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I recently watched Amazon’s remake of the 1980s movie “Roadhouse,” and it instantly brought back memories of my early submarine life. Unlike the original, the new movie is set in the Florida Keys, where I was first stationed as a young sailor. Within 4 years, I crossed paths with astronaut John Glenn, President John F. Kennedy, and the boxer Muhammad Ali.

As I wasn’t yet of drinking age, I didn’t get to share a Cuba Libre with Hemingway at his regular Key West drinking hole, the Brown Derby Saloon. The bar in Roadhouse, however, was a steel cage of sorts, home to lots of manly brawls. My steel cage at the time was a claustrophobic diesel submarine, where I was a crew member.

In the era of transition to Nuclear power, in 1958 the USS Nautilus went under the North Pole the year I joined the US Navy. Harnessing the power of nuclear reactors to produce unlimited energy, as opposed to putting wild gladiators inside a steel cage and fighting to the end. It started when the power of the wind was harvested.

I once was in a Charleston shipyard, stopping to charge the submarine’s battery. There I saw Roman Gabriel featured in an issue of Sports Illustrated, who was playing football for NC State. Following sports was a way to assimilate into American life. From there, we sailed to Europe for three months. We got to see the 1960 Olympics in Rome and watched Muhammad Ali.

My limited Spanish translation skills helped a few asylum seekers who were pulled onboard trying to escape the crisis in Cuba. We visited Gitmo 4 times in those years. In 1961, we met up with John Glenn who was in medical isolation after a preparatory voyage for their moon landing. We also met up with JFK, in that infamous October of 1962, as Key West was the ground zero for the Cuban Missile Crisis.

My last tour was at Charleston Submarine Base, assigned to Fleet Ballistic Missile. Simply put capable of mass destruction. My lowly office and sleeping quarters were sandwiched by a nuclear reactor and 16 ballistic missiles armed with warheads. It was my version of sleeping with the devil. Our world was lucky we never fired in anger, a true deterrent of peace. The photo of me is undersea, believe it or not near Disney World. I brought my family here for the last reminiscent six years later.

The one-liner “Nobody wins in a fight” is an important lesson. The Greyhound station is a fixture in the movie as well, reminding me of my last day in the Keys, where I boarded a bus to start a journey back to the West Coast. Needless to say, I never became “Ernestor” Hemingway, my wild fantasy. I’m just the Old Man in the Sea, as Ernesto would say with humility. I was just a passenger among the crazy bunch of men. I am proud but no hero.