My junior and senior years, I had seven roommates in four separate doubles, but I was the only one in the Navy ROTC program.
I my senior year I had to do a ‘project’ for Naval Science, and I decided to do a model of a D-type, main propulsion boiler, perhaps because I built a lot of airplane models when I was younger.
This project required the installation of over a hundred straws into a balsa wood steam drum and several balsa wood water headers. There were more straws leading to a super-heated header. It was all enclosed in sheets of grey balsa: the firebox.
While the ‘boiler’ wasn’t more than a foot squared, you will perhaps imagine the mess I made in the living room: glue, sawdust, fragments of balsa and straws, tools, sandpaper and sketches. I had underestimated the time required, was forced to work well into the night before submitting it the next morning, leaving the living room a disaster area, which it remained until I returned in the afternoon. Fortunately, my roommates were not expecting dates, and they all knew that ‘Peace is a bit crazy.’
It was about three years later that, wearing non-regulation denim coveralls and boots as a lieutenant, junior grade, and chief engineer, I climbed into a D-type boiler in the forward fireroom of my destroyer. My chief petty officer had asked if I wanted to inspect the work that had just been completed by the crew of the forward fireroom. I said, “Yes.”