Coffee Time Blog 12: Thanksgiving at Sea

Good morning! It’s 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, November 27, 2025. It’s clear and cold, it’s Thanksgiving 2025, and it’s coffee time.—–

It’s Thanksgiving, and I hope you are all having a great one. Some of you get along with your families; some of you don’t. Some of you will nap in somebody else’s chair this afternoon—yeah, that tryptophan, the chemical that makes us want to snooze!

Anyway, today when I got up, I thought about my time in the US Navy between 1980 and 1984. For three of those years, I was on an aircraft carrier. Thanksgiving on an aircraft carrier at sea is a different experience—not a party, but definitely unique. I wasn’t around my family, but I honestly didn’t mind. My siblings all had their own families, and we had mostly stopped gathering for Thanksgiving before I joined the Navy. My parents usually volunteered somewhere, too.

So, there’s this unique thing about being on an aircraft carrier—specifically, the USS Nimitz, the first Nimitz-class carrier. Back then, it was the “Gem of the Sea.” 

Eating at sea on a carrier: The first thing you face is a long line. There are two sides to the main chow hall dining area—port and starboard. Lunches and dinners were always two hours long, because waiting in that line took up most of that time.

The line for the serving area would start on the second deck, where the chow hall was (it was almost the width of the ship, in the middle). Then, the line would g up the ladders—the stairs—to the Hangar Bay, which is considered the first deck of the ship. From there, the line would snake randomly between equipment and planes, seemingly finding the path of least resistance.

Here was this snaking queue of sailors dressed in many different ways: some in working clothes, some in dungarees, some in the different colored shirts they have on aircraft carriers. Even on Thanksgiving, this was the norm. Many of us back then would carry what we called a “line book”—usually a paperback—to read while standing in line. Sometimes the line was a couple of hundred people long, maybe 500-600 feet. There were actually four lines because there were four serving lines for about 3,000 guys (there were no women on carriers back then). That’s the foundation of what I’m trying to say: the only difference was really the food and the dining atmosphere. There was still the long line, and we were still in our work clothes. There were still books to read. Did I mention waiting in line and the books? Ha Ha

Like I said, it was pretty much the traditional food and the mild atmosphere that marked Thanksgiving for us. We never really gathered around to say what we were thankful for. But mostly, we just ate, came back, maybe wrote a letter or two, some of us took naps, and the next day we went back to work.

I was blessed with a small division on the Nimitz. We were weapons specialists, and there were only about 30 of us. We had a small berthing area that some would have considered luxurious, and we all got along pretty well. So, not every division had the luxury of coming back and crawling into their rack (your bunk) and snoozing the afternoon away. A lot of guys would have their Thanksgiving meal and then go back to work. They were on duty; there were still things in engineering, aviation, and all that, that needed to be done on the ship.

The point of the story is that my first Thanksgiving away from home wasn’t really a big deal since I was single. My second Thanksgiving, I was newly married. But I never really got homesick or sentimental. There was no Black Friday either.

Basically, it was just a good time to chow down on better-than-usual food. I often remember the experiences I had on that big old ship. A lot of craziness, a lot of good times, a lot of serious times, but it was good nonetheless, floating around in the Mediterranean during the Cold War.

All right, I hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving out there! Don’t nap too long, make sure you take some Tums with you, and I will talk to you on the next Coffee Time. Have a good one, be good to each other. Peace, love, togetherness, and all that good stuff! All right, man, have a good one. Bye.

Love,

Mark