WOW! Fifty years ago, October 20, 1964, I enlisted into Uncle Sams Canoe Club. Amazing as it is, I remember my first breakfast after all these years. Most likely from the shock of what they were labeling as food. Blurry eyed from riding in a haze gray navy bus all around the city of San Diego to disorientate our group, before stopping in front of the boot camp gates, around 1 oclock in the morning, and into our racks two hours later. That would have been fine, if we could have slept longer, except reveille sounded at 0600 hours. Shoving a stainless steel tray, with its individual compartments down the long line of almost food, where I received a scoop of watery half-cooked powdered scrambled eggs, to go along with the floating watery instant mashed potatoes. The bacon matched the rest of the almost food. I tried to take a bite from a piece of under-cooked bacon strip, stretching it as far as it would go before it snapped in half, and slammed into my pearly-whites and lips. I could tell the bacon would last until lunchtime, because it was like chewing rubber bands, rubbery and spongy. I had to ask the cooks helpers what everything was, because I didnt know, and apparently, the cooks and their helpers didnt know either. They were thankful there were individual tray compartments, because they didnt want a chemical reaction from the contents running together, and blowing-up the mess hall. And of course, there was coffee, soooo strong it could beat the hell out of the whole bunch of us. I was careful balancing the tray of sloshing contents, in order not to spill anything into the other compartments of the tray, as well having the contents spill onto the floor. Oops, Im sorry, Im in the navy now, I didnt want to spill anything onto the deck. Who knows, the contents might eat a hole into the deck. No one went back for seconds; hoping lunch would be a lot better. To our amazement, the cooks were professionals. What ever they had prepared for breakfast, they were able to duplicate it for lunch and every meal afterwards was detestable, until I left boot camp.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 19:15:29 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015