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My January of Discontent
Navy recruits marching at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, IL.
My best friend and I signed up for the Navy a couple of months before we graduated high school in north Phoenix. After inking the deal, we could choose a date within the next 12 months to begin our adventure. After going back and forth, we chose January 5 as enlistment day.
Since I was entering the Nuclear Power Program, my recruiter said I had to do bootcamp in a little slice of heaven known as Great Lakes, IL, about 40 miles north of Chicago. My buddy was training as a Fire Controlman, so he could choose Great Lakes or San Diego. It took him about four seconds to abandon our years-long alliance by choosing sunny beaches over frozen tundra.
While flying to bootcamp in the Great White North, a brand-new replacement best friend and I were confused by the midwestern terrain below. “Why is everything white?” we wondered for about two states before we realized it was something called snow. Arizona boys.
The new guy and I showed up to Great Lakes, which was freezing cold and covered in the white stuff. We both lied that we were experienced in drill team, and were thus assigned to a “ceremonial company” that performs at bootcamp graduations. It’s a slightly cushier deal than a normal company; better to twirl rifles than peel potatoes.
Our first night in the barracks, our charming Company Commander (the Navy version of a Drill Instructor) announced that every morning about 20 of us would have to wake up at 4 a.m. to shovel snow. My turn came up on Day Three.
“Get up! Get out of your racks!” the CC hollered as he banged a metal trash can with a giant soup ladle. “I can’t belieeeeeve you aren’t dressed yet!” We finally got on our uniforms, peacoats, gloves, and wool balaclavas and headed outside where we were handed these weird flat shovels.
“Listen up, you turds! Shovel all this snow from right here to over there,” CC yelled. “If I see one snowflake left, it’s your ass!”
Ah, shoveling snow. I’ve seen this on TV. I scraped the shovel across the top of the snow-covered street, got a few flakes on the end, and tossed them onto the snowpile, only to see the wind blow them right back in the road.
Try again, same result. I’ll get the hang of this, I thought and looked to the guys on either side of me. They were old pros. Every shovel-full carried about ten pounds of the frozen stuff which they’d toss off the road with ease.
After studying their technique I tried again. Looked something like this.
By now, the Company Commander had noticed my utter incompetence.
His red face pushed into mine as he spit out, “Gabriel, what’s wrong with you?! The hell are you doing? Haven’t you ever shoveled snow before?!”
I didn’t know what to say. “I’m from Phoenix, sir!”
I guess it surprised him. He laughed hard, caught himself (it’s bad for his “tough-guy” brand), then yelled at me for making him laugh. “I never want to see you out here again, Gabriel! Get the hell out of my sight!”
So, for the next two months, as my fellow shipmates were awoken daily at 4 a.m. to shovel snow, I got to sleep in.
This conversation is part of our Group Writing Series under the January 2020 Group Writing Theme: Winter of Our Discontent. Thanks to all who chimed in this month; it has been a series of great posts.
Interested in Group Writing topics that came before? See the handy compendium of monthly themes. Check out links in the Group Writing Group. You can also join the group to get a notification when a new monthly theme is posted.
Published in Group Writing
One of my Dad’s co-workers grew up in a small town in the upper Midwest and only joined the Air Force so he could “see the world.” Spent all four years freezing his butt off in Minot, N.D.
My Navy boot camp experience was the opposite of Jon’s. I was sent from Alaska to Orlando in mid-July. I still remember getting off the plane at midnight and slamming into this wall of heat and humidity. I had never experienced anything like that in my life. Absolute misery.
Yeah. Another coincidence, which I noticed when you tweeted about your birthday some time back, is that my birthday is the very next day. I wondered if you were born exactly one day before me, but it seems more likely that it was a year and a day.
If I recall correctly, Shadow Mountain had the best girls’ swim team at the time. I admit that my recollection is a bit vague, as I was obviously on the boys’ side (and the best boys’ team was Brophy).
What does Bush have to do with it??? :-)
Original Best Friend, or Replacement?
Timing is all. It was during the Bush administration that the ice caps melted and the polar bears were reduced to swimming in hot water until they just gave up and drowned. Just ask Al Gore.
I took my turn at Great Lakes in 1992 during July and August. Lucky us we got heat stress days where we were required to stay in the compartment. The cool trick was to be smart enough to follow the classes while only attending half of them. That way I go to be on watch during the day and got to sleep all night every night.
It doesn’t matter. We all died when Trump pulled out of the Paris Accord, and again when Kavenaugh became a Supreme Court Justice.
We were all dead even before that, when Trump’s FCC repealed Net Neutrality.
As we used to say in the AF “Why not Minot?”
Another great post that bridges nicely from “winter of our discontent” to “advice.” This conversation is part of our Group Writing Series under the January 2020 Group Writing Theme: Winter of Our Discontent. Thanks to all who made January brighter with their contributions!
February’s theme is “Advice:” our schedule and sign-up sheet awaits.
Interested in Group Writing topics that came before? See the handy compendium of monthly themes. Check out links in the Group Writing Group. You can also join the group to get a notification when a new monthly theme is posted.