I never served on a Navy ship, although I was “on float” on two troop ships in 1965-66. In boot camp, there were “smokers” — boxing matches at which smoking was allowed, I assume, butI I wanted nothing to do with them.

There probably was gambling at those wrestling matches. When I was posted to Japan, I became friends with another corpsman, Don, who was a pool shark. He was extremely talented -- he could routinely pocket a ball on one table from an adjoining table in the barracks rec room, and delighted in relieving other pool sharks of their money. Some of those other pool sharks were chronically in debt!

Don was an inventive guy. He once made an electronic elephant detector which would light up if elephants were in the neighbourhood, and it worked: since it never lit up, he said it proved that there were no elephants nearby. He must have been right, because I never saw an elephant on base. I wasn’t surprised when Don became an orthopaedic surgeon at the Mayo Clinic.

 
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