Breaking Eggs
I was breaking the shell on an egg this morning when my mind slipped back to 1964. Yes that was approximately two years before the beginning of recorded time. I arrived on Guam, reported to my squadron VW1 and was sent on a prestigious mission for the U.S. Navy. The Navy saw fit after 15 months of training in Great Lakes Illinois, Memphis Tennessee, Glynco Georga, and Barber’s Point Hawaii; they thought three more months in the galley would round out my education, so they assigned me to mess cook duty on Guam. I of course agreed wholeheartedly with the idea. 12 to 15 hours a day in a sweltering hot scullery, washing trays and emptying garbage, was the icing on the cake, the coup de grace of my aviation electronics training.
Each squadron or detachment on board ship or ashore supplies mess cooks to the galley in support of the food service effort. We select few were roused out of bed at 0400 so we could be at the galley at 0500 ready for muster and inspection. The galley master-at-arms would have us fall in, call us to attention and prepare for inspection. He would then walk down the rows looking at everyone’s hands for dirty fingernails and check to see we had a clean uniform on. Our work dungarees had to be clean and shoes polished at 0500 so we could start sweating and spilling at 0530. I relished the concept of 12 hours or more of scraping plates, washing mess trays and dragging off garbage. Many of the mess cooks had simply enlisted, finished boot camp and boarded a plane for Guam; whereas I was a salty-dog with an extra year of technical training and thought this was beneath my station in life and in the Navy. It turned out that everyone in the squadron had months or years of technical training, so it was more a matter of my low position on the totem pole than my feigned vision of expertise.
The time spent in the galley rolled along, like anything else, after a few days a person becomes used to whatever the situation is and things become routine. I don’t know how it came about, but at one point I was assigned to night shift in the galley. Roy, Harley and I were put under the supervision of Cruz, a cook second class who loved being stationed on Guam because it was his home. Suddenly galley work wasn’t bad at all; we would arrive after supper and work until 0700 the next morning. The worst part was scrubbing giant cooking pots; large cook pots, medium cook pots and pans, but we finished that early in the shift. Cruz was a stickler for sparkling clean pots. Once we finished that we would start making box lunches for the next day’s flights out of Guam and sometimes unexpected flights for weather tracking. Preparing box lunches was good duty, with liberal food benefits. The worst thing about the duty was I had to spread margarine on the sandwich bread. I couldn’t see how anyone would enjoy that, but it was supposed to keep the bread from drying out. Roy and I had to leave at 0400 to wake up the day shift and ensure they got out of bed. I never liked waking people up so that was the second-worst part of our duty. It seemed cruel to wake a guy back to conscious life in the galley when his face indicated he was perhaps in the middle of a sailor’s dream. Once everyone was out of the sack we walked back to the galley to set-up for breakfast.
Everything that was consumed on that island was sent in there on container ships. The eggs were from refrigerated containers. My morning job was setting up and running the grill. I had no prior experience, but did very well I think. I cooked eggs to order as sailors passed through the line. Now those eggs traveled from U.S. farms to distributors, to the Navy storehouses in California, to the ships, to Guam. Are you getting the picture here? Those eggs were six months old sometimes by the time they hit my grill at the NAS Agana, Guam galley. Every once in a while one would get cracked and splash onto the grill, all green and black and those seemed to have a life of their own, dancing and sputtering across the hot grill. I would scrape them off the edge of the grill and crack another one. No one seemed horrified at the sight, nor did they complain. So to this very day, I never crack an egg that I don’t travel back to Guam and see those green and black eggs skittering across the grill bringing joy to some poor sailor’s morning. I acquired some skills there on that duty. I could crack and open an egg with one hand and place it on the grill with the yolk intact, all the while flipping another pair of eggs with my left hand. I don’t know if I ever had breakfast at the galley there once I was transferred back to my squadron. It wasn’t because of the food but rather I valued my sleep more than filling my belly. After 94 days working in the galley I was finally free to pursue my true purpose in the navy.
It’s funny how memories seem better when recalled than when they actually occurred. Even the bad times don’t seem as bad as when I experienced them.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
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