This is from a Hard-Hat Diver correspondent of mine who served on the Salvage Vessel USS Grappel.  I don't know how much exposure it has had, but it sure do hit a few responsive chords in my aging memory discs.  Kinda long for those of us with attention span problems, but still worthwhile if you can still focus.


To your old Sailor friends

? LIBERTY BARS
? Our favorite liberty bars were unlike no other watering holes or dens of

iniquity inhabited by seagoing men in West/Pac. They had to meet strict standards
to be in compliance with the acceptable requirement for a sailor beer-swilling
dump for a ship/div hangout.
? The first and foremost requirement was a crusty old gal/mamasan serving suds. She  had

to be able to wrestle King Kong to parade rest. Be able to balance a tray with
one hand, knock bluejackets out of the way with the other  hand and skillfully
navigate through a roomful of milling around drunks and bar girls.. On slow nights, she had to
be the kind of gal who would give you a back scratch with a fly swatter handle
or put her foot on the table so you could admire her new ankle bracelet some
?mook? brought her back from a Hong Kong liberty.
? A good barmaid had to be able to whisper sweet nothings in your ear like, 

?Sailor, your thirteen button flap is twelve buttons short of a green board.?
And,?Buy a pack of Clorets and chew up the whole thing before you get within
heaving range of any gal you ever want to see again.? And, ?
Hey animals, I know
we have a crowd tonight, but if any of you guys find the head facilities fully
occupied and start urinating down the floor drain, you?re gonna find yourself
scrubbing the deck with your white hats!?
? They had to be able to admire great tattoos, look at pictures of ugly

bucktooth kids and smile. Be able to help haul drunks to cabs and comfort 19
year-olds who had lost someone close to them. They could look at your ship?s
identification shoulder tab and tell you the names of the Skippers back to the
time you were a Cub Scout.
? If you came in after a late night maintenance problem and fell asleep with a

half eaten Slim-Jim in your hand, they tucked your peacoat around you, put out
the cigarette you left burning in the ashtray and replaced the warm draft you
left sitting on the table with a cold one when you woke up. Why? Simply because
they were one of the few people on the face of the earth that  knew what you
did, and appreciated what you were doing. And if you treated them like a decent
human being and didn?t drive ?em nuts by playing songs they hated on the juke
box, they would lean over the back of the booth and park their soft warm breasts
on your neck when they sat two Rolling Rocks in front of you.
? Imported table wipe down guy and glass washer, trash dumper, deck swabber and
paper towel replacement officer. The guy had to have baggy tweed pants and a
gold tooth and a grin like a 1947 Buick. And a name like ?Ramon?, ?Juan?,
?Pedro?, ?Tico? ?Joe-San?. He had to smoke unfiltered Luckies, Camels or Raleighs. He
wiped the tables down with a sour wash rag that smelled  like a skunk diaper
and said, ?How are choo navee mans tonight?? He was the indispensable man. The
guy with credentials that allowed him to borrow Slim-Jims, Beer Nuts and pickled
hard boiled eggs from other beer joints when they ran out where he worked.
The establishment itself. The place had to have walls covered with ship and
squadron plaques. The walls were adorned with enlarged unit patches and the
dates of previous deployments. A dozen or more old, yellowed photographs of
fellows named ?Buster?, ?Chicago?, ?P-Boat Barney?, ?Flaming Hooker Harry?,
?Malone?, ?Honshu Harry?, Jackson, Douche Bag Doug, and Capt. Slade Cutter
Ginney, Cracker and Snipe, decorated any unused space.
It had to have the obligatory Michelob, Pabst Blue Ribbon and ?Beer Nuts sold
here? neon signs. An eight-ball mystery beer tap handle and signs reading: 
? ?Your mother does not work here, so clean awayyour frickin? trash.? 
? ?Keep your hands off the barmaid or take her upstairs?
? ?Don?t throw butts in urinal.?
? ?Barmaid?s word is final in settling bets.?
? ?Take your fights out in the alley behind the bar!? 
? ?Owner reserves the right to waltz your worthless sorry ass outside.?
? ?Shipmates are responsible for riding herd=on their ship/squadron drunks.?
? This was typical signage found in classy establishments on the Honch catering to

sophisticated as well as unsophisticated clientele.
? You had to have a juke box built along the lines of a Sherman tank loaded

with Hank Williams, Mother Maybelle Carter, Johnny Horton, Johnny Cash and
twenty other crooning goobers nobody ever heard of. The damn thing has to have
?La Bamba?, Herb Alpert?s ?Lonely Bull? and Johnny Cash?s ?Don?t take your guns
to town? in memory of Alameda?s barmaid goddess, Thelma. If Thelma is within a
twelve-mile radius of where any of those three recordings can be found on a
jukebox, it is wise to have a stack of life insurance applications within reach
of the coin slot.
? The furniture in a real good liberty bar had to be made from coal mine shoring

lumber and was not fully acceptable until it had 600 cigarette burns and your
ship?s numbers or ?FTN? carved into it. The bar had to have a brass foot rail
and at least six Slim-Jim containers, an oversized glass cookie jar full of
Beer-Nuts, a jar of pickled hard boiled eggs that could produce rectal gas
emissions that could shut down a sorority party, and big glass containers full
of something  called Pickled Pigs Feet and Polish Sausage. Only drunk Chiefs and
starving Ethiopians ate pickled pigs feet and unless the last three feet of your
colon had been manufactured by Midas, you didn?t want to get any where near the
Polish Napalm Dogs.
? No liberty bar was complete without a couple of hundred faded ship or airplane

pictures and a ?Shut the hell up!? sign taped on the mirror behind the bar along
with several rather tasteless naked lady pictures. The pool table felt had to
have at least three strategic rips as a result of drunken competitors and balls
that looked as if a gorilla baby had teethed on the sonuvabitches.
? Liberty bars were home and it didn?t matter what country, state, or city you

were in. When you walked into a good liberty bar, you felt at home. They were
also establishments where 19 year-old kids received an education available
no where else on earth. You learned how to ?tell? and ?listen? to sea stories.
You learned about sex at $25.00, $10.00HK, 500Yen, 1000 Lira, a pop! -- from professional ladies who taught
you things your high school biology teacher didn?t know were anatomically
possible. You learned how to make a two cushion bank shot and how to toss down a Kirin
beer and shot of Sun Torry or some Akadama wine or Sake known as a ?depth charge.?
? We were young, and a helluva long way from home. We were pulling down crappy

wages for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a-week availability and loving the
life we lived. We didn?t know it at the time, but our association with the men
we served with forged us into the men we became. And a lot of that association
took place in bars where we shared the stories accumulated in our, up to then,
short lives. We learned about women and that life could be tough on a gal/wife.
? While many of our classmates were attending college, we were getting an

education slicing through the green rolling seas in WestPac, experiencing the
orgasmic rush of a night cat shot, the heart pounding drama of the return to the
ship with the gut wrenching arrestment to a pitching deck. The hours of tedium,
boring holes in the sky late at night, experiencing the periodic discomfort of
turbulence, marveling at the creation of St. Elmo?s Fire, and sometimes having
our reverie interrupted with stark terror.
? But when we came ashore on liberty, we could rub shoulders with some of the

finest men we would ever know, in bars our mothers would never have approved 
of, in saloons and cabarets that would live in our memories forever.
? Long live those liberties in WestPac and in the Med! They were the greatest

teachers about life and how to live it.
? Author Unknown

One of my many favorite bars in Sasebo was a tiny place called Stand Bar Emy.  Emy was a little Japanese Gal that fit some of the characteristics listed above and played Early Merle Haggard endlessly.  She said one of the Navy Regulars there when the ships were in was Merle's Brother.

Was That A Line or Not???

I did indeed drink Kirin beer there with Akadama chasers.  That my liver and i survived is something I take pride in to this day...

Paul  '65-'67.

Here's latest on Subic Bay, which had a few of those legendary bars many years ago.  Now, apparently a Parking Lot:


American Shipper-- March 6, 2009

Idled vessels turning to Subic Bay
Vessels looking for a place to anchor are beginning to pile up in Subic Bay, Philippines, according to a Bloomberg report Thursday.
  As anchorages in Hong Kong and Singapore fill up due to an unprecedented number of vessel layups in recent months, ship owners are looking for new places to park unneeded containerships.
  Officials at Subic Bay, a U.S. Naval port until 16 years ago, said 19 vessels are laid up and they are expecting another eight this week.
  ?If the downturn continues, we?ll probably get even more,? Ferdinand Hernandez, senior deputy administrator of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority, told Bloomberg.
  As of Monday, an estimated 453 containerships were idled, with more in the global dry bulk and car carrier fleets.