instapinch.com

From July 29, 2006.

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Prepare to be underwhelmed.

Callsigns (or “nicknames” for you lubbers of land) in aviation are a necessity that have sprung (sprang? springed? spronged?) from the realities of the tactical environment of flying. In a nutshell, you can’t very well be calling “Jim…this is Bill checking in” since there could very well be more than a couple Jims or Bills out there flying around. Hence, the need to have specific and individual callsigns that would help sort out an already confusing tactical arena.

Coming up with callsigns based on names is one obvious and popular way of getting (or giving) new monikers, for example in the Tophatters we had “Otis” Redden, “Cock” Roach (in the days of Patsy Schroder, having that callsign stenciled on the side of a jet was problematic, to say the least), “Flail’n” Whalen, “Peggy” Fleming, “Rock” Whittrock (although that was his name, so I guess that one doesn’t count), Jim “Rev” Jones (shortened at times to “BJ” for Bug Juice, the navy nickname for kool-aid – hey, we’re not PC if we’re not anything). Callsigns need to be short and succinct for obvious reasons – you don’t want to have to say “Bhagavad-Gita, Destroyer of Worlds” any time you key the radio (”Bags” would work in that case). “Doc”, “Furrr”, “OB” and “Geyser” were others (reminds me of that old joke….”When Judy, Carole, Betty and Lisa get together, they call each other Judy, Carole, Betty and Lisa. When Jim, Bill, Dave and Randy get together, they call each other Rev, Pinch, Hooter and Cock.”

As far as mine was concerned, initially it was, of course (and I knew this wouldn’t last), a shortening of my last name, “Paisley” became “Pais”. That was sufficient to make it through the various training pipelines, but when I reached VF-14, that would soon change.

So it came to pass shortly after I arrived at the World famous Tophatters, I found myself in the hangar gee-dunk (again for you lubbers, navy parlance for “snack-bar”) one morning getting a donut or a bagel or whatever it was and the cost of said munchie was $.95. All I had at the time was a dollar, and the young airman recruit who was tending the bar at the time did not have the till open. Fine, I said, with a cheerful mouthful of breakfast fare and not wanting to hold up whatever line was behind me, you owe me a nickel and we’ll call it even!

Fast forward to early afternoon. I had headed back down to said gee-dunk to grab a sandwich, and whatever it cost, I was…..a nickel short.

Again, no problem. The guy owed me a nickel from earlier in the morning, so we were square.

Problem was, there was a different guy behind the counter in the afternoon and it took me a few minutes to convince him that yes, he DID owe me a nickel!

End of story. Right? Wrong, or this would be the most boring post in the world.

Mike “Van” Valen, a squadron buddy and one of the great givers of call signs in the unit, happened to be a couple of people behind me in line. For whatever reason he made it back up to the Ready Room before I did, and as I walked in a few minutes later, he was holding center stage, REGALING the story of me and my wayward nickel, although when he got to the part about my “convincing” the gee-dunk guy that yes, he DID owe me a nickel, Van had me grabbing this guy by the shirt, hauling him OVER the counter and was beating the crap out of him….because he wouldn’t credit me a nickel.

After that, a number of recommended callsigns were written on the white board and throughout the day people would vote on them. I can’t remember what the others were, but “Pinch” won, and has stuck to this day.

As a funny epilogue, shortly thereafter and at various times over the next 2 and a half years in the squadron, I would happen to find random pennies and NICKELS tossed in my mailbox that squadron mates felt would be better served in my possession than theirs. This prompted one wag to say I shoulda rigged the voting for, instead of “Pinch”, but “Buck”.