Mark Stigers
Bio
One year after my birth sputnik was launched, making me a space child. I did a hitch in the Navy as a electronics tech. I worked for Hughes Aircraft Company for quite a while. I currently live in the Saguaro forest in Tucson Arizona
Stories (369)
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A White Set of Cracker Jacks
When I was in the Navy in the Nineteen Eighties, McNamara had given the Navy business suits for uniforms. No style, just a nasty business suit. The Navy was unimpressed. They asked that some modern Cracker Jacks be made available. When the white uniform came out, I bought a set. I thought I looked hot in them. Little did I know the Officers had noticed me, and I would be sorry I bought them. I had the POW (Petty Officer of the Watch) when we pulled in to port. The Captian was OOD (Officer Of the Deck). I was not sure what to think.
By Mark Stigers 4 years ago in Humans
My First Time in the Navy
Every good Sea Story starts with this is a no-shitter, and this one is one of those. In Nineteen Seventy-Nine, I was a Nuke Power student. When I graduated from ET School in the Great Lakes, my class was not ready, so I got a transfer to the USS Vogelgesang, DD 862, before Nuke School in Orlando. I was green. I was more green than a freshly cut Pear Tree.
By Mark Stigers 4 years ago in Humans
The Night I Should Have Died
I don’t remember the date. I don’t remember the name of the storm. We were off the Va Capes, graveyard of the Atlantic. I remember the night well. I had the mid-watch in the shop onboard the USS South Carolina CGN-37. We dogged the mid-watch to two hours, not the normal four hours. That night it was two hours of hell.
By Mark Stigers 4 years ago in Fiction
Leroy
Leroy had a patented flexible mold. He programmed a computer to produce Ten Thousand objects for your home out of good plastic in five colors, and high-dollar plastic matches any color and texture. Good quality objects were one dollar, Any high dollar object, five dollars. With Ten objects, you could make a very fancy chair. With Five objects, you could make a nice side table. Twenty objects would make a dining room table in several styles. Ten objects to make a chair. It could make All kinds of things like furniture to wine goblets at the Quick Maker store. No other store could compete with no overhead of the Quick Maker store. Furthermore, the stores would buy back by weight any plastics item it made for recycling.
By Mark Stigers 4 years ago in Fiction
Too Much Fun in the Sun?
I hate jet airliners. While I am flying, I think 35,000 feet divided by 16 is 2187.5. The square root of that is 46.77. That means that if the plane explodes and I am thrown free of the wreckage, it will take 46.77 seconds to hit the ground. Of course, the Armstrong Limit is the altitude above which the atmospheric pressure is sufficiently low that water boils at the temperature of a human body. I’m about 30,000 feet below that, thank God. The air is a much better 3.5 psi at -65 degrees Fahrenheit. It warms up quickly as you fall. Everything suggests that you would die from impacting the ground.
By Mark Stigers 5 years ago in Fiction
To Stone a Bull
When I was young, we would go to my Uncle Buck's country farm every summer in Ohio. The closest town was Gallipolis, which was near Waterloo. They were out in the country. We drove across America, and it was beautiful. I remember them building the Arch in St. Louis. We saw a mammoth crane put the gleaming sections into place in the Great Gateway Arch.
By Mark Stigers 5 years ago in Fiction
The Pod
The Sail Fish, a one-masted cabin cruiser, and I ran about four knots against the wind. It was a time to be alone. When a fat old sea lion shot out of the sea on a wave and landed on the deck of the Sail Fish. A pod of angry Orca swam around the Sail Fish. Two of the big ones started to ram me. I put on my life vest. Three hits, things started to get thrown around. Five hits, framing started to creek and crack. ten hits it is coming apart. I call on the radio. The GPS stops working.
By Mark Stigers 5 years ago in Fiction
The Chocolate Monger
Robert Mumford had always loved chocolate. He had chocolate every day in as many different ways as he could. Chocolate donuts at breakfast. Chocolate soda at lunch. At dinner, he had chocolate milk and chocolate cake for dessert. Mumford’s Chocolate Limited did a good business selling refined chocolate concentrate syrup to manufacture chocolate masterpieces. At Mumford’s, a huge tank of chocolate syrup did not wait long to distribute its contents to manufacturers that turned the sweet liquid into money.
By Mark Stigers 5 years ago in Fiction
