I had gone to the USS San Francisco.
“Request permission to come aboard.”
I was speaking to the topside watch on the pier. Upon returning from an early dinner at the galley that evening, I found a note taped to my door at the Paquet Hall enlisted bachelors’ quarters. The San Fran had returned to port, and to her I was to report. This was November 13, 1997—or tee minus 1175 as I tracked it. I had been living in paradise for nine days. This notification on my door contained no information as to exactly where the San Fran was located. This presented a bit of a challenge for me.
Fairwater planes are the wing-looking things up top on the sail used for fine depth control, and to me, they looked rather necessary in order to be a proper submarine. Later-built “improved” Los Angeles boats—or 688i-class—instead had retractable bow planes below the waterline. Those newer naked sail boats just didn’t look right to me. Some improvement! I could pass right on by the silly looking 688i’s.
I had to walk up, down and all around the piers until I found the San Fran. Due the similarity of the pure black beasts of no names or numbers, the most effective means of identification is the ship’s banner, usually draped over the gangplank railings. It took me a good while, but I finally found the San Fran. She was in the Quarry Loch, near Sharkey Theater and Lockwood Hall, right across from the haze grey and not underway row of destroyers which greeted me on my first day. The topside watch responded to my request to come aboard.
“Orders. I just transferred to this boat.”
“Fucking nukes.”
“Excuse me?”
“Only a fucking nuke would try to report in the evening. There’s no one here right now but the watch section.”
The Los Angeles class submarine was designed during the height of the cold war when the Soviets were our main adversary. Little did those warship designers know that the real war would actually take place inside the hull of the submarine they built. Indeed, the true adversary to us guys in Engineering were the coners. A coner, which rhymes with boner, is a non-nuclear trained crewmember whose habitat is in the front half of the boat—or cone as we liked to call it.
Coners hated nukes, and nukes hated coners, but even still, I was astonished at how insubordinate this Seaman Apprentice coner was. He had maybe six to nine months in the Navy. I was a Petty Officer Second Class—the equivalent of a Sergeant in the Army and Marines—which was three grades above this Private equivalent prick. I returned fire.
“You had better stow that attitude Seaman.”
“Pffft. Whatever. All you nukes think you’re hot shit right out of school with your give-away chevrons and without a single fucking day at sea.”
“Watch yourself. I’ve got more time at sea than you have in the Navy.”
This dick measurement was a little bit of a stretch, but not by much. He stared at me confused, looking at my uniform above the left breast pocket, then my face, and back to my uniform. There it was. The source of his disrespect. He noticed my dungaree uniform lacked the submarine warfare insignia—which we called dolphins—and therefore incorrectly assumed I had made rank by merely reenlisting.
“But you don’t have your dol—”
“Yeah, my last boat was NR-1.”
“Ennerwon? What’s an ennerwon?”
“Submarine NR-1 is the deepest diving nuclear submarine in our fleet. Completely different systems than on an attack boat. Can’t get your dolphins there.”
“Oh.”
His facial expression shifted from cockiness to slight concern. I found this rather satisfying, so I continued puffing up my noticeably dolphin-less chest.
“As for me not having a single day at sea, how about I give you a little piece of information? Just a few weeks ago, I completed a six-month MEDRUN with NR-1. Have you even gone on a full deployment yet, Seaman?”
“Uh… no. Not yet. But we have one coming up.”
“Then it would be better for you to keep your mouth shut than to talk to a Second Class Petty Officer like that. You have no idea who I am.”
It wasn’t often I got to “pull rank.” That would actually be my second to last opportunity ever, but I didn’t know it at the time. What I did know is that I disliked this prick more than that smoking seaman at the airport. Yeah, this guy was definitely a prick. I mean, I knew submarine sailors were slack compared to the surface wienies, but this jerk saw my lack of a submarine warfare insignia as meaning I was fresh out of training, and therefore it was fine to ignore the fact that I was three ranks superior to him.
Regarding the “MEDRUN,” it was a portmanteau, which the Navy is wont to do. It stood for “Mediterranean Run,” the six-month deployment that east coast boats would routinely make. Or at least I’m guessing that the “RUN” part actually stood for run. If so, it sounds like an informal phrase became an official Navy portmanteau. I dunno. In any case, my particular six-month MEDRUN with Submarine NR-1 had been shortened to five months. I was not about to admit that to that Seaman Apprentice asshole, however.
On the larger point however, this asshole apprentice was probably right. Fucking nukes! What the hell was I thinking trying to report at six in the evening the day the boat returned from sea? Who in their right mind would want to meet me? What would my new Chief say to his poor wife on the phone?
“Sorry honey. Going to be a little late tonight. No, I know. I know. It’s been weeks. But go ahead and eat dinner without me. Just save me a plate. I have to check-in the new guy. Yeah, he’s eager to come aboard. Tell the kids I love them, and I’m sorry. Tell them I promise I’ll read to them before bedtime tomorrow.”
Yes, I was being dense. But in my defense, I had put on my dungaree “prisoner’s” uniform, grabbed the big manila envelope with my orders, and tried to find my boat as soon as I received the note on my door. Along with that lack of specificity of boat location, it too lacked a specified time to report. I took that to mean immediately. After this quick reflection on my apparent and noticeable high density, I responded to that topside prick.
“Okay. You’re right. It’s too late to report. I’ll return in the morning.”
I received a pursed mouth semi-smile and a nod in return. He probably rolled his eyes, shook his head, and flipped me off with both middle fingers as soon as I turned around and walked away from the San Francisco. So much for meeting some gentle people there.
On the morning of 1174 days-to-go, I returned to the San Fran. There was a flurry of activity around the boat. People were in motion. After being granted permission to board, I partially crossed the brow and paused to sharply salute the ensign. That’s what we called the American flag in the Navy for some reason. (Confusingly, Ensign is also the name for the lowest ranking commissioned officer. Gotta salute those noob officers too.) The protocol for showing respect to the inanimate variety of ensign involved pausing halfway down the gangplank, snapping to attention, and sharply saluting.
With this brief pause on the gangplank, I was able to take in the sheer size of the first Los Angeles class submarine I was ever going to penetrate. This fucker easily dwarfed that giant 747 jumbo jet I rode on over to Hawaii. The San Fran was just massive. 362 feet (110 m) long stem to stern. That’s as long as a football field with the end zones. Picture that the next time you watch a game! Plop the San Francisco on the field, and she wouldn’t fit without poking into both goalposts by a foot.
I set foot onto the big black beast and noted a somewhat rubbery and rough surface. My feet were not on hard steel. No, I was standing on what we called shit. Or “SHT” more officially. These sound deadening “Special Hull Treatment” tiles were made of anechoic synthetic polymer and were specially painted. By special paint, I mean someone took ordinary not special black paint and mixed sand into it for traction so that we wouldn’t step on top of the perfectly cylindrical boat and slip right off into the water. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
This section of the top deck one first steps onto from off the ladder looked suspicious. It had the appearance of a trap floor that would split open like bomb bay doors. What’s below here if they determine I have the wrong orders? I probably shouldn’t have rented that Austin Powers movie a few nights ago. Dr. Evil made good use of trap doors. That thought was quickly suppressed by other sensations.
Trap door floor aside, there are two things that hit you at the bottom of the ladder when first coming aboard a submarine. First is the smell. It’s, ah… well, it’s unique. The best way I could describe it is a combination of mothballs and flatulence. Seriously. It’s not at all pleasant. The second thing you’ll notice immediately is that the massive size of the boat outside does not translate well inside. It was cramped. People were squeezing by me as I tried to figure out where my noob ass and its paperwork needed to go. I made my way to the Control Room.
The indifference to a wide-eyed intruder such as myself was impressive. No one cared. I was someone else’s problem presumably. Eventually I found a random Chief, and he directed me to find the Yeoman. That’s basically an HR guy in Navy speak. I was told his office was one deck below and all the way forward as far as I could go without finding the secret tunnel to the sonar sphere.
There was an actual staircase to get down to the mid-level deck, albeit an extremely steep one. So steep, you were supposed to descend it backwards like a ladder. On stairwells like this, it was more fun to grab the handrails while holding your feet out slightly and let gravity do the rest. Not here. I discovered how tight the interior of a 688 is by grazing my head on the floor penetration while sliding down the railings and dropping my packet of orders.
Hey shipmate, horseplay leads to sickbay!
On my way to the Yeoman’s office, I noted that the interior decoration choices were as unfortunate as they had been in the stationary submarine training engine room I was assigned to during the “prototype” portion of the pee’pay-lee’nay. My main complaint was the paint color. It’s the Navy. You expect grey. No, you demand grey. You’re supposed to be “haze grey and underway” in the Navy.
Instead, inside US Navy submarines, we got this shitty pastel green color called “seafoam.” It was everywhere on the boat. I hated it. Twenty plus years later, it’s still my least favorite color. How could the brass have actually wanted this particular color? I wondered if there was this angry Admiral somewhere in the paint procurement process.
I said some form of grey, damn it!
Later I heard a naval urban legend that supposedly, seafoam was chosen by military psychologists for its calming effect. I also heard that in bootcamp we were served “Grade D” meat rejected by prisons. But there is no such thing as Grade D meat. There’s not even a Grade A meat. The USDA grades meat as Prime, Choice, Select, and Standard for most meats not destined to be ground up, and never by a letter grade. Therefore, I was skeptical when told that the military psychologists picked the same colors found in insane asylums for our submarines.
Yet I thought about potential experiments carried out inside these boats until the desired results were obtained. I would have liked to have seen the blood red or jet-black interior boats. Or at least the results of prolonged exposure to them. All these guys staring at those red walls getting particularly riled up with no war to attend? Must have been tense inside those sewer tubes. Nah, probably not. I don’t believe any of that.
Back on point. If a spot on the ship wasn’t slathered in seafoam, then it was covered with very dark, very fake looking faux wood paneling. After all, the keel of the San Fran was first laid in the late 70’s. It was somewhat surprising that there wasn’t a bead curtain at the entrance to the Control Room and a lava lamp at the helm. For high abrasion areas where seafoam or fake wood couldn’t withstand the sailor abuse, you’d find bare stainless steel panels. It was a jarring contrast with the faux wood in those spaces. Kind of like some old man converted an operating room into his TV den.
I didn’t really mind the fake wood paneling or the surgical stainless steel or lack of lava lamp though. I just really hated that seafoam green paint. Yet there was another interior decorating choice that I absolutely loathed. To me, the second most obnoxious choice the interior decorators made concerned the floors. They were covered with plain white vinyl tiling. White vinyl tiles? In a fucking nuclear submarine? That was complete bullshit! Like, are we inside a tip-of-the-spear powerful and fearsome warship, or are we inside a hospital cafeteria with weak coffee and a shitty buffet where you fear to eat?
At least we didn’t have drop ceilings. No, the ceiling of each level was actually not well defined. It was just a tangle of pipes and cables running all over the place. Ugly (yet apparently calming) seafoam green pipes and cables in the overhead. Lighting was provided by harsh florescent tubular bulbs in rectangular metal and plastic enclosures, which in some spaces were exceptionally low hanging. This was perhaps by design as when you smacked your head on these housings, you were a highly visible warning to others.
Attention to detail, shipmate!
I located the Yeoman in his office in no time. He was nice guy and looked the part. He had neatly combed, slick black hair and wore his government issued eyewear as if there was nothing wrong with wearing government issued eyewear. These thick-rimmed, oddly shaped, brown acetate spectacles were hideously ugly. So ugly, we had dubbed them BCG’s—this stood for Birth Control Glasses. Wearing a pair of BCG’s functioned quite well as your own personal little cock blockers. There’s no way you could secure a date wearing those monstrosities.
Once the rather affable Yeoman was done spouting off all sorts of boat wisdom and processing my paperwork, he took me around to attempt to find my Chief, some guy named Chief Steven Queen. Let’s talk about Chiefs for a minute here. The first person to scream at me in the Navy was an unknown Chief in bootcamp right as I got off the bus. (“Eat your Grade D beef!”) No, I jest. I don’t even know what he was yelling about. Maybe just, I dunno… everything?
A couple of days later, I’d meet the most feared person in all of basic training: my drill instructor. And wouldn’t you know it? Mine turned out to be a fucking Chief. That was somewhat uncommon. Usually, they’re just lower ranking Petty Officers. So, having a Chief for my drill instructor was a double whammy.
Chiefs are always disappointed. In you, in their other subordinates, in the wet-behind-the-ears fresh-out-of-school young division officer they technically report to, in the department head officer they more realistically report to, in the second in command Executive Officer, in the obviously first in command Captain, in the squadron, hell in the entire fucking Navy. No one is up to their standards, and everyone is consistently making the wrong decisions in their opinion. Afterall, Chiefs have the weight of the entire fucking Navy on their backs, and it makes them cranky. Don’t believe me? Ask an Admiral.
During my basic training graduation ceremony, an Admiral speaking to us all kept going on about how we should all strive to become Chiefs. Why? Because Chiefs are “the backbone of the Navy.” Apparently, there would be no functional Navy without the hard work of the hardworking Chiefs! This backbone of the (otherwise invertebrate) Navy talking point was something which was repeated to me throughout my entire enlistment. Clearly, this goes to every Chief’s head—likely the exact second they are frocked as a Chief. These Chiefs have therefore evolved to become a perpetually ornery bunch. No joke.
So, what is a Chief? Chiefs are the senior enlisted naval crew members who are seven paygrades up (equivalent to a Sergeant First Class in the Army and Gunnery Sergeant in the Marines) and higher. They are considered technical experts in their field. Their role would best be described as a supervisor. (In this analogy, junior enlisted sailors like me would be the union workers, the commissioned officers—the guys we have to salute—would be the managers, and the civilian Department of Defense workers would be the corporate people.)
I should note that Chiefs actually come in three different prescriptions: regular strength Chief (paygrade E-7), extra strength Senior Chief (pay grade E-8) and maximum strength Master Chief (paygrade E-9). Senior Chiefs are generally the worst, as in most aggressive in their ability to be assholes, but once they make Master Chief, they tend to relax a bit. (That’s not always the case, and on the USS San Francisco, I would learn that was definitely not the case.)
Also noteworthy is while these three paygrades are collectively known as Chiefs, never address an individual Senior Chief or Master Chief as simply Chief. Oh, no that’s not good, trust me on that one. If in a hurry to get all your words out, you may call a Senior Chief simply Senior. They like that. However, I found out that for some reason you are not allowed to address a Master Chief as Master. Yeah, they don’t like that at all.
So many rules!
On average, it takes 12 to 15 years to make regular strength E-7 Chief, depending on the job specialty. (In the Navy, we call our job specialty a rating. My rating was Machinist’s Mate, as was my new-to-me Chief’s.) Once you make Chief, you stop wearing the typical dungaree prisoner’s uniform and white Dixie cup hat of an enlisted sailor and start wearing the khaki-colored working uniforms and cunt caps of the officers (the guys we have to salute). Why does the Navy do this? I think it’s to keep the junior sailors like me on our toes. Because if you accidentally salute a Chief, he’ll be offended and take his day out on you.
“Don’t salute me dumbass; I work for a living!”
Jesus, the Navy could have made the Chiefs’ uniforms slightly more distinctive if they really wanted to, like add some strategically placed pinstripes or something, but apparently in the 1990’s, they didn’t want to. It was damn near impossible to tell the difference between a khaki-coated Chief and an officer in the low light of the morning or at night. Gotta squint to see if their affixed tiny little golden cunt-cap device is one little anchor with “USN” across it, or two little crossed anchors with a shield across them. Still can’t tell? Well, the choices are to either get chewed out for failing to salute an officer or to be called a dumbass for saluting a Chief.
Hmm. I’ll guess I’ll be the dumbass today.
Fortunately, unlike the Army’s rules, the Navy’s rules state that you don’t salute anyone without wearing your cover—Navy speak for hat—and you don’t wear your cover when indoors. Therefore, you don’t salute officers inside a building or submarine, making it much harder to accidentally salute a Chief. Once you climb down the hatch into the sub, those Chiefs will have to find another reason to call you a dumbass.
But there of course are plenty of opportunities for them to do so. Like when the Yeoman brings you to the Goat Locker, stating to go in because your Chief is likely in there. Always be suspicious when someone tells the new guy to go in somewhere first. It’s not because the space is cramped. I wasn’t suspicious enough, and it was a god damn setup. The Yeoman didn’t inform me that one must request permission to enter before just wandering into the Goat Locker. I blasted in, all guns blazing.
“Mornin’ Chief! Do you know if Chief Queen is in here?”
“Oh, you’re a special kind of dumbass just waltzing in here like that, aren’t you!?! What’s next? Gonna to take a little nap in the Captain’s stateroom?”
Neat prank. Note to self: Never trust someone who voluntarily wears birth control glasses. So, what is this Goat Locker place? It’s the nickname for the Chiefs’ Quarters, which on a 688-class boat, is adjacent to the Yeoman’s office. I’d imagine Goat Lockers are not unique to submarines as its name derives from the old wooden sailing ship days when the title of Chief was first created. Apparently, it was more desirable to sleep with the livestock than with the regular seaman, so that’s where the Chief would make his bed. Makes you wonder how bad the conditions were in the seamen’s berthing areas! The name stuck around even after the goats did not.
Submarine NR-1 was too small to have a Goat Locker, so I did not know that all enlisted crewmembers below Chief must request permission to enter one. And hell, in accordance with naval tradition, and out of respect for the Chiefs, even all the officers including the Captain request permission to enter the Goat Locker. (I do wonder if a Chief ever said no to a Captain.) My Chief was not in this nest of hornets I disturbed, but when one of the hornets was done stinging me, he mentioned that Chief Queen went back aft to the Engine Room.
Along the way to the Engine Room, the formerly-regarded-as-affable Yeoman pointed out the main enlisted berthing and head (or bathroom in Navy speak), the officers’ quarters, the officers’ wardroom, and the steep staircase to the lower level deck. That’s where the Torpedo Room, the Auxiliary Machinery Room, access to the battery pit, the smaller “twenty-one man” berthing, the storeroom, a small head, and the washer and dryer were located.
We passed by another small berthing area on the portside, the countermeasure launching space just aft of it, and the trash compactor room on the starboard side across from it. Note that port side is the left side of the vessel when facing forward, and starboard is to the right. (Also note that both port and left have four letters while starboard and right have more, in case you have trouble remembering.)
Walking just beyond the countermeasures launching space, we entered the mess deck. It was on the port side and had room for 24 enlisted swabbies at the five tables. This was the first place inside the sub where you got a sense of its size, but just barely. You could kind of see just how wide the boat was here, as half of the 33-foot diameter of the boat opened up on the mess deck. This was the last stop before the Engine Room, and the Yeomen said to wait at one of the tables for the time being.
Sitting there, I noticed that along the portside bulkhead outboard of the three tables alongside of it were lockers with fake stained-glass windows. Turns out that each 688-class submarine was customized here. Our fake stained-glass windows were a very pleasant Golden Gate Bridge surrounded by deep blue water. I would imagine that when you’re out to sea for a while, it’s supposed to be like you’re in the City by the Bay looking out the window of a café. Maybe that was supposed to be relaxing, but it’s kind of superfluous when you think about it. I mean, we had all those calming seafoam green bulkheads to stare at whenever we found ourselves particularly riled up.
The entirely stainless steel galley—Navy speak for kitchen—was on the starboard side across from the mess deck and accessible via one doorway and a service window. The galley also had a service window to the officers’ wardroom. The freezers and refrigerators were just aft of the galley. The main passageway continued a few feet past the mess deck and ended at the reactor compartment. From there you had two obvious choices. Go up the forward escape trunk or take a turn and go all the way starboard-side outboard to access the hatch to the engineering spaces. (Note that you actually have an overlooked third choice: there’s a secret deck plate that opens up to go down into the Auxiliary Machinery Room, but I did not know this for a while.)
The big, heavy Engine Room hatch was not unlike a bank vault door. Judging by the thickness of it, the hatch was designed to seal off the engine room and reactor compartments from the cone in case of some really serious shit happening. This hatch was so heavy that it used a jackscrew to open it. The small, highly polished hand wheel to the side of it even had a little speed handle on it since it took so many turns to open the damn thing. On the other side of the hatch was forbidden territory. You needed a security clearance of at least CONFIDENTIAL-NOFORN in order to enter. NOFORN is a naval portmanteau, a contraction of “NO FOReign Nationals.”
Step away from the hatch Francesco. You too François, Franco and Franz. Okay, right this way Frank. Watch your head.
Everyone attached to the boat had even higher clearances than CONFIDENTIAL, either SECRET or TOP SECRET. I had plain old SECRET clearance, but I preferred to call it BOTTOM SECRET. With my Bottom Secret clearance, I was allowed everywhere on the boat except the Radio Room during operations. Perhaps they thought I’d order a large pepperoni and sausage pie from there while deployed, thus giving away our position to a potentially hostile contact.
Despite having a Bottom Secret clearance, I was not yet permitted to enter this forbidden territory. I had to wait on the mess deck for a bit. The reason I could not enter the engineering spaces was not due to my security clearance, but because I lacked a dosimeter. It’s a device which measures your exposure to ionizing radiation. Yeah, there’s a real-life nuclear reactor back there. It wants to kill you. Or at least make you vomit, give you blisters, and cause hair loss. So, I sat there at a table on the mess deck waiting for a squat to issue me a dosimeter.
A squat is what we called an Engineering Laboratory Technician. These ELT’s start out as ordinary nuclear trained Machinist’s Mates like me, but then veer off to an additional three-month technical school prior to hitting the fleet. There they learn many specialized skills such as how to properly conduct radiation surveys, how to decontaminate equipment and personnel, how to sample and analyze reactor coolant chemistry and, unlike the regular knuckle-dragging variety of Machinist’s Mates like me, how to sit down and pee like the proper ladies they were. That’s why we called them squats. Oddly, they didn’t seem to mind that nickname. Even they called themselves squats. I guess they really were proper.
Sitting there waiting for the squat, it only took a few minutes to find out I was already doing something wrong again. It really sucks being the new guy! Fortunately, a Third Class Petty Officer named Brown came by to keep me out of trouble. His rating was Electrician’s Mate, but I didn’t know it at the time. What I did know immediately was that he was a friendly-looking, smiling guy with bleached blonde hair and had some sort of surfer-like accent.
“Hey dude! Uh… you’re like sitting at the Chief’s table, so uh… maybe you don’t wanna piss them off? Like, if one of them comes by? You know, dude?”
“That fucking yeoman! He told me to sit here.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, and just before that, he tricked me into pissing off a Chief in the Goat Locker.”
“Bummer, dude.”
I got up and then pointed to the table behind the Chiefs’ table.
“This one good?”
“That’s like where the nukes sit.”
“Perfect. I’m a nuke.”
“Right on, dude.”
Petty Officer Brown continued on his very merry way through the mess deck and into the Engine Room. Later I would learn more of this Electrician’s Mate Third Class Donald Brown. He was one cool electrician. Everyone liked him. I mean everyone. And due to his accent, every one of us that liked Donny thought he was this surfer dude from California. Maybe we were completely wrong. Who knows? But wherever he was from, he was really cool and laid back. So laid back, we all just figured he had been high on pot for most of the time before he joined the Navy, and you know, maybe it never really completely left his system. Because of such speculation, Petty Officer Brown earned the nickname of Hash Brown. Yeah, that’s what we all called him. It was a comfortable fit.
A few minutes after Hash Brown left mess deck, the formerly-regarded-as-affable Yeoman returned from the Engine Room and told me a squat would come by momentarily to issue me a dosimeter and take me to Chief Queen. I waited a bit longer, and then a Second Class Petty Officer with curly, dark hair—looking a bit like the corporate guy in Aliens who trapped Ellen Ripley and Newt in the room with a face-hugger, you know the guy from Mad About You—emerged from the Engine Room. He had a little black dosimeter in his hand, stopped on the mess deck, and looked at me for a few seconds. I figured he was the squat about to issue me the dosimeter.
“Hey, how are you doing? I’m Brendan Drou—”
“I buried too many friends to make any more.”
His grizzly voice and message took me aback for a second before he erupted in a giant smile. He then addressed me with a significantly less deep and gravelly voice. The new manner of speaking, which was somewhat soft-spoken, suited his friendly schoolteacher looks much better.
“Just kidding. Been watching too many war movies lately. I’m Bruce. Bruce Bells.”
“Oh! Got me there for a second. I’m Brendan Droughton. Is that my TLD?”
“Yeah, here you go. Once you get that on, I’ll take you back aft to meet Queen La Chiefa.”
“Wait, what? Did you just say Queen La Chiefa?”
“Yeah, you’re in M-Div, right?”
“Yes.”
“So you report to Queen La Cheifa.”
“That’s fucking genius!”
“I didn’t make it up. But one thing though. I wouldn’t recommend saying that to his face. Not unless you’re a big fan of having a bad day.”
“No, I am not a fan of that.”
“Best to just call him Chief Queen when he’s anywhere close to being within earshot. He hears everything. Trust me on that one.”
“Got it.”
As we were talking, I unbuckled my belt, pulled the end of it out of a single loop, slid on the dosimeter (which we called a TLD), fed the belt back through the beltloop, and buckled back it all up. It was so natural and reflexive that you didn’t have to look to do this. I suppose it’s a little strange to unbuckle your belt like you’re about to take your pants off while staring another man in the eye and chatting, but we were sailors, so it was all really quite normal.
TLD, if you must know, stood for “Tiny Little Device.” I kid. It was actually a “Thermo-Luminescent Dosimeter.” We just liked to call it our Tiny Little Device. This little device was a small black cylindrical plastic case with a grey cap and contained a special crystal inside. The reason we were so comfortable unbuckling our pants in front of others for the removal and replacement of our Thermo-Luminescent Dosimeter was due to the frequency that a squat, such as Petty Officer Bells, would take it from us and issue a fresh one. This was done once a month for the rest of my enlistment.
The squat would then bring your old TLD into a secretive lab called nucleonics, where to the best of my knowledge, they would ordinarily conduct sleep experiments. The squats were notorious for being the sleazy slackers of the nuke world. Fucking squats! But with your dosimeter in hand, they would actually have to work by unscrewing the cap and extracting the special crystal to place in a machine that does the rest of the work.
The calcium fluoride crystal absorbs radiation and traps this energy, remaining in an “excited state” while affixed to your hip. Now if there’s one thing the Navy is good at, it’s finding ways to remove excitement from absolutely everything. These special crystals were no exception. When heated with an electrical current (hence “thermo”), the crystal trades this excitement for a burst of supposedly creepy green light (hence “luminescent”). This burst of light is proportional to how much radiation your rather unfortunate Navy-owned and operated body absorbed that month.
I don’t know for certain, but I’d be willing to bet a measly sailor’s paycheck that the creepy green light released is a burst of seafoam. I mean, that’s the only shade of green that gives me shivers. Regardless of my speculation of the specific hue, a machine somehow measures this burst of light and converts this into your dose. And finally, after his nap, the squat records this in your permanent record. With a freshly zeroed-out TLD now on my belt, I was allowed to go into the engineering spaces.
I followed Bruce through the open engine room hatch into the reactor tunnel. As long as the reactor compartment hatch is closed, we could leave both the engine room hatch and the aft escape trunk open while in port. (Those two hatches must be shut if the reactor compartment hatch was to be opened or if we were getting underway.) The reactor “tunnel” we walked down wasn’t really tunnel-like in my opinion. It just seemed to be an anticlimactic long, clean and brightly lit ultra-white hallway with one smooth flat wall on your right (which was the reactor shielding) and a curved one full of pipes and cables on your left (which was the hull). You could have a cyborg awakening scene in this little shielded bridge connecting the forward compartment to the engine room.
There were numerous yellow and magenta radiation warning signs posted. You were allowed to walk by the reactor in this passageway while it was online, but you weren’t supposed to loiter there. Never know exactly which neutron is the one that will create your cancer. Best to be brisk about it!
The end of the reactor tunnel hallway led to Engine Room Mid Level. It was mostly an electrical space. Multiple grey painted control cabinets and panels and a pair of very large grey AC/DC motor-generators occupied the majority of the space. There were also some pumps and large air compressors. While the electrical equipment was thankfully painted grey, there was no shortage of the hideous seafoam green paint due to all the piping, the exposed portions of the hull insulation, and reactor compartment bulkhead. There was also no respite from those ugly white cafeteria-style vinyl tiles even in the Engine Room.
Mid Level wasn’t very large, but it was the largest space I had seen so far. You could see the full 33-foot width of the submarine here, but this space was barely as long as it was wide. It sort of just ended despite realizing that there was a whole lot of engine room left. Where the space abruptly stopped, there were two ladder wells down to Engine Room Forward, and a staircase to Engine Room Upper Level. Up we went.
At the top of the stairs were more cafeteria tiles, more electrical panels, more haze grey and seafoam green paint, but also the aft escape trunk, which was the third and final hatch to the topside. (There is a fourth hatch to the bridge on top of the sail, but I didn’t know about that yet, however.) Being under the escape trunk, there was a bit of gathering room. This area was informally referred to as “the lanai” since we were stationed in Hawaii. I would imagine on boats out of San Diego, they called this area the veranda and in rotten Groton, Connecticut, the porch. But that’s pure conjecture. I have no idea what they called them outside of Hawaii.
Forward of the lanai was Maneuvering—the control room of the engine room—and the rear bulkhead of the reactor compartment. That seafoam green bulkhead was covered with a bazillion shiny metal valves with their handwheels removed and watertight caps installed over their bonnets. Certainly noteworthy was the access hatch into the reactor compartment. It was located outboard on the starboard side. It was shut and locked. We went in the opposite direction, continuing aft.
There was a gap in the floor, and we were now on a catwalk. The gap in the floor signified that we were walking on the machinery “raft,” a sound isolated suspended floor for the propulsion machinery and turbine generators. There were three catwalks around the densely packed equipment. The two far outboard ones against the hull went the entire length of Upper Level while the centerline one ended between the main engines.
Standing on the machinery raft in Engine Room Upper Level was the only place inside the submarine where you really got the sense of just how immense this beast was. At the beginning of the engine room, there are three levels, in the middle there are two levels and at the end, only one. Upper Level starts getting lower and lower the closer you get to the main engines. In the brightly lit Upper Level, you can really see that you’re in this massive sewer tube as half of its 33-foot diameter is now arching above you, and the length of this one space stretched on for probably about a hundred feet. This fucker was simply humongous.
Almost everything in this part of Upper Level was coated in seafoam green, even the main engines. And these main engines were amazingly compact yet powerful turbines with a combined rating of 30,000 shaft horsepower. There was so much thickly insulated piping of various sizes running all over the place that it would appear should something malfunction, you’d be better off calling a plumber instead of a mechanic.
If you followed the largest diameter pipes in the overhead, they led to the propulsion turbines, which then led to the natural habitat of the Chief I would now be working for. Machinist’s Mate Chief Petty Officer Stephen Queen. His workstation was a computer set upon the base of the starboard main engine, which made for a comfortable worktable when standing on the catwalk alongside of it. Bruce quickly departed after introducing me to my new overlord. That squat certainly didn’t seem to want to linger around Queen La Chiefa for too long.
First impression while sizing up Queen La Chiefa? I found him tall and slender, but maybe it was just his proportions and my shortness that made him seem tall. To me, he looked more like a Beatle than a Chief to be honest, a Beatle circa 1964. It was that bowl of dark brown hair. In my opinion, the hairdo bowl was out-of-spec or nearly so. Probably no one brave enough to tell a Chief such things, however.
Other than that, he seemed like a no-nonsense dude with purpose, somewhat indifferent to my existence. Even when telling me to wait for him to finish his report, his eyes were laser focused on the 90’s-vintage box-like greyish-white computer monitor. There was a period of mostly silence filled only with the high-pitched whine of the ventilation fans and muted clicking of the keyboard. I stood beside him a few feet away, awkwardly and without any apparent purpose of my own. Finally, he stopped pounding on the keyboard and turned towards me.
“I reviewed your file.”
“Hopefully there was nothing bad in it.”
“I will expect a lot from you, do you understand?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Yes, I do what?”
“Yes, I do, Chief.”
“Good. I don’t think I will have much to worry about with you.”
“Guess there wasn’t anything bad in my file then…”
He looked at me disapprovingly.
“…Chief!”
Chief Queen continued to eyeball me in silence through his non-birth control glasses. And then he spoke again.
“When you report in on Monday, you will wear your long sleeve dungarees. Short sleeves aren’t allowed in the Engine Room, do you understand?”
“Yes, Chief.”
“No working whites or dress whites either. When in the Engine Room, you must wear fire retardant uniforms, clear?”
“Very clear, Chief.”
“Now, this is what I expect of you…”
Chief Queen got right down to business. He explained that we had a six-month deployment coming up in the Spring, that we shortage of qualified watch-standers at the moment, and that it would be “in my best interest” to provide relief by qualifying much more rapidly than the official allotted time. Queen La Chiefa stated that I would be concentrating on four qualifications simultaneously:
-Shutdown Roving Watch (SRW)
-Engine Room Lower Level (ERLL)
-Engine Room Forward (ERF)
-Basic Engineering Qualifications (BEQ)
This would take a few months, but if I could knock it back to several weeks, I would be a hero to the guys standing extra watches. Perhaps it would even reflect positively upon me in my evaluations. Wasting no time, Chief Queen shuttled me over to see a Senior Chief who would set me up to get started on my “quals.”
This guy, Senior Chief Pullman, was the Engineering Department Enlisted Advisor (EDEA). Note that the title of this position would soon be changed to Engineering Department Master Chief (EDMC), which may be somewhat confusing as most of these guys were not actually maximum strength Master Chiefs, but simply extra strength Senior Chiefs. So, from here on out, let’s call the EDEA/EDMC by their informal title: The Bull Nuke.
The Bull Nuke is the highest ranking, most senior nuclear trained enlisted crewmember and serves as an advisor to the Engineer. He’s basically the Engineer’s consigliere. Unlike Chief Queen and the other Leading Chief Petty Officers in the Engineering Department, no one worked directly for the Bull Nuke. However, every nuclear trained enlisted crewmember onboard most definitely followed the Bull Nuke’s orders. That included the other Chiefs in Engineering.
Senior Chief Pullman was much more personable than Queen La Chiefa. This guy actually smiled. To me he looked like some sort of super dad. He was very muscular, had a lot of hair on his arms, did not have a lot of hair on the top of his head, and his thick glasses probably let him see through some sort of time dimension I was unaware of.
Despite being a Senior Chief—usually the biggest buttholes in all of chiefdom—he made friendly small talk. He repeated a lot of what Queen La Chiefa had already told me, but in a much less threatening manner. I’m not sure why he was like that. Perhaps he didn’t care about making Master Chief. Yeah, there’d be way too many snarky sailors responding “Yes, Master” to award minor corrective punishment to for sure. What a chore.
The Bull Nuke gave me a list of required regulation reading and my check-in sheet—both of which would take about a week to complete—and then handed me my qualification binder. This binder contained hundreds of pages of brief descriptions of what I must learn to be qualified. Under said descriptions were empty signature and date lines. Someone would have to sign for each and every little piece of information the Navy had determined necessary knowledge in order to operate a nuclear propulsion plant at each watch station.
To receive a signature, I had to prove to all these someones that I had actually learned the particular piece of information. Signatures were earned by verbal discussions and quizzes, by drawing out systems, and sometimes by actually performing specific evolutions. Once I had all the signatures, I’d take a written test, and then finally I would have to pass three interviews per qualification. One from my Chief (the Leading Chief Petty Officer of Machinery Division), one from my Division Officer (the Main Propulsion Assistant), and one from my Department Head (the Engineer).
These quals, however, would have to wait until I read all the required passages of the of Standard Organization and Regulations Manual (SORM) among other manuals, and then initialed my check-in sheet. Eventually I’d have to actually check-in with everyone in my chain of command. So far, I had already checked in with my Chief and the Bull Nuke, and after reading a few selections of the SORM, I decided to call it a day on my duties and explore the Engine Room instead. How could I not?
As I made my rounds, I began meeting the guys in my division. There were about ten of us in M-Div. Some of these guys were friendly, some were indifferent, some were just these bitter fucking dicks who you could immediately tell were no pleasure to be around. Regardless of their outward attitude, pleasant or not, it didn’t take long to realize that everyone was fairly miserable.
The first guy who attempted to befriend me was one of the friendly miserable types. He was a Machinist’s Mate Second Class like me, appeared to be slightly shorter than me, and had a big white forehead with dark curly hair that clung close to his head. His delivery was wry and sarcastic, but never threatening. The misery he projected seemed that of the beat-down and jaded variety.
“Hey, I’m Jay-Jay.”
“Hi, I’m Brendan. Nice to meet you.”
“Welcome to the absolute worst boat in Pearl for MM’s to be on.”
“The absolute worst, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Why’s it the worst?”
“You know the San Fran’s hull number, right?”
“Of course.”
“What is it?”
“S-S-N seven eleven.”
“You know what the S-S-N stands for?”
“I dunno, probably ‘Submersible Ship, Nuclear’?”
“Nope. It stands for Saturdays, Sundays and Nights. Because you can kiss all of them goodbye now.”
That was the first time I had heard this line, letting out an audible “hah” before regaining my composure and responding like a seasoned sailor.
“Yeah, well uh… this ain’t my first boat. I know the drill.”
“Sure, but do you know what the seven-eleven means?”
“Is this going to be a convenience store joke?”
“No. It’s not a joke. You’ll be stuck on the boat as long as it’s convenient for Queen La Chiefa.”
“Right. Different ship, same shit.”
“No, it’s not the same.”
“How do you know it wasn’t the same where I came from? We pulled some long ass hours on that boat. Oh yeah, let me tell you. Those were some long ass hours. And hell, most of the time were in three sect—”
“No. You see, it’s not the same no matter how many hours you pulled because whatever boat you came from, Queen La Chiefa wasn’t there.”
“Yeah okay, but what’s so bad about him?”
“He’s a fucking psychopath.”
“Really? He seems alright. Maybe a little curt.”
“Yeah, wait until you do something to piss him off. You might not even know you’re pissing him off at first. Then he’ll just go off on you. He’s fucking crazy. You’ll see.”
“Well, that seems like a pretty standard-issue Navy Chief to me, to be honest.”
“No, he’s next level. Definitely a psycho. This one time, someone saw him repeatedly trying to staple his head. He was just banging the stapler against his head over and over again, right there by his computer.”
“Staple his head? That’s weird. Was the thing loaded?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But this other time, a few guys saw him cradling the fire axe like a baby while rocking back and forth on the lanai and mumbling to himself.”
“Yeah, okay. If that really did happen, it does seem a bit into the ‘next level’ category by a fairly safe margin. Did that really happen, though?”
“A lot of guys saw him.”
“Did you?”
“No, but a lot of other guys did.”
“Maybe he was just fucking with them.”
“No, he’s definitely a psychopath.”
“Alrighty then. Thanks for the heads up.”
“You’ll see.”
Once Queen La Chiefa dismissed us for the day, I shot over to the base galley. This was the day before payday, and I was broke. That meant that I couldn’t afford to go bar hopping and therefore had no choice but to simply return to my barracks room after eating. I could listen to some heavy metal with my little CD Walkman and stare at the walls as if I was back in rotten Groton.
The guy who had the room all to himself before the San Fran’s most recent little underway did not seem too happy to see me when I entered the room. He was a husky fellow who looked familiar, sporting a flattop and silver wire-framed glasses with an overabundance of metal. I could picture him in coveralls and holding a pitchfork somewhere on a farm in the Midwest. He was clearly sizing me up to with these serious, focused eyes that were trained on me in an uncomfortable way.
I don’t blame him for his reaction. Surprise roommates are most unfortunate for the unsuspecting recipient. I of course didn’t request that room; this regrettable new reality for him was entirely the Navy’s doing. It appeared that he might have come to the same conclusion and became a bit friendlier in short order. Something else was sparked in his mind when he took a good look at me, and he spoke exactly what it was in his mind with quite the twang. Noteworthy was that his “you’s” were stretched out for an especially long time, and they had something of a harmony to them.
“I remember you!”
“Really? From where?”
“I checked you into your barracks back in Orlando. What’s your name?”
“Brendan.”
“Yeah, I’m Andrew.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I remember checking you in.”
“Into the barracks?”
“Yeah.”
“A-School or Power School?”
“A-School.”
“Oh, hmm… Yeah, maybe.”
“No, it was definitely you.”
“Well, the red hair can be hard to forget.”
“Your hair’s orange!”
“Which is called red in most parts. Where are you from?”
“West Virginia.”
“Yeah okay. Makes sense.”
“You?”
“New York.”
“You don’t sound like you’re from New York.”
“I get that a lot. You, however, definitely sound like you’re from West Virginia.”
“Thanks!”
The reason Andrew had not returned to the barracks the same day the San Fran returned to port was because of a nasty little thing the recruiters usually keep a secret. It’s called duty, it stinks like a butthole full of doody, and when you have it, you can’t leave the boat under any circumstances. On a fast attack submarine, you get this dirty, stinky duty every fourth day while in port, and it lasts twenty-four hours. This includes Saturdays, Sundays and nights… and there is no exception for holidays either. Stinky duty doesn’t give a shit what day it falls on, and you don’t get a make-up day off or get paid any extra. It’s just an additional work schedule (for operations) that rides on top of your standard Monday through Friday eight to twelve-hour per day work schedule (for maintenance).
I had the weekend off, and Monday morning marked 1171 days to go. Loraine worked at The Hideaway on Mondays according to my napkin schedule. We were paid two days a month (on the 1st and 15th), one of which had fallen on the weekend. With a fresh pile of cash deposited, I was planning on seeing Loraine after getting through this stupid workday of reading regs, initialing papers, and checking in with some officers. I threw on my long sleeve dungaree uniform—as prescribed by both Queen La Chiefa and the Bull Nuke—grabbed a can of Royal Mills and began walking from Paquet Hall down the waterfront to Quarry Loch where the San Fran awaited me.
A random drive-by Chief yelled at me to roll down my sleeves. Fucking Chiefs. I swear they lay in wait for us like highway cops behind a billboard. I complied. No other choice as he stopped his car to make sure I did so. He was satisfied and drove off. Once his car pulled around the corner, I rolled them back up. No one seemed to mind the state of my sleeves once aboard my boat.
This was the day I first got a taste of our daily routine. When in port, all crewmembers not on duty reported to their Chief in their division’s designated areas at something like 0730 or 0800 hours. I don’t quite exactly remember the time. All nukes met in the Engine Room of course, but there were four varieties of nukes, and thus there were four morning muster locations.
Machinist’s Mates in M-Div (Machinery Division) like me huddled around the starboard propulsion turbine in Engine Room Upper Level. You know, Queen La Chiefa’s natural habitat. Our unofficial team name on the boat was “knuckle draggers.” To differentiate the four varieties of nukes, we had an anecdote about taking measurements that was pretty spot on. For example, if you asked a knuckle dragger to measure something, say the length of a dollar bill, the response would likely be,
“About half a foot.”
Electrician’s Mates in E-Div (Electrical Division) such as Hash Brown met in Engine Room Mid Level by one of the motor-generator sets. Probably the portside one. I dunno. That’s the lower traffic side in ERML as the reactor tunnel and stairs to ERUL were on the starboard side. Their unofficial team name was the “wire biters.” If you were to ask a wire biter the dollar bill length question, their response would be something like,
“Six and one eighth inches.”
Electronics’ Technicians in RC-Div (Reactor Controls Division) met in Engine Room Upper Level on the starboard side, not by the main engines like the mechanics, but by the coffee maker. Smart! Well, they were the most elite of the nukes as they were the only ones allowed to qualify as Reactor Operators. All the rest of us had supporting roles. While the nuke mechanics and electricians had by far the biggest workload in the nuke world, these ET’s ran neck and neck with the ELT’s for the title of most slack ass bitches on the boat. Their unofficial team name was the “twidgets.” A twidget’s response to the dollar length question?
“One hundred fifty-five point nine six millimeters… or six point one four inches if you prefer. You know what’s even more interesting though? That dollar bill is only zero point one one millimeters thick. Sorry. Four thousandths of an inch thick. Pretty neat, right?”
Shut up, twidget!
Engineering Laboratory Technicians (really just fancy Machinist’s Mates with more education) in RL-Div (Reactor Laboratories Division) such as Bruce Bells met inside the nucleonics lab in Engine Room Upper Level way back aft on the portside. Surprisingly, their unofficial team name was not the squats. That was disappointing to learn. No, to differentiate this group of mechanics from the knuckle draggers, their team name was the “limp wrists.” But fuck that. I’ll forever call them squats. Now, if you were to ask a squat the dollar bill length question, they’ll look around, lean in, and quietly ask you,
“How long do you want it to be?”
Once in our designated muster spot, as with virtually any morning meeting in any organization one could work for, we would get our job assignments and receive any announcements from up the chain of command. Pretty standard. Maybe not as standard in most any organization’s morning meeting was the workers Chief Queen had to deal with. We were sailors after all, and we had reputations to protect which preceded us with hundreds of years of tradition.
Today, as with most any given day I would come to find, my division would be made up of a mixture of dead tired mechanics just off of duty, a few well rested ones, then a bunch of guys somewhere between massively hung-over and still a little drunk with their blood-shot, far-away staring, glazed-over eyes, and 5 o’clock shadow at 8 o’clock in the morning.
The whine of the ventilation system drowned out most of whatever the Chief would say unless you were pretty close to him and listening intently. Perhaps by design, sounds do not carry well inside a submarine. Unfortunately, scents do. Every few minutes, there would be frenetic outbursts of “Ah man!” Yeah, some partially drunk jerkoff was dropping bombs which usually smelled like pure sulfur and not anything remotely capable of coming out of a human ass. This morning’s nostril searing scent was unfortunately not some special treat. This was to be the standard morning ritual for the rest of my time in the Navy.
My assignment was of course to continue reading the SORM, to continue initialing the sheet, and to continue working up the chain of command with my check-ins. The sooner I finished this, the sooner I could start my quals. But the reality was that I couldn’t possibly read all the regulations they wanted me to read and sign for in the allotted time. I knew towards the end of the week, even if I was the fastest reader on the boat, I would still be blazing off my initials and signing for things I didn’t yet read. Remember, I had been on Submarine NR-1. Same check-in process there. Why not just start blazing those signatures today? And of the check-ins? I was at the mercy of the officers and their schedules. Therefore, I changed my assignment to a shoot-the-shit with my new shipmates in order to get to know them better.
After the meeting, most of the guys dispersed, but Jay-Jay and I lingered around for a shoot-the-shit. What about his assignment? Truth is, in the Navy, an organization that does not pay by the hour or by the job, we always had more time in the day than we needed to complete our work assignments. Our time was not micromanaged because we wouldn’t be cut loose for the day until we completed our work. That was not a problem. The problem was that if we weren’t in a heavy maintenance period, it was a struggle to keep busy in order to make the day go by more quickly. With all that time, our mornings would be off to a lethargic start.
Jay-Jay and I were shooting the shit in front of the starboard turbine generator set with Queen La Chiefa right around the corner on the side of the starboard main engine. Unbeknownst to us, our inane conversation was irritating the hell out of him. With all the sound deadening material around and that ventilation whine, we didn’t think he could actually hear the words coming out of our mouths. We were wrong. I should note that it wasn’t so much the conversation itself that was pissing off Chief Queen. No. It was merely one particular word we kept repeating.
“Dude, blah blah blah…”
“No way, dude. Blah blah blah…”
“…blah blah blah so I said to the dude blah blah blah…”
“…blah blah blah man, you’re crazy dude blah blah blah…”
Queen La Chiefa had enough and simply reached his breaking point. He approached us and initially started speaking to us calmly yet firmly. Perhaps even with a bit of bewilderment. How did these two clowns make it past the pipeline and into my engine room? As he spoke, slowly and surely his demeanor escalated into this boiling rage. Eventually he was full on yelling at us like we were in some sort of movie about the military. It’s what the audience would expect from such an authority. And let me tell you something, we might have been quite relaxed when La Chiefa started his diatribe, but we were sure as shit standing fully at attention and a little terrified by the end of it.
“Dude? Did I just hear the both of you say ‘dude’ in my engine room? Let me get this straight. In the engineering spaces of a nuclear powered attack submarine, where we maintain the highest standards of professionalism, where our primary concern is reactor safety, where I will address you as Petty Officer Droughton and you as Petty Officer Vanderbilt, and you will address me as Chief Queen, the two of you are calling everyone ‘dudes’ like a bunch of stoners? You think you can call everyone ‘dudes?’ In my fucking engine room!?! No! Not in my engine room! Don’t you ever fucking say ‘dude’ in my fucking engine room! There are no dudes in the fucking engine room!!! Do I make myself clear!?! THERE ARE NO DUDES IN THE ENGINE ROOM!!! Is that understood!?!”
Immediately after Queen La Chiefa finished ripping us a new asshole, but just before we could “YES, CHIEF!!!” him to acknowledge his instructions, Hash Brown whipped around the corner and said this in the most perfect Californian surfer-stoner accent:
“Whazzup, duuuudes?”
After a split-second satisfyingly evil thought of oh my god that was so perfect, yet before the stunned and dying-on-the-inside Queen La Chiefa could collect himself and angrily correct Hash Brown, I calmly addressed the wayward wire biter.
“Petty Officer Brown, there are no dudes in the engine room. Understood?”
Hash Brown looked at me like he was trying to solve a quadratic equation in his head, yet wisely uttered not another word while Queen La Chiefa turned bright red. Oh yes, Queen turned a very bright shade of red and then walked off before he murdered us all. It was the most perfect unintentional comedic timing I had ever experienced in my entire life. And it was a damn good thing Hash Brown didn’t work for Queen La Chiefa. Damn good thing.
And you know what else? That hippy Scott McKenzie was full of shit. I had gone to the San Francisco. There was no goddamn love in there. Maybe I should have gone in the summertime.
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