Next to liberty and mail call was food. Chow aboard a ship of the line was notoriously bad on the USS Yorktown off the coast of Korea in 1953. When the vessel was just out of port, the vegetables and fruit would be fresh. That was good, however, young sailors like fresh, cold milk. That would be rationed to one, one half pint carton per man per meal. After a couple of weeks afloat, the veggies and fruit might be a little old, but we could live with that. The milk situation was different. When it was getting stale, the Mess Officer would decide to get rid of it and permit the sailors to drink as much as they wanted. Of course, then we didn’t want it.
Menus were repeated. If you could remember what day of the week it was and what meal you were going to, it was almost instinct to know what the meal was going to be. You didn’t need to read the poorly written sign tacked on the bulletin board. Some deviation was necessary.
Photographers were creative at problem solving. Especially involving food.
We were able to make photos of the ship, nice desirable, eight by ten inch enlargements of the USS Yorktown under-way. All the crew members wanted them, especially cooks and bakers. Conveniently, the bakery was two decks directly below the photo lab. When they baked, the aromas would drift up the trunk (stairway) right to the photo lab. We photographers could not resist the smell of spice cake. When the distinctive fragrance of the spices arose, one of us would collect photos of the ship and run down the two ladders to the bake shop to anxiously knock on the door. It was time to deal. (An old Navy tradition known as cumshaw) But the bakers were also dealers and they held the better hand. After a considerable amount of dickering, the bakers would have the stack of photographs (to send to their girlfriends or mothers or to re-trade with other sailors for other goods and services), our representative would have a prized cake or maybe a loaf or two of freshly baked bread. We all came out ahead.
Chocolate milk and fudge were non-existent on the USS Yorktown. There simply wasn’t any on our ship. One of the photographers, Airman Hansen came up with a solution. One of his expressions was, “I come from as far down in South Carolina that anybody from North Carolina we consider him to be a DAMN YANKEE.” He claimed to know how to cook “being a Southern boy, y’all learn about things so y’all can git by.”
After a spirited discussion about the non-existent chocolate delicacies, he said, “I’ll see what I can do.” He took an ample quantity of hero photographs of the USS Yorktown in action for the deal and headed to for where the Yorktown cooks dwell.
Some time later he returned to the photo lab with a big box. He began to take out things that amazed us! There was powdered milk, sugar, a big brown box of cocoa. He took these ingredients to the chemical mix area of the photo lab. There he found a stainless steel bucket and an electric chemical mixer with an 18 inch shaft propeller on the end.
The rest of us photo lab thieves watched spellbound as he mixed hot water with the cocoa, powdered milk, and sugared. Our questions were answered when he dipped a cup into the liquid and offered us HOT CHOCOLATE!
Quite calmly, he asked us; “How would y’all like some fudge?” Wide-eye, we all gasped, YES! YES! A THOUSAND TIMES YES!
“Welllll, git otta here. I don’t my secret receipt to git all over the ship.” Left alone, he was busy mixing and stirring. He went into the print room and returned with two 11x14 inch stainless steel developing trays. He poured his concoction into them and placed the trays into the film storage refrigerator.
He announced, “If ya’ll keep your fingers out of it, in a couple of hours, we’ll have some nice, sweet chocolate fudge.”
Luckily, flight operations had been cancelled for the day. All photo mates found something that they must do in the photo lab. It was a small wonder how all 30 of us were able to squeeze in that small photo lab at the same time. Especially for two long hours. Even Chief Bill Blair stuck around. He made sure nobody opened the refrigerator door for any reason-official or un-official.
When the two hours were up, Hansen opened the refrigerator door. There for us to see, were trays of fudge as we cruised right in the middle of the ocean! He carefully took them from the shelf, placed them on the Print Finishing Table and cut the rich, brown, chocolate treat carefully into 30 equal pieces. He delicately removed the first piece and give it to a thankful Chief Blair. Our admiration of this culinary feat was surpassed only by our appreciation of Airman Hansen. He was certainly a hero to us!
We enjoyed our little surprises like this, that we bored and lonely sailors would receive from time to time. It really helped the long, tiresome and dangerous days weeks and months to go by.
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