¬Ý
Meat Cutter or Electrician
¬Ý
When I went aboard ship I was immediately placed on Mess Duty in the scouring room. I collected the trays and utensils to run through the dish washer during meal time. I also did the setting up before mealtime and the clean up afterwards. I recall it being overly hot in there and the humidity around 99% because of the steam the washer was causing in such a small space. I was however, a lucky one. The first day the ’ÄúE’Äù shop head man cornered the Engineering officer and they went to see the Captain about getting me off that duty, saying it was wasteful putting an electrician who just graduated from Electricians Mate school in the scullery. They also complained that I was sorely needed in the general maintenance and repairs of the ship. As it turned out, I was at that time the only non rated person in the ’ÄúElectrical’Äù Shop and they needed a Gofer badly. The Captain agreed, and I only spent about two hours in the Mess gang. When I was relieved of the mess duty I went with Jolly (the leader of the E shop) to repair a frayed armored electrical cable for the starboard boat davit. I had worked with my dad for a couple of summer seasons helping him in electrical contracting, so I was knowledgeable about the tools of the trade. In my zeal to show how well I knew how to use them, I got a bit too aggressive cutting the cable and the hacksaw hung up, jumped onto my left hand and cut a pretty good gash in the area of my knuckle. The blood started oozing out so he took me to sick bay for a patch up job. He had to be wondering right about then if he had gotten a ’ÄúMeat Cutter’Äù or an ’ÄúElectrician’Äù. We went back up and finished the job without further damage to me or him. I worked with armored cables many more times during my 40 months onboard the ship, but never had that problem again. Buddy Benton EM3 ¬Ý(a couple of times)
Return to LST Home Porthttp://www.abiz4me.com/lst.htmlshapeimage_4_link_0
Copyright © 2007, Mershon, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.
¬Ý