Building 10, Winter Harbor's Administrative Hub

"Hey! You work out!"

The NSGA Chapel & Library shared the same building.

As a Latter-day Saint, I was part of a religious minority at the command. Other than myself and Commander Tucker, there was only one other LDS Family on the base while we were there.

When I saw a flyer posted in the barracks advertising a bible discussion group, I couldn't resist becoming a part of it and offering another insight. The meetings were moderated by protestant sailors, some of which had a little animosity toward Mormonism. But I did my best to remain diplomatic. I'm sorry to say that the attitudes of some of the moderators turned some other sailors off completely to Christianity as a whole.

Bachelor Enlisted Quarters (BEQ aka "Home Sweet Home")

Life in the barracks is much like life in a college dorm, except you have tennants ranging in age from 18 to their 40s (some single sailors choose to live off base). I served as a barracks petty-officer for the wing that I lived in and managed to go an entire ten months without having a roommate. My secret? Seaman Tuttle. Like Hawkeye Pierce's childhood imaginary friend who got drafted into the Army when he got drafted (From an episode of M*A*S*H), I concocted an imaginary roommate. I got tired of seeing a bare mattress and empty shelves on the other side of my room, so I made the bed and put some items on the shelves. Every time a new sailor was assigned to the room, the MS that accompanied him would see Tuttle's belongings and say, "Oh, it looks like someone's already in this room. We'll put you down the hall." When I came in off of mid watches, I would even sign Tuttle into the "Do not wake" log. If anybody asked, I said that Tuttle was a CTM who worked in the Classic Wizard building.

Corea, Maine, home of NSGA Operations

I still have no idea what Classic Wizard is exactly. I think it involves satelites. But I could be wrong.

There was also a basket ball court on the premesis and it wasn't unusual to find a handful of sailors playing a game at midnight or one AM to kill time and stay awake on a mid watch.

Another way that my duty section would occupy ourselves on slow watches was to contribute to our aluminum recycling project.

Bldg 85 inside "The Elephan Cage"

While we did try and do some work while we were in Building 85, I tried not to miss an opportunity to get outside and take in some sun. Since this was a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, there were no windows we could look out of. So if you wanted to get some fresh air and keep from being completely pasty white, you'd steal a minute or two during the day to get outside. I would take my breaks whenever my friend Jeremy Para stepped out for a smoke. He would walk out from the Mat-Shop and say, "Wanna go for a second-hand-smoke?"

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," I said. This exchange found its way into the dialogue of Barracks Rats.

Winter was a much more difficult time for me. I've dealt with Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD) all of my life and with Maine being the farthest north of the lower forty-eight states, winter days were very short. We came and went from work at 7:00 AM and 7:00 PM and during the winter, it was dark at those times of the day.

The Schooner Club

Of course, we didn't work all of the time. I enjoyed the "2-48-2-72" Schedule they had us on. We worked twelve-hour shifts but you never worked more than two days or two mids in a row.

Every military base has to provide leasure activities for their personnel, one of my favorite places to hang out on base was The Schooner Club. You could play pool, have dinner and, once a month, sing karaoke! I was usually the designated driver for karaoke night.