It was long after my Naval service, and we were working a contract aboard a ship at the Alemeda Naval Air Station, California.  Alemeda is an island nearby San Francisco. My wife came out to spend some time with me, and we discovered a restaurant at the outskirts called "Pier 29". Note: QM1(SS) Michael R. Carlson was kind enough to point out that the restaurant's name is NOT Aromas (as I mistakenly thought I remembered).   Much to our surprise, they had a huge model submarine dangling by chains from the overhead.  The sign in front of it read:

Most submariners watched those movies until their eyes fell out!  These are some of the pics I took of the place.  Even while I was there at the Air Station, I watched it shut down as The Alemeda Naval Air Station - forever.  Want to know what they're doing with it now?  Hollywood!  Arghhhh!  We were on a MARAD ship tied up to this pier just down from a historic air craft carrier that did battle in WWII.  I solemnly promiss to insert the carrier's name here when I find it again.  It's the submarine mentality.  I was working aboard just another Big Floating Metal Thing Painted Grey (it was a Roll On Roll Off "RORO" and we had been on a LOT of them), and we were tied up opposite and down the way from another Target.

So anyway, we were up topside taking a break, when this TV crew showed up and took over the pier and the carrier.  Trucks of cameras and equipment.  The principle actors and the main actress showed up as well.  We had to wait for them to finish a shoot to get to our cars.  On OUR time.  They were filming an episode of JAG.

I'm told that the movie studios, like Disney, are falling all over themselves to make movies and television things there.  Hey!  I'm a computer geek - what do I care?  I just watched REAL history going straight down the tubes the week before.  Like Longbeach, and a whole bunch of other bases.

Back in the days before TV, video tape recorders, microwave ovens, and soft drink dispensers in the Crew's Mess, we had 16 MM movies.  The reels came in large green cardboard square containers.  They were traded back and forth between the boats whenever possible.  Heavies (pronounced HEE vees) with weighted Monkey Fists came in handy for that.  A heavie was a thin rope weighted at one end with a special knot that looked like a fist.  It was used to toss to another person over the water, then tied to the larger mooring lines to facilitate their handling.

Depending on the boat, Movie Call was a privilege of those qualified in submarines.  Sometime, those who were ahead in quals were extended that privilege as an incentive.  But.  If you were a DINK!  Forget it!  Those who were delinquent (dink) or behind in quals had no privileges.  That also included going ashore on liberty.  Believe me - I know about that one....

Sometimes, on a long run, and with no chance to exchange "flicks" (movies), we'd play the same ones over and over so many times that for fun, we'd turn off the sound, and add our own dialog to the movie.  That got pretty hilarious on occasion.  We'd prop up with out duty popcorn and bug juice (cool aid), sometimes with the rare bag of pistachio nuts (dyed red for better flavor of course), light up a cigarette, kick back and that was our basic entertainment.   I threw in the cigarette bit for the benefit of today's nukey poos who are now going into spasms, aghast in indignation.  I, of course, am talking about DBF here. <grin>

Oh yeah.  The senior qualified guy present called the shots as to what movie was shown.  That went for the Officer's Ward Room as well.  This is way before the nukes took over with their POD's (Plan Of The Day like the Skimmers),  and scheduled everything in sight.

I went to Submarine School (SubScol) in 1964.  It was HARD to get into subs!  Only the elite could even apply, on a voluntary basis only.  Of them, they had a 60% attrition rate at the time I had attended.  In MY case, they didn't like my eyesight, and kept trying to drop me for that.  What I did, was get right in the guy's face, and ask who HIS boss was.  Went right up "The Chain Of Command", I did.  The top dog doctor finally shrugged his shoulders and gave up.  I graduated.

We were a work hard play hard bunch of guys, and did everything we could to get the job done - no matter what it took.  Nobody messed with us.  Sometimes our whitehats (Dixie Cups) looked more like blackhats.  Skimmers (surface Navy sailors) would try to give us a hard time, (Barracks Master At Arms, Gate Guards, and such) but we mostly ignored them entirely.  Working 24 straight hours non-stop was nothing at all.  There's a pic somewhere on this site where we had worked four straight days without sleep.