[RG_]

Sounds like a great Christmas time, rb, the kind that you recall years later when the generations have passed and events have changed.

Being out of the Navy, too, I really envy your shadow box gift. Some of my Navy friends have some great shadow boxes, done as retirement gifts, made with the box in the middle of an old sailing ship steering wheel. Very dramatic. I would love to do the same with my own memorabilia, except that it was all lost in the loss of my house several years ago. I probably regret most the loss of my uniform. The branch of service that I was in hardly ever wore dress uniforms (and on the one occasion that I recall that we did, change-of-command for the boat, I had finagled to be on the duty crew below decks). The only time that I wore mine in three years was the day that I mustered out of service. I had it cleaned and in perfect shape, awards and medals shined an in place, tie perfectly knotted, etc. and checked off of the tender (my boat was already back out to sea--we had just dropped into port overnight a few days earlier to drop me and an ORSE team off). I went to a friends house, put on civvies, and carefully hung the uniform under plastic and when I got home in Kentucky stored it in my closet. I can't say how much I regret the loss of the uniform. All of my other memorabilia and many pictures went in the same disaster, including a picture of my boat with the original set of dolphins that was pinned on me when I qualifed in submarines. (And I do mean really "pinned." After the official ceremony, there was the unofficial ceremony when everyone who already had their dolphins pinned yours on you by hitting you with the dolphins with their closed fist, and then shaking your hand. By the end, there's just a big bloody spot on the shirt where the pins have been driven into your chest. It was sore and bruised for a few weeks, but that's just part of the initiation. Those were the days when men were real men and these rites of passage were part of being in the toughest military force in the world. I am afraid that America has gone soft. But I'm off rambling on a spanking board. On to the topic!)