Twenty-One. The magic age. The rite of going out and getting sloshed – legally – for the first time. I spent my 21st birthday floating a couple of miles off the California coast.
We had been back from Viet Nam for about a month, homeported at NAS Alameda – right across the bay from home. I was back to almost being a civilian with a Navy job. I was even working at Pirro’s and collecting a paycheck from Barry, as well. It was rough.
There was no air wing on board at this point – they were all back at Lemore, Miramar, North Island, or wherever… It was just us sailor-types on the boat.
The powers-that-be planned a 3-day “RefTra” – that’s refresher training in Navy lingo – for the end of July. Knowing my 21st birthday just happened to fall at the end of July, I put in for a 3-day leave. Leaves like this were pretty much just rubber-stamped. There was no compelling reason to deny – especially since we were part of the “New Navy” headed by ‘Uncle Elmo’ Zumwalt – Chief of Naval Operations. Uncle Elmo had revamped all of the personnel policies to make the Navy a more human place.
Yeah… it was that Leading Chief, again… Chief Tanzio wasn’t about to let one of his least-favorite pieces of Government Property actually spend time off the ship enjoying his special day. No… our dear Leading Chief let me know just how indispensable I was feeding the limited crew we had on board.
Yeah, right.
I did very little during that three days floating off the coast – there literally wasn’t enough to keep us busy – and that was after doing a “Navy Clean” of the bakeshops. (They really did use white gloves and that asshole really did look for stuff to criticize.)
So… I got back on land the day after and celebrated then. One of my first stops was “The Blue Crystal” – a bar up the block from Pirros’s where I had been working since I was 16 – and drinking at since I was 17-18. It was all about how you ordered a drink. Order a “Seven and Seven” and you’d get carded. Order a Vodka grape short or a Jack with a Bud back and you would get a great drink.
They were really not amused that I had fooled them for such a long time.
And it wasn’t the last time the asshole Chief screwed me over…