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inspiredcreativity — Me in an Engine Room, age 19
Published: 2009-11-21 00:27:33 +0000 UTC; Views: 6434; Favourites: 9; Downloads: 255
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I decided to make you suffer with yet another photo of me. Somehow, there are only two photos of me in an engine-room, ever. So, blurry mess that this is, it is all I have. It is 1975 and I was 19 years old.The boilers were 1000 psi sinuous header. The ambient temperature we worked in was 110°F to 135°F (43.33°C to 57.22°C). It is a steam ship so it is dripping with humidity. This is a small engine room because it is the Academy ship, The Golden Bear, which has now been made into razor blades.
The Academy was a turning point in my life, mostly as an escape from home, and suddenly being accepted by my shipmates.
The Merchant Marine is very different from the Navy. We are civilians and work for private companies making large salaries. I did serve some years in the US Navy Reserves (Lieutenant Commander). I was forced to do it to get my education subsidized with a relatively small grant.
I had very negative feelings about the Navy and refused to do any of my required duties. But they kept promoting me, LOL.
My time around the Navy showed me that it was an inherently abusive system that squashed innovation, incentive, and fostered abuse by officers who had no working knowledge of a ship's systems. I lost all respect for the institution.
Our Academy Training ship used Sinuous Head Boilers and Turbines. The Fireroom was where the Boilers were All of the ships I worked on, except for the Exxon Galveston, were Steam Turbine ships. These two videos shows roughly what our Training Ship Main Engine Room looked like, only ours was larger:
SS American Victory Engine Room
MATSON S.S Lurline
Video Steam turbine ship engine room tour part 1
Video Steam turbine ship engine room tour part 2
Video SS Norway's Engine Room
Video SS Norway Engine Room Adventure
Video Supertanker DIESEL Engine Room Tour
Video Diesel Ship Engine Room MSC Napoli
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Comments: 64
Cool. Good memories. You fit here, with those who appreciate you...
Feeling as though we fit in is so hard, especially since, no matter where you are in community or relationship, there are those who forget kindness and goodwill, and get grumpy, judgmental, jealous, etc.
It is not easy being an artist sort, or a human being for that matter.
We are none of us perfect, and that makes life not so easy.
We must focus on the big picture, remove ourselves from stressful situations sometimes, make a life that fits us, offer the best we can for the time and space we find ourselves in at any moment.
It is nice to think back on good chapters of our lives and happy memories... though of course, only the present moment it real.
How hard that can be to remember-
A happy Sunday to you, Matthew with Two T's...
Sincerely,
Merton
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Thanks Merton. When we are young, we simply don't know any better, unless we have a mentor or someone who cares enough explain such things. when you are young, everything is intense.
Have you joined the GLBT Pride Club [link]
It was started by a gay young man
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True, Matthew.
Ty for the info
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Good to see you happy after your difficult youth...
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It was the tuning point. I was scared to go. My father pushed in that direction, but as a deck officer. When I got there, everyone got a tour of the engine room, which was dripping slime, black oil, lube oil, dark as a tomb, you had to climb down flight after flight of accommodation ladders, down into the very bowels of the ship, where there were massive turbines and huge boilers, pipes in mazes, cables withering around everywhere you looked. I thought to myself, "This is me." I immediately requested to change for Deck to Engine, not caring what my father thought anymore.
I had been so very alone and isolated before. We went through two weeks of hazing and abuse before school started, loosing one-third of the entire class to it. But it also bound us together. Fo the first time, guys were accepting me and even liking me. I am not capable of putting up a facade, so I knew they were liking me for real. We had little in common. I was never into guy things. But we now had ships and engineering and engines in common.
They could not believe I had never had a milkshake, did not know what sex was really about, or any number of other things, but instead of mocking me, there was enthusiasm to bring me up to speed. It turned out I was rather good at this engineering stuff (who would have guessed), but of course, I was as slow as ever and had to study all the time.
So yes, they were relatively good years, although I was stressed a lot the first year. I had only enough money saved to get through the first trimester. We went to school all year, in three semesters, with one of them at sea on a ship. I had to do well enough to earn a scholarship, get a grant, and eventually loans. But because I was compressing 4 years into 3, I was taking some of the hardest classes immediately. But I made it Ok. Then the school started helping me.
I was also selling my blood plasma every friday until my veins collapsed. I got a super-vaccine injection for lock-jaw, which turned me into an antibody factory. They were making vaccine from my blood plasma. I had no money. When everyone else went home for the holidays, I would be alone or with just a few at the academy, with no meals. That's how I found out you can get drunk on watermelon. If you starve yourself, your blood sugar levels hit rock bottom. Then eat half a watermelon and you get a massive sugar rush. I had been tutoring more and more people for free, so the school decided to pay me a small stipend to help me eat and buy toothpaste, etc.
Those were the good-old-days.
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Thank you so much for the answer!!
So glad to know you...
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My pleasure, at least you don't mind my long answers—some do. It is a fast paced world.
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No, I don't mind... I pretty like them indeed
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I generally was. Despite the heat, the slime, the grease, very long hours, and the pressure of responsibility, I was thriving in it. Pipes are easier to understand than people are, LOL. The real work after school was a different ballgame.
It is not as bad you might think because you are supported by a bunch of buddies. Of course if they had found out I was gay, I would have been a goner. I will never forget the how they damn near killed a boy suspected of being a thief. He was crippled. Taming wild animals can be dangerous, you never know when their true nature will surface, like the chimpanzee that tore the face of that woman.
Later...
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id only heard about the part of not being able to be yourself
its nice 2 c the smile
pipes ARE easeir than people!
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And we had some really complex piping systems…
The guys in the Academy were great fiends, lots of camaraderie, Esprit de Corps, and we could be relatively intimate at times, physically and emotionally. Maybe that is why being Gay would have felt like a betrayal (sounds like an excuse). They were very tolerant, to appoint, then completely intolerant. I hope it has changed.
When we got to the Academy, we did two full weeks of hazing and harassment before the rest of the cadets arrived. One-third of the incoming class is lost then. It became one of those us against them things, basically bonding us together in common survival. I had always been the outcast and isolated by the autism. Suddenly it all changed, and guys were accepting me, respecting me, and being my friends. This is why I thrived so well. Even wearing a uniform was good, since I was infamously a bad dresser (my mother and hand-me-downs). So I just took the gay thing and stuffed it in a deep hole—Ok, bad choice of words, lol.
Everything was based on a buddy system. If you got demerits for threads showing out of one of your buttons, your body got them too, because he is supposed to check you over. You watch-out for each other all the time.
So in most regards I grew and developed as a person and found some self-identity, while I was also completely stifled in sexuality. If anything, I was even more ashamed of it than before. I had a disgusting secret, the revelation of which would have ended my life—that was how I saw it then. Still, they were some of the best years of my life.
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it sounds so hard
im glad it was a good time too
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