5/11/20

I worked with this guy Leo, who was a Vietnam vet who went through the Panama Canal, which was a big deal. Going through the canal, while they were dropping the ship through the locks, he got drunk and passed out in a lifeboat. When they didn’t make rollcall they found him and he got court martialed. They put him in the bottom of the ship in the hold in this chicken wire cage that had rats running all over it and through it. He was on bread and water and had a bucket to shit and piss in. he said when the ship docked and tied up to the pier that the rats ran out of the ship and down the rope back and forth like it was a party.

[“You don’t mind a gross story do you,” Ron asks of the Land Lady, and she answers, “No more rats, pigs, roaches or bed bugs please,” and Ron informs, “male genitalia,” and she chortles, “Okay!”]

Well, Leo was in the Marines, at boot camp in Paris Island.

My father was a marine who also served in Vietnam. He just donated his stimulus check to a wounded veterans fund.

So there comes this time that the men have to line up naked so that the corpsman [medic] can check them out and make sure they’re okay. And this one black guy that was next to him had this big lump of white stuff on the head of his penis that looked like Philadelphia cream cheese. The officer of course makes fun of him and calls him Cheese Dick, and the Corp man takes him away to address the issue. It was said really, if you think about it, that he didn’t have a father to show him, look, you need to pull that foreskin back and clean it. Well, for the rest of boot camp that guy’s name was Cheese Dick.