Friday, April 02, 2010

Overheard

So, I'm lookin' at the kewl collection of photos of the USS Macon which DirtCrashr linked and said to Tam, "Oooo, you should see the mooring mast for the Macon, it's like a combination switching engine, scenic elevator and radio tower!"

Tam spins around. "There was an airship named after Mencken?!"

[...long pause...] "Oh, Macon!"

"Yep," sez I, "But how wondrous if they had. The USS Mencken would have to be equipped with a pointy ram and go around deflating enemy airships!"

O, happy, happy world, that'd have such vehicles innit....

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think for seeing that I'll put on my Glenn Miller record, and ponder what could have been. (Or be, should we be fortunate)

Jim

og said...

The pictures of the head most intrigued me.

The lightweight aluminum sinks make enough sense. The curious thing is either a: They were too puritanical to show the crappers, or b: the crappers are actually rectangular holes in the ship out of which you hang your nether regions to let loose on the earthbound.

BobG said...

I'd like to see a USS PJ O'Rourke.

Drang said...

The Mencken, the Dacron, , and the Shannon Dougherty...

wv: mensavvr. Er, no long pig for me, thanks.

Drang said...

BTW, did you see the announcement ?Wreck of Airship USS Macon Added to National Register of Historic Places?

Justthisguy said...

And they deserve to get it good and hard.

WV: lallol. Yeah, Los Angeles is laughable.

Justthisguy said...

Now, there's a Sousa march for this one: "The Aviators."

There is a Sousa march for any and every occasion. At the second Clinton inauguration a band played "The Bride-Elect." They shoulda played, "Our Flirtations" IMHO.

The Marine Band missed a chance to play "Daughters of Texas" for the second inauguration of W.

If those ignant doodahs in the current administration had had any class, culture, or knowlege, they could have had "The Belle of Chicago" for the Obama inauguration.

Justthisguy said...

Og, I think the rectangular holes might have been windows, to let the daylight in. If only the Navy had listened to Arnstein about the proportions of the fins...

WV: punsions. Sometimes I indulge my self in a puncheon full of whine, yes I do.

Second WV: (first one didn't work) fixesses. Yup, Bobby and Tam can fix things.

NotClauswitz said...

That's a beautiful thought, the barbed torpedo-ram equipped USS Mencken!

One of my other favorite Old Navy stories is of the inter-war period USS Submarine R-14 that in 1921 broke-down on a search-and-rescue mission 100 miles off Hawaii. The captain said, "We're sailors!" so they rigged a mast, boom, and sails, and sailed it back - took 64 hours to get to Hilo.

Sorry this rotator-cuff thing has impinged on my daily blogasaurus...