Back in my high school days, before I joined the Navy, I had a summer job on the Intracoastal Waterway in Northwest Florida. One morning in 1970 a river monitor made its way past us. I was so impressed that I decided the Navy was what I wanted to do after graduation. But, in boot camp in 1972, I discovered that the Brown Water Navy had been disbanded and I ended up on aircraft carriers, instead. Not what I wanted, but my mom felt better about it.