Everything Fred – Part 9

24 March 2021

I was sent for permanent duty to Communications Station New Orleans located at the old ammunition depot for the U.S. Navy out from Belle Chase. New Orleans wasn’t new to me. There are two places that call to Mississippians: Memphis and New Orleans.

I spent a lot of time in Memphis as an undergraduate at Ole Miss and did the requisite things – like watch the ducks march from the fountain to the roof at the Hotel Peabody and the Ole Miss pep rally in the lobby of the Peabody.

New Orleans, on the other hand, was to become my home for the next two years. Actually, my very first visit to the city was with my cousin Jimmie with her sister Jo. It was also my first hurricane at Pat O’Briens. Actually, I had two and learned to never do that again. That had to be around 1966-67. It was also my first Mardi Gras. I loved the first one. Later, I was trapped in the city for three more and learned to steer clear of the city when that time of year rolled around. I guess I’m just not a big partier.

The Coast Guard Communications Station is really outside of Belle Chase and very isolated from the city. It consists of two thousand acres. A lot of the acreage is old navy ammo storage dumps with the rest is antennas for the radio station. There were two main buildings when I was there – the base itself with a dining hall, a rec hall, a garage for the vehicles and tractors (to mow under the antennas) and a dormitory. I had a private room to myself in the dorm. After sharing berthing space with 15 of my closest friends, it was paradise.

The other building was located a mile or two away and it was the “radio shack” which housed the commanding officer (CO), executive officer (XO) and the radio room. The radio room was about 900 square feet with stations along the periphery and the officer in charge’s (OinC) desk in the middle.

Next to the OinC was a row of teletypes. There were one Morse code site and one voice communications room – glassed in but away from the sounds of the teletypes and Morse code dits and dahs. We generally rotated duty among the teletype, voice, and code station. I had gotten pretty good with Morse code – I was up to 30 words a minute in copying code and it got to the point that the OinC would often put me on code when an SOS came in. I worked several of those during my stay at the base. There were others that were better than me in code but if they weren’t on duty, it was me on the code desk.

I was even better on teletype. As I previously wrote, the Coast Guard taught me Morse code and typing at the same time. To send a message on the teletype, you would type the message out on the keyboard. It would generate a punched paper tape. To send the message, you fed the punched tape through a reader which sent the message at 100 words per minute over the air waves or by landline. By the time I finished my tour at the station, I was able to type a leader on the tape, plug it into the reader/sender and then keep up with the sending of the message. I could type 100 words per minute with no errors. You couldn’t make errors. That meant all kinds of problems in trying to correct them in a message that had been sent out.

Sitting the code desk was kind of miserable if there was nothing exciting going on. We would receive weather reports from ships at sea and there were often 20 or 30 of those a watch. They were all encoded in a standard format that anyone could read if they knew how. I do remember copying one weather report from a ship in the Gulf that was in 80 foot seas. I was glad I wasn’t on board that one.

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I made some good friends at the station and one in particular became a lifelong friend – Lester Theriot – yeah, a true blood Cajun. He was an LSU fan and we got together to make a plaque that held 100 years of Ole Miss/LSU football scores. We passed that plaque back and forth for years. Unfortunately, LSU is ahead of Ole Miss in the win column. Les passed last year. I still hear from his wife Debbie. When they had their son Colin, I would send Ole Miss memorabilia just to piss Les off.

At the time, I thought you could eat better, cheaper in New Orleans than any place in the world. The food was unbelievable. I didn’t really eat at any of the fancy places but once, places like Antoine’s, Court of Two Sisters, Brennan’s. I instead stuck to the hole-in-the-wall restaurants that served good, cheap food. One of my favorite places of Mosca’s.

There are two major bridges across the Mississippi River in New Orleans. At the time, the one that crossed over to the west bank near downtown New Orleans was called the Greater New Orleans Bridge (now two bridges called the Crescent City Connection). The other bridge was upriver and called the Huey P. Long Bridge. To get to Mosca’s from New Orleans, you crossed the Huey P. and traveled to the boonies. I mean literally. This place was a shack in the middle of nowhere. It was an all wooden building with checkerboard red and white plastic table cloths. It was also the absolute best Italian food I’ve ever eaten. The radio station was on the same side of the river and it was a 25 minute drive from the CG Station – and it was worth it.

I got in the habit of jogging around the base. I think it was three miles around the base and I would jog on top of the levee. What was really strange was to walk below the levee and see a ship above your head and seemingly above the levee. I often wondered what would happen if one missed a turn and plowed into the levee.

I might have made a career out of the Coast Guard (20 years) but for one incident at the radio station. The commander was Chief Warrant Officer (CWO) Cobb from Cobb County Georgia. I got along well with him – we both spoke southern. He pulled me from radio watch and assigned me Officer of the Deck (OOD) duty at the base. I was the daytime OOD and in charge of pretty much everything – dining hall, dorms, rec room, grass mowing, etc..

At the time, whoever was OinC at the radio station during the day would call the OOD (me) and request meals be sent down for lunch and dinner. Someone from the base would load up the requested meals and deliver them to the radio shack. After a while, Cobb noticed that more often than not, no one would take the used dishes back to the dining hall. He pitched a fit and ordered me to never allow another delivery of meals. If the radio watch wanted meals, they had to send someone up to base to get them.

Usually, during the day, the OinC was a Radio Master Chief (RMC). I forget his name but he called me one day and “ordered” me to have the meals delivered. I patiently tried to explain to him that Mr. Cobb had “ordered” they never be delivered again. He continued to press. I knew better than to go against the commander of the entire base and told the chief “no.” He said, “I’ll remember this.”

Eventually, I rotated back to the radio shack and the RMC did everything in his power to punish me – sticking me on mid-watches, making me the janitor of the radio shack – literally every demeaning task he could come up with. He later looked over at me and said “I told you I would get you.” I figured it the Coast Guard allowed people like that to stay in service, it didn’t need me. It was getting close to my enlistment to be completed (4 years) and instead of re-enlisting, I applied to graduate school at the University of Mississippi.

Stay tuned!

Author: searcyf@mac.com

After 34 years in the classroom and lab teaching biology, I'm ready to get back to traveling and camping and hiking. It's been too long of a break. I miss the outdoors and you can follow my wanderings on this blog.

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