Here is the next Chapter of my Memoir/Novel, Lost and Found.
Be well — Be in peace,
Ron Rink
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One event during our process of taking the USS Rice out of the mothball status and into re-commissioning status was to make sure it was sea worthy in every regard. On our ship there were two smokestacks which also needed to have the paint stripped off and be repainted. I soon discovered sailors rarely use ladders for accomplishing tasks up high – they use what is called a “bosun’s chair”. A bosun’s chair is a device used to suspend a person from a rope to perform work aloft. It consists of little more than a wooden plank and a set of ropes to raise a person up or down. Some bosun’s chairs have the necessary gadgets which allow the person in the chair to raise and lower themselves. The chair we were using didn’t have those gadgets so a second person would be stationed on the deck to control the ropes to lower or raise the person in the chair.
On one of the hottest days I had experienced so far in my time in Charleston, the Chief picked me out of our lineup for morning muster to do some wire-brushing of the paint on the rear stack using the bosun’s chair. Another seaman named Blair was assigned to be the rope man with me. Blair was a big guy. He was tall and had a build which I felt could hold my weight easily. Chief Thatcher spent time showing us how to use the chair – and gave us time to practice raising and lowering me. The Chief explained that he picked Blair to handle the rope because he would need to be strong enough to pull my weight up and also be able to hold my weight to keep me from coming down too fast. The practices went well and the Chief gave me an air-powered wire brush to do the paint removal. Blair raised me to the top of the stack.
The noise of the wire brush wasn’t so bad, but it was heavy. The main noise came from the large gasoline generators which powered what we called “deck crawlers” which supplied the power to the wire brush. I spent one day handling the “deck crawler” and it was the most exhausting work I had ever done. They were noisy, chattering tools which required lots of strength to hold while kneeling on a steel deck in ninety-to ninety-five degree weather. The dust they created was immense and I tied a bandanna around my nose and mouth so I could keep breathing. I also put goggles over my eyes to cut down on the amount of dust getting into them. I was happy when someone else was assigned to do this the next day. Some time later I learned that most of the guys working as deck hands had their turn with the “crawler”.
The process of wire brushing the paint off the stack wasn’t difficult. The hardest part was holding myself on the chair while I was putting so much pressure on the stack body. As I pressed on the stack with the brush, there was a tendency for my upper body to want to move backwards and my feet to swing forward. I could feel my balance shift. I eventually figured out how to put my arms around the ropes of the chair to hold me more upright.
It was hot that day. On other hot days I was working on the deck and had a ready supply of water available. Up on the bosun’s chair it wasn’t so easy. I did call down to Blair a couple of times to lower me so I could get a drink. The lowering and the raising of the chair was a hassle so we didn’t do it often. It had been a couple of hours since I had any water when I noticed my body feeling much hotter than it had been. I had also stopped sweating and my stomach was upset. About the same time I had begun to feel dizzy so I called down to Blair to lower me. I felt the chair start to move when everything went blank. I woke up flat on my back on the deck, with Blair holding me by my head and telling me to drink from the water container he was holding to my lips. He had dragged me into the shade of the stack and there were several other sailors standing around me.
Chief Thatcher appeared with a large container of water in one of the tubs from the galley. He called out, “Move away you guys. I’m gonna dump this cold water on him!”
The guys moved away and the Chief poured the entire tub of water on me. I started to shiver almost immediately.
“Somebody get to sick bay and get the Doc over here,” the Chief yelled. He looked down at me and said, “Do you hurt anywhere, Van Buren?”
I was breathing hard and I had trouble getting my brain to comprehend what had happened. “Yeah, my head hurts and my back is killing me!” I said.
A few minutes later the ship’s doctor was kneeling beside me and telling the Chief, “Let’s get him into sick bay where it’s cooler so I can check him out more carefully. Use a stretcher in case his back is hurt!”
A few minutes later I was on the table in sick bay. The Doc had taken my temperature and was putting cool water-soaked towels on my chest and head. When the thermometer wasn’t in my mouth he had me drinking cool water. He said, “Your temperature is up around 104 to 105 degrees. We have to get it down to around 100 degrees before we let you go down to your sack and get some rest. You didn’t fall that far so there aren’t any broken bones we have to worry about. We just have to keep you hydrated and get your temp down.”
My temperature did come down after a while and, thanks to the Doc’s orders, I was able to spend a lot of time in my rack and resting in shady spots on deck for the next two days. The Doc gave me some meds to help with the headache and the soreness in my back. Jim, Ralph and Joe were checking on me every chance they had, either all three of them would show up after work, or they’d sneak down one at a time during the day. They also helped to keep the other guys in our quarters reasonably quiet so I could sleep. I was surprised at how sleepy I was and the Doc told me that was one of the reasons they called it “heat exhaustion”. He also said the pain meds would make me sleepy.
The work continued with the sanding and priming. The hull of the ship became a patchwork of red – red lead primer. After the major work was completed, like cutting, welding and other structural refinements, the ship’s color gradually evolved. From red lead to drab gray and deck gray. The transition of readiness began to appear.
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