There was a whole line of long haired hippies waiting to get a haircut when I went into the Navy. Maybe your Dad was one of them. Something about the Viet Nam War and the draft ended more than a few long haired hippie careers. That is why I'm trying to get those days back, in retirement I mean. So far so good.
Yep. Dad's number was about to come up and his grades slipped so he decided he'd better go enlist to do something he wanted to do before he found himself on point with an M-16 in a jungle.
Interestingly, he was very successful in business later, his buddy who did end up on point being shot at, did even better as a lawyer, and the Americans who didn't have to go, eventually voted in a draft dodger as their President, who had a number that should have sent him sooner, and is now worth an estimated $33M. May the sleaziest hippie win, I guess is the moral of that story.
Dad figured out that sales was a pretty good way to drink beer, play golf, and go skiing regularly and did well enough at it to retire the first time at 53. But I think his favorite day in the Navy was catching a Chief taking a leak on a civilian car in Italy when he was volunteering for Shore Patrol, and made a deal where they'd agree to "leave each other alone" from then on, or he could drag his own Chief back to the brig.
Or maybe he'd say it was the day he pulled watch duty in Norfolk and some butter bar demanded he chamber his sidearm. He told the kid if he was planning on shooting anyone in Virginia, he could have the .45 and unholstered it and handed it to him. Said he was shipping out in a few days and shooting someone in port would probably delay that. His Chief had to come unruffle the butter bar's feathers real fast. Haha. (Not the same Chief. But I did ask him that once...)
He used to joke, "Not too many Americans have gotten to take a leisurely swim in Haiphong Harbor from an aircraft carrier..."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_End_Sweep
(Interestingly I've read through his stuff and studied info about his time afloat, and that Wikipedia page has some significant errors. Starting with the fact that it shows a photo of a Sea Stallion operating from his ship, but doesn't even list his ship in the task force list later in the article.
Wikipedia is pretty much crap, especially if a page has historical information on it, but that one is pretty impressive a mistake, even for them.
Doesn't matter much I guess. The ship is at the bottom of the Atlantic and dad ain't here no more. History is always rewritten to please the living.