John,I second the thank you. Thanks to you we have also been in touch with many fine people we knew back then. Richard, in the navy, some people felt rank entitled them to be jerks. As a civilian it is a differen't story. Maybe it is Jerry Springerish but I don't tolerate jerks well. I bend over backwards to get along with people but some people are impossible to get along with. If someone gets in my face, they are going to get it back as far as I have to take it. Years ago I roughnecked on oil rigs. Roughneck was definately a fitting word. You worked hard and if you were disrespected, you fought hard. Unfortunately that is still the only way you can get some people's attention. The fear of a good old fashioned ass kicking is all some people understand. I know it makes some mouthy people careful of what they say. I guess maybe when civilazation doesn't work.....I was pretty small. I had to learn to fight back. Sink or swim you know? Kinda wish I was still small though. I haven't been called slim in a while if you know what I mean. Mark, words over time diminish in importance. The jerk I referred to laid a hand on me. Quite a different matter. Hard to scrape that off your shoe. Fire up your National. I have a Telecaster, two Telecaster (Warmoth) clones I built and a Ovation Custom Balladeer. You'll have to do the singing. I only play. Sometimes it even sounds good.

Wes

Wes, I really do understand what you are talking about. The only thing I am thinking though is what I tell my students when someone gets up into their face. They get mad and want to hit back. I only tell them that it is exactly what they were hoping you were to do. There was an officer who did not like me very much. I really didn't understand why, but he had it in for me. I think it must have been that he always had paint splattered all over his uniform (hint on at least where he worked) and I always had a nice clean one and worked in one very cool, air-conditioned office. He felt very superior to most of us because he graduated from college and most of us were right out of high school even though I would say a good number of our shipmates later got even higher degrees than he had. He tried to make my life miserable and I think I felt about him as you do about your "friend" for the past. I really do understand how you feel, and I feel the same way towards the jerk who made me want to get out of the navy too. The only thing I say is that we cannot let them victimize us again by making us mad all over.

He hasn't vicimized me. I just have the memory hanging around. I don't dwell on it. Hopefully we both will have a chance someday to tell these jerks what we feel about them. I do believe what goes around comes around. I have seen a lot of jerks come up the losers when their methods backfire in their faces.

Wes

What horror stories!! I really hope no one term enlistees
have any of these to tell about me. There are classes in all
occupations; you guys are talking about some very low class people.
I suspicion they would be in civilian life too.
Charlie Snyder

Hey Chief,
I remember very well what a class act you were when we on Cochrane together. As honest as I am about that "officer" when I was on, I am being honest with you now. You treated all of your guys fairly, and I think you can tell by how guys address you here that they all appreciated you. Really Chief, there is no comparison with you and those guys.

I agree with you that those guys were losers then, and don't become less loser just because they change into civies. I would have loved to stay in the navy at the time, but had to get away from people like him.

Chief, I didn't know you. I just saw you around. I never heard anything bad about you so that must mean something. I really think most of the people were pretty good. It is really saying something to be a bunch of guys ,living in close quarters, and not killing each other. I really think a lot of it was because we worked pretty hard at it. For the most part I think we were pretty private, not revealing too much about ourselves. We had to be if we were to function in such close quarters. That is probably why we knew each other for several years but didn't know each other at all.

Wes