Dart begins, “Just got my feet back down on the ground, after the phone calls of yesterday. When I returned to the ship after calling you, I found that supper was already over and that my name was on the liberty list for the evening.”
After a shower and shoe shine, and adding another battle star to his uniform, he set out to see the town.
He and his buds had a good spaghetti dinner and found a “dog wagon” where they could get a cheap burger and fries just before grabbing the streetcar back to the ship. He found the “Y” and the phone building so he could call his folks.
The only snag is that the ship moved today, so next time he gets liberty, he’ll have to case the town all over again.
The city where they are has a bad reputation, and for the most part, Dart and his pals found it lived up to that reputation. But his group are not the kind of guys who do the sorts of things that get sailors into trouble in a town like this. Living by regulation makes it easier to live up to the stricter regulations of this port town.
Although he is not permitted to write the name of their location, I know they were in the shipyards of Norfolk, Virginia. from the deck of his ship, Dart describes the scene around him. “Overhead is a constantly moving maze of geometrical framework: the huge shipyard cranes which loom black against the sky from miles away. They trun and swing and move around like grotesque carictitures of long-legged swamp birds with long bills probing for food and then swinging it in the air before casting it aside or devouring it. Far be it from this worldly sailor to believe any more in the ‘stork theory’, but in this place where ships are born, those cranes look like huge storks standing on their spindly legs.”
“All around us is the bustling of the yard. Grinders and chipping hammers and riveting hammers send their staccatto protests through the strongest conversations, stopping all but the oaths. Occasionally, a head-rending hiss will startle the idle dreamer, as some high pressure steam boiler pops a safety valve. Bells and whistles of locomotives alternate with the banging of the freight cars they set in motion. The throaty whistles of ships add their hazzahs to the din. In the more quiet moments, a nearby automobile horn can be heard faintly. Men shout with the shrill, piercing voices they acquire when trying to make themselves heard above lower-pitched sounds of great volume. Ships alarm systems are being tried-out, so in this peaceful (?) place, we hear general quarters with no enemy to fight, chemical alarms with no poisonous gas in the hemisphere, and cease firing horn when not a gun has been manned. And over the PA system of a nearby ship comes the shrill trill of the boatswain’s pipe.”
“It’s hardly a symphony, this cacophonic bedlam which surrounds us, but it’s music to our ears.”
As Dart walks through the more picturesque parts of this town, and when he sees the Executive Officer out in search of housing for the married men, Dart daydreams of what it would be like if he and Dot were already married. They could spend as much time together as if he were not in the Navy; that is, until this respite is over and he must return to the sea. “You could meet the Haggard (She’s my third best girl now, even though I sometimes call her a “pig-iron _____*” ) You and Mom also rate high.
*synonym for “lady dog,” used among kennel enthusiasts
He is more homesick and lovesick for Dot than he has ever been before.
