Unedited email received from Bob Kinney in April 2002.

Dear Don,

Here are some stories and things that I fondly recall about the Ray and her crew. Some of the pranks and things we pulled would make Hawkeye Pierce & B.J. Honeycutt from MASH look like school boys. By the way I love that show!

Precom days:

We had our offices on a barge and each division had their own cage to use as an office/lounge. The Peanuts comic strip was the big thing then, and someone from E-div would cut it out of the paper and post it on the bulletin board every day. The first thing everyone did when they came to work was to go to E-div cage and read the latest snoopy comic.

I remember reactor plant testing and chow runs to the greasy spoon at the head of the pier and New York Hot Sausages! Pity the poor guy that had to take the orders, collect the money, get the chow, distribute it and the change, and hope he didn't get shortchanged. He also had to listen to complaints: "Hey I wanted mustard, not catsup on my hot dog!"

Then there were the Kennedy Half Dollars that were minted at that time. Jeff S. bragged about how he bought a whole bunch of uncirculated ones and had them in a safety deposit box. He and I were doing a closeout inspection of the inside of the PSW tank one day. I was just inside the tank near the man hole, he had gone in ahead of me and was at the other end when an air hose outside the tank broke. The tank magnified the sound. While I was trying to decide whether to exit the tank or stay put, he let out a yell and crawled over to the man hole and out. We all told him that he was afraid he would never see those half dollars again.

At sea:

I also remember Jeff putting liquid detergent in the engine room bilges. We were operating on the surface in rough seas and he figured he would let it slosh around awhile and then pump it out and the bilges would be clean. Ha! When he tried to pump it out, the bilge pump got suds bound and wouldn't pump. Seems like he got the DA award for that!

Then there was the burial at sea for Leroy the Fly! He had managed to avoid getting trapped in the air conditioning in Machinery room #2 lower level for over a week after we left on patrol. The watch standers called him their mascot and named him Leroy. One day someone from up fwd came back to visit, Leroy landed on him and he swatted and killed Leroy. Leroy's remains were gathered up and placed in a special coffin made from the Hospital Corpsman's splints. A death certificate was prepared and when we surfaced on the way back from patrol, Leroy was thrown over the side.

How about the weight watchers club! I remember guys at the beginning of a patrol putting up a graph with their names and present weights plotted at the beginning and their goal at the end. All the projected goals were lower than present except for Norty, his goal was to gain weight! Remember a certain ELT named Dicky H. that was doing well until the cooks made sticky buns one morning. He normally skipped chow on his way from watch to his rack, but he had to stop and eat one, than another, until he ate 17! Needless to say, his chart showed an upward blip after he weighed in the next day. I also remember the mess-cooks sneaking into the Goat Locker while CPO Holmes was sleeping and putting weights in his pants pockets so he would weigh more on the scales when he weighed in.

Finally, do you remember an officer with the initials FASIII? When he would be on watch in the maneuvering room, he would set his dress uniform cap on the desk by the back door. A watch stander in the engine room would sneak up to the door and snatch his cap. When he discovered it missing, he would call for the Watch Supervisor to relieve him so he could go and find it. The watch supervisor would delay going to relieve him until the other watchstanders had time to totally disassemble the cap and hide all the pieces around the engine room.

Don, add whatever you want of this to the RAY page as you deem appropriate.

Thanks,