An Old Salt grouses ...

This is actually a guy I met in a sailor bar in Hawaii. He was an old, overweight retired Bosun's Mate, who always had some great sea stories to tell, and also always kept a live Chihuahua in his (voluminous) shirt sleeve.  Every once in awhile, the dog would poke its nose out of the sleeve, and this old guy would stop his story in mid-tale and feed it a teaspoon of beer.  Somehow, I was the only one in the bar who seemed to find this -- odd.

“It ain’t what it used to be!”

By William Breyfogle

The old sailor groused, in the midst of his tale

            Recalling his days all at sea

But he stopped in mid-tale, turned around and regaled,

“Mates … It ain’t what it used to be!

“Why the Navy has changed, since my day, so it has

            And these young’uns are all soft and spoiled

Why back in my day sailors had no degrees

            It was just back-aching, backbreaking toil.

“We labored in heat of the fire down below

With the engines, but men did their best.      

It was ‘Feed the fires, move the coal!

Make the steam, damn your soul!’

Days on end, and with nary a rest.”

“Now they’ve got engines that power jets through the sky

            Or split up an atom, I hear.

So the engine room’s more like an office suite, now.”

            And he stopped and returned to his beer.

“If a Sailor got rowdy, back then,” he began,”

            We’d just take ‘im out back past the docks.

And the Chiefs would pound sense into him,” and he grinned,

            “Why, many’s the Chief that could box.

“But now they’ve got ‘rights’, and protected from that,

by some kid with a legal degree.”

And he shook his head sadly, in great disbelief,

            “Ahh, It ain’t what it used to be.”

“And these officers. Babies, all fresh out of school!

            With book-learning stuffed in their heads

But let it get rough out there and then you’ll find.

            They can’t navigate out of their beds.”

“When the enemy’s guns open up out at sea,

            Well, you know that you’re in for it, then

And the big shell’s are crashin’, spitting fire, sewing death,

            Ah, that’s when they grow into men.”

 “Now look over there! Women! In Crackerjack blues!

Just look how they hug breast and hip.

I’m telling ya, Mates, there’ll be trouble aboard

If they ever get on a ship!”

“What’s that, did you say? They’re already on board

            And serving on warships at sea?”

He sat is stunned silence, then raised up his glass,

            “Mates, it ain’t what it used to be.”

But he thought for a spell, and then grinned through his beard,

            “It don’t hardly matter, ye see?

Cause, Shipmates, I’d give up an arm and leg

            And more to go back to sea.”

“My best days were out there,  way out in a ship

Surrounded by shipmates and brothers

And I’d be out there now, If I wasn’t too old

I’d die out there, if I had my druthers”

“But it’s all about schooling and books now,” he sighed,     

            “There’s no place for old salts like me.

It’s all for those youngsters out there, like I said

            “Cause it ain’t what it used to be.”