Thanks for the Dreams Facebook

It's gone - gone from my dreams and gone in reality.

But the memories and people from USS Sacramento live on. For me lately, it's been in the form of old shipmates searching me out on Facebook. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me to get a call, email or friend request from anyone I ever met from any point in time. Lots of you are likely experiencing something similar.


Call it globalization or whatever you will. I call it pretty freakin' cool.

And all the recent incredibly mind-boggling changes in my life mixed with this Facebook globalization phenomenon to open a time capsule of memories in my mind. The capsule's content is emptied out while I sleep.

Last night's dream was about my time living in Ruskin, Florida circa 1989-90. I was 9/10 years old and in 4th and 5th grade. It was filled with the ups and downs of any childhood. Last night I met people whose names I'd forgotten more than 20 years ago. This morning I remember a name - Starr. How does that happen?

Many people would be petrified or bothered by these dreams as I was at first. But, much like the Facebook globalization phenomenon, I'm fascinated by it.

As for the USS Sacramento dreams - I believe they're done. Three nights ago we ran drills on her. The entire old crew was manning the ship through the most intense series of GQ drills I could imagine - from refueling while firing all weapons to heavy seas and fighting real fires in the main space. Everyone was very well aware we were putting the ship to rest soon and trained it accordingly by capsizing to see if it could recover - which it did. Then we ran it into the pier to show the crew what a collision would be like.

My most vivid memory of the dream is hanging on to a receiving station on the 02 level while the ship violently rolled before capsizing. I don't know why that stood out so strong to me.

Lastly, we saved the ship and sailed herbadly beaten and nearly sunken body off into the sunset on her way to the scrap yard in Texas. Everyone on the entire ship was just happy we could all do what we thought we could do - all while being so proud of our ship. We celebrated a bitter sweet goodbye.

In reality, the Navy sold her to a ship yard in Texas, where yard birds finally took the torch to her in late 2007. A local photographer snapped this photo of the Sac moored up behind her sister ship USS Camden (AOE 2).