Landmarks of Your Personal Past

The Long Beach Naval Station, where I was based on board the USS McKean DD784. The McKean was sold to Turkey and dismantled for parts.
The Naval Station is no more. The second pic is of the tower in pic 1 getting demolished.

They took away my ship. Here it is again.

THE pub for the Federal Navy in Wilhelmshaven - the Cog ('Kogge'), here as in the late 60's/early 70's



Actually, there were two pubs in that house (one called posh "restaurant", the other cabin. We mostly could only go in one - namely that one which wasn't occupied by Fletcher crews.

Ditto.

When I dropped out of art school in New York, my parents insisted that I enroll in a college, any college, so the next Fall I enrolled at U of I, Chicago Circle Campus. For an entire year, I hung out in The Pit all day and played cards.

What was the lady's name?

Then again I don't suppose that the US Navy would use a woman's name for one of their ships....

USS McKean

That's the USS McKean, a destroyer.

what do you call a hula-hoop with a nail in it?
A navel destroyer....................

Ouch!

Thanks Walter. That link tells an exciting story. Specially where it sank the Soviet sub. Fortunately for me, we never saw action during my stay on it. We did get a good scare, during the Cuban missile crisis.

What did you do on that ship?

This is a photo from of the Brown Derby Restaurant in 1946. It probably didn't look much different when my cousins and I were taken by our aunt and uncle back in the fifties, maybe 1955. Then we were treated to the movie - Oklahoma - probably at the RKO Pantages, but just a guess.

Musso and Frank Grill - ate there a few times. They're famous as an old hangout, including for cocktails, but I was there before I'd tried my first Manhattan on my 21st birthday (not there, as it happens. Wonder if I can find a pic of Edna Earle's Fogcutters..)

(I see Musso's referred to in books about old LA)

Then there's the Nicodell - oy vey.
My father and mother planned this debacle (to me) for me. My mother made me a bright kelly green corduroy jumper (oh, god) and they arranged for us to eat there when the Notre Dame team did, there in LA for the USC game, of course. I suppose I was seventeen. I walked by the team on the way to the rest room. I'm sure I didn't even look in their direction. (oh, god, again).
Looking back I still cringe, but with later knowledge, I see it as the last memorable time we were a happy family.

Uh, here's that Brown Derby -


and the Nickodell - (my cut and paste sense is off)

Navigator.

As a conscript - in (all the year) 1970.

(Then, four times for a couple of weeks each until 1973 as reserve exercises again. After that, "they" noticed that I was on the 'wrong' boat and I became navigator (later deputy fleet navigator [reserve] on a LCM .... and the first and only petty officer in the German without having taken any petty officer courses.)

You brat! *laughs..

I think Walter, CI, and I took a tour around that campus. Indeed, if I'm right, that was the campus where the bus nearly took off without me as I was still busy looking at the stuff in the Mies van der Rohe built museum and couldn't afterwards find the group.

This type of LCM (have in on that and three or four others, too)

The world famous Wayside Inn: Where I was treated to one of my favorite birthday meals. Duck with orange sauce....

I know. I wasted their money and feel ashamed because of that.
Isn't the Brown Derby about the ugliest building you've ever seen? Is that where Lucy, Ethel and Fred saw William Holden who ended up with a salad on his head?