USS Austin Cruise (For Spouses) - Part 1 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

USS Austin Cruise (For Spouses) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

We never went to truly fancy restaurants when Florence was a small except for holidays and when grandma visited.

I liked Pizza Hut for its salad bar buffet, various European pizza selections, air-conditioning, and jukebox selections for a quarter a song.

We usually ordered a meat and vegetarian pizza each with the salad bar and Diet Cokes.  I saved a change purse full of quarters, so Florence could listen to her favorite songs several times and try some new ones that mom thought might be good.  We sang along to the songs and chair danced to Madonna songs.

It was such a treat for me no matter where I ate to order food, have food magically appear, have my Southern iced tea full of sugar delivered, and watch the dishes go bye-bye.  I washed dishes at home.  Laurent did offer to do the dishes, but I was blunt and just said, “You don’t know how, so we won’t catch colds.”

I stretched out in the cold, air-conditioned restaurant and felt pampered and liked my juke joint.  Florence would eventually stop chair dancing and go play in Pizza Hut’s miniature kitchen play area while I sipped a coffee.  I knew Pizza Hut was a clean Naples (Italy) experience with easy parking. 

(Laurent and I visited Naples as one of our honeymoon stops.  I wanted all the beautiful buildings cleaned and loved leaving town for the Isle of Capri and Salerno.  There was obviously no trickle down money from the European Union to this town yet for development in the late 1980s.)

There was going to be a dependent’s cruise soon.  Florence could not go, because she was too young.  I found her a babysitter through church, who had references.

I called our ship’s ombudsmen after dinner, who said the cruise was still a “go” and that the weather looked fine for a deck top picnic.

I had a whole evening to myself and sat in silence reading Chicago cook Ken Hom’s book Fragrant Harbor Taste: The New Chinese Cooking of Hong Kong.  (There is a recipe for shark fin soup in the book, which put it on weeding lists in many libraries.)

My boss lent me the book, saying I would love the recipes.  I knew sharks were hated on the Atlantic Seaboard and wondered if people made the shark fin soup out there. 

Before it was outlawed, I had eaten it several times in Chicago at PRC functions.  I did not know what it was until I read the recipe in Hom’s book and saw the seasonings in this cookbook.  The Chinese probably view sharks as pests for their shrimp food supplies, too.

I liked reading about Guangzhou in Southern China, where most of the Chinese immigrants to the US came from who built the railroads here.  I thought all world citizens might like to know about “dim sum.”  That word means “touch the heart.”  These bite-sized morsels are the bistro fare of China.

You usually sample 6 – 8 dim sum for a brunch and drink a pot or two of tea with it.

Dim sum are sometimes called “yum char” for “drink tea” meal.  I slept well, dreaming of dim sum.  In Norfolk, we had Polynesian restaurants that served “pu-pu” platters that were like dim, but with more conch, coconut sauces, and spam sushi. 

Filipinos and Pacific Islanders form a large minority contingent in the US Navy, so we had Filipino and Polynesian restaurants in Norfolk.

I woke up at 6 am and drove to the Amphibious Base where I took an amphibious boat out to the USS Austin along with other dependents.

The overcast sky made it cool and perfect for a picnic on the blacktop landing pad of the USS Austin.

Laurent showed me around the ship.  The first place we visited was the bridge where the captain holds forth.  No joking goes on there – not when you were driving millions of dollars’ worth of ship through a bay like the captain was doing.

Triangulation is the order of the day.  Measurements are taken from both sides of the ship.  The officer with the charts (water maps) says exactly where the ship is.   Another officer determines whether or not they need to move the ship.

If the ship’s course must be changed, the following events take place:

-the triangulation officer explains where the ship is

-another sailor says if the ship should change course

-the captain approves the change or not

-then, the order is repeated three times before the change is made

I asked the man doing the triangulation, if he had maps for every bay in the world.

First, he corrected me by saying, “Maps are for land.  Charts are for water.”

Then, he said they had charts for every piece of water that they sail in.

“If we don’t have a chart, we don’t go there,” he said.

Despite my “map” faux pas, he continued to explain how ship traffic works:

-you stay to the right of buoys

-green buoys should be to your right when you head out to sea

-red buoys should be on right when are heading back into port

More about the USS Austin Dependents’ Cruise to follow….

By Ruth Pennington Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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