Shore Patrol

It was hot in Subic Bay, Republic of the Philippines. It was always hot. The kind of hot that drips down your back and off the end of your nose. The kind of hot that makes nylon shorts seem OK. And it was the other kind of hot. The frenzied hot. The heavy bass lines of the giant, neon clad rock and roll clubs pulsing down Magsaysay Drive kind of hot. Lipstick and short shorts kind of hot. San Miguel. Mojo. Grasshoppers and Red Horses. People pressed upon people, spilling out of, and then back into, every nook and cranny of Olongapo City. It was always one giant party when the fleet was in. And it was always hot.


Old timers would tell you, "You'll eat a big dinner, find a girl, get wasted, and wake up with a bunch of stupid t-shirts. And can't hardly spend $20 doing it." That was pretty close to true... kinda. It was a skill you had to learn though. And you didn't learn it on your first visit. The local population would likely have you headed back to the ship dizzy, spent, and relieved of your whole paycheck. In a single night. And you'd be grinning like the fool you were as you crossed the quarterdeck, rendering a salute that was more to prove that you were still able to keep upright than it was professional and respectful. The watchstander just sighs and waves you on. He wishes that was him.

Fast forward a dozen visits to Subic. Now I am that old timer. I know how to ride the jeepneys. "Suklee ko!!, driver. The ride is only 75 centavos. I gave you a peso." I know my way around, "(Rapping on the jeepney roof with my knucles) Bayedo. Mah-ma. Bayedo." I want to get off. I brushed off the street vendors, as respectfully as you can treat an insistent street vendor with a curt, "No. Station dito." I live here. A lie, but close enough. I was an old timer and couldn't be bothered. I was on my way to the record store. If you know who to look for, there in the back, is a guy who gives you a much better currency exchange rate than any of the official institutions lining the boulevard. Black market...Schmack market. More money is always better when you got this much living to get done in such a short amount of time.

One night I have shore patrol. Not in Olongapo, though. That's good. Olongapo is full of rowdy drunks. Mouthy fellas routinely getting their heads whapped upasideof by the Provost Marshalls and thrown in the back of the wagon. The PM's got little tolerance for mouthy, drunk squids. They'll tell you something once. You agree or you get smacked and cuffed. A simple situation, really. Even a drunk can come to understand it. Some drunks more quickly than others.

I also don't have the Subic City patrol. Subic City was where you went, if you didn't want too many prying navy eyes. It was a lot more laid back. It was a lot cheaper. And whatever you just asked is OK, as long as you've got "peso-nality". Yeah, I love you, no shit, but you'd better be able to pay. The biggest downside to Subic City was, if you crossed the line, they called the police, the guys who were already routinely shaking you down, instead of shore patrol. Then it got kinda ugly for the poor sap what got the police called on him. They were going to take him to jail, no question. They didn't care what he did so much as they knew he'd pay dearly to get out. We left dude after dude behind as the ship sailed. They was in a province jail, and what could we do about that? We'd eventually see them again in Guam, or Korea, or Pearl Harbor, or San Diego. This much I know. If you got put in the PI jail, it sucked to be you.

I had Shore Patrol in Barrio Baretta. A quiet oasis on the dirt road between frenzied Olongapo and the wild west town of Subic City. Baretta had no bands, only jukeboxes. My favorite place had a dirt floor and an old jukebox with David Allan Coe on it. As soon as I'd step off of the jeepney, a girl of about 9 would spot me and run over to the counter girl for a cold beer and a big peso. The new, smaller pesos wouldn't work in the jukebox. She'd throw the peso, a big one, in the juke box, press the buttons for my favorite DAC song, and meet me at the entry (no walls, so it wasn't really a doorway). With a giant grin she'd hand me the San Miguel while crooning along with Dave, in her endearing Philippine-Southern drawl (think corn pone meets fish sauce), "Dronnk. And toh-tahlly drained..." Good times.

So, I had shore Patrol in the Barrio that night. And it was boring. The place had as many resturants as bars, which most of the young squids on a mission saw as a waste and therefore didn't bother to stop. Fine by me. Don't need the hassle. I shore Patrolled for a while, but it was just me and a few others walking up and down a dirt road, in our dress whites, doing nothing. I thunk up a plan in the quiet boredom of that hot, sticky night. I put it into play after my next break, because I knew that a) it would be suspicious if I didn't show up for my break, and b) I knew I'd have 55 full minutes before they were expecting me back again.

I finished my break and moseyed easily down my side of the street, slowly making my way to the far end of the small barrio. I stuck my head into one quiet place where all the girls were sitting around playing cards and talking. Baretta was like that, real quiet. I stepped in, pulled out my wallet and bought ladies drinks all around. That got their attention. Then I handed one of them a small tip and said to her, "Sit outside and let me know if you see any Shore Patrol." She looked at the 20 Peso bill and then back at me. Then back at the bill. She cocked her head. "Ummm... you ARE Shore Patrol." Good point. So I told her, "Good point. Tell me if you see any other Shore Patrol, OK?" "Sure. OK." And, with her tasking now clear to her, she took a seat outside.

I wasn't stupid. I wasn't going to try to sneak a drink on duty. There was plenty of time for doing too much of that anyway. And I didn't want to be on restriction for something stupid like that. If you were restricted to the ship back in the day, before it became quite so pansy as it is now, the navy ships I was on would only count the days the ship was in port as days of restriction. They figured, rightly so, that when the ship was at sea nobody could leave, so it couldn't count as your punishment. That was a killer bad deal for you if you got put on restriction because, in order to burn off your 45 days of restriction could literally take you 4 to 6 months, depending how much we were underway. I wanted no part of that foolishness. But if i got caught in a dark corner, smooching up on a pretty lady when I was supposed to be patrolling a dead dirt road beat... well, slap him on the wrist and give him another night of Shore Patrol. Heh heh, boys'll be boys. What you gonna do?

OK, this went long. More stories later. I have them writ down so I won't forget.

I love you no shit, buy me a helicopter, out
Ramblin' Ed