Oral History: Roger Jarboe

[0:00] Now all sailors of any salt know what scurvy is. It is a vitamin C deficiency and it causes you to lose your teeth and general bad health.

[0:12] One time shortly after well I think was on our first cruise after I reported aboard. I'm heading down the passageway and I can't remember our leading chief's name, but he was an old submariner that couldn't pass the physical for submarines anymore. So, he was finishing out his time on a carrier.

[0:34] He steps out of his office and he grabs me and he looks at me like I've got three heads and I'm going, "Chief, what's going on?" He says, "Come with me." So, he goes into Dr. Stein killer knocks on his door and doc says come. So chief opens the door and he says doc we got a problem and I'm going what's wrong and doctor looks up and says what's the matter chief and he says it's Jarboat he doesn't look good.

[1:05] So doc gets up he starts looking at me and he says chief says yeah I think he's getting scurvy he's not looking good. So then Dr. Stein Keller just broke out in this great big grin and he says, "Okay, Chief, I'll handle it." So I was like, "Okay." So then Chief turns to me. He says, "Okay, you go down the mess decks and you get five gallons of orange juice." I was like, "What?

[1:32] You just said I'm dying." He said, "Oh, shut up. Just go get the orange juice.

[1:35] They'll have it waiting for you." So I was like, "Yes, chief." Because when you're in E5 and a senior chief says to do something, it was like, "Yes, chief.

[1:44] and then you ask about it after afterward. So I go down to Mestex and sure enough one of his cronies down there has this container of five gallons of orange juice. So I lug that back up to sick bay and I said, "What do you want me to do with just put it on the wart for now?" I was like, "Okay." So then I go on about my business. Uh the doctor had written for like I don't know how many cans of uh medicinal alcohol that went into that container of orange juice.

[2:17] So we had a scurvy party. So everybody is sitting around watching blue movies cuz there was always a crew member that had the blue movies and we're sipping on our scurvy juice.

[2:32] And every now and then a different division officer would come wandering through and get his glass of scurvy juice. And so those were scurvy parties. And the time I was aboard, we had like three of them, I think. And uh good way to break up the time and have a little alcohol on the ship.