Here's a pretty good sea story from an old sailor I knew.

Looking at the prospect of winding up in the WW2 infantry, my old friend Lou joined the Navy.

Like most of the guys that served, he wanted to get the war over with and go home. He actually did pretty well in the three and a half years he served, making the grade of First Class Petty Officer.

Still, he told me that like almost everyone else he would have rather been somewhere else and been doing something else. He said he coped simply by keeping them guessing every once in a while.

He had been stuck in the galley for a day and gotten grease on his shoes and try as he could, he couldn't get a very good shine out of them. Of course, he wound up facing a uniform inspection the following day.

The skipper commented on the dull shine on Lou's shoes and told him he ought to break out his other pair of shoes and start wearing them.

"But, Sir," protested Lou. He looked at the skipper in the astonished look of a man that has been told to melt the Holy Grail down for scrap. "Those are my LIBERTY shoes!"

The skipper really didn't know what to say for a second but recovered as best he could. 

"Looks like we're just going to have to get you a new pair of shoes," said the skipper.

Lou was pretty good at keeping them guessing.

He's gone now and the world is a little bit dreaarier place for his passing.




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY