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What kind of monster have I created? All I did is have a drink and a chicken sandwich. This is really nice to see the interaction. I may have to put the YouTube and tools down and pick up some more books.
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Steel Soldiers now has a few new forums, read more about it at: New Munitions Forums!
Where's AHAB ?
- Thread starter rustystud
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As a kid, no one read to me that I can remember. But I started real early, and read at least 1-2 books a week. I never knew Dr. Seuss books. Then with our first born, that all changed. After the first, I went down and got everything I could find, and drug it home. First I read it to the kids, who knows how many times, then once when I was cleaning out the attic. I just stopped what I was doing, and plopped down. That was it for the day. What great books.
I normally go in a "rut". When I find something GOOD, then I read that author. First to last. Or a subject interests me? Then I check every book out I can. Scour every used book, and junk store in the universe.
Once, reading a 1926 edition of the completed works of the great Sherlock Holmes story's, I came to a screeching halt! A charterer in one of the story's was hypnotized, and he committed crimes that would normally be against everything he holds dear. I went down to the public library in Yorba Linda, California, and checked out every book on hypnosis they had. I just didn't believe it possible. And found out I was right. Hypnosis can not make someone do something that they are morally against doing. BUT, I did learn how to hypnotize people! Oh yes, 15-16 years old, and I started to hypnotize the entire neighborhood kids. Got almost all of them to do stupid chicken dances, moo like a cow, bark like a dog, and walk around with their hands over their heads. I gave them instructions to not be able to bend their arms. So when they walked through a door, or tried, they could go no further. This was great fun, until the neighbor lady found out that I had her son standing on a tree stump, crowing like a rooster. Fun while it lasted.
Another Ahab
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Hard not to like Dr. Seuss.
He did some propaganda writing during WWII also if I remember right (if I find it I'll post it).
For the record, I worked sales and marketing for J.A. Jones Construction for a good stretch of my career and they fed us a LOT of sales books (part of the program).
Hands down, the best sales book I ever read (not on the JAJ reading list!) -of ALL of them- was "Green Eggs and Ham".
Kid you not! Persistence. Do not give up. If you have good product, the sale will come.
Guess I owe the Dr. Seuss estate a commission percentage....
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Brother Ahab, here ya go. Dr. Seuss goes to war. Boy "Green Eggs & Ham".....sure brings back some memories!
davidb56
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C-rats had green something in them often, and you could scrape paint with the crackers.
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If I recall correctly it was called 'Ham and Eggs, Chopped', two good things pureed together to create a green gelled mass of disgustingness. Ugh!!
And what did I say whenever I was unlucky enough to draw said ration? "I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam I am!"
We called the crackers Gorilla Biscuits. We had nicknames for pretty much every item in the c-rats, but many are not suitable for a family site.
By the late 70s when I joined the Marines, we called the canned meals c-rats (short for Combat Rations) even though by that time the proper title printed on the box was MCI (Meal, Combat, Individual).
Cheers
rustystud
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Than as a Marine you must know how many holes the "Gorilla" cookie has ! 64.If I recall correctly it was called 'Ham and Eggs, Chopped', two good things pureed together to create a green gelled mass of disgustingness. Ugh!!
And what did I say whenever I was unlucky enough to draw said ration? "I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam I am!"
We called the crackers Gorilla Biscuits. We had nicknames for pretty much every item in the c-rats, but many are not suitable for a family site.
By the late 70s when I joined the Marines, we called the canned meals c-rats (short for Combat Rations) even though by that time the proper title printed on the box was MCI (Meal, Combat, Individual).
Cheers
I actually like my "K" rations and then the "C" rations. The new MRI's had just come out when I left but they where excellent !
Listening to all the stories of reading great books just makes me sad for this new generation. You ask almost any kid now a days what book have they have recently read and they will give you this blank stare. "Like what are books ?" .
Even my son says "it's the digital age dad, get with it" .
Very sad indeed.
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Made my son breakfast in honor of this thread.
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Looks so yummy for your tummy.
And it's most delicious for your digestious.
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I hope I aint disappointing anyone, but I like the Ham and eggs chopped. We had to turn the case over, upside down, to hide what boy was what, and then everyone took a box. It was to make it fair. No one could get "stuck" with the dog foods in the C-rat case. I loved the eggs and ham, chopped. So I learned that when the case was upside down, label to the left, the second box from the left, was eggs and ham. A tad red hot, and I was ready to deal!! Back then I always traded my cigs, for ANY meal I wanted. A case of C-rats goes for 300 Euros a pop here today. Collectors item.
rustystud
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A case of C-rats goes for 300 Euros a pop here today. Collectors item.[/QUOTE said:
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Well, there are at least two of you in the world! I had a civilian buddy named Louis who also loved the green eggs and ham. So long as I didn't have to carry too many around with me, I'd collect a few cans each time we went in the field and bring them to him.
Dog food, yep. I think it was called Spiced Beef? I always said that in some factory the stuff was canned, then went down a line where every other can got swiped either left or right by a machine. Those that went right got painted green and stamped Spiced Beef. Those that went left got a label that said Alpo Meaty Chunks.
I always found the cans of bird meat good. I did think it amusing that they were marked Chicken and/or Turkey, Boned. What? They didn't know what type birds they were killing to put in the cans?
Beans and franks was another meal they couldn't mess up, spaghetti was something they could (how do you mess up spaghetti?!?)
We had found that if one was having difficulty with 'regularity', the jam in the can would, shall we say, loosen things up. If one was having the opposite problem, the peanut butter would bind things up a bit. If everything was going as it should, you mixed both together into what we called Tiger S**t, which was eaten with the previously mentioned 64-hole Gorilla Biscuit crackers.
One bad thing about switching from c-rats to MREs was loosing the ability to make field stoves out of the cans, or cook the stuff in the cans. Heating MREs in the chemical bag is a neat trick, but just doesn't taste right. We also lost our supply of cans for improvised booby trap and perimeter warning devices.
Speaking of MREs, the first ones we had were on a BnFX (Battalion Field Exercise, pronounced ben-fex) in the early 80s on Fort Hood. On Camp Pendleton we were still getting MCIs, but on Ft Hood we were guests of the Army and they provided the modern chow.
These were the dark brown bagged meals that could apparently only be opened by bayoneting or small explosive charges. They were awful! We quickly tagged them Meals Refused by Ethiopians. The later tan-bagged ones were a marked improvement and actually quite palatable, dare I say even tasty.
Tabasco was something most of us carried long before the modern MREs came with those tiny bottles included. That sauce could cover a myriad of flavour discrepencies.
Since we found Ahab (Yay!!!) this thread has become a bit like a super-bounce ball zinging in various directions!
Cheers
Pic - Here I am enjoying a tasty C-Rat c.1979
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Funny you use that descriptive, Rory.
As you may recall our face-to-face (and very enjoyable) dinner several weeks ago, and our spectrum of topics and rabbit trails chased that evening.... I once enjoyed a fine dining experience with Ahab, aka: Rocky, while on a lobbying trip to Washington, DC in the spring of 2018. We met at a tavern in Georgetown in which history records that JFK proposed marriage to Jackie in one of their front booths. The steaks were utterly delicious, but the conversation was even more enjoyable, diverse, rapid-fire, borderline-schizophrenic (bottom border), convoluted, fun, and definitely charged full steam ahead in every one of the VARIOUS DIRECTIONS you implied above. What a great and memorable encounter.
I really got to know Ahab that night. I appreciate him even more than I did before he went AWOL. I was also privileged to have maintained occasional contact with him - including that meeting in D.C. - during his SS sabbatical. DANG! - It sure is good to have you back, Rocky!
If anyone ever gets to the DC/Virginia area I would highly recommend trying to meet our celebrity AHAB if you can. The Smithsonian pales in comparison.
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During my time in service I think I had their "boxed lunches" only 5 to 10 times total. I was suitably unimpressed.
I was permanent party in support of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland. Our assigned "dining facility" near our dormitory was fully funded not by the military, but by the National Security Agency. Steaks and seafood cooked to order were available most evenings, and more exotic offerings were dished up at least a couple of times each month. Yes, we were spoiled.
If we were on duty, the cafeteria in the operations building was also available - they kept 20,000 fed 24/7. Their food was almost as good as our "Chow Hall", but more mass-produced assembly line fare.
Whenever NSA sent me traveling I was always in civilian clothes, very young, but traveling on NSA credentials either solo or with one or two others only. Due to the classified purposes of these visits every cook seemed blindly ordered to serve up their finest meals. I always figured they had NO IDEA who I was or why I was there so they'd better try to impress me/us. Needless to say - I never complained.
One trip was aboard a Coast Guard "ship" for about 4 days. For some (secret) reason we lost sight of any "coast" very shortly after weighing anchor in order to do what we were sent to do. The crew loved having me aboard. Seems NSA was funding the trip and they had taken aboard all manner of prime cuts of fresh meats, and all the trimmings including as one Coastie said: "More desserts than this boat had ever floated." For the most part, they had no patrol duties during that trip and were only my "water taxi" to a point in the ocean to observe something, so for them it was a cruise rather than work.
So that's some of my military dining experiences. I had it easy.
Sometime I'll write about being sent to some of our Embassies.
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So....
What's another random thought to bat around for a while???
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Thought you all might like to see another satisfied customer for C-Rats. This was 1973, and we were getting a beer per C-Rat can. We shamelessly cheating the kids.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=41&v=NCT4fxTb7LQ Had to throw this into the conversation guys. Hope it's not too long.
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Those look like some of the local hoodlums I made acquaintance with!!! when I was a smidge younger!!! ROFLMBO
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Camels or Lucky Strikes.
59apache
Chipmaker
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Sounds for me like a win-win situation
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No one went home unhappy!
rustystud
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Well I might have to go "AWOL" again. I saw the Doctor today and the infection is back with a vengeance ! There is only one anti-biotic that will work now. If it fails I need to go into the hospital. Don't like hospitals very much, but as I've gotten older it seems I'm making more and more appearance's there. So if you don't here from me for a while you'll know where I'm at.