220307 Sentinel, Alcohol

I do not remember what year I drank my first beer, but I do remember my first beer.

I was walking down a gravel road at night and a friend of mine grabbed a six pack from somewhere he shouldn’t have been.
My real drinking started when I was in the navy. I was in many ports throughout the Philippines and Asia. Those ports had bars everywhere and they were all in close proximity to each other. In Olongapo back then anything that was not on the main street was out of bounds, so if a sailor went to town there was nothing to do but go to bars and drink. Now I could have stayed aboard ship, but that was where I had been living for anywhere from 30 to 61 days in a row, working 12 hours a day and writing letters and sleeping, so a few different surroundings were a welcome sight along with a few beers to pass the time while in port.

Sangley Point, Philippines naval air station was right outside the main gate of a little town called Cavite. There were no out of bounds areas there, but there wasn’t much of anything around there. So we went to town and drank beer. I did have some interesting foods that I was introduced to, foods that later became Joyce and my favorite dishes. One was tacos. I had never heard of them before, but they were so good there. Another was called monkey meat. I don’t think it was a monkey, but people there did have caged monkeys outside their windows. That is why sailors called it that. Vendors would have small grills on the sidewalks with small pieces of meat barbequing on bamboo sticks and the aroma was so nice we couldn’t turn it down and it too was delicious. I taught Joyce how to make it and we introduced to many other friends we knew. Cavite was an inexpensive liberty, 5 dollars would buy all the beer and food we could consume and go back to the naval base with money in your pocket.

Yokosuka, Japan was the most expensive liberty, but the most interesting place to go and shop and drink. I bought a lot of trinkets in Yokosuka, more than anywhere else I visited. I really enjoyed Japanese beer. One of the strangest things I ever experienced was there. I was in a bar drinking my beer when I felt the need to relieve myself. In the bathroom there I was standing, doing my business when a young lady who worked in the bar came strolling in, dropped her pants and sat down to take care of her business a few feet away from me. She said hello and I said the same and that was matter of fact, like it was normal procedure in a day’s work. I doubt it is like that anymore.

Hong Kong was interesting. Every street seemed to have a tailor shop where a sailor could have a tailor-made suit made in a couple of days. The shills there would get you to go in and once inside a young lady would hand you a cold beer to drink while you shopped for a suit. When short on cash, it was a place to have one or two more beers before heading back to the ship. I enjoyed watching the Chinese men playing cards on tables on the sidewalk. I think it was a form of Pinochle. A few cards were played and then they knew how every card remaining would be played, so they would toss the rest of the cards on the table and laugh. I had breakfast at a British enlisted club in Hong Kong, the worst food I ever had overseas. I didn’t get to see much of Hong Kong because I was walking and not sure of where China proper began, so I stayed within walking distance of the pier where the ferry took sailors back to the ship. Oddly enough, I never got really drunk in Hong Kong or in Japan, the Philippines was an entirely different story.

Singapore was an amazing place to visit. My first liberty there, I caught a cab and went to the Raffles Hotel. I knew that was where the British aristocracy and military officers spent their leisure time before WW-2. I wanted to see that, and sit on the veranda sipping Singapore Slings (invented right in that hotel) and sit outside looking at the garden there. It was the same then as it was during WW-2. The history intoxicated me more than the drinks. Shopping there in the old tight alleyways was a thrill. Everything was jam packed together and I think a person would see people from around the world in that alley. It was amazing to me. Singapore was an expensive place to go to a bar and drink, too rich for my blood. Even though I was there in the seventies, the city seemed to be trapped in the fifties at that time.

I thought when I began this post it would be all about alcohol, but it seems at the end to be more about traveling with alcohol in second place. I start my posts with an idea, but I never know where my posts will take me until I reach the end of the story that even I didn’t know the ending until it happened.

I leave you with an interesting song about alcohol by Brad Paisley. It's a mixture of fun and sad truth about alcohol and that is the title of the song. The video is well done and is interesting to watch.