Russell Sheffrin and I have so much in common, we could’ve been twins.

We’re the same age and both grew up in Saranac Lake. We went to good ole SLHS, took the same classes, and graduated the same year. After high school, we both went off to college, and after college we both joined the Navy. We both taught at Paul Smith’s, we’re both MOTs, and each of us had the same hopeless adolescent crush on the same girl … and each suffered its same pathetic but predictable end.

But that’s all at first glance. If you look more closely, you’ll find our differences far outweigh our similarities.

Though we both spent our youth here, he’s not a native — not at all, since he came here a battled-scarred 3 year old, from the mean streets of Joisey City, pardon my French.

We graduated together in ’64 — he as the valedictorian, me as the Maestro of Mediocrity, being 38th in a class of 76.

We started college that fall. He had a stellar academic career from the get-go; I flunked out after my freshman year.

Although we were in the Navy at the same time, he was an officer; I was a lowly enlisted man. Beyond that, he was on active duty for about two years and spent almost all of it at sea. I was in 39 months and the only sea time I had was a few trips on the Staten Island Ferry.

As for Paul Smith’s? He taught for one summer session. I — slow learner that I am — went AWOL from the trenches of academe after 41 years.

He’s also one of those glass-half-full, the-sun’ll-come-up-tomorrow, four-eyed optimists. As for me? The less said, the better.

But there’s one important thing we have in common, which is our love of storytelling. And when it comes to stories, Russ has his fair share, one of which I’d like to share with you.

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Homeward bound…

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Russ’s ship was USS Intrepid (CVS 11), a WWII-era carrier then in service for anti-sub warfare. It stayed on the Atlantic, going between its home port Norfolk, and Guantanamo Bay. At some point, the ship was in Philadelphia for repairs, and then was going to its new home port, Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. And it was in the bay that the “fun” began.

Russ was an Electronic Warfare Officer, which meant he was in charge of radar and radar counter-surveillance. His usual duty station was in the Combat Information Center, or as known to landlubbers, the radar room. However, on this day, he was on the bridge with the captain and a pilot, and three or four others, headphones on ears, listening to the radar operators in the CIC, reporting their location in the bay. And their location was vital, since they were in fog so thick they couldn’t see the weather deck, let alone the buoys, the shore, or anything else.

Things were going fine. They were on course — and with the protection of Saint Brendan — they’d stay on course, all the way to their berth, and thence to all the fleshpots, bistros and buckets of blood that Narragansett had to offer.

Unfortunately, at that moment Saint Brendan was asleep at the wheel … or if you prefer, at the helm. Because the guy in the radar room, at the other end of the sound-powered phone, told Russ they were drifting off course, to the right of the channel.

Russ immediately told the captain, who thanked him … and kept drifting.

A moment passed and the radar room guy again said they were off course — only this time with real concern in his voice.

Once again, Russ repeated they were drifting away from the channel. And once again the captain thanked him, and continued drifting.

Now, keep in mind, the guys plotting the chart in the radar room were enlisted men. There was an officer on duty, but he was pretty much supervising — the actual work of reading the radar, assessing the range, and plotting the chart was being done by peeps of the lower ranks. But regardless of their ranks, they all had one thing in common: They knew exactly what they were doing. Which, sadly, the captain did not, because the more they kept saying they were off course, the more the captain kept ignoring them. And of course ignoring Russ, the messenger.

At that point, they were to the right of the buoys, moving ever closer to shore. And here’s the thing: An aircraft carrier is monstrous — essentially a whole city block that floats. As a result, its momentum and inertia are likewise monstrous. To put it simply, when a carrier is headed in one direction, even slowly, trying to change it isn’t like switching lanes on the interstate. In fact, it isn’t like anything we can imagine. Think the Titanic, which saw the iceberg, but couldn’t change course fast enough to avoid it.

Next, the guy on the phone went ballistic, knowing exactly where they were headed, which was not safely into the bay.

As I said, Russ was an officer and gentleman. But he was speaking to an enlisted guy, who was spared the inconvenience of being either. And so the enlisted guy started cursing like — what else? — a sailor. His aspersions first questioned the captain’s sanity, IQ and parentage. After that, he savaged the captain’s wife’s fidelity, as well as her looks, her career as a low-rent escort, and her kids’ legitimacy.

Russ could only stand there, slack-jawed, unable to relay anything to the captain, knowing full well the ship was going to hit the shore, and everything else was going to hit the fan.

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…till running aground

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At that moment, the engineering tore into the bridge, red-faced, sweating and winded, having sprinted up from the engine room.

“Clam shells!” he yelled. “Clam shells! Clam shells!”

It was not a secret codeword, but a straightforward description. The ship had indeed run aground. And now the cooling pipes, instead of containing only seawater, were chockful of mud, stones, clam shells, and God knows what else, which had punched holes in the condenser and were pouring into the engine, destroying it.

And that ended the drama.

It also ended any chance the captain had for advancement, since running a warship aground is, to put it mildly, a career-limiting move.

The Navy is as tradition-bound as it gets. If it was good enough for John Paul Jones, then it’s good enough for us — that kind of thing. And one of the Navy’s most revered traditions is the same as The First Rule of Plumbing, namely, sewage flows downhill. So when an officer screws up, he always tries to find an inferior to take the blame. Unfortunately for Russ’s captain, there were too many witnesses for him to do anything but take his lumps.

Russ didn’t know what happened to the captain after that, but you can bet if he didn’t retire, his next duty station might’ve been something like the recruiting office in Fargo, North Dakota or embassy duty in Burkina Faso. or maybe OIC of the Great Lakes laundry. Certainly, if he ever went to sea again, it would be as a passenger on a cruise ship or some-such.

There was an official investigation, and as one might expect, the Navy took the moral low road: The ship ran aground, they concluded, due to the buoys being in the wrong place.

It was a case of The First Rule of Plumbing at its best.