Hooch Construction
Hooch is slang for 'house'. Soon after we arrived in Vung Tau it was decided that the boats were not configured for sleeping and eating. Since we would be out on the water for extended periods, this was a necessity. Since our company was made up of a cross section of the community, we were fortunate to find that several of the men were skilled carpenters. Many others worked in construction. So it was time to gather the necessary materials to build a house on each boat.
Each of the 19 boats had a hooch. The design was pretty much standard for all of the boats but there was plenty of room for customization. There was a lot of wheeling and dealing for materials but I wasn't privy to the negotiations. This was standard in the military and probably still is. A couple of cases of whiskey for a jeep would have been a fair bargain. But the most amazing part of the "home" project was the arrival of 19 porcelain toilets! These were ingeniously installed in a corner of the welldeck by our resident plumbers on a wooden pallet or box with plumbing that led overboard and a 55-gallon drum above to supply the flushing water. Boat crews even devised varying degrees of privacy with curtains and partitions. I mention the toilets because, well, every home needs one, right?
To make the bathroom complete, most boats had a shower in the other corner of the welldeck. There were one or two more 55-gallon drums on the roof of the hooch that gravity fed the shower head, so there was plenty of water pressure. This system also supplied water to the sink inside the hooch, an optional accessory depending on the ingenuity of the crew.
No kitchen would be complete without a stove and an ice chest. Everything from sterno to army-issue gas stoves were scrounged. Ice chests were homemade out of plywood, thick foam insulation and epoxy resin to seal it tight. These were mainly for beer storage as a cold brew was an absolute necessity at the end of a long, hot day on the water. Food prep depended on the amount of culinary talent aboard. Some of the time it was C-rations, short for "Meals, Combat, Individual". But once again, ingenuity appeared as crews went out of their way to avoid C-rats. An unscheduled stop along the Mekong at the local market yielded fresh and cheap food. We stayed away from the meat and usually found some nice seafood instead. Once my crew bought a giant blue crab with long legs. We had to shop for big pot at the same market. It took forever for our stove to boil the water, but it turned out tender and delicious.
Inside, the hooches varied in style from basic to quite fancy. Some of the accomplished finish carpenters went a little overboard (sorry) with their attention to detail. Countertops were stained and sealed, ceiling lights installed, and many had either a table or small dinette area. I don't remember seeing any upgrades to the standard army cots in my travels as mail courier. You have to remember that this was Vietnam in the middle of a war zone. There was strong competition to outdo the neighbors amidst ever enduring camaraderie.
Also among the crew members were a couple of artistic types. The boats just didn't seem complete without a logo of some sort. Being the Reserves, we didn't feel compelled to observe army uniformity, so each boat's logo was very unique. The boats all had numbers on them but the logos provided names as well. Soon, nobody referred to a crew by boat number but by the name on the logo. The names were quite clever like, "The Clark Clifford Experience" (Sec. of Defense), and "Miss Budweiser II". Each boat also acquired a Florida state flag to fly. I'm not sure where those came from.
One thing we didn't have was air conditioning. To maximize the flow of air inside the hooches, most had screening on four sides. Large plywood window covers could be lowered when a rainstorm came along.
I guess the desired result of all this building was to construct something that made us feel more at home. Anything that put the war out of our thoughts helped move the waiting game along. We drank, swam, gambled, read, debated, and explored to work away the hours, knowing we would eventually win a trip home.