I am keeping this short and sweet today, by offering my website for anyone who comes across this blog: www.rmalmeida.net.
I will return tomorrow, with a new series.
I am keeping this short and sweet today, by offering my website for anyone who comes across this blog: www.rmalmeida.net.
I will return tomorrow, with a new series.
My “A” School complete, I was ready for another ship, the USS Monticello (LSD-35). My most memorable and turbulent times came from my time aboard the “Mo Boat”.
It would be 1979, when the USS Monticello would make its way up the Columbia River to Portland, Oregon for a shipyard overhaul. I lost a good friend there one night, his body was found in a river, we were told he had been stripped of his shirt and shoes. The police thought it was a “carny”, since there was a carnival in town that week. We had other suspicions, that turned up a dry well. Portland was a time of revelling for me. I would begin to haunt nightclubs and dance places for one night stands. Women I spent time with, some destitute, others just looking for a good time like myself. I would find myself at the Copper Penny Two in downtown Portland, or Earthquake Ethel’s in Beaverton, or even the Pigeon Toed Orange Peel Bar and Grill, that catered to the college crowd that no longer seems to exist. It was when the town of Spirit Lake closed in early 1980, that I began collecting articles from The Oregonian. The mountain that people loved to travel to see in Washington, Mt. St. Helens had spit out plumes of ash and soot. Something was happening, I could feel it in my bones. It was on May 18, 1980 that the newspaper clippings I had been collecting came to fruition when Mt. St. Helens finally erupted, spitting out a plume of ash and soot that covered 3 states. That occurred 30 years ago. What many people do not know today is that we were not affected by ash from the volcano for 3 days. We suffered from the fallout, the day becoming like night when the winds shifted. Portland had come to a standstill.
These are my memories of a time when I was in the service. It was my first 4 years, which eventually would lead me to another 16 years in the Navy. When I left the service in August of 1980, to return to my native Colorado, I never thought that I would be returning to the Navy. I was finished, I’d had enough. Besides my uniforms, I had one memento from a very special lady in my life at that time, her name was Ruth Larson. I can still remember one of our last telephone conversations when I called her from my friend Bob Berry and his wife’s apartment. My final gift was from Ruth, that I received in Colorado on September 5th, 1980. It was a small package containing a pen filled with what looked like white dust. Wrapped around the pen was a short note, “Just thought I would give you a piece of ash. Love, Ruth”.