A NEWSLETTER SERVING FORMER CREWMEN OF USS BRYCE CANYON Volume 15, Issue 1 April 2010 A VIEW FROM THE FRONT PORCH By Stan Hitchcock swim fairly well. I had also I’ve been doing just that ever to California to meet my studied about Jonah and the since. ship. In the first week of Janu- THE U.S. NAVY OFFERS A whale that swallowed him and About a month into basic ary, 1955, I came up the MOVABLE STAGE…. then the Lord spoke to the training I got to missing gangplank of the USS Bryce I graduated from Pleasant fish and it vomited him up on something really, really Canyon (AD-36) carrying my Hope High School in May of dry land. If the Lord could do bad. Yeah, it was the first worldly belongings in my sea 1954. I had turned 18 on the that for Jonah then I was sure time I had ever been sepa- bag across my shoulder, and 21st of March, had never been he could get me through 4 rated from my guitar since I my J45 Gibson in my other out of the hills of the Ozarks years of the Navy. started playing it at age 12. I hand. Seeing that ship for the and was looking for an adven- I remember standing at the went to the First Class first time was just awesome. It ture where I could travel, have Frisco Depot, waiting to board Bo’sun Mate that was trying was the biggest thing I had a secure place to sleep, 3 the train to Chicago and the to teach us something and ever seen or heard of. It car- meals a day and some walking Great Lakes Naval Training asked him if I could send for ried more people than half our around money….hey! let’s join Center and seeing tears in my my old Gibson J45. I got per- county back home. The ad- the Navy! So, three months Dad’s eyes. Unusual cause I mission and sure enough it venture started when I later, on August 12, 1954, I don’t believe I had ever seen arrived in a couple of weeks, stepped aboard. headed off to bootcamp to him tear up like that be- so we got to finish boot camp I’d been on board a couple learn the finer points of sailor- fore. Course, Mom was crying together. of days, got assigned to the manship. like Moms do, but Dad…… Right after Christmas, and second division (deck force), Figured it couldn’t be too nope, that was some- a few days at home on the had a bunk and was learning hard to learn about boats, thing. Years later, he told me farm, I again boarded a train to chip paint and grease ca- ships and big bodies of water he was choked up because (probably the same one I bles with the best of since I had grown up on a he knew that when I left it used to lay in bed in the old them. That evening I went up creek that ran through our would be for good, never farm house and listen to the topside with my guitar and sat farm, had been baptized in the looking back, following my whistle as it headed across on a hatch cover and started Sac River and knew how to own way. And, he was right, country) and rode all the way (Continued on page 2) VOLUME 15, ISSUE 1 BRYCE CANYON UPDATE PAGE 2 (Continued from page 1) and got to see the world at the same ending up with the great Carl Smith picking a little. Wasn’t long before a little time. What a deal. This was at the end of number, ”If Teardrops Were Pennies, guy with a mustache and the look of an the Korean War and a lot of our boys were And Heartaches Were Gold”. old salt came over and sat down on the in hospitals and I remember one show we In 1957 I left the ship for Shore hatch beside me and listened played in Kowloon at the British Army Duty, posting to US Naval Air Station, awhile. He introduced himself as Pee- Hospital there when our ship was in Hong Chase Field,Beeville, Texas for my last Wee Garrison from the great state of Kong. They treated us like we were Opry year of active duty. As I was saying Georgia and allowed as how he played Stars, giving us escorts from the families goodbye to PeeWee and Smoky, on the fiddle, and some of his shipmates of the British foreign service people and it the quarterdeck of the Bryce Canyon, I played other instruments and maybe I was pretty heady stuff. The British ambas- realized that somewhere between would want to pick a little with them. I sador’s daughter escorted me; the other coming on board and now leaving I allowed as how that would suit me boys had beautiful young escorts and we had made the change from teenager to mighty fine, and so I did and we be- were taken to a fancy restaurant in Hong sailormanship, green kid to manhood, came the Bryce Canyon Troubadours, Kong called the Parisian Grill. I remember and it felt pretty good. I was 21 and life and finally the official ship’s band. I that was the first time I ever had Sweet- was an adventure and I still couldn’t sang every Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, breads. I saw it on the menu and ordered wait to get on with the rest of it. Webb Pierce and Carl Smith song that I it, not having any idea what it was, but Now I’m way down life’s road, still knew and the boys played so fine be- man, it was good. In the middle of the excited when I wake up, wondering hind me. I didn’t know it then, but now I meal I quietly asked the waiter, who spoke what adventure is just over the next hill see that it was the start of what I would almost no English, what the meat was. He and saying Lord keep me strong and do the rest of my life. started describing and talking in Chinese ready for whatever comes. And if I get I turned 19 on March 21, 1955, in the and I stopped him and asked him to tell swallowed by a whale, stand back, middle of the Pacific Ocean, playing and me really slow…..He held his hands up cause he’s fixin’ to spit me up on dry singing my heart out up on the Main and gestured and said, “the hangy down ground! Praise God from whom all Deck, all of us standing in a circle on thingee on cow”. I lost my appetite in- blessings flow. the main hatch for a stage, the ship stantly because I believed I was eating plowing through the rough water and COWS UDDER! It was years later, in an- Stan heading for the Far East. The Trouba- other fancy restaurant somewhere on the __________ dours and I established a pattern we road that I found out it is actually the would follow for the next 2 ½ years on hangy down thingee between the cows board the Bryce Canyon, singing on FRONT legs and is quite good. Anyway, USS BRYCE CANYON board every night when we were under- the show at the British Army Hospital was way and playing at every EM Club, just fabulous and we ended up feeling like REUNION Chief Club, and even occasionally Offi- celebrities. On the boat taking us back cers Clubs, in Hawaii, Philippines, Ja- across the Hong Kong harbor I even got to pan, Hong Kong, Okinawa, Taiwan and sneak a kiss from the Ambassador’s OCTOBER 7—10, then back in California when we re- daughter. Yessir, Show Biz Is My turned from overseas. It was the best Life! We must have been pretty fancy in 2010 school of music I could ever have been our white bell bottom uniform pants, a part of. PeeWee from Georgia on topped off with the loudest Hawaiian shirts fiddle, Smoky from Kentucky on the dog known to man, PeeWee sawing away on house bass, Roger Bigcraft from Minne- Orange Blossom Special, me singing wide CHICAGO, IL sota on the big electric guitar, and a open the Webb Pierce song of, “I’m In The mandolin player that changed several Jailhouse Now” or “Don’t Do It Darlin’”, NTC GREAT LAKES VISIT times when they’d get transferred. I followed by “Fire Ball Mail”, “Kawliga”, FRIDAY, OCT. 8 played rhythm guitar and sang my old “Pilipino Baby”(a big request number in hillbilly songs on that movable stage Subic Bay), “Your Cheating Heart” and Base, CA to Hickam Air Base in Hono- ual tours of duty. AN UNEXPECTED lulu, Hawaii, then on to Yokohoma where After my tour of Sea Duty, Class “A” I was taken by bus to Yokosuki, Japan, in Storekeeper School, more Sea Duty, and ENCOUNTER early 1955 where I was placed in transit eventually Shore Duty in Great Lakes, IL, awaiting the arrival of my new assign- I received my Honorable Discharge Pa- Editor’s Note: We sent out an e-mail ment aboard the USS Bryce Canyon. pers. asking for stories about a time you met While in transit, I met this young sailor While waiting for processing in the someone you knew in an unexpected nicknamed Curly.