A long, long time ago, what seems like a different life now, I was a Sailor.Towards the end of my teenage years, I came to a point where I knew I had todo something with my life, and at the time, that something was not college. Myadoptive father was in the Navy, so I decided to follow in his footsteps andjoined the Navy myself in October of 1995. From June of 1996 to July of 1999 Iwas assigned to the USS Platte, an oiler. During this time I made the bestfriends of my life, met my wife, and travelled across Europe and even into theMiddle East.

It was a different world back then, back before 9/11. It was a brief time ofpeace, a period of national calm that came after the cold war was over, andbefore the war on terror began. I went on two six-month deployments to theMediterranean, Med cruises we called them. We would travel from port to port,spending anywhere from a couple of days to three weeks in port, followed by aweek or two underway.

In port, my friends and I would make a point of going out and seeing thesights during the day, before taking in the local beverages at night. I lovedthe architecture, I loved the age of some of the buildings and castles that wefound. Back here in the States, if a home gets to be one hundred years old,its an amazing thing, but over there structures built by man could last forhundreds and hundreds of years.

Sometimes, when we were out to sea, the water would be so calm it looked likeglass. Other times the waves splashed over the weather decks and wouldthreaten to wash an unwary sailor overboard. During those times I’d have totake medicine from the ship’s doctor to try to ward off the seasickness thatwould invariably come. I never got over it, in three years I never got my “sealegs” like most of the guys did. But mostly it wasn’t a problem, most of thetime we avoided the rough weather and stayed in the calmer seas to do ourrefueling of other ships. Most times the waves were small enough that I couldstand on the edge of the ship and watch flying fish dart between the crests ofthe waves. And sometimes, I would close my eyes and smell the salt in the air.