merits of which I liberally berated in earlier posts.  Copy and paste the links below, might make you chuckle.

https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4575053743717058165#editor/target=post;postID=984565507632208558;onPublishedMenu=posts;onClosedMenu=posts;postNum=7;src=postname

http://edgem21.blogspot.com/2011/06/man-in-motion-part-two.html
    

Banana Blues

As a youngster, I had an ongoing case of severe BDS (Banana Deprivation Syndrome).  Dad did all the grocery shopping.  He'd bring home cases of apples, peaches and other in-season fruit - but bananas?  Virtually never.  Guess he didn't like 'em much.

God, how I envied my neighbor and classmate, Bob - that rascal seemed to always have a banana in his school lunchbox.  Mom always put carrots or kohlrabi or some other blah garden vegetable in mine.  I'd watch Bob snarf down his banana, jealous as hell.  Don't recall him ever offering to swap his banana for my carrots, either. Selfish little bugger.

Church bingo/potlucks were the only social events back in the day, and I really looked forward to them.  We kids would tear around outside while the adults played bingo, returning inside when it was time to eat.  And the eats were delicious: hot dishes, decadent desserts and strawberry jello - with bananas!

Nowadays, I do the grocery shopping and there's always bananas in the fruit basket on the kitchen counter.  First thing in the morning - every morning - it's banana time!  That's been the routine for 4 decades.  Although my BDS is in remission I still feel its presence.  It's there alright, lurking in the shadows, waiting for the day I forget to stock up on bananas before setting up camp in a remote area.

Just the thought of it makes me twitch.

Inner Sanctum

It's 1954.  I'm 10 years old.  Our first TV set, a large blonde console unit with a piss ant screen, is 2 years old.  All TV programming is in black and white; color TV still 10 years out.

On a good day, we got 3 North Dakota-based stations, 2 from Fargo, 1 from Valley City.  There was an electric rotor on the TV antenna that turned the antenna towards the signal source.

Dad was the undisputed boss of viewing selections, directing us kids to switch channels while he was lying on the sofa after dinner.  No remotes in those days.  Dad was a great fan of boxing and wrestling.  Mom was into watching religious stuff and The Voice of Firestone, a weekly classical music show, which ran from 1949 to 1963.

Other regularly-watched programs included Flash Gordon, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, The Ed Sullivan Show, I Love Lucy, Adventures of Superman, What's My Line, plus a few other westerns.

My most vivid memory though, is none of the fore-mentioned but rather Inner Sanctum, a horror/sci fi serial.  The show always started with a guy talking like Vincent Price, and a scene showing a heavy metal door.  After a few introductory sentences, the guy would say, "And now we will open that squeaky door."  The door would open very slowly, with the squealing sound of rusty metal hinges.

It scared the crap out of me!  Very creepy stuff.  I'd crawl under the dining room table when the show started.  Actually, no one in our family was much into the show, and we usually changed channels when it started.  The channel change couldn't happen quick enough for me, though.  Gotta give credit to the folks that created that creepy introduction: it left a lasting impression - 60+ years in my case. The show ran for just one season, seems I wasn't the only non-fan.