Luckily for us, we live in an area with many tourist attractions, so that guests from out of town who might not come a long way just to see US nevertheless visit us as part of their tour of all the area's exciting attractions, such as the White House and the formerly World's Largest Chair.
Our most recent visitors were lucky enough to be here for a famous summertime event, one that we in the East all look forward to each year: humidity. So on one of these hot, humid days, we did what any sensible hosts would do: We took our guests on a tour of a couple of ships in the downtown harbor, where there was about as much shade as on the open ocean.
Fortunately there was some rudimentary air conditioning on the ships, which was activated by each individual tourist waving a brochure in front of his or her most uncomfortably hot body parts. At each ship, employees sat at the entrance to take tickets and inform tourists that the tour was self-guided. THEY were not stupid enough to go down below where there was even less air movement than outside.
These ships are actual, life-size ships that in their early days had some function out on the vast seas, then somehow wandered into the harbor and have been there ever since. They are large and rather obvious, and should have been easy to find. The brochure stated plainly that there were four ships, but we -- our faculties possibly confused by the extreme heat -- could locate only three.
"It's over on Pier 4," we were told when we inquired about its whereabouts, and as the man showed us what was involved in getting to Pier 4 -- crossing vast desert-like areas of waterfront, leaping over tall buildings -- we made the decision to simply visit the ships in front of us.
The WW II-era submarine was of particular interest to the Hero and I, having just finished listening to The Hunt for Red October. This is a riveting tale of U.S. and Soviet submarines that took approximately 8,000 CDs to tell and included some very convincing, though fake, Russian accents.*
*In the interest of full disclosure, certain parties have promised us financial gain to mention this book on the blog, provided we also would agree to wire them money from our own bank accounts, etc.
As far as we could tell the submarine looked like most other submarines, meaning it looked like something built from old tuna fish cans and might fall apart at any moment, probably while we were on board.
The inside of the sub consisted of a great many wires, pipes, knobs, discarded car parts, pizza boxes, long, metal projectiles labeled "Do Not Stand Too Close to the Missile," etc. The effect was awe-inspiring, as we contemplated the likelihood that the whole thing had been assembled by a tribe of baboons rudely awakened from sleep.
While the guys admired the great many wires, pipes, knobs, discarded car parts, pizza boxes, missiles, etc., the girls debated whether we would rather suffer a slow, torturous death on board by tiny toilet or tiny shower. THIS, we concluded, was the real reason women have been kept from active service on subs for so long. Before we would set foot on a sub, every ship in the fleet would have to be retrofitted with spa-quality jacuzzis and sparkling clean bidets.
The sub was built to accommodate some 80-odd men, and if we tried real hard, we could see how it could easily fit that many, provided they were all the size of GI Joe action figures.
Our next stop was a nineteenth-century sailing ship. If the girls had been dismayed by the size of the toilet and shower on the submarine, imagine our horror at viewing what appeared to be one apparatus used for both these functions in the captain's quarters. The males among us did not, however, comprehend what this horror was about. Upon closer inspection we were relieved to see that the bathtub and toilet were actually separate, although we feared that the captain, sharing his maleness with those among us, would not have troubled himself greatly to make the distinction.
Back on land, we contemplated all we had learned from these relics of time past. After heading to the nearest air-conditioned building.
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