Tales from a Yardbird, Volume 1.
[This is an edited re-post from a prior Substack post on September 12, 2025.]
I usually pen these several days ahead. This week I did not, and yesterday as I draft this, a Shot Was Heard ‘Round America. I do not feel like writing. I do not feel like being funny. But perhaps I should. Maybe this is exactly what God wants me to do: use the gift he gave me for lifting spirits. After all, everyone is angry, with the possible exception of those keeping their heads in the sand. We don’t need another angry writer ranting. In fiction, we can’t leave the action and trials running non-stop. The readers/viewers/listeners can’t handle it emotionally. They feel a sense of relief when the main characters get out of danger, even if just for a bit.
Let’s see if I can help both you and me escape the danger of reality, if only for a few minutes.
I used to work for the only facility in America to recycle nuclear-powered ships and submarines. If you’re like me, you have two immediate thoughts after that sentence. 1. Aren’t submarines ships? And 2. Where do they put the recycle triangle thingy on a sub?
Yes, despite the claim by literally every American to ever call themselves a ‘submariner’... Despite that claim by them that submarines are “boats,” I offer this evidence. The word “ship” is literally in its name. U.S.S. Ohio is an abbreviation of United States SHIP Ohio. Period. Which is an ironic thing to type, because by writing out the word period between two periods, I’ve actually made an ellipsis… 😈
More on Periods later.
You see, anything and everything that has to do with naval nuclear-power is slow and engineered to the umpteenth degree. It’s called the Rickover mindset. Hyman G. Rickover was the Mack Daddy of taking the Navy into N-Power in a safe manner. He was a control freak; lacked all social skills; and a technical expert. I imagine if he were in elementary school in 2025, he’d be in the “spectrum” classes building space stations out of Legos. I can only imagine the agony his kids went through if they got bread crumbs in the butter, or finished making a PB & J sandwich with a little jelly oozing onto the crust.
But you know how (if you repair your own car) you curse out engineers with all the energy of Hades? (If you don’t repair your own car, this happens because engineers do things like put the rear spark plugs on a 6-cylinder transaxle engine underneath the intake manifold; or install oil filters in places where you need three elbows in your arm to reach.)
So imagine nuclear power being designed and run by thousands of them. And when those reactors and hulls become unusable… and the sub gets parked on a pier for a couple of decades so it can half-life down to a lower radiation level… those engineers haven’t gone away. Unfortunately, they’ve found lady nerds and spawned. New engineers with nerdy little glasses and PHD lined diapers are crawling out of nerdy wombs all the time. Don’t believe me? Here they are in mating season, which is where they learn about a different type of Hymen <ahem>.
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I was a shipwright, the trade which builds dock-settings, platforms, scaffolds, stairs, guardrails, etc. The riggers were the trade that rig the cranes to move heavy things. When the only thing left in the dry-dock is the reactor, a team of those two trades (along with just a couple of welders and shipfitters) use giant jacks to move the reactor and its leftover submarine hull fifteen feet into the air, which helps it match the height of the barge it is about to be placed on. This is done a few inches at a time, until enough height exists to get another thirty inch tall concrete block into the new row being built. Get it? It’s like the world’s most dangerous game of Jenga. And it takes round the clock work for about a week to happen. Why? Engineers.
After every movement, the “package” has to be measured with transits and its exact position noted. Temporary stacks of oak pieces have to be “just so.” Rows of concrete blocks have to be “just so.” And eventually the track pieces at the top have to be “just so.” But… six ton blocks aren’t always identical. Things aren’t always perfectly flat. Shims and such have to be used. Metal moves when it is welded. Etc. On one of those lateral movement operations, when the package was about half on the rows of blocks and half on the barge, something horrible (to the engineers) happened.
A track weld broke. (Cue shocking, dramatic music.)
We shipwrights worked for a foreman whose name I won’t use, but we called him Big Bird because he was a tall, lanky… what’s the technical term…? Doofus. Yes, that is it.
After the track broke, the engineers split in two and doubled, and they did that at least twice, like amoeba in neckties.
Big Bird: “It’s gonna be a while. You guys go hide.”
5 Bored Shipwrights: “Where?”
Big Bird: “Go into the break shack. I’ll come get you when we need something.” (On the barge was a twenty-foot metal hut with table, benches, coffee pot…)
5 Bored Shipwrights: “Why don’t they just weld it?”
The Heavens split open and toads began to fall.
Big Bird: “They can’t make new welds without new paperwork. ALWAYS work to the correct paper.”
5 Bored Shipwrights: “Where the eff are all these frogs coming from?”
So into the little shack we went. Conversations ranged from gals we’d “dated” over the years; to favorite music and movies; to alternate movies we would make if we were Hollywood producers; to concerts; to foreign languages we learned in junior high… You get the idea. We were on 12-hour shifts and had nothing to do for about ten of them.
We tried to play pinochle, which is basically a religion in the shipwrights, but “We aren’t paying you to play cards” was stipulated by Big Bird more than once. Which is too bad. One guy took German in junior high. The only thing he remembered was “Ich habe keine beine” which means “I have no legs.” After a long, tired laugh by the rest of us, we realized how that might be conversationally useful:
German Tourist looking for Bremerton-to-Seattle ferry station, in very passable English: “Excuse me. Can you please point me toward the ferry?”
Shipwright in horrible German: “I have no legs.”
But “legs” is also a pinochle term, so that phrase became our personal cheat code when illegally table talking against other lunchtime shipwright pinochle teams for weeks to come.
We returned to work at 0400 the next day, discovering that the overnight crew had gone through the same struggles.
Big Bird: “You guys can’t hide in the shack today. There’re too many white hats around.” (The managers and engineers wore white hard hats. You know—since they’re the good guys.)
5 Bored Shipwrights: “Say no more…”
Big Bird, as we’re walking away: “Wait! Where will you guys be?”
5 Bored Shipwrights:
We went to all the muster and break shacks around the shipyard, showing the other shipwright crews how awesome we were since we were on “hot standby.” Once their supervisors caught on, that was quashed. Mind you, this lasted for 2.5 days until new paperwork authorizing new welds was issued. I’m counting a little time for the welding in that, too, but once it had been performed, we were all set to begin “pushing” the package again. Until…
The other track broke.
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The 2-millionish-pound reactor had sat on the tracks far longer than ever before. The track at the other end broke as soon as the RC package started to cross over one of the welded intersections. Any guesses on how long it took to investigate? Measure? Plan? Write new paper? Fix? Yep. Another 2.5 days. Five bored shipwrights swapping war stories for five days of long, horrible overtime. We circled back to older conversations, including the fact that at that time, women were still not allowed to serve on submarine crews.
Me: “They should allow women to serve on subs. They already serve on surface ships.”
4 Bored Shipwrights: “Says who!”
Me: “Says me. I’m the only Navy vet here!”
One of the 4 Bored Shipwrights: “I was on an aircraft carrier!”
Me: “You fetched coffee for the Air Boss. That doesn’t count. I was on a surface combat ship.”
4 Bored Shipwrights: “That wouldn’t work!”
Me: “You know how women who live together always sort of… wind up on the same… you know……….. cycle?”
4 Bored Shipwrights: “Exactly!” (Trying to use my point against me.)
Me: “Put ‘em all on one sub. One week a month, they’d be the most dangerous crew in the fleet…”
4 Bored Shipwrights: 🤨
Me: 😑
4 Bored Shipwrights: 🤔
Me: “Think about it…”
4 Bored Shipwrights: “What would you call it? Red October?” High-5s and raucous laughter abounded at their self-perceived genius stroke.
Me: “Too cliche… I think it would have to be Crimson Tide…” <winkity-wink-wink>
A few months later, 9/11 happened. By then I was building dock-settings for active subs getting ready to go into dry-dock for overhaul. Things changed. The shipwrights building the settings were deemed “essential”—part of several hundred or so employees (out of 8,500 at the time) who still had to come to work the next day. It was odd seeing a Navy destroyer (from the base up in Everett) parked in the inlet outside the shipyard, guarding us from…? Nobody knew. A day earlier, terrorists had turned jumbo-jets into “assault jumbo-jets.”
I could see Gunner’s Mates—my old job in the Navy—manning 50-cals and Mk 38 25mm chain guns, ready to defend us from a boat full of explosives or an airplane full of fuel. In that moment, the sex of the Patriot Sailor no longer mattered. It was a new decade, century, and millennium. And a new world in which humor and respect are even more essential was born.
Somehow, in two dozen years, our country went from “Never Forget” to “Are you willing to die for speaking the truth?”. Here is the Ultimate Truth.
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Friends, it is my hope that you found just a moment of laughter in all this. I found it therapeutic to write, allowing me to focus on something besides the Doom Scroll of social media for a while. Please consider sharing to your own socials & inner circle!
