A few minutes later the tapping was back, so I reported it to the chief of the watch in control, but no one seemed to believe me. Well, about an hour into my watch, I thought I heard the faint sound of something tapping on the hull, but instantly dismissed it. That’s probably why I could enjoy the music at Woodstock. At around midnight, I got up and made it back to the after engine room to start my six hour watch.Įven with both diesel engines running as well as the two in the forward engine room, I never wore hearing protection. So, we stayed on the surface and searched and searched well into the night with no success. You never realize how vast the Atlantic is until you have to look for one lone human being. Then on the USS Croaker two years later, while transiting the Atlantic ocean for our four month Mediterranean cruise, we received a message that one of our planes had gone down and we were ordered to search for the pilot who had successfully bailed out. Had it not been for a curious shipmate, we probably would have dragged the SEAL team back out into the deeper ocean waters where we would have gone a lot deeper than periscope depth. Just by accident, our quartermaster wanted to see the shoreline before we got too far out and snuck a quick look out the scope before lowering it. Since our part of the mission was seemingly over, at least until we were supposed to rendezvous to retrieve the team, we started heading back out to sea. Because the raft was sinking, they did not detach it from the scope. There was no communication with the team once they left the boat, so we had no idea what was going on. All went according to plan except when the SEALS detached their raft, and got into it, it started to sink. When we reached the insertion point, the seals were supposed to exit the boat through our forward escape hatch, swim to the surface, get in their raft and paddle to the shore. Our mission was to secure their raft to our periscope fairing and then submerge and transit into a coastal shore line as close as we could under cover of darkness. Now, they were in the process of honing their skills in covert insertions using submarines. Usually the UDT teams were culled from the navy seabees or construction battalions. The SEALS had just been formed as a special forces group a year earlier from the navy Underwater Demolition Team or UDT. Love Sade, sixties soul, seventies rock, and all jazz.Once on the USS Piper back in 1962, we were operating with a group of navy SEALS. Worked as a commercial photographer at JL Hudsons in Detroit and continue photography as a hobby. Major hobbies are collecting old stuff from the 20s and restoring old racing bicycles. After that, he would always throw a couple of pork chops or steaks into the package with the free kidneys.įredric Durrette served one tour in Vietnam, retired as E8 in the navy submarine service after 23 years. But then he realized that we were probably one of his poorest customers. Then, one day during a conversation, my mom let out that the kidneys weren’t for the cat and that we were actually eating them ourselves. This went on for several months until, my mom began asking only for the kidneys. Well, the old butcher thought we were getting the kidneys to feed our cat, so he practically gave them to us without charging. So, mom started buying beef liver and kidneys to serve with our homegrown vegetables. Now, my mom fell on hard times while she was between housekeeping jobs and it was getting hard to put meat on the table. I also remember that he kept a candy dish near the register for us kids when we were sent by our parents to pick up an order. His English was fair, but the European accent gave it a foreign flair. He knew his customers by name and even us kids when we shopped for our parents. Our particular neighborhood butcher was on Conant Avenue, a few blocks from our home, and was owned and operated by a kindly old Polish gentleman who had migrated here to escape the war in Europe. The butcher shop was also a gathering place for the ladies to exchange recipes and gossip. Want a special cut of beef, just ask the butcher.īecause the butcher shop was usually a neighborhood store, they knew the neighborhood families and would often be generous with weighing the scales, sometimes even letting poorer families get meat on a pay when you can basis. If you wanted your porkchops thin, that’s how you got them. The butcher would actually cut the meat exactly how you wanted and weigh it right in front of you. Back in the 1950s Detroit, before Walmart Super Stores, big chain supermarkets and packaged meat, you got your meat from a butcher shop.
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