Tanks

So this doctor comes into a scrapyard and he’s looking at some big plastic barrels. He asks one of the workers about them and is told that they wont fill his need but he should go inside and talk to the counter man as they might have something else that will work.

Counterman: "Hi Doc! What can I do for you?"

Doctor: "I’m building a cabin out in the woods and I need some barrels to use to rig up a water system."

Counterman: "Well I got these big white plastic 200 gallon water containers out back that would work but they’re pretty pricey."

Doctor: "Well, maybe we could work out a trade."

Counterman: "Maybe, what sort of Doctor are you?"

Doctor: "Plastic Surgeon."

Counterman: "You should go in the back and talk to my dad, he’s got a new girlfriend and she is looking to increase her bust size."

The Doctor goes in the back there’s a conversation and after a while he comes back out.

Doctor: "Load em up."

Counterman: "So, what kind of deal you make?"

Doctor: "Tanks for the Mammaries!"

Uncle Dave

Philosophy

You learn interesting things from miscreants.

Such As! Some women say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. This is not true. The way to a man’s heart is with a Ka-bar from just below the sternum upward at a 40-degree angle to the hilt and pivot the blade to his left.

Now, I've never needed this information for any action I may have contemplated taking personally, but knowing that this is the way your opponent thinks gives you an edge in dealing with him.

I spent time while I was in the military as an Armed Forces Policeman. We weren’t detectives or traffic cops or the guys to go to when you’ve lost your dog. We were the guys tasked with keeping solders, sailors airmen and marines out of trouble when they were on liberty in various foreign ports. It’s not the same as the Military Police (MPs) or Shore Patrol (SPs) or Air Police (APs) we were the guys that told those guys where to patrol and what the local rules were. Also, we were the ones they called when there was something to big for them to handle. We had guns, they didn’t, although most of the time we depended on nothing more than a night stick and our wits to keep the troops from hurting themselves too much.

I found that many times our biggest problems came from overzealous MP-AP-SP personnel assigned to us. As in the time we got a call about a riot at a bar in an area of Subic City called The Jungle. It was an area we told the fleet to stay away from and a place we seldom ventured unless asked. This time we had no choice as one of our Shore Patrol teams had gone where they were told not to go and were in the process of getting their butts whooped. The desk sergeant on duty sent two vans out to gather up shore patrol to take to the fray and I gathered up the available MPs and SPs from headquarters and headed for the last van. When I got to the vehicle I found a SP in my seat in the front of the van I told him to get in the back and he wanted to argue about it as he thought he outranked me. I wasn’t in the mood to argue so I figured I could set him straight later. I jumped in the back and we headed out for The Jungle. These vans are normally used as prisoner transports so the back cannot be opened from inside, therefore I told the Shore Patrol in my seat to remember to let us out when we got where we were going. I told him again when we got to the scene of what looked to be a pretty wild riot… all to no avail. The moron jumped out of the van and ran into the fray wildly swinging his nightstick, while we in the back of the van set helpless to do anything but curse. A very long ten minutes later someone opened the back of the van to put in some prisoners and we all piled out on top of him. The fighting was over. I went into the bar and found the moron bruised and bleeding and he jumped up and started yelling at me for not backing him up. It took all the fortitude I had not to kill him on the spot. I took his stick and his SP armband and made him ride back to HQ in the back with the prisoners.

Most of the way home I imagined scenarios where I had him drawn and quartered or court marshaled or just took him back to one of the cells and beat the living crap out of him, but when I took him out of the van he looked so beat with all the cuts and bruises, I just sent him back to his ship with orders to send us a replacement and instructed him to "Never"come back again.

All in all, it wasn’t such a bad deal. I didn’t have any lumps, bumps or bruises and I had lost no blood at all. I had barely broken the crease in my uniform. I suspect that that van stunk of testosterone to a much greater degree then it ever had before or since, but that would be expected.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Uncle Dave

Armed Forces Police

I was in the Navy a long time ago. The Navy is where I learned computers & electronics, which is what I did to make a living after I go out. When you go into the Navy you are initially trained in a specific rating or "job" and like most I assumed that that would be the work that I would be doing. This was not necessarily so.

When the repair ship I was on pulled into Subic Bay in the Philippines in late 1971 we had been at sea for a couple of weeks and everyone who could, got off the ship as soon as possible. I chose not to as I had heard about "amateur night" and seen it’s effects in Yokosuka Japan so I was bundling up my cloths and heading for the laundry mat an hour after everyone else had headed for town.

The flaw in my logic was that sometimes the Navy assigns you to work that you are not trained for. I was just about to head out for wash-ex when my boss catches me and tell me to go back and get into uniform as I was drafted.

I was sent on a "Temporary Assignment" to Armed Forces Police duty, my penelty for being the slowest man in my division off the ship. By training I was a Data Processing Technician and by edict I was a cop.

What I didn’t know at the time was how this little side trip on the road of life would potentially change my life… forever. For the next several weeks I learned how to keep sailors and marines on liberty from doing things that would change their lives, forever, and how to stay alive while doing so. I was surprised to find I really enjoyed it.

I got a lot of interesting stories from this period of my life and I will try to pass some of them along through this Blog. But for now, consider this a start.

Uncle Dave

Country Cuisine

I haven’t had any really good escargot in a coon’s age. It disappeared from the Waffle Barn a couple of menu updates back. I asked Jethro, the manager, about it and he gave me some line about getting a bad review in the "Swap and Shop" and deciding to concentrate on their "Core Competencies" for a while. I asked if that ment Possim and Coon Stew was comming back but he just looked at me like I was making him uncomfortable so I let it drop. I think losing the escargot had more to do with the customers getting creeped-out seeing snails crawling across the sidewalk outside and on the menu inside.

It probably isn’t practical to keep an item on the menu for just one customer, but I do miss it. It was such a good excuse to eat toast points dipped in garlic butter, and it went so well with the mountain oysters.

I guess I will just have to go back to biscuits and gravy for now.

Uncle Dave