Carl Bush:  

OK ... so I'll get to writin' and you grab a cool rum-n-coke, set back, and get to readin' ... sorry, but can't keep it short. Following graduation in '78, I left for the US Coast Guard Academy on scholarship. Fred Midgett was in my class year. A year spent in New London, CT made me realize I wasn't ready for that level of regimentation and I dropped out in the summer of '79 (Fred kept up a long family tradition of service in the U.S. Coast Guard ... there is a Cutter named after the family ... USS MIDGETT (WHEC 726)). I was hired on with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as a deck-hand aboard the sea-going survey ship MT MITCHELL. I met the ship in Puerto Rico and worked the Caribbean helming the embarked survey boats and chipping paint. When MT MITCHELL returned to Norfolk, VA for the winter, I was offered the opportunity to crew aboard the survey ship FERREL from Portland, ME back to Norfolk. November in Portland is about as cold as a person should ever have to experience ... and to be working on the water was even colder! In February of 1980 I joined Hydrographic Field Party 3 in the process of surveying Lake Borgne in New Orleans, LA. Of course February is also Mardi Gras time in New Orleans, so you can imagine how a 20 year-old on his own enjoyed the local enticements. Beignets, strong coffee and the occasional illicit Hurricane (after all I was only 20). The crew I was with consisted of four civil-service survey techs and one NOAA Corps Officer-in-Charge. From New Orleans the team moved to Cocoa Beach, FL and surveyed the Banana and Indian Rivers before heading north for the summer. We spent the following two summers working the Delaware River from Philadelphia to points south. Taking a cue from my more experienced co-workers, I bought a 27-foot travel trailer and lived the nomad lifestyle from campground to campground up and down the east coast. Following a return to Florida in '81, we continued work on the Indian River from Merritt Island up to Titusville. We provided a quick survey of the waterways used by the two vessels NASA employs to retrieve the spent solid-rocket boosters after a Shuttle launch. They were having an issue with crushing manatees while transiting the narrow channels. While working in Titusville, I met my future wife, Julie, who was a manager at the local country bar. This was a place that was literally like the bar in the movie Roadhouse. Lots of cowboys with attitude and the country girls who liked to watch them fight. You'd have had to experience the Marker 34 in person to appreciate the extent to which the word "cliche" can be applied. Great times there, but watch out for the flying beer bottles. Survey work in Fernandina, Mexico Beach, and Panama City, FL rounds out my time with NOAA (way too many adventures to list). Julie eventually moved in with me and we have been together ever since. I spent four great years on HFP-3 and still keep in regular touch with a few of the folks I worked with. I left NOAA at the beginning of 1984 and resumed academic pursuit at Florida State University. We sold the travel trailer and bought a single-wide mobile home in Tallahassee. I went to school year round and worked as a fitness instructor at a local gym. Finished up 4 years of college in 2-1/2 years. Managed to leave FSU in 1986 with a BS in Biology. My parents, God love 'em, offered to pay for me to stay in school to get a post-grad degree, but by that time I was more than ready to move on and g...Expand for more