So, there was this one time when we thought that the stinky sub would actually be home for a few weeks that summer. Life was going along fairly uneventful; each day starting and ending on happy notes because John was home. Yea, he was in 3 section duty but that was the way it had always been and it sure beat all hell out of port & starboard duty. This, as an aside, truly blows giant bubbles. The summer weather had been most enjoyable for several weeks. The stifling heat and humidity that Southern Virginia is noted for had not started up and the neighbors were most generous with sharing their in-ground pools with us. Yes, we were shiny happy people. And then the storm came.
I don’t recall the name of this storm but it was given a name and we started tracking its projected path across the Atlantic, all the while hoping that Jim Cantore was not coming to Norfolk this time. We had learned that when Jim came to town the weather was sucking, and usually blowing with wind speeds greater than 100 mph. All Navy Wives know that when a storm is approaching that the call for a ‘sortie’ is coming and we also know that it is invariably up to us to get out there in the screaming mob of frantic shoppers and snap up what we consider to be necessary supplies to ride out the weather and the clean-up afterwards.
To some people this means an acre of plywood and 50 lbs of nails, 1,000 rolls of toilet paper, 20 gallons of milk and all the bottled water in a tri-state area. Why these particular items were purchased storm after storm, year after year, I will never know because once you have plywood you have it. If you use a modicum of patience and care when taking the sheets down they can be dried out and stored in a garage or shed without taking up too much room. Nails can’t always be used again but it doesn’t require 2 nails per ½”
to secure a sheet of plywood. As for the toilet paper, one only needs to ask themselves ‘how much do we normally use in a week?’ and then go with that amount. If power is out for any amount of time, say more than 2 days, the National Guard is going evacuate everyone except the looters to safer places and I doubt that a stash of toilet paper will keep these losers from kipping your stereo equipment. Milk requires refrigeration. If power is out for more than 2 days it is going to spoil…’nuff said about that.
This particular storm came fast so when John went to work for what should have been a duty day we considered that the boats would sortie and he would not be home for a few extra days. We thought maybe five days in all as they would have to wait their turn to come back in and be tied up after the hurricane passed through. Five and a half weeks later…
Yes, the hurricane came and as always we were personally very fortunate that our home and neighborhood suffered little damage and power was restored in less than two days. We had potable water within the week and all things were looking good, until The Phone Tree Call came through. Seems like our hard working husbands were going to have to take the place of another sub that was scheduled to find and track a Russian sub that was supposedly lurking off the eastern seaboard. No small feat but a doable one. Well, it seems that the sub scheduled to do this was so not into performing their duty that the CO actually radioed squadron that his ship could not perform as ordered and that his crew needed to come home and have some time off. Oh, yes, he did. The kicker is this…they already had been tracking said Russian sub and had grown ‘tired’ of being at sea and they wanted to come home. So, hubby’s CO was ordered to get on the trail of the quickly disappearing Russian sub and track it. The details of this impromptu deployment are still a mystery to me. I guess it was one of those top secret missions that the Silent Service brags about that they can’t talk about it in mixed company. Uhm, whatever.
The boat been scheduled for some down time after just coming home from a 3 ½ month run and then were scheduled for a couple of weeks in the shipyard to have some new equipment installed. They hadn’t done a proper stores load in weeks and none of the crew was emotionally ready for anything more than a quick sortie and back to the pier to resume their down time. So when the Phone Tree Call came through with some of the most hated words a submariner’s wife can ever hear “The boat is being detained at sea. We don’t have a return date and we don’t know if Family Grams will be allowed.” There was only one thing to do, go shopping for supplies to weather the ‘storm’. Alcohol, Diet Pepsi, cigarettes and food for the child. She much preferred Kudos, Cheerios and frozen yogurt to Captain Morgan and Diet Pepsi. FTN Baby.
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