USS Cambria (LPA 36) - Naval Cruise Book

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taiPMn r v. 14 Right — The (.rami Palace. Below — The Fleet Landing. Lower left — Where you go, Joe, I lake you. Lower right — Every cabman had two broth- ers. One sold cameos. The other — spa- ghetti. UOA

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NAPLES You Speak, Joe! They ' ve finally unstrapped me from my hos- pital bed Fully recovered. Shock they said. I ' m free to go, sane as before, Unless I return to that Place once more. That Place that I speak of I ' ll always re- member, So old to me note but so new last September. T ' was a routine cruise to Italy and Greece, Sardinia, Sicily, Cannes and Nice. These ports of call we made at random, none too bad. For a fete days you stand ' em. But this Place that I tcrile of, yet wish to forget, We saw most frequent, ten limes I bet. It was as if some magnet was drawing us there, To soak up its filth and choke on its air. But then came the day for us to leave, Sort of a pardon, or timely reprieve — We were on our way. at sea once more, To find liberty later on some Spanish shore. The thought of Spain with its wines and laces And senoritas ' veil-clad faces Induced my pulse from slow to fast And brought mind to that Place as a thing of the past. We steamed and sailed, circled and veered. Then the day when land appeared. No more guides and grubby vendors, Here came liberty in all its splendors. I dashed below and leaped into my clothes, How I made it God only knows, But I made the first boat, was whisked to the pier And hired the first cabby who happened near. In broken Spanish (high school edition) I asked and got » -hut caused my condition — Where ' s the Arena, when ' s the bullfight be- gin? He replied: You speak, Joe, YOU ' RE IN NAPLES AGAIN! by Joseph Laird, BM3 USS WHITE MARSH (LSD4) I A Imiilr of vino in the Italian nun, with Naples Bay sprawled below and Vesuvius in the liaek- ground. Every restaurant had a terrare over- looking something. We had to overlook a few ourselves. K 1 1 ..« •

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Below — . . . and little cars with big horns ft INCNELM ' s home town. Over thirty days of grated parmesan and grated nerves. Towards the end we had found every 100-lire-a-heer parlor in town and we spun spaghetti into a spoon so deftly we took the napkins out from under our chins. And we spoke, Joe! From quanta costa to sold for a carton of Pall Malls we breathed American cigarette smoke into merchants ' faces to lessen price resistance. We made one-hand-on-the-door last offers for half hours at a time. We wound up paying only double local prices. But no one could say we didn ' t buy wisely. Pasted mosaics that dissolved in water. Cameo lamps to light the cockroaches to the spud locker. Paper cutters, cut glass bowls, kid gloves, portraits of wives. And enough musical cigarette boxes to stock a chainsmoking R ussian through two 5-year plans. When we weren ' t buying we were dodging. Guide service to Pompeii or Amalfi. Hustling pedestrians. Small cars with big horns. And if those small car drivers weren ' t dodging the law . . . the Italian law ought to be revised. The last remnant from the days of the Grand Tour is the saying See Naples and die! From the King ' s Palace to the ZigZag to the Opera House to the Snake Pit and Moulin Rouge we saw it. It was no natural death. We were slaugh- tered.