"Take the con"

[Wilson Gray]

As chance would have it, I've had occasion to speak with my brother
the Naval veteran re "take the con."

He didn't remember my asking him whether he had ever taken the con,
but he did explain why such a question would have pissed him off. He
spent three years as second in command of the guided-missile destroyer
(so-called not because it destroyed guided missiles; rather, it was
because it was a destroyer that had guided missiles as its main
offensive armament), the USS Waddell, off the coast of Vietnam. Hence,
taking the con was one of his primary duties. So, asking him whether
he'd ever had occasion to do it was the kind of stupid-assed,
land-lubber question that would have pissed him off. He went on to say
that the alternate spelling, "conn," was probably influenced by the
obsolete term, "conning tower," once used WRT submarines, when they
were "boats." They're now "ships." The replacement term for "conning
tower" is "sail."

-Wilson
--
Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is knows how deep
a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
race. He brought death into the world.

--Sam Clemens

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