Sea Stories: Big Dick's Ton O' Salad

TALES FROM THE SHIP...

BIG DICK'S TON O' SALAD, by PAT "GUIDO" MORGANELLI, F-14 RIO

(ADULT LANGUAGE - SALTY)

Somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea- circa 1980

There wasn’t much to mealtime on the carrier, that was for sure. We all ate in the dirty shirt wardroom, where you could wear a bag - even a really stinky bag - and no one would care. Sometimes there were others: engineering dudes, flight deck gurus, civilian tech reps. But mainly the aviators owned the place. The dirty shirt was on the 03 level, only about ten feet or so underneath the flight deck. Unreal. Planes and all kinds of shit moving around that close to your head while you eat. I don’t mind a little movement, I just hate it when anyone screws with my feeding.

There was another wardroom onboard, the so-called Clean Shirt. We - the aviators - called it that. I don’t know what the Shoes called it. Let’s compare and contrast: You had to wash up or shower and put on a clean khaki uniform to eat there, but The Clean Shirt had linen and better chow and sometimes the Mess Specialists would even serve you at the table. I did it once and it was sweet. It was just too much trouble, that’s all. Well that and the grief you'd pull from your buddies.

The dirty shirt was all the way forward. In heavy weather stuff might actually float weightless when the bow went on the down stroke. It was always the same. The steel girders, the worn tile floor, the plates hot and steamy from the scullery when you picked them up and set them down on the plastic tray, sliding along the stainless steel tubing that made up the serving counter. And the greasy heat from the kitchen, the faint reek of paint and fuel and jet exhaust, and sinking to the bottom of the whole unsavory mix was the gloom they called food, huddling in steam pans like dead cats. For the most part you just choked it down and then bolted. My mom spent my whole childhood and adolescence teaching me to eat slowly, carefully. One month onboard ship and that whole program was history.

On our ship for that cruise they had this fucked up deal where you had to pay for each item on your plate. See, the normal way is that each officer onboard gets a monthly bill of about $120, and the Supply Chief plans the menus based on that amount. On that particular cruise guys were even cheaper than normal and they decided that they could save money by paying as they went. So instead of asking for and getting what you wanted you had to count it up and at the end of the chow line a mess cook with a ticket punch would take your meal ticket and mark off what you had on the tray.

The only food you could still have for free was peanut butter and jelly and what passed for bread. For a while some guys were living on that, then CAG came on CVIC TV and said that if he caught any of his aviators living on that shit he’d personally horsewhip him. The Supply Officer - not a Shoe in the truest sense but Shoeish in many ways, believed (correctly) that it was an aviator thing and he took it personally, which meant that he used the unorthodox arrangement to channel every goddamn decent thing remaining in the dirty shirt down to the Clean Shirt. I never worked it out on paper but my guess is that we may have saved about ten bucks a month each and all it cost us was an exponentially cruel erosion in quality of life.

But in the Navy, if a thing is worth doing it’s worth overdoing.

Anyway...I went through the dinner line one night, passing along the grey vegetables, the potatoes, your condiments, your canned three-bean salad, your cabbage, your fluorescent-lit grease-soaked steaks and the alternative cheeseburgers (The Other Red Meat), selecting something for my dining enjoyment. I don’t remember what. Why would anyone remember? The messcooks stood behind the steam counter, all sullen and miserable-looking. Probably wondering why they’d chosen the service when the judge had said it was that or prison. I’d try to talk to those guys and cheer them up but most of them didn’t want to hear it. When I got to the end of the line the seaman took his punch thing and checked off my meal: about $2.50. Not much, but look at what it bought you.

The wardroom itself was loud and a bit smoky, with guys clustered in groups at long tables covered with food-stained white oilcloth tarpaulins and dirty plates and half full water glasses filled with red bug juice. Some guys stuffed themselves and others jabbered and laughed like goons while the ceiling groaned under the weight of gigantic things being towed around between recovery and launch. Some older guys sat in the corners, sipping java and smoking, though most younger guys didn’t. All the smoking, and probably the laughing too, is gone nowadays.

I sat down with my squadron bros: Hollywood, Cock, and Banzai. They were mostly done, but fuck it, I sat down anyway. It gave them a reason to not leave and go back to work, so everyone was happy, I guess. Hollywood sat across the table from me. He leaned back in his chair, balancing on the two back legs, rocking back and forth while he talked. He wore a rumpled, damp bag and his hair was slicked down from wearing a helmet. Faint reddish rings circled his ears from where the helmet ear cups had been pressing on the sides of his head. If you had a good eye you could look at those rings and tell to within five minutes accuracy how long ago a guy had taken off his helmet and how long he’d worn it. My guess was that H’Wood had been on the previous recovery.

Cock sat next to him, still power-loading his chow. He wore thin cotton wash khakis which could only mean that he had the duty. Banzai sat to my right. He wore a bag, but it looked presentable and his head was un-creased. Obviously still on the night team, poor schmuck.

"Was going on ?" I asked, scraping the legs of the chair across the linoleum.

"I’m considering ritual suicide," H’Wood said.

"Cool."

"Don’t even fucking talk to me," Cock said, swabbing a french fry in some brown shit.

"Got the beak?" I asked.

"I got the beak and the rooster feet to go with it..."

"What’re you eating, man?" I asked to change the subject.

Guessin' our food's origin was a ritual pastime. I knew it was some sort of burger. My food identification skills were at least that good. But this was a variation I hadn't yet seen. Cock was a good guy, who got stuck with the duty, and I wanted to engage him in a dialogue that would help his self-esteem.

"Tango Charlie with Tango Charlie," he pronounced, mouth full. "Check this out: Triple Cheese with Triple Cheese. You got your three patties and your nine, count -em, nine slices of cheese."

"You are an artist. Life should be good," I said. "Why the beak?"

He counted the reasons off on his fingertips. "I’m on cruise, I’m wearing tackies, I got the duty."

"Roger that." The man had a point.

H’Wood caught sight of another Gypsy and yelled, "Hey, Dick! Hey, you, Big Dick!" I suspect only on a carrier, after four months of cruise, would that not even warrant a glance from others.

Big Dick came over and sat down. On his tray was a huge bowl filled to the brim with salad. The bowl sat on a plate. He had kind of a serving plate thing going, I suppose. I don’t know much about that shit. During my bachelor days, most of my meals were consumed standing over the kitchen sink. The Biggus Erectus also had about fifty packs of saltines and two glasses of bug juice.

"Was up?" he asked of no one in particular. He was big, alright: six two, 220 pounds, under 10% body fat. A monster. His chair creaked when he sat.

In the meantime, Banzai still hadn’t said a word. He gripped a glass in one hand and a table knife in the other, holding it tightly. He stared into his Jus de Bug while the muscles connecting his jaw to his head twitched.

"Jesus, that’s a big ass salad you got there," Cock said.

"It’s a Ton o' Salad" Big Dick announced, like a brand name thing. He could have said,

"It’s a Sony Salad or a Chrysler Motors Salad." He started opening his saltines.

"That’s what you ought to do after you leave the Navy," H’Wood said, "Open a chain of Salad Houses. Big Dick’s Ton o' Salad!"

"You could have TV commercials where someone says, ‘Pull in at the sign of the Big Dick’," I offered.

Big Dick moved the Ton o' Salad bowl from the serving plate, setting them side by side. Next he jammed his hand into the salad and fished around.

"What the fuck are you rooting around in your food for?" Cock asked.

Ignoring the question, Big Dick pulled a steak out of the salad and dropped it on his plate, flicking away a couple of pieces of lettuce that flew across the room. One piece landed on a guy’s leg but he pretended not to notice.

"Gimme the A-1," Big Dick said as he picked up his knife and fork.

"I don’t fucking believe this," H’Wood uttered.

"Dick, you hid the steak under the salad?" Cock asked.

Big Dick jammed a hunk of steak into his maw. "Yup."

"If CAG finds out he might horsewhip you," I offered, " Skipper for sure will..."

"I’ll kick both their asses. And yours too if you don’t shut up."

"So how much was that dinner, total?" asked Cock. Ever since his wife's credit card bill started showing up at mail call, he'd become budget conscious.

Between chews, Big Dick said, "Fifty cents".

"Shit, I might do it next time then."

"You guys sound like my fucking uncle" H'Wood said.

"I hate him" Banzai said quietly.

"You know Hollywood's uncle?" I asked, but as soon as I looked at Banzai I knew I’d made a mistake. His teeth were clenched and he was breathing through his mustache. Banzai set new standards of intensity everywhere, even in a place like a fighter squadron aboard an aircraft carrier. But when he started staring at an imaginary horizon and breathing through his mustache, verdant as a fifty-year-old boxwood hedge, it meant that things could go shitty with only the thinnest provocation.

Cock looked at me and mouthed the name, "Jack."

"I really fucking hate that guy," Banzai hissed.

"What'd he do, steal your one day hop this week?" I was kidding, because I didn't think even a weasel like Jack would be that much of an asshole, but Cock frowned and shook his head.

Our shipmate was close to going postal. Banzai had been on the night team so long he had racoon eyes. Cock, who flew with Banzai, would regale of us stories about Banzai's plots to kill Jack. For reasons known only to our skipper, Jack was allowed to torment J.O's who had humiliated him in dogfights. Banzai hadn't seen a day hop since their last 1 vs. 1. But, as Banzai had found out, no one was going to come to his aid, since he was flying all the trash hops.

At the end of the wardroom the sad-eyed young seaman who’d been checking off people’s dinners stepped into the room with the Supply Officer. They stood there and looked across the room at us. The young sailor pointed at Big Dick.

"Hey Dick, check right three, for fifty feet," I whispered, trying to not move my lips. Ventriloquism must be hard as shit, I decided.

The two men walked over to where we sat.

"How’s your dinner?" The shoeish Supply Officer asked. The seaman looked down at his feet and blushed

" S'good!" Big Dick said, not missing a beat. "Thanks for asking."

The Supply Officer looked at the seaman and asked, "Are you sure?"

The seaman looked at Dick and at the rest of us. Big Dick glared back at him. Wilting under the pressure, he said "No sir. I just remember he was in a flight suit."

"That could be anyone in here," I said to the Supply Officer. "Except for you...and Cock, here."

"What’s the problem, anyway?" H’Wood asked. Hollywood had this way of intimidating people by asking a question packed with undertones. Like he knew that you knew that you were full of shit. He'd of made a helluva lawyer.

The Supply Officer looked at each of us, said, "Fucking Aviators," and walked away.

H’Wood and Cock got up and left. Big Dick went on masticating his steak and his ton of salad, and Banzai went on breathing through his mustache and staring into his glass.

I sat there for a bit and took it all in. Eventually I looked back at the food on my plate. It looked even worse now than it did before. Unconsciously, I started chewing on the inside of my right cheek. Just great. Forward deployed and eating my own flesh.

It was the best meal I’d had in months.