Monday, March 15, 2010

Mail call!! at the Shipslog




Above is a mail plane on the carrier. Once they drop the mail. Helos will grab mail for the other ships around and fly theirs out, butg us carrier guys got it first.


There is nothing like mail call in the field.



Paula of ‘paulinescountrytales’ was talking on her blog about mail call. She is the first civilian type person I have heard call it that. Sonnyboy was the last one I remember talking about mail much and he always said, ‘I call for the mail every Saturday morning.’




Anyway it brought back so many memories. My first experience with a ‘mail call’ was on Parris Island. The DI would stand in the center of the squad bay and call out names. You were to run as fast as possible to get the mail. He loved to get one that had perfume on it. He would hold the subject there in the center of the squad bay and describe the woman who had sent it. Sometimes she was beautiful, sitting with his best buddy as she wrote sweet-nothings to the Jarhead locked up on Parris Island.








Sometimes he would yell air mail and sail the letter in the general direction of the receiver. He actually made mail call fun. He could also be mean and cutting. Mostly it was a fun time because he knew morale rested a lot on Mail call. If a guy got several letters the DI would jokingly suggest the receiver share with some unfortunate who got no mail.
I don’t know how a girl feels about mail, but there is nothing that lifts your spirits as a boy, like a letter. A letter from that special girl (wife) with a ‘SWAK’ on the back. Sherry and I started putting little notes under the stamp; it was fun to ease that stamp off to find a little note:
‘Darling I love you’, ‘I miss you much’, ‘how about a…..’ etc.
I still have every letter Sherry wrote to me on a Med Cruise. I made a book of them.








Sherry kept the ones I wrote her, and they were stolen along with some other stuff we left upstairs in a house we rented out. My USN letters to her are somewhere in our storage building.





There is a strange story about the thefts from the attic. Do you remember the ‘Lomas-Fargo’ robbery 1997 in Charlotte, NC of $17.5 million dollars? The accepted leader of the gang was Steve Chambers. He was a child, a member of the family living in our little rental house at the time of the thefts from the attic. Reckon……. Naw, I doubt if he took them. I do miss a little black and white sheep skin rug that was there though. HA!
Thanks for coming by the log,

Nite Shipslog
PS:
I still like mail call, even though our mail call isn’t but every two or three weeks.
**************
Wife who put
Husband in doghouse soon find him in Cathouse.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Man who drive like Hell, bound to get there.

7 comments:

shirl72 said...

I just looked at the pictures of MJ on the tractor. I can't believe that dog. I guess she
is not afraid of falling off anything. She was
on the Motor Bike when Mark can over to the house. I guess she will ride anything. Hope she never falls then she may loose her nerve.
That is one funny dog.

Shirl

Anonymous said...

What a beautiful entry of yours, reminding me indeed of the time, when people would sit down and use a pencil instead of a keyboard.
Meeting my wife "in the net" had both of it though.
Am still hopefull that my son will love to write with a pen as well.

Paula said...

I learned to call it mail call from Mel who served 18 months in Japan. We wrote to each other almost everyday. He told me the same thing you said how much mail call meant to the guys.

betty said...

I think it is neat you still have Sherry's letters after all these years; sorry her's got stolen though. I have heard how uplifting it is for soldiers to hear their names called out for mail.

betty

Coffeeveggie addict. said...

Very lovely p0st,i always love to keep mails even fr0m th0se suit0rs mail,and h0nestly I still miss th0se times that I can recive 3times in a week,the feeling is quite g0od reading th0se w0rds,unlike the email,i just feel n0thing reading it.
Have a nice day jack and sherry!
Hugss,
blue

Sheila Y said...

I miss getting personal letters in the mail too...we have mostly turned to email to correspond. I do send (and receive) letters to an older friend I met in England in 1992. Take care, Sheila

Dar said...

Things sure have changed, except for the mailcall for our honored and respected servicemen and women. How important is that, to hear from anyone from their homeland. Thanks for sharing these heartfelt memories of yours and Sherry...love that you are a romantic to the core to keep Sherry's love letters...so sad she lost hers...I still have every letter my boys wrote while serving. They still mean the world to me.
That MJ is something else...what a hoot...
oh, did you ever get the slab layed?
Bless Ya