USS MULLINNIX DD-944

Rio de Janeiro 1958

Pictures courtesy of Jim Young


Rio de Janeiro 1958


Rio de Janeiro 1958


Rio de Janeiro 1958


Rio de Janeiro 1958


Rio de Janeiro 1958


Rio de Janeiro 1958


Rio de Janeiro 1958


Rio de Janeiro 1958

Pictures courtesy of Art Salzfass

	Liberty in Rio - Nothing Like it! Adm Stephan		Reminds one of the movie - "An Officer & Gentleman"
	The lighter side of the Mux Officers		Sugar Loaf
	Sugar Loaf		Adm Stephan
	Rio		Rio
	Rio		Rio
	Rio		Rio
	Rio		Mullinnix Officers
	Rio

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Excerpt from "The Last Gun Ship - History of USS Mullinnix DD-944"
A Historical Novel By Frank A. Wood

Many of the crew went to see the "Christ the Redeemer" statue that overlooks Rio. Poverty in Rio was everywhere, worse it places like Ipanema Beach with its numerous ramshackle shacks in the slums. The streets were narrow and strewn with every imaginable kind of refuse: pig shit and wooden crates, bales of hay and butter churns, cheese hoops and cattle hooves.

The many open-air markets lay in the shadows of a few modern sections that stretched for blocks in all directions, line with warehouses, fringed with baker's ovens and wine cellars, and butchers' back rooms. The gutters ran with blood in the early hours of each morning, with all manner of fowl screaming during their last day in the sun; the somnolent eyes of rabbits trussed and hung upside down by their feet from wooden dowels; the fresh goat cheese covered in ashes; and the winery smell of apples kept too long.

Mullinnix picked up some very cheap coffee (lots of coffee) and beef for only $.20/pound. The beef was a keeper, but the coffee had to be dumped as it was the wrong grind for the coffee makers abroad ship. Enroute to Boston, someone found an article concerning Brazilian beef, saying that they were fattening them up with female hormones. A joke quickly engulfed the ship that reported some of the crew was starting to talk with high pitched squeaky voices.

With the aid of civilian pilot, Captain Mariano, Mullinnix moored port side to the west side of Finger pier, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil the morning of 11 July.

The crow shits! Payday! The holiest day on board ship. In this era, the Navy paid sailors in cold hard cash – green backs baby. Ensign Brown typically kept about $20,000 in cash in the ship's safe. Much of which was recycled aboard ship. After payday, Brown would collect cash from the ship's store and the post office – money order sales. Where else was a sailor going to spend his money at sea?

Currency exchange could be a real challenge however. In Rio, Recife, and Salvador, most thought that Ensign Brown was doing them a favor by exchanging green backs for Cruzieros. Truth of the matter, Brown had to pay the Mullinnix’ fuel bill in cash – in Cruzieros! The payday challenges would increase in Tampico, Mexico. Ensign Brown and petty-officer Guth would trek to the bank ‘on the other side of the tracks’, heavily armed, to fetch pesos for the crew.

There is a built in advantage of a destroyer over larger ships, particularly carriers. Most piers aren't large enough nor the water deep enough to allow carriers to berth. Destroyers? No problemo! Guess who's first on liberty call?

Where the pier in Trinidad was an ancient frame of heavy weathered timbers, the Rio pier was all concrete and gleaming steel. Two sets of rails ran down the center of the pier – one for cargo locomotives, the other for a massive crane that dwarfed Mullinnix. The sky was purple and full of gulls as the IMC announced, "secure the special sea and anchor detail". Lighting crawled through the clouds overhead as those lucking enough to pull liberty left the ship, curious how a ship the size of their own could be moored so close to the city center.



The pier was a perpendicular extension of the main Cornish in Rio. As the crew walked under the Eiffel Tower-like structure of the giant crane, their eyes were immediately met by the hustle and bustle of a teeming Rio de Janeiro and its beautiful European-influenced architecture. Many buildings topping out at over twenty stories, some triangular in shape with rounded corners versus the classic rectangular shape with sharp contours. All were different shades of white-washed to tan to light-brown brick with the top stories stair-stepping like ancient pyramids.

Nestled strategically between these imposing giants was the landscaping and architecture of Rio's humble beginnings. An eye appealing blend of two to three story stucco structures that reminded one of a small Mediterranean village and giant tropical trees casting their shadows over manicured lawns and lush multi-colored flowerbeds.

The sights: At Street level, the nightclubs numbered into the dozens. The hues alone were incredible. Everything was dripping in rich, over-saturated color - the club architecture, the costumes, the women - it was like an explosion at the Technicolor factory with Carmen Miranda's presence at an event that was pending.

The sounds: In the early 1950s, Brazilian musicians heard the "cool jazz" of the US and adapted it to a gentler samba rhythm syncopated on the guitar. The result was the reflective, romantic music called Bossa Nova. This beat oozed out of clubs, joints, and dives like wet cement, snail-like, moving, never fast, crawling up the legs of sailors that lingered outside.

The people: Brazilians know how to party, whether it is a post-soccer beer-bash at a beach kiosk, an evening's entertainment at a roadhouse, or a drink at one of the numerous bars and clubs tucked into tight crevices on many streets. With booze served at all hours, locals drank with friends at corner bars. The real action, sailor-action, didn't really start until around 2300, when the Bossa Nova clubs open their doors for music, dancing, drinking, and meeting the next perfect woman in your life.

The beaches: Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon were special for sailors, so far away from home. Many parties could be found at the kiosks that lined the beach promenades or around the Lagoa.

The women: With a city proportioned and decked-out like this, the local population of the female persuasion had to be, just had to be, as beautiful as well. The crew was to find out that was the understatement of their enlistment.

_______________

Many of the crew settled in at the Bar Luiz, one of the oldest bars in Rio, where drinking spilled out onto the sidewalk on a nightly basis. The alley to the left of the entrance was lit by a single street light with a mist-enhanced yellow halo of pale light that illuminated a set a rustic, but sturdy set of wooden steps with a lonely, almost melancholy feel, up to a lounge club that catered to the under-belly of Rio society. The bartender was a sinewy black man with salt-and-pepper dreadlocks that fell like pieces of rope below his shoulders. No one knew his name, but everyone was expected to call him Cappel. The rum he served was local. The first sip burned. The second one burned good. At the end of the night, your gut felt like a nuclear meltdown that had cored a hole straight to the center of your ass. The first shit burned. The second one burned good.

Sailors came from the rum, the cold beer, and the local talent. The food was acceptable. A favorite of the Muxmen was salsa fresca, a pineapple-serrano with plantain and red chili corn chips. It gave some 'body' to the glasses and mugs of liquid they consumed.

On one perfect Rio evening several of the crew were holding down rattan chairs, drinking, singing along with the old man in the corner playing on a beat up guitar with 5 strings. Meanest 5 string jammin' any of them had ever heard. Drinking, hoping to fall deeply in love before the sun came up. Drinking, swapping sea-stories with Cappel. Drinking...

The Navy knew him as BM3 Jonathan Kramer. The crew called him 'drink and dial' or 'DD' for short. Anywhere in the world he'd get drunk, get homesick, and call home. When you saw a picture of Diane, you quickly understood why.

"Doc, sometimes you make me wish one of us was stone drunk or down at the hallucinogenic clinic."

Doc was born Walter Higgins Holliday. Nicknamed 'Doc', due to his Dodge City mentality and view of the world, he bit back, "Shiiittt, I'm no fucking pecker-checker". Doc had a voice like a rusty chainsaw so 'shit' sounded like he said, 'screathc'. Red face on a short, stout neck, Doc reminded you of a bordello lamp.

Next to Doc was Lanny "Lack-a-nookey" Landowsky. A viscous rumor had been started he was a closet bone smoker. But his runnin' mates knew he was a regular slash-hound while on the beach.

"Come on DD, cut him some fucking slack!"

"Fuck Landowsky. He shouldn't have said it!"

What Kramer was so upset about was the word that began with L and rhymed with shove - the word that was forbidden in a sailor's vocabulary. Doc had been thinking, that just maybe - just maybe, he was following in love with a Rio bombshell he'd met a couple nights before in a third rate dive on the other side of town - The Bull and Barrel. He was going to head back there later.

"No way", shouted Kramer. "He was as drunk as a two-peckered billy-goat. He wanted to get a piece. That's all. Fuck falling in love."

"I know she likes me Kramer. We connected from the start. We both could feel it!"

"Holy shit Sherlock, her highest level of love is a $5 bill in a garter belt. Come on Doc, wake the fuck up, over! All she wanted to do was polish your knob."

Cappel couldn't help but over hear all this. He'd seen his share of sailors in his bar, in his time. He understood them better than they did themselves. But the Muxmen were special. They were a bread apart. He couldn't quite put his finger on it. Sailors from the Mullinnix were somehow grounded. Grounded to what was right about men. Tied to what was basically common sense and he liked them for it. Cappel knew they were, first and foremost, sailors however. He took that into account before spoke.

Through a thick blue haze of cigarette smoke, "Boys, let me explain something to you about Rio and the women that live here."

"Hell yea Cappel, help me out here", cut in Doc. "Tell him it like it is Cappel" he added.

"If you'd all shut the fuck-up, I'll lay it out for you", Cappel blasted. "The sex wasn't a sign of a deep intimacy Doc. These girls, their first loyalty will always be to themselves and in loss, disappointment, even despair; they will find others like them in a support of strength. Not a sailor that's in port for a few days."

Doc's head lowered slightly, paused a moment, raised and took a long pull of his drink. Pausing again, "Ah hell, you're probably right Cappel."

"No probably about it, I know I'm right. I see it all the time. The two of you connected - big time, intense shit. You'll leave in a few days. Same thing will happen to you in the next port. Same thing will happen to her with the next ship's arrival."

"Are you listening Doc?" Kramer hoping like hell his buddy was sober enough to take this advice and run with it.

"No shit Doc, it's happen to all of us", added Landowsky.

Doc drained his beer. Lit a Camel, inhaling deeply. Rubbed his non-smoking hand across his forehead, just above his eyes. Rubbing back and forth - trying to rub her memory out of his brain. Exhaled. Looking first at Landowsky, then Kramer, finally at Cappel, "Sometimes when you're deep in Indian country, the only speeds available are full throttle and fuck it."

Cappel eyed Landowsky then Kramer. They returned his look with a quizzical eyeball.

Adding, "Fuck, you guys are probably right. I was just sport-fucking I guess. Cappel, bring us another round if you don't mind...and thanks for the head-straightener." Laughing he added, "Kramer, from now on keep your fucking nose out of other people's love life!"

"And you Landowsky, you fucking prick..." Laughter erupted around the table. Mates, always mates.

_______________

The second day in port, Mullinnix hosted a 'general visit' for the people of Rio. The sun was high but haze from the morning marine layer was muting its glare as the pier quickly filled with Rio's population, eager to see America's newest fighting ship. Old and young alike formed a queue at the aft gang plank, anxious to experience the internal workings of Mullinnix. When the sun settled into the western horizon, 2,180 guests had boarded and explored the ship.

To be continued...

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