Are you ready? Are you sure?

Preparing after a Disaster strikes is like trying to learn how to swim after you find yourself in the middle of the ocean with no life jacket With the recent storms in Florida and the south, I was reminded about another large storm and it’s impacts. We are praying for the folks in the South […]

Monkey See, Monkey Do

As I have gotten older, I have discovered that the words on pages seem to have grown smaller and less distinguishable. I was convinced for some time that this was a result of printing companies using cheaper and less effective ink and smaller letters to conserve costs. Kind of like the fast food restaurants are […]

Wouldn’t it be grand?

After years and years of following a path set by others, I have thought recently how nice it would be to finally have my say about everything that touches my life. Wouldn’t that be grand? It’s an old saying from my Grandmother’s age, but her definition and the one of today’s world would probably be […]

The Old Metal Box

We have moved 18 times in our thirty one years of being married and I moved quite a few times before that dating back to 1972. As far back as I can remember, I have kept two things with me in all of those moves. One is a tattered old World Atlas that I faithfully […]

What Would You Take With You?

One of the questions almost always asked during one of my submarine life talks is about sleeping on the sub. Most people who have been around sub sailors have heard about hot racking and I will have to admit to doing so a few times in my career as a lower rated enlisted man. Getting […]

Reality Check

I have been enjoying submarine week on the Military Channel and I hope those of you who are “Brothers of the Fin” can say the same. This post is a little different from my normal so if the only reason you come here each day is for boat stories, please feel free to take the […]

Too Big To Fail

I was only able to serve on five subs and two of those were 688 class boats so my viewpoint may be a bit limited. But I am under the opinion that the designers did a pretty good job making a machine whose sole purpose was to hunt and kill the enemy. The reactor and […]

Need a lift?

August 8 1974 was the day when one of the most interesting events of the Cold War came to a dramatic point. On that day, the Glomar Explorer completed a journey and a mission that had been so well cloaked in secrecy, it is doubtful that we even know today all that transpired during the […]

Disrespected

Somewhere, Mrs. Stamps (my third grade teacher) is standing with her shoulders slightly slumped and shaking her head. She has just heard one of her students use a noun as a transitory verb for the hundredth time and feels like her mission of bringing proper English to the children of Mt. Vernon Elementary School has […]

Just a moment in time

Like most of you, I am just trying to absorb the loss of our brothers in arms today in the fateful crash of the helicopter in Afghanistan. These man are part of today’s greatest generation and a reminder of how precious life itself is. They are not a number. They are not just a part […]