I haven't seen a Bi-Tran 6 since Dam Neck. I did look it up on the Web and talk about it to some of my classes. When I describe the total memory, they are incredulous. When I describe the core memory, their eyes glaze over. I wish I had a good memory for names but, alas, that is not the case. I sometimes have to check my own ID before I introduce myself. I have a knack for remembering faces. I saw a guy on a ship in Japan back in the early 90s and just knew I knew him. It turns out he was an MT2 on my submarine back in the late 60s. He was always the biggest complainer and detested "lifers." He couldn't wait to get out. Lo and behold, when I met him 22 years later, he was a tech rep and had been the COB on subs by the time he'd retired. It's truly a small world. I arrived in Dam Neck around September of 68. It seems like PE "A" school lasted until just after Christmas, and then MT "C" school lasted until early/mid summer. Some of the class went into the relatively new C-3 training, some went to A-3 training, and I went to A-2 training. I recall some of the machinery we trained on. The Bi-Tran 6 was dazzling to me. I also recall a MTRE trainer that ran off of paper tape that was my first exposure to stored-program computers. I do recall the CPO instructor on that machine who chewed me a new one when I hit the reset button after none of us could figure out what the displayed code output represented. He was a pipe smoker. I also remember some fellow students taking diet pills. They were already thin, so I couldn't figure out why they would be worried about their diets. I was too naive to understand that they were basically taking uppers to be alert in class. I loved to run on the beach, especially the gunnery range portion when they weren't firing, as it was usually pretty deserted. Boone's Farm strawberry wine was popular among students those days. Also, beer. If I recall, we could drink "near beer" either there or in Groton. The barracks were no Taj Mahal for someone who was a light sleeper. I recall spending hours using towels to "snap" wasps out of the air in our spare time. They were everywhere, as the windows were always open to catch a little breeze. The noise in those "cubicles" was usually deafening. The dividers were little more than a few of those partial panels they put in heads. It wasn't much of a step up from boot camp (Great Lakes). Two buddies and I moved off base at our earliest opportunity in the spring. Late spring/early summer in the swamps of Dam Neck, living in an old pig shed that a farmer had converted into a rental for guys just like us, low ceilings, three rooms, the size of a small travel trailer overall, no air conditioning, and the graveyard shift at USNGMS so they could pump through students as quickly as possible--you can't buy an experience like that. We'd lie on top of the sheets in just our skivvie shorts during the day, sweating profusely, with a table fan running, blankets over the windows, trying to get a few hours of shuteye before going back to school late. Ah, memories. After C school, I was put in charge of an X Division for almost a month, if I recall. It wasn't just guys like me awaiting orders. The guys who'd been kicked out were also put into the division--cleaning heads. As a brand-new E-4 technician trying out his untested leadership skills for the first time--with sailors over whom I had no real power, i.e., what was I going to do to someone who was already on the way down or out of the service?--it was another eye opener. My orders to the George Washington worried me. I had heard so many bad things about that first boomer. The underwater-escape/free-ascent tower trainer in Groton had a fire, so I didn't get to do that. We ended up pretending in the nearby lake (Rock Lake?). So, my free ascent in the Steinke hood had no more than "Ho, Ho" before breaking the surface. Friends and I climbed the cliffs on the base and took scenic pictures--that was until the gendarmes surrounded us, accused us of being spies taking pictures of the torpedo-assembly shop below the cliffs--but hey, we got free film processing at least on the government dime. They determined our pictures were just of a bunch of young petty officers clowning around on some rocky cliffs, and nothing more. The Navy figured I didn't need Sub School (a big mistake, IMHO) since I was already rated, but I did get to train with my crew on John Marshall before we all climbed aboard a couple of C-130s out of Quonset Point for Holy Loch. Some of these details are a little shaky, I'm sure, but they'll probably become more clear as I grow even older and my short-term memory grows even shorter. I haven't thought about some of this stuff for decades. Wow. Of course, the Silent Service part of me doesn't discuss what happened once in Scotland or Spain. It took me almost two decades before I could stop myself from dipping my finger into every puddle of water I saw on a linoleum floor and tasting it, though. Some habits are hard to break.