I’m a retired Navy CPO with26 years service. I did some time in the Merchant Marine before I joined the Navy where I served aboard seven different carriers and made 10 major deployments and a bunch of lesser ones like NATO cruises and short deployments to the North Atlantic.
I figured that was enough to call myself an oldsalt...so I did.
When I was a kid in Seattle in the late '50's, I had a paper route that included an area (Pier 91) that Navy ships would come and go from, (I even had to have a special ID card, which was cool for a 10 year old).
Anyway, during August, Naval ships would come in for Seafair Week and I would sell hundreds of newspapers to the sailors coming off ships plus get a lot of head pats, it was awesome!