One hot summer day I was headed aft to the Shipfitter’s shop to locate one of my guys. USS Mobile was tied up in San Diego at the time for some routine maintenance, so the ship was crawling with sweaty deck-apes armed with paint chippers and paint soaked brushes. BM2 Hollingsworth(can’t remember his real name. Old-timers decease I guess,) was overseeing the progress of several men when I happened by.
Hollingsworth was a red-headed, red-necked, REDMAN tobacco chewing, tall drink of water from the state of Montana. He was usually full of piss and vinegar, as was the case this fine morning. We stood around in the shade of an “LCM-8" boat, admiring the day and sharing scuttlebutt. Hollingsworth noticed my ice cold can of Coke and asked if he could have a sip, (WARNING:If you ever gave Hollingsworth a drink of anything, he’d usually spit some REDMAN juice into it to mark it as his, or he'd do it just to start a fight.) "I break your redneck if you put your lips to my Coke. Take a slug of your own damned Coke!”, I said, referring to his own tobacco spit filled Coke can. Feigning heartbreak over my comment, Hollingsworth let a long brown slimy honker of tobacco spit slide into his own Coke can. Then he gave me a mischievous look as he held a finger to his pursed lips.
BM2 Hollingsworth tippy-toed over to the bullwork near one of his guys who was busy knocking away loose paint from the deck. Hollingsworth covertly swapped Coke cans with the one sitting on top of the bullwork, above the toiling deck-ape. Then casually, Hollingsworth took his place by my side, whilst sipping on his fresh new Coke. It wasn’t a long wait before his thirsty deck-ape reached up and took a long pull from his not-so-frosty Coke. And a long pull he did take. The deck-ape was on his second to third gulp when he’d realized something was drastically wrong. Maybe it was clue he got when he saw the two Second Class Petty Officers over in the shade, choking on their own spit from laughter! Then Hollingsworth takes a last slug off of his tasty Coke and offers it to the deck-ape, “Looking for this!?” Immediately, Hollingsworth drops the Coke and takes off on a dead run down the main deck! The deck ape looks over at me with shear hatred, but he doesn’t want me nearly as bad as he wants Hollingsworth. So with paint chipper in hand, he’s quick to his feet, and in hot pursuit of the tall, laughing, red-neck, disappearing in front of him, down the main deck.
Up ladders, down ladders, port, starboard, forward and aft of the ship they ran. It was like watching some demented episode of a Popeye cartoon. I don’t remember ever laughing so hard in my life. Eventually the deck-ape lost steam. He lost his chipping tool over the side when he threw it in a wild attempt to hit Hollingsworth. After an exhaustive chase, the deck-ape gave up hope of ever catching Hollingsworth. As the deck-ape stumbled his way down to sickbay for a cure to tobacco spit poisoning, he started puking and having the dry heaves. The poor guy thought for sure he was dying a horrible death.
Then it was the sadistic Corpsmen’s turn to “cure” the poor bastard. They made him drink some black solution then pumped his stomach to get rid of the nicotine/spit poison. The Corpsmen did other stuff to him, but it was all behind closed doors. Later on one of the corpsmen told me that they'd utilized the deck-ape as a guinea pig, "poison control dummy" for training purposes. Sick puppies them Corpsmen.
After all was said and done, BM2 Hollingsworth came away from this incident squeaky clean. Sometimes you get lucky I guess. The deck-ape, at best, survived the ordeal. And I forgot why I was headed aft to the Shipfitter Shop, so I went back to the Carpenter Shop for some coffee and to share my story with anyone who would listen .
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