In The Navy (BE&E), Part 5

So I was again back on barracks duty. The Chicago area was now full into summer and it is immensely hot most of the days. Anyone with not much to do seemed to get themselves in trouble around this time. I don’t know if it was the heat, plain boredom, or a mix of the two. Since I was stuck on daytime duty, the mid day trips to the lake ceased, except on weekends.

Everyone had their doors and windows open in the barracks, except when it rained. This lent to two things; Invasions of privacy and disturbing the peace. It seemed there were two bands that met the approval of almost everyone in the barracks. That was Lynyrd Skynyrd and Led Zeppelin. I became intolerant of both bands within a week. These guys played the same tapes over and over and over. You would hear one song from one room, and a different song from another as you moved through the building. To this day either band’s tunes make my skin crawl. I went to the commissary and got some headphones to go with my radio/tape player. I think it saved me from utter madness.

Some guys were not spared madness, but it would probably be better described as a drug induced insanity. One night fairly late, there was a huge ruckus down the hall on the second floor of my building. Shouts were everywhere and people running around, soon there were sirens. One of the guys had gotten doped up on something and decided to jump out of his window. Not a long fall really, but he broke something in the process. The excitement passed and the Navy seemed to be starting to take notice of its drug problem. The Regan administration announced a formal Zero Tolerance policy very shortly after this incident, though it was due to many similar problems across the Navy. Drugs were rampant.

Since I was assigned to the barracks, I was assigned a full range of duties. We would meet in the break room each morning. I was on time always, but wound up waiting for the rest of the group and the barracks Chief. I passed the time playing the latest video game, Space Invaders. I got pretty good at it and soon was closing in on whoever had the top score. When I broke that record, I had three guys cheering me on, who I didn’t even know. Pretty cool.

One morning, when we finally got our assignments for the day, I was assigned to police the outside of the building. It was odd that the Chief actually accompanied us. We started at the front door and picked up the usual trash and bagged it. Then as we headed around the building, which had a two foot skirt of gravel on the ground, we started finding things…

It was apparent that all of the guys cleaning their pot in the barracks didn’t want those pesky seeds in their rooms, so they were dumping them out the windows. I had never noticed before, but guess what was growing all around the building? Pot plants! We were pulling up one to two and a half foot tall plants every few steps. We probably had two pounds worth of end product by the time we were done. A little scary and telling of the problems the Navy faced with its drug usage.

Barracks duty wrapped up after a few weeks and I had a bit of time back home, before I was to fly off to Sub School in Groton Connecticut. Leaving Chicago for the last time, I took in the orange glow that encompasses the heart of the city and the immediate urban area. I said goodbye to the city then, not feeling happy or sad about it. I have never been back.

I had never been to the east coast, so seeing it seemed intriguing. By the time I left Great Lakes, I was the only one left of my few friends and had already wished them all well and seen them on their ways to various parts of the country to start their real training. I was very ready to move on, but had no idea what was ahead of me.