Navy Picnics

On a hot summer day like today my thoughts turn to the picnics I used to go to when I was younger; most of which were sponsored by the Navy. I loved when my dad's command would have a picnic - they were usually on a school day (missing school makes anything better), they normally let me eat and drink as much as I wanted (another plus when you're dad's trying to make ends meet on an E6's pay), and they were always someplace cool I hardly ever got to visit.

Up until I was about 10, most of the picnics I went to were at a place called Admiral Bakersfield Park in San Diego. In addition to all the hamburgers and soda, this place had some incredible kid playgrounds, including a three-story high robot you could climb up inside, and this big jungle gym that looked like a pirate ship. After I got too old for ABP, I started going to the beach parties that were usually at Mission Beach or the Strand, by the Amphib base. Those had the added attraction that you could usually find a group of SEALs-to-be nearby doing something that looked really tiring.

So it's sort of sad that I almost never go anywhere near a command picnic these days. On my first boat, the only after-hours function I went to of any kind (not counting the stuff that was supposedly voluntary, but at which the Eng informed us he'd be taking muster) was a Christmas party in the early nineties. Boy, that was a mistake.

I'd just started dating this girl, and she really wanted to go, though I told her it would most likely suck donkey balls. Naturally it did, and she got waaay too drunk out of sheer boredom. The problem was that there were also a bunch of younger cones that showed up stag, and they started chatting her up. She wasn't particularly good looking (you can't be choosy in Hawaii), but she was about the only non-married female there, and I think all the attention went to her head. When she went off to dance with a group of them, I left.

It's not like I was going to marry this chick or anything, but still. Kinda hard to live crap like that down, but I don't specifically blame the Navy. At least I was the only non-lifer nuc there, so no one who's opinion I cared about saw her first hand. I didn't see a lot of her after that, but I heard a sonar tech on the Indy left her knocked up a few months later.

Anyhow, there were two main reasons I stopped going to Navy picnics once I was actually in the Navy: (1) The guys from the boat who normally showed up at them were the same ones I wanted to see as little of as I could when we were actually in port, and (2) The food was horrible. If I did have to go to something like that, I'd bring my own. When the Navy started frowning on command-purchased beer (early nineties; I just know Clinton had something to do with it) Navy picnics became only slightly more fun than eating sliders in crew's mess.

There's nothing you can do about the crew; sometimes you like the guys you work with, and sometimes you pray for the sweet release of death to end your tortured existence. But I can at least explain why the food was so horrible. When I was the admin weenie for Radcon, I got stuck planning a Navy picnic of my own.

The division officer announced he was looking for a volunteer to put together a command picnic at a staff meeting one morning. Since none of the people wearing khaki felt like demonstrating some leadership and organizational ability, I got bagged with it. The only help I got was the address of the housing / rec committee building off base, where the Navy supposedly had money set aside for just this purpose. That's right, every year, the command gets money just for picnics and other recreational activities, which is why a lot of that crap is free to attend.

But it's not a lot of money. In fact, if I remember correctly, it worked out to be about $1.25 per sailor per year, and you could only save up about three year's worth. If you didn't spend it in time, the housing folks got it, so they made it damn-near impossible to actually get any of that money.

As the admin weenie, I was used to bureaucracy and filling out five different forms just to get a $10 mail bag from Servmart. But getting to the rec funds was a whole new level of bullshit. Before they'd cut you a check for food (for example) you had to fill out a shopping list, including SKU numbers, which they would approve line by line. If you put down French's mustard on your list, that was all you could buy - if they were out when you finally got to go shopping, you couldn't substitute in some other brand, even if it would be cheaper.

To make matters worse, we only had about $300 in the fund, total, and the Navy wanted $100 off the top to reserve a picnic area on the beach. You'd think that recreational facilities ON A FREAKIN' NAVY BASE would be free for sailors, but you'd be wrong. They gave me some BS about private contractors who maintained the facilities (also Clinton's fault), and held out their paws for the money. The best thing you could say about it was that it was cheaper than anywhere else remotely near the water, a fact made even sadder because Oahu is one big beach, and a lot of it's owned by Uncle Sam.

So I had about $200, total, to feed about eighty sailors and their families. The one time I inquired about charging a few bucks per head, the division officer shut me down fast. "No one will show up" he predicted, and he was probably right. The only way to even come close to feeding all those people was to buy no-name brands whenever possible. When you find a box of one hundred hamburger patties for $20 at the Hickam commissary, you know that they're probably not made from top-of-the-line cows.

Just like always, I ended up bringing my own food... but this time I knew exactly why the chips were all Granny Goose and the condiments looked suspiciously like they'd been stolen from the galley. We squeaked in just under budget, but I had to pass the hat mid-picnic when we ran low on ice. Unlike a normal picnic, I had to stick around for the whole thing, and ended up shooting about 300 pictures with the office Polaroid.

Afterwards, pretty much everyone looked like they had a good time. I thought it was just another crappy command picnic, but maybe that's the point; if they can manage to do anything with the pathetic resources the Navy provides, it's a heck of a success.