The Airman's Club

When I first arrived at Keesler AFB in the spring of 1973 I spent many of my evenings at the Airman's Club... It wasn't so much because I liked to go out drinking (I really didn't) - it was mostly because I could :-) Yes - back in those days the drinking age on military installations was 18 and beer was dirt cheap (two for a quarter on Tuesday nights).

Aside: There were usually a few WAFs at the club but you couldn't get anywhere near them because they were surrounded by airmen, which totally mystified me... I don't know how to say this without seeming unkind, but (speaking from the perspective of a 19 year old airman) most of the ladies who hung out there were not "particularly attractive"... All I can figure is the guys must have been pretty drunk (and not very picky). But I digress...

Back in those days the Airman's Club wasn't in the triangle (a bit odd since that's where all the airmen were). As I recall, it was across base on 6th street (north of Meadows), which was about as far from the triangle as you could get. It was too far to walk so we typically took the shuttle bus that looped around the base. Now, the base buses were driven by civil servants who I'm quite certain (based on their demeanor) were retired training sergeants who had never fully accepted the fact that they no longer had any real authority over us. I mean - they probably could have gotten us in trouble if we were way out of line, but in the case of a minor offense they seemed to be pretty much powerless... The upshot is that whenever a driver tried to go "drill sergeant" on us we pretty much ignored him. And that leads to my first story:

Late one evening about 20 of us (all fairly plastered) boarded the bus to head back to the triangle. And as soon as we were all seated the driver closed the door, stood up and declared "I saw a beer get on the bus and I'm not going anywhere until I find it!"
The bus was dead silent for quite a few seconds, then Juneau (seated next to me at the very back of the bus) spoke up: "Sir? ... I think you must be hallucinating... Beers can't walk."
The bus exploded with laughter (it's even funnier when you're drunk) but the driver was not amused. He spent the next few minutes pacing up and down the aisle screaming at us and trying to find the culprit. (I sensed that he really wanted to search us but I don't think he had the authority.)
He finally got back behind the wheel and announced that weren't moving until someone confessed... I really don't know what he was expecting to happen - but nothing did. We all just sat there wondering what his malfunction was, and after about 5 more minutes he muttered under his breath and got underway...
I'm not sure why that incident stuck in my mind (although the mental image of a beer climbing onto the bus was priceless). It was just so typical "military" - people getting their shorts in a twist over the most insignificant things. The irony is that I don't think there ever was a beer on the bus. I mean, if the driver was that certain he saw it he would have known who was carrying it, right? ... It's no wonder that military retirees have such a short life expectancy :-)

Next (and last) story:
One night I ended up having drinks with a few airmen I didn't know very well, including one who kept blurting out "I've done that before!" in response to pretty much everything we said. And we weren't the only ones he was "sharing" with. He noticed some guys up at the bar buying beers and yelled "I've done that before!" And some people started dancing he yelled "I've done that before!"... Yeah - it was kind of funny at first but as the evening wore on it got pretty annoying...

Eventually it was time to head back to the triangle and one of the guys offered us all a ride. I didn't hesitate. (Anything was better than riding the bus.)

Aside: Yes - I know... You should never get into a car with someone who's been drinking, but the speed limit on base was 20 MPH and there was almost no traffic late at night - hence it wasn't considered a big deal and I never heard of a single accident the whole time I was there... But that has nothing to do with the story :-)

So it came to pass that five of us piled into an old Ford station wagon and I ended up sandwiched in the middle of the back seat next to "Mr. Eloquence" who was yelling "I've done that before!" out the window at every pedestrian we passed. (Apparently that was the only thing he ever said when he was drunk).

Not long after we got underway the driver exclaimed "I'd sure like to find me a sheep!" which prompted the front seat passenger to ask what what he meant by that, and the driver explained: "Sheep are the closest thing to human (anatomical reference) there is. All the guys up in my part of Montana know that." He expounded a bit more about the virtues of sheep and eventually said something like "Yeah - you just get on your hip waders and head out to the pasture."
At that point I really didn't want to hear any more about the topic (I was afraid he was actually being serious) but the inquisitive guy just had to ask what the hip waders were for... The driver's response: "Well, you grab the sheep's hind legs and stuff them down into the waders so she can't get away while you're f**king her!"

There was a long period of stunned silence, then the voice next to me said: "I've never done that before..."

Home Again

In the summer of 1973 I completed the Basic Electronics portion of my training (self-paced - with honors) at Keesler AFB... My radar maintenance classes didn't start immediately so I applied for (and was granted) a week of leave. That meant I could visit home for the first since reporting to the military induction center in Portland Oregon 5 months earlier.

It was a short notice thing, so by the time I made travel arrangements anything that was even remotely close to a direct flight was booked. I ended up flying out of New Orleans at zero dark thirty, with changes in Houston, Kansas City, Denver, Boise and Portland, finally arriving in Eugene in the late afternoon. And in order to make the New Orleans departure time I had to catch a shuttle van leaving Biloxi sometime around 2:45 A.M.

Which leads to yet another story I probably shouldn't tell:
In an earlier post I mentioned the ready availability of a certain "smokable substance" in the Keesler triangle... Now - most of the us didn't partake with any regularity (studying electronics requires a certain level of mental clarity) but there were a number of die-hard stoners amongst us. And it was common knowledge to everyone (except the Training Instructors) that "party central" was the C shift bays on the 3rd floor between 2AM and 4AM.
Yeah - for some reason the TI (training instructor) shift rotation only covered 22 hours of the day leaving the squadron unmanned during the wee hours of the morning. The C shift students got back from school after midnight, and by the time they ate chow and got cleaned up the last TIs were on their way out the door... That's when the party started. Airmen from all over the dorm would toss in a buck or two to cover the beer and "ganj", and get totally wasted :-)

Which reminds me: Back in the 70s the nozzle off a deodorant can would fit on a shaving cream can, turning it into a weapon that would shoot a thin stream at least 15 feet. (It was a lot like "silly string" only messier.) Yes - shaving cream wars were a mainstay of the C shift parties...
It was also the only way I found to get rid of those big-ass Gulf Coast roaches. They were too fast to kill with insecticide and trying to squish them only seemed to annoy them. Then one day I discovered (by chance) that if you hit them with a stream of shaving cream they got so freaked out they froze in place. That gave you time to pry them off the cinder block wall and toss them outside (not as easy as you would think - they fought back)... But I digress :-)

Airman Juneau decided to hang out with me until it was time to catch the shuttle (we were roomies at the time and I was pretty stressed about the trip). I'm not sure which one of us came up with the idea of going up to the 3rd floor prior to my departure, but since I was going to be spending the day traveling I figured I might as well be "relaxed"... Yes - I did inhale. (Note to future generations: that's a Bill Clinton reference.)

There not much to say about the first part the trip (other than it was really dark and I was really tired). It was pretty uneventful until we began our descent into Houston - and that leads to another one of my favorite stories:
I was sitting by the window on the right side of the plane (just behind the wing - my dad always told me that was the safest place to be) listening to Top 40 on the headphones (once upon a time the airlines actually provided free music)... The sun was just rising and there were pockets of mist along the ground, and in the early morning light it was indescribably beautiful (and not just because of the "state" I was in)... As we started our final approach, the song Hummingbird (by Seals and Croft) was playing, and just when it got to the final verse ("Don't fly away" repeated in different keys) the plane crossed the threshold and entered a patch of thin mist and - I swear I am not making this up: There were rainbows flowing over the wings...

Yeah - it was one of those moments when a bunch of things came together to create an event so incredible (and implausible) it remained forever etched in my memory. There is really no way to accurately describe it :-)
BTW: The topic of being on my way home at sunrise will come up again later... I never really "connected the dots" before, but there is apparently some deeper significance there. (New beginnings?)

There's not much left to tell:

Mom was still mom... She had moved (yet again) - to a nice little rental house in Coburg (just north of Eugene). One of the first things she wanted was an upright freezer (don't really recall why) so I sent her the money to buy one... (It was a "Signature" unit - Montgomery Ward store brand. I inherited it after she passed away and it lasted until the mid 1990s.)
I don't recall how much I saw of Karina, but I don't think she was still with Bernie... At some point during 1973 he moved to Redding California to work in a music store (which he ended up buying a couple of years later) and they never saw each other again...

And I ran into a couple of people I used to hang out with and they didn't seem to have any grasp of what I had been through or how much I had changed... They were like "I haven't seen you for a while... Oh - you're in the military now? That's nice"... I mean - I knew life would go on without me but their level of indifference was still a bit of a shock :-)

Finally: Unbeknownst to me, my future wife (having graduated from high school in Sandy) was at that very time preparing to attend the University or Oregon (in Eugene), thus putting into motion a chain of events that would result in us meeting a bit more than a year later...

But my main "takeaway" was that mom was getting along fine without me. That had been my deepest concern when I enlisted, but by the end of the visit I was finally at ease with the decision I had made.

Della - Last Part

Once again, the topic is a girl named "Della" (I don't recall her actual name) that I knew at Keesler AFB while I was attending ATC Radar Repair school in 1973.

I probably shouldn't tell this story, but it's one of my more interesting memories so I will anyway:

One day Della invited me up to her place up in Hattiesburg to ride her horse... Now - horses really aren't my thing (they're big, stupid and they fart a lot) but I figured what the heck (it gave me a chance to hang with Della). So that Saturday morning (a very hot and humid day) I headed north out of Biloxi in my '68 Barracuda convertible. By the time I arrived Della was already in her "riding outfit", which happened to be a skimpy, bright orange bikini... Now - I had seen her in some pretty revealing outfits before, but nothing prepared me for the sight of her in that bikini.

After I was able to breathe again we headed over to the pasture. Della didn't own a saddle (always rode bareback) so we used a fence to get up on the horse (Della in front and me behind) - and it didn't take long to discover that when two people are on the same horse (bareback) it's pretty much impossible to maintain any space between your lower torsos (you tend to slide together). I also quickly realized that in order to maintain my balance I needed to put my hands somewhere and the only thing available to hold onto was Della. I considered asking her "Where would you like me to grope you?" but I decided against it, and finally just placed my hands gently on her waist (I figured that was the safest location - a good distance from the "naughty bits"). She didn't react to my touch so apparently it was a good call.

To summarize:
There I was, sitting on a horse behind a beautiful 16 year old girl in a skimpy bikini - my hands on her bare waist - both of us hot and sweaty - her long blond hair brushing against me in the warm breeze... Furthermore - our nether regions were pretty much "spooned" together and the movement of the horse was causing some rather interesting sensations - and it occurred to me that if I were to become aroused she would immediately become aware of it. Since I really didn't want her asking "What is that poking me?" I did my utmost to distract myself from what was one of the most fascinating experiences of my life up to that point. (I thought about cars, sports, the obese lunch lady from the 6th grade - anything I could come up with to keep myself from fully appreciating the ride.)
I honestly don't remember how far we went (like I said, I was trying not to think about it), but afterward we spent the rest of the day driving around and hanging out - and by the time I headed back to Biloxi that evening it was clear that Della had no romantic interest in me (no need to go into details). Whatever she was feeling, she didn't consider it to be "love".

Aside:
On my way back to Keesler I ended up driving through rural Mississippi after dark - and there was something about the way the trees looked in the moonlight that totally gave me the "willies"... (It was almost as bad as driving through the bayou at 1AM - but that doesn't happen until later.)

Final story:
Della was constantly pestering me to let her drive my Barracuda (especially that day in Hattiesburg) but I kept explaining that (a) she did not have a learner's permit so it would be illegal, and (b) if something happened (regardless of whose fault it was) it would cause us both a crap load of trouble...
Apparently the message didn't sink in. There was another GI in my dorm bay whose name I shall not mention (initials were DH) who owned a Chevy Vega GT (one of the worst cars ever made) and he was completely infatuated with Della.

Aside: I almost never think of guys in terms of what they look like (I don't roll that way), but DH was short and squat with thick glasses and an overbite - I'm pretty sure he would be considered "unattractive" by anyone's standards, and I suspect that Della only let him hang around because of all the attention he lavished on her...

So - one weekend in the fall of 1973 DH drove his Vega up to Hattiesburg to spend the day with Della. And early that evening he called the dorm to have one of his buddies come pick him up. When he got back (without the Vega) he was covered in bruises... Yes. Della had talked him into letting her drive...
Apparently they were going around a curve and an oncoming car was slightly in their lane. Della overreacted and drifted onto the gravel shoulder then over-corrected trying to get the tires back onto the pavement (a classic rookie mistake). The end result was a totaled Vega. Luckily, nobody was seriously hurt, and DH got away with claiming he had been driving so Della didn't get into trouble.

Another aside: I still remember the apprehension on DH's face as he explained to me and Juneau what had happened. He was clearly aware of how protective we were of Della and was (rightfully) concerned that Juneau (who had a volatile temper) might pound the living sh*t out of him :-)

Although Della did the planet a huge favor by destroying that gawdawful Vega (one less POS cluttering up the universe) I was really angry with her for ignoring the voice of reason. (I just hope it taught her something.)
That whole incident happened shortly before I left Keesler so I never had a chance to discuss it with her - and once I moved on I never really looked back... That's why I was so surprised to discover that telling the story was taking 3 posts.

Now that that's finally over I can move on to more interesting and amusing subject matter :-)

Della - Part 2

My prior post was about a girl I knew at Keesler AFB back in 1973 who I've been calling "Della" even though I'm pretty sure that wasn't her actual name (I'm drawing a blank.)

Quick aside: Speaking of girls at Keesler - there were rumors that there was a brothel operating out of one of the women's dorms there... I never made any effort to check it out but a decade later there was a scandal involving a prostitution ring being run by some officers there, so it does seem plausible (although not particularly relevant to the topic at hand).

And back to Della:

I think there were 3 main reasons that (over time) she grew to trust me. First, I never tried to go beyond kissing (and I only did that when she initiated it). Second, she realized she could not manipulate me. (Compared to my mother and sister she was a rank amateur.) And finally, I think she sensed that I genuinely cared about her... And when you put it all together that made me the last guy on earth she wanted to be romantically involved with... Yeah - go figure :-)

First story - actually more of a recollection than a story:
Della spent a lot of time hanging around with older guys but (as it turned out) she was much more interested in boys her own age. The problem was she couldn't make sense out of how they behaved toward her... I remember having long conversations with her about high school and rumors and peer pressure and stuff, but my basic message was: (a) she didn't need to try to be liked; (b) regardless of how they acted, any teenage boy who didn't find her attractive was probably gay; and (b) if you accept the fact that teenage boys are brainless twits everything else becomes self-explanatory :-)

Second Story:
I have to admit that one of the reasons I enjoyed hanging around with Della was the way other guys looked at me when we were together. (Yes - I realize how shallow that is)... It was kind of like when I was having dinner with Stan "The Man" Musial at his restaurant - all the other kids stared at me with that same look on their faces.

So one day when we were marching back from school I noticed that Della was waiting on the sidewalk across from the dorm. She was all done up and wearing a very short bright yellow dress (she looked absolutely amazing), and she appeared to be really excited about something. (Of course, by the time we came to a halt pretty much everyone had noticed her.)
When the yellow rope yelled "Dismissed!" Della came running across the street and jumped up into my arms (almost knocked me over), and started whispering "I'm so happy!" into my ear over and over... (At that point there were about 100 guys staring and they all had that look on their faces.)

She finally calmed down enough to explain that a few months earlier her foster parents had filed adoption papers without telling her (I assume they didn't want to get her hopes up) and that morning they got word it had been approved and they all went to the courthouse to make it official.

Aside: When a foster child turns 18 (or 21 in some states) they "age out" of the system (the state will no longer provide money for their care). So unless their last foster family is willing to start supporting them they end up on the streets... Being adopted means having a family for life, and for someone like Della who never had a real home that was unimaginably huge.

BTW: The sergeant and his wife were incredibly nice people. There were unable to have children of their own and had already adopted a Vietnamese girl (war orphan, around 7 years old - who had really bonded with Della)... Also, even though they gave Della quite a bit of slack you could tell that was extremely difficult for them. (Despite her level of self-reliance she still did stupid things from time to time.)
Yeah - I recall that first time Juneau and I met the sarge. We had a brief conversation about nothing in particular and he seemed to have (rightly) concluded that neither one of us was the type of guy who would hurt Della in any way - so I guess we passed muster :-)

There are a couple of more stories to tell, but I'll leave them for the next post... Then I can finally get on with stories of life on (and around) Keesler AFB...

Della - Part 1

The topic of this post is a girl I met at Keelser AFB back in the spring of 1973... I'm pretty sure her name wasn't actually Della (once again, my memory fails me), but I recall that it was something unique (a name you rarely hear) and Della is the closest thing I can come up with so that's what I'm going with :-)

But before I tell the story, here's a non-sequitur:
I have absolutely no recollection of how my laundry got done while I was at Keesler... I mean - I was there for 8 months so everything must have gotten washed a bunch of times but I do not remember either taking it anywhere or doing it myself... I do recall ironing my fatigues, but other than that ... nothing... Weird.
I also remember polishing my boots (many, many times - it's a military thing). Yeah - applying the polish is just the first step. After that you put some Witch Hazel (astringent) on a cotton ball and work the surface in small circles until you can see your reflection. You have to be careful not to overdo it or (over time) the polish will become brittle and flake...
And I also recall using Brasso to polish all the knobs and handles in the dorm room (and my belt buckles). But doing laundry? Nada...

And on to the story:

One day Juneau (aka The Grinch) and I headed over to the base bowling alley (which was right across Falcon street from our dorm) and immediately noticed a number of airman milling about one particular lane... The attraction (as it turned out) was a teenage girl with long blonde hair wearing a tube top and "short shorts" (way too tight). She was bowling all alone and oddly enough, none of the airmen approached her. They were all just hanging around trying to pretend like they weren't staring at her...

OK - I feel kind of bad about objectifying her (there was more to her than that) but since the point of this blog is to record my thoughts and memories as accurately as I can, here goes:
If you only saw her face you'd describe her as cute, but not exceptionally so. However, the rest of her was absolute perfection... Nothing too big, or too small - too firm or too soft. Every curve and contour was exactly as it should be...Taken all together it was enough to make you forget to breathe.

So the moment Juneau spotted her he was like "Let's go over and say hi!" and before I could say "Are you freaking crazy???" he was headed that direction. I didn't even have time to get nervous before he introduced us - and much to my surprise she couldn't have been friendlier...

Aside: All the other guys were stunned. They had assumed she was "unapproachable", and then we just walked up, said "Hi!" and started bowling with her... They were all like "Doh!"

As it turned out, she was the foster daughter of one of the instructors (a Master Sergeant) on base. She wasn't around very often because they lived up in Hattiesburg (about an hour away) where she went to high school... Yes, she was younger than we initially though - barely 16. (Once again, I feel compelled to mention that the age of consent in Mississippi was 13 at the time, although that wasn't an issue here)...

Over time we learned that she had been abandoned at a very early age (she fantasized that her mother was a Hollywood actress who would come looking for her one day) and she was on her 12th foster home. (She didn't go into details, but I got the impression she'd had some very bad experiences along the way.) And despite everything she didn't seem to be particularly jaded or cynical. (She was actually quite upbeat.)

I was even more surprised that she had been labeled as "out of control" by the child welfare system. That mystified me... Yes - she definitely did her own thing - smoked and occasionally drank. And she could be a manipulative little "so and so" (no surprise given her background)... But she didn't do drugs, and although she was highly flirtatious she was not at all promiscuous.
The point is that somewhere underneath it all was a really sweet, vulnerable young lady. She just couldn't stand being kept on a short leash (that's when she would run away)... Fortunately, her new foster parents seemed to understand that, and for the first time in her life she was in a home where she felt comfortable.

You know, I honestly haven't thought about her much since I left Keesler. That's probably why it's taking me so long to write this post - none of it has been "processed"...

In retrospect I probably had deeper feelings for her than I realized, but it wasn't mutual. I still remember the day she said to me "You're a great guy, and some day some girl will be lucky to have you for a husband - but I could never think of you as anything but a friend." (If I had a nickel for every time I heard that...)
That's not to say we didn't still make out occasionally - there were times I had to pretend to be her boyfriend so some other guy(s) would leave her alone. I didn't really mind that :-)

Aside: Of the 4 or 5 girls I've ever kissed she was the only one who smoked... Yeah - there's a reason you almost never see non-smokers together with smokers. Nicotine tastes pretty icky...

There are (of course) stories to tell (in the next post), but other than that there's not much left to say... She was at a point in her life where things could go either way, and there were times when she seemed to be trying to prove to herself that she didn't deserve to be happy... I did whatever I could (as did a number of other people) and I often wondered if it was enough... I guess I'll never know...

Indy and Calculators

As you can probably guess from the title, I'm going to cover multiple (unrelated) topics in this post... But, before I start, here's a quick recap of where we are in "the story":

At the beginning of 1973 (at the age of 19) I got fed up with being unemployed, so I enlisted in the Air Force (for 6 years) with a guaranteed job code of "30331" (Air Traffic Control Radar Repairman)... I chose that field because it had one of the longest tech schools of any career in the Air Force, and on April 6, 1973 I arrived at Keesler AFB  (after completing basic at Lackland AFB) to begin that training...

But before I get around to tech school I want to (not so quickly) mention the 1973 Indy 500:

Less than 2 months after my arrival at Keesler a bunch of us got together in the day room (multiple times) to watch the race. I remember that there had been a fatality during qualifying, and in the pre-race interviews some of the drivers expressed concerns about the safety and condition of the track. That was prophetic...

The race didn't start until mid-afternoon on Monday (due to rain delays), and on the 2nd lap "Salt" Walther's car somehow got airborne, careened off the grandstand fence and turned into a fireball (causing an 11 car pileup). He suffered critical burns and a number of spectators were injured... Then before they could clear the wreckage it started raining again and it didn't let up for almost two days. At that point they should have realized the race was cursed and cancelled it - but they didn't...

They restarted the 500 on Wednesday and on the 57th lap Swede Savage's car twitched, veered hard left, and smashed into an infield wall almost head on... There were flaming pieces of the car (including the driver's seat with Swede strapped in) bouncing all over the track. I was so horrified I almost threw up... Then a few moments later there was a collective scream from the grandstand as a firetruck hit and killed a crew member on pit road... At that point I couldn't take any more and went back to my room... According to Wikipedia there were only 10 cars left running when the fiasco was finally ended (due to rain) on the 133rd lap... I still get queasy whenever I think about that race. I couldn't bear to watch another 500 for years afterward...

Aside: That was also the year Secretariat won the Triple Crown and I have a vague recollection of watching a couple of those races as well... Thankfully, no horses caught fire or anything :-)

And on to tech school:

I'm sure I've mentioned this many times before, but when I graduated from high school (in 1970) I was pretty well convinced I was stupid and useless. (Thank you school system!)... The issue wasn't my test scores - those were generally pretty high (I attributed that to having an unusually good memory)... The issue was that everyone else always seemed to understand exactly what was going on whereas I was generally so confused I could barely function... I figured I must be a serious dumbass not to be able to grasp what seemed so obvious to everyone else..

So when I got to Keesler and they told me I qualified for the self-paced Basic Electronics program I was jsutifiably apprehensive - but I needn't have worried... Unlike high school textbooks (written by PhDs trying to demonstrate how smart they are) the Air Force training materials were written as if they actually wanted you to understand the subject matter. (What a concept)...
But the thing that really struck me was the stunning absence of ambiguity. Yes - when you are running a military operation that last thing you want is for "grunts" to be confused about anything. So the education process assumed nothing and built from there. Step by step, every term is defined and every concept explained...

Now - I'm not saying it wasn't a challenge. There was a lot to absorb and it was the kind of technical stuff that many people can't grasp... But for me the whole thing was a revelation. For the first time in my life I was in a classroom and everything made sense. Yeah - apparently high school was just too slow-paced and I was just too easily sidetracked... Definitely a match made in hell :-)

But the main thing I remember from that self-paced Electronics course was the hand-held calculator one of the instructors had on his desk. He had purchased in kit form for only $100 (roughly $500 adjusted to 2013) and I had never seen anything like it. Not only could it add and subtract, but it could multiply and divide as well. I was totally blown away!! ... Only a few years earlier an equivalent desktop calculator was as big as a suitcase and cost roughly as much as a new car... The implications of being able to carry something in your pocket that could do math (other than a slide rule) were staggering...

Aside: I used to get a kick our of watching people the first time they held a calculator. More often than not they tried something like "2+2" (as if they hoped it would give the wrong answer)... Of course, the "geekier" types would run some complex calculations and check the result with a pencil and paper. It was incredible to discover that the device had gotten it right... Yeah - I don't think anyone envisioned the extent to which hand-held devices would eventually change our lives...

I suppose someday one of my descendants might be reading this (trying to understand where the "weirdness" came from) and he or she will have access to technology that is eons beyond "finFETs" (state of the art in 2013). Maybe biological computers??? Who knows...
But please tell me that we (as a society) eventually realized that having all of mankind's accumulated knowledge (not to mention millions of pictures of cats doing funny things) at our fingertips every hour of every day is not necessarily a good thing... And please tell me that the researchers finally stopped trying to make"wearable technology" happen... You know - your fridge tells your left shoe that you are almost out of milk so it can remind you when you pass a store - because our lives would be so much better if we never had to think about anything :-) :-)

So yeah - that's where it all started (me and technology) - back in the early 70's - in the days of "stone knives and bear skins"...

The Waffle Guy

During the first couple of months I spent at Keesler AFB (in the spring of 1973) my room assignment (and / or roommate) seemed to change on almost a weekly basis...  I figure that was because Basic Electronics was relatively short term (high turnover) so they had to constantly shuffle us around to keep us grouped together in the same bays... Yeah - I vaguely recall having at least 6 different roommates and 4 different rooms during that period but I'm a bit hazy on the the details. (It has been 40 years...)

I do, however, clearly remember the worst of my roommates. The first thing he did when he moved in was inform me that he was dealing drugs and if I told anyone he would kill me, and (even worse) he grabbed the pack of colored pencils off of my side of the table and asserted they were his... Yeah - that was wierd... The only other thing I remember was that he had a '66 Fairlane GTA (390) and one night he flipped it and flattened the roof, so the next day he took a power saw and turned it into a "convertible"... Dumbass...

Then there was the roommate who left to go to the BX one day and returned less than a minute later informing me I might want to step outside while he changed his pants. Yeah - he intended to fart but that's not what happened... (I was highly amused)... But none of that has anything to do with the title of this post.

The "waffle guy" was one of the more interesting (and sad) characters I encountered during my time at Keesler... He lived across the hall from me for a while and I don't recall his name so I'll just call him "Wallace".

Historical footnote:
At the beginning of the 1970's the makers of Aunt Jemima frozen waffles launched a publicity campaign featuring a cartoon character (similar to the "Cocoa Puffs" bird) called "Wallace the Waffle Whiffer"... The general theme of the TV commercials was that every time Wallace caught a whiff of those particular frozen waffles he would start yelling "Waffle! Waffle! Waffle!" and track down the source (despite many obstacles in the way).

So - one day we were all standing on Falcon Street behind the dorm (waiting to form up) when a flight of WAFs (Women in the Air Force) marched past. And "Wallace" throws back his head and starts screaming "Waffle! Waffle! Waffle!" at the top of his lungs... At first everyone ignored him, but he did it again the next day, and the next... And eventually some of the other guys in the squadron joined in, and then it spread to the next squadron, and the next, and the next... And by the time I left Keelser, the "waffle call" could be heard all over the base...

Aside: I'm aware that it was all a bit sexist, but back in 1973 nobody really cared (the sergeants sure didn't)... And yes - the feminist movement was active by then, but societal attitudes take time to change. My point is that it was a different (less sensitive) era...

And while I'm on the topic: That was also around the time "gender neutrality" became a hot button topic. The Air Force response was to issue a regulation that redefined all gender specific terms (he, his, man-hour, etc.) as referring to a service member of either gender... Problem solved :-) ... But I digress...

The rest of the "waffle guy" story is both amusing and tragic... "Wallace" was in his late 20's and had joined the Air Force after losing his job as high school history teacher due to alcoholism. Yeah - there were a lot of alcoholics in the military back then, and (as I recall) Wallace was a particularly "entertaining" example thereof.

Now - one of the more popular items of subculture paraphernalia of the era was the "Fly United" poster. That phrase was the main slogan of United Airlines and the poster in question consisted of the airline logo (and slogan) above a pair of ducks mating in mid-flight... Yeah - you probably had to be stoned to think it was funny.

So, one Monday morning I walked into the latrine and discovered that one of the walls had been "decorated" with a faithful reproduction of the aforesaid poster... Yeah - apparently "Wallace" had gotten particularly drunk the night before and (unable to control his creative impulses) proceeded to "memorialize" the mating ducks in black marker. (It  was actually quite nicely done.)

Of course, at that moment I had no idea who the "artist" was, but later in the day I found Wallace repainting the latrine wall in its original dull green... Yeah - murals in the latrine are not the type of thing the military has a sense of humor about. (Actually, the military doesn't have a sense of humor about anything)... But Wallace had "fessed up" and the squadron commander had agreed to be lenient as long as the damage got repaired...

I wish I could say that was the end of the story (and I really don't know how it all turned out), but the next Monday morning I walked into the latrine, and there was another mural on the wall... This time it was a jungle scene featuring a pair of mating elephants, compliments of Wallace's drunken "alter ego"... Yes - apparently the commander had made the mistake of reciting a list of animals he did not want to see mating on his latrine walls, and he had failed to specifically mention pachyderms :-)

The Barracuda

I had been stationed at Keesler AFB (tech school) for a couple of months in the spring of 1973 when I started thinking about getting a car (I hadn't owned one for 8 months)... I mentioned that to my father when I called him one Sunday afternoon and it turned out he was in the process of buying a new '73 Dodge Charger and had only been offered $300 to trade in his '68 Plymouth Barracuda convertible. Now - I was familiar with the "vert" (having driven it in New York a few years earlier) and when I expressed interest, my dad's response was something like "I'd much rather see you have it than sell it to the dealer for that."

Now, silly me - I took that to mean that he was either going to sell it to me for what the dealer had offered or (less likely) give me the car outright... I figured that even with the car's high mileage (around 100K, which was considered a lot back then) the "worst case" price of $300 plus $150 for airfare to Milwaukee was still a reasonable deal so I told him I'd fly up there the next weekend to pick it up.

OK... Here's where I go "off-topic" for a few paragraphs:

I could have caught a shuttle bus from Biloxi to the New Orleans airport but that would have taken a couple of hours and I wasn't particularly patient so I booked a seat on a "taxi flight" out of Gulfport instead... That was the first of many times I flew on Gulf Coast Airlines (now defunct), and I was a bit surprised (and amused) when the guy working the ticket counter hauled all the luggage out to the plane and load it into the hold... I was even more surprised when he climbed into the cockpit and sat down behind the controls... Yeah - it was that kind of airlines :-)

Aside: That was the only time I ever flew anywhere in my uniform. I thought we had to wear our "dress blues" when traveling. I guess I'd seen so many soldiers at airports that it never crossed my mind that it was optional... Who knew?

I boarded the flight to Milwaukee in New Orleans and ended up sitting next to a guy who was an obvious "redneck", and the second I saw him I got this really sick feeling deep in my gut. That was because I'd had long hair for many years prior to joining the Air Force and had been mercilessly harassed by guys like him more times than I could count. They never seemed to have any qualms about calling me a hippie / commie / fag / junkie or whatever else crossed their minds. So I braced myself for the barrage of insults and epithets that was surely about to be hurled my direction.

Yeah - I had totally forgotten that I was now a soldier... The guy absolutely beamed when I sat down next to him and at one point he literally gave me the food off his plate... I just couldn't get over the irony. A few months earlier (when I was still a "hippie") he most likely would have cussed me out - and now that I was wearing a uniform I was his best buddy... I felt kind of like I was accepting his kindness under false pretenses... It was just too weird :-)

And back to the story:

That was the first time I had visited my dad since he moved from New York to Milwaukee. His new job was managing an obscure division (medium scale power generation?) of Allis Chalmers and he was living in a condo at the corner of East Kane and Summit. The building only had 8 units (one per floor) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (who was then playing for the Milwaukee Bucks) lived a couple of floors up.

I don't remember a whole lot about the visit (it was for less than a day), but when I got there we drove around Milwaukee for a while. Here's the proof:

As you can see, I was in uniform and my hair was still pretty short.

When we got to the condo dad found the car title and made what seemed like a really odd comment. He said "I've been looking at the classifieds and people seem to be asking around $500 for cars like the Barracuda, so I think that's a fair price"... I remember thinking "Well, that's interesting, but I don't see the relevance..." and then it hit me. He was saying he wanted $500 for the car...

Now - that wasn't an outrageously high price, but it was probably a bit more than he could've gotten selling it locally. And when you add in the $150 I'd already spent on airfare it was a horrible deal... So I had 2 options: Spend another $150 for airfare back to Biloxi ($300 total for a wasted trip), or write a check for $500 (almost every penny I had) and get a car out of the deal... So I chose the latter...

(Note that these amounts are in 1973 dollars. To adjust to 2013 dollars multiply by 5... )

You know - I really should have seen it coming... After all, we're talking about the same man who 18 months earlier had promised to pay my college tuition and then later claimed it was an advance on my child support (causing me to be evicted)... Of course, many years later he would deny ever having done anything like that to me. But that was dad - clueless to the end :-)

I don't remember very much about the 1000+ mile drive back to Biloxi. I know I left really early Sunday morning because it was still pitch black when I passed through Chicago. That's where I had a close call with a semi. (I got "squeezed" between the truck and a concrete barrier in a construction zone. I have no idea how I avoided making contact with one or the other.)
I remember going through Illinois and tiny bits of Kentucky and Tennessee on my way to Mississippi, and it was around 10PM when I finally got back to Keesler... That was a long day's drive :-)

Aside: I didn't transfer the title on the Barracuda until I got to Oregon in December and when the guy at the DMV checked the VIN against the title he discovered one digit didn't agree ("8" vs "B"). I had the paperwork from when my dad bought the car new and it also showed the error... So the thing had been titled in Massachusetts, New York and Wisconsin without anyone ever noticing the discrepancy... It took some extra paperwork, but we got it all straightened out...

Yeah - despite the "excessive" cost it was nice having wheels again :-)

The Bottle Incident

Before I get around to subject of this post here's another aerial photograph I recently found of Keesler AFB that gives a much better perspective of the "triangle" as it was back in 1973:

Yeah - this picture really captures how "institutional" it was... And on to the story:

Late one evening (well after dark) about a month after we got to Keesler, Juneau and I headed out the west gate (on foot) with another airmen (whose name I no longer recall) to grab something to eat at one of the fast food places... We were heading west on the north shoulder of Pass Road less than block past the "tee" intersection with Iberville Road, when we heard a car make the left turn from Iberville onto Pass behind us at a high rate of speed... A couple of seconds later a beer bottle missed our companion's head by mere inches before smashing into a telephone pole... The bottle had been moving frighteningly fast and there was absolutely no doubt it was intended to cause injury. (At that speed it might have been fatal.)

The "projectile" had been launched from a gold 1970 Pontiac GTO and we got a real good look at the passenger as the car sped past (he was yelling obscenities out the window). We also made note of the license plate number as it disappeared off into the distance... Not surprisingly, we were a bit perturbed... We immediately ran back to the dorm and got a ride to the Biloxi Police Station.

Aside: There is a certain word I have avoided using in my posts because it is incredibly offensive, but in this case I feel it's justified as a reminder of the extent to which bigotry existed as recently as 1973... And if current residents of Biloxi are offended by my narrative, I understand that this all happened many years ago, but it is (unfortunately) part of your town's history... So, here goes:

When we arrived at the station we went up to the desk and began to describe what had happened (which immediately captured the attention of everyone within earshot). But before we got to the details we were interrupted by an officer standing next to the desk who asked (and I will never forget this): "Was they niggers???"

I cannot begin to describe how disoriented I became at that moment. It was as if someone had suddenly yanked the cord that tethered me to reality. I was trying to process the implications of what I had just heard but I couldn't quite wrap my brain around it...

When we informed the officers that the culprits were actually young white males (with longish blond hair) their interest instantly "deflated" (like someone letting the air out of a balloon). They even tried to dissuade us from filing a report, saying things like "I'm sure they were just having some fun - you don't need worry about it" but we insisted so they (eventually) wrote down the information.

Aside: I remember that at one point Juneau used a mild expletive in describing the perpetrators and the senior officer informed him that bad language would not be tolerated in the police station... Yeah - but the "N-word" was not a problem... Ironic...

In the weeks that followed the airman who had almost been hit by the bottle continued to investigate. He discovered that the plates on the GTO had been stolen from a Ford Fairlane in Gulfport and interviewed the elderly owner to determine exactly when and where they were taken. Also, word of the incident had spread throughout the squadron and we were getting occasional reports of GTO sightings from the other airmen... All of the information was relayed to the Biloxi Police - and they continued to do absolutely nothing...

It was all rather strange (the attitude of the community toward airmen)...  The guys in the GTO obviously had some sort of issue with "our kind" but I have no idea what it was. And I couldn't help but think that if we had been locals (or if the perpetrators had been minorities) the police would have been all over it.

It didn't take long before we were spending almost all of our time on the base. (The BX, movie theater, Airmen's Club and "auto hobby shop" provided plenty of entertainment)... And when we ventured out we went to Gulfport, Pascagoula, Hattiesburg, or even Mobile...

Anywhere but Biloxi.

Out and About

When I arrived at Keesler AFB in the spring of 1973 there were (as best as I can I recall) three other airmen from my flight in basic training who ended up in the the same dorm as me... First was Juneau (AKA the Grinch), who was a constant presence (or should I say annoyance?). Then there was Little, who had been my squad leader at Lackland. And finally Copley, who I hadn't gotten to know very well during basic... And here's a few stories:

Story #1:
Before Airman Little and I had that falling out over that loan he didn't pay back until months after the due date we made the rounds of the nearby churches... Yes - we were trying to pick up girls :-) We figured it would be easier than going to bars (not to mention that the church girls had a lot fewer tattoos - and a lot more teeth), but the "church folk" didn't really trust military men (probably with good reason) so it didn't work out...

Story #2:
One Saturday a few weeks after arriving at Keesler I was "out and about" with a few guys I barely knew. As I recall, it was Gutierrez (married, but his wife and kids hadn't arrived yet), Parker (AKA Kung Fu - whose van we were riding in), and that obnoxious ass-clown who said "Arf!" all the time...
Sometime that afternoon we met a couple of 16 year old girls from New Orleans on the beach near Gulfport... Now - I don't remember much about the rest of the evening but at some point we all ended up in the back of Kung Fu's van in their hotel parking lot, and the girls were rotating amongst us  being major "teases" (admittedly so)... At one point I was making out with one of them - totally her idea (not that I minded) - when she said "Stop!" so I stopped and she was like "Why did you stop?" and I was like "Because you said to stop" and she was like "Are you crazy??"... Yeah - I never could understand the rules to that game :-)
Eventually the girls' parents came looking for them and they left without any of us getting past second base (I'm sure that was their "game plan"). But I did learn a few things:
First, 4 guys hitting on 2 girls in the back of a van can get really awkward... Second, the girls were batsh*t crazy... And lastly, it is impossible to pronounce "New Orleans" correctly unless you grew up there :-)

BTW: The age of consent in Mississippi was 14 back then (it was raised to 16 a bit over a decade ago) so those two girls were definitely "legal", but they should have been required to wear warning signs for other reasons :-)

 Story #3:
Airman Copley and I ended up in the same dorm bay when we got to Keelser so we started hanging out together. That next weekend he went home (to Georgia?) and brought back his Suzuki T-500 Titan (500cc 2-stroke street bike). He was a serious rider (wanted to be a motor cop) and had a spare helmet so we spent a lot a time cruising around on weekends (riding 2-up)...

Now - as I mentioned in an earlier post, when we got to Keesler we had been briefed on the local traffic laws and were specifically told that helmets were not required in Mississippi. What they did not tell us (and I always wondered if that was intentional) was that the city of Biloxi did have a helmet law.
We found that out the hard way one really hot, humid Sunday afternoon when we stopped at the main light in town and took off our helmets to cool off. It only took a few seconds for the cop to light us up.
We followed him to the police station (a few blocks away) where they booked us. (Yes - they actually booked us for violating a city ordinance.) I remember being kind of pissed off because the woman at the desk put down that I had a "ruddy complexion"... I was thinking "It's darn near 100 degrees out and I just got busted by Barney Fife for trying to cool off... Has it occurred to you that maybe that's why my face is red???" ... Strange, the details that stick in one's memory :-)

Aside: Over 30 years later I applied to take the Oregon Bar Exam and was supposed to list every traffic ticket I had ever gotten. At the time I couldn't recall ever having gotten one and It wasn't until a couple of years later that it dawned on me that the "helmet incident" probably qualified... But I sincerely doubt that it would have disqualified me from practicing law :-)

Yeah - it was all but impossible to spend much time at Keesler AFB without having an encounter with the Biloxi Police. (It was a frequent topic of conversation in the dorm)... Apparently their officers didn't get paid a whole lot more than minimum wage so the fact that they treated airmen as a source of revenue wasn't surprising...

There is one more incident I had intended to include in this post, but this is running a bit long so I'll defer it to the next one... And yes - it does involve "Biloxi's Finest" :-)

The Moose Club

There were a lot of things "new and different" about my life when I started attending tech school at Keelser AFB in 1973... The main one was that I was finally on my own which meant that for the first time since I was 12 years old I didn't need to worry about having a roof over my head and food to eat at the end of every month... As a matter of fact, the 8 months I spent at Keesler was the longest I had been in one place since 1968 (having moved 14 times in the interim)... Yeah - being away from the constant stress and never-ending chaos and drama of life with my mom and sis was huge.

It was also the first time in my life I had been around so many people who reminded me of myself... To wit: All the airmen in my squadron had scored 80 or higher on the electronics qualification exam, which implied they had unusually good math and science skills, and yet (for whatever reason) weren't going to college and had (furthermore) decided that enlisting in the military would be a good idea... In other words, it was not your typical group of guys :-)

Of course, there were some "nerds", but not as many as you'd think. Most of my peers would be better described as "delightfully eccentric". The whole experience caused me to reconsider all my notions about intelligence... I couldn't help but think back to those kids in high school who always seemed to know all the answers. I had always figured they were the smart ones (at least that's what the teachers seemed to think), but now I was beginning to suspect that they simply lacked imagination. By contrast, my "bay mates" at Keesler were anything but conventional thinkers... In other words, they were a lot like me :-)

And that brings me to the F*ckey Moose Club:

One Friday evening shortly after I got to Keesler I was invited to one of the dorm rooms for a meeting of the aforementioned club, which was regularly attended by a number of airmen (and myself later on)... The festivities started off with a modified version of the "Who's the leader" song from the TV show featuring a rodent whose name I shall not mention for fear of triggering a copyright infringement takedown notice :-)

The rest of the "meeting" was mostly a way to welcome the new guys into the fold (and an excuse to drink a lot of beer).  But it was also an opportunity to mess with their heads a bit... Some of it was brain teasers like "If your house has southern exposure on 4 sides and a bear walks past the window, what color is the bear?" (White, obviously)... But the best part was the "telling of the jokes". Here is one example (there were many others):

 A polar bear and a penguin were taking a bath. And the polar bear turned to the penguin and said "Would you please pass me the soap?" And the penguin replied "What do you think I am, a faucet???"

Exactly... At this point all the "old timers" would be in stitches because it was excruciatingly funny watching the new guys (fresh out of basic training) try and figure out why everyone was laughing at a joke that didn't make any sense to them... (I swear it got funnier every time.)

But that wasn't the end of it... Eventually, someone would admit that they didn't get it, which was the cue for the punchline: "Well, of course not! That's because polar bears live at the North Pole and penguins live at the South Pole, so they couldn't very well be taking a bath together now, could they?"... That was a perfectly true statement, but as an explanation of the joke it made even less sense than the joke itself... Yeah - maybe you had to be there :-)

I'm not sure how long the club existed before my arrival or much longer it lasted afterward... It was in the section of the dorm where the "basic electronics" trainees were housed. Nobody stayed there for more than a few months before moving to one of the "Cody Hall" bays so I doubt the "tradition" survived for very long, but I'm sure it was replaced by something equally odd...

Yeah, definitely good times :-)

Marching

I figure I spent roughly 200 hours marching back and forth across Keelser AFB during 1973, and there's one thing about it that's driving me absolutely nuts: I cannot recall how I carried everything to and from school... It wasn't a trivial amount of stuff either. We're talking about all my books plus an extra set of fatigues and a raincoat (in case of sudden downpours)... I mean - it's hard to march while holding a bag in your hand so we probably had some sort of backpack, but for the life of me I don't have the slightest recollection of it... I've been trying to dredge up any memory for days now - and nada... But that's not the point of this post :-)

Three times a day all the students in the squadron who were on the same shift going to the same Hall would form up on Falcon Street and march off. (The Allee Hall formation left earlier than Cody Hall because it was further away.) The formations tended to be large (6 columns wide) and were arranged by height, so every Monday when new students arrived to take the place of the ones who graduated the previous Friday we'd play the "who is taller?" game until we got it all sorted out... As I recall, there were a few "old timers" who wouldn't move from their usual spot so the ordering ended up being inexact, but I don't think anyone really noticed...

The student leader in charge of the marching formation was known as a "yellow rope" because (oddly enough) he wore a yellow colored rope loop on his left shoulder. There were also green ropes who were bay leaders, and red ropes were in charge of a shift - or a squadron  - or something. (I was never quite sure about them.)

Aside: For the life of me I could not understand why anyone volunteered to be a rope... The TIs always insisted that it would look good on your "permanent record" - but think about it:
Enlisted members of the Air Force are basically technicians. Do you think you can "manage" aircraft mechanics (for example) by yelling "Get out there and fix that plane!"??. Yeah sounds kind of silly, doesn't it... My point is that just because you can make sure the latrine gets cleaned doesn't mean you can coordinate a complex maintenance operation - it's a totally different skill set (and everyone in the "real" Air Force knows that)... Of course, it's been many years since I left the military so things may have changed, but back in my day admitting that you had been a rope in tech school earned you nothing but derision... And I digress.

I was on "A" shift for radar school and it was usually quite dark out when we headed off to Cody Hall in the morning (5 AM?) so we carried a black flashlight with a yellow cone on the lighted end (for visibility) in our left hand. And sometimes when we were about to do a "left turn" the guys in the left column would blink their flashlights off and on like a turn signal... Yeah - it was amusing at the time but only because of how bored we were... Sigh... I can't believe that I remember those stupid flashlights so well, but a bag or a backpack? Nothing...

Now - about that raincoat and spare uniform... I have never experienced anything like the downpours on the Gulf Coast... I specifically remember one morning when a storm hit while we were on our way to school. We were already wearing our raincoats but we might as well have not bothered. There was so much water coming from so many directions that within 30 seconds my uniform was soaked just from what was running down my collar. And a short time later I realized that every time I took a step there was water gushing out of the top of my combat boots... Yeah - we're talking "inches per minute" here ... but at least it was a warm rain :-)

The "highlight" of our day (from a marching standpoint) was "passing in review" (near the flight-line) during the noon shift change. First the B shift students passed on their way to school, then the A shift students on their way back to the dorms. The drum corps (when present) would repeat the same 4 bar pattern the entire time (I will never forget it), and as we approached the stand we'd fall into step with the drumbeat, the yellow rope would call "eyes right" (or left, depending on the direction) and then he'd salute the officer(s) on the stand... Yeah - real exciting stuff :-) And that leads to a story in 3 parts:

There was an airman from Seattle named Simms who was my yellow rope when I was at Allee Hall. He had grown up in a predominantly white neighborhood and if you talked to him on the phone you would have never guessed he was African American... So - one day we were on our way to the chow hall and I noticed that whenever we were within earshot of any other black airmen he would drift into "ebonics"... I remember thinking "Seriously?" - then it dawned on me that he was stuck between two worlds with different expectations and was trying really hard to fit into both, which must have been really tough... End of part 1.

As a yellow rope, Simms was a lot of fun to mess with. One of our favorite stunts was for the airmen at the front of the columns in the formation to do a "change step" and / or randomly alter their pace while he wasn't looking. Within a few seconds it would be total chaos (everyone bouncing up and down out of sync) and Simms would turn around and be like "What the hell just happened?" and he'd have to call cadence until we got back in step... Yes - we were actually that bored... End of part 2.

Shortly after Simms and I completed  Basic Electronics at Allee Hall (on B shift) he was given the job of yellow rope for the A shift formation to Cody Hall, but that only lasted for one day:
As I mentioned before, the "passing in review" ritual happened during the A/B shift change, and on B shift the stand had always been on his right, but on A shift we were heading the opposite direction so the stand was on his left... Earlier in the day Simms had mentioned being worried about mistakenly calling "eyes right" (as he had always done on B shift). That would be "bad" because our squadron commander was on the stand that day. So as we approached he made absolutely certain to call "Eyes left!" and then saluted... That's when we heard our commander's voice say "Wrong hand, Simms!" ... Yeah - he had been so focused on not screwing up the call that he inadvertently saluted with his left hand... And he lost his yellow rope that afternoon...

So - five days a week thousands of students would march to and from school at Keesler - formation after formation - close to 100 airmen each - all in perfect step - as far as the eye could see... The whole thing was pretty impressive, actually... And of no real value whatsoever.

Yes - I did stand in formation a few times after I left Keesler. (A couple of flag ceremonies and that one time when a "shake and bake" 2nd lieutenant decided we needed to be "inspected")... But I never marched another step again.

The Dorm and Beyond

I can't remember if we referred to our housing units at Keelser AFB back in 1973 as "barracks" or "dorms" (it has been 40 years), so I'll just refer to it as the dorm (not that it matters)... And this is probably going to be one of those "dry and not particularly interesting" posts, so - my apologies...

To get started, I've annotated an aerial picture of Keelser as it was back in the day:

 

The building labelled "D" was my dorm (no longer there), "W" is the infamous west gate, "C" was the original Cody Hall (where the radar repair school was) and "A" is Allee Hall (basic electronics school)... Yeah - the march to Allee Hall was a serious pain in the butt (almost 2 miles each way), which was one of the reasons I was so glad they let me take basic electronics self paced. That allowed me to start radar school at Cody Hall (a much shorter distance) a lot sooner than originally scheduled ...

The dorm buildings in the triangle had 3 floors. The "A shift" (6AM to noon) students were on the ground floor, "B shift" (noon to 6PM) on the second, and "C shift" (6PM to midnight) on the top floor, together with some B shift overflow. Each floor was divided into multiple hallways called "bays", each with it's own latrine and 6 (or so?) rooms housing two students each. As I recall, the bays were identified by letters but I'm not sure how many there were per floor (I'm guessing A through G) - and I vaguely remember spending my last few months in 1st floor E bay. (That seems really familiar, and not just because of the online auction site).

The dorms rooms were quite "spartan", although they did come equipped with large fuzzy spiders, cockroaches and assorted other critters (including tree frogs)... Now - I'm not saying the place was teeming with them... It's just that the Mississippi Gulf Coast seems to be a perfect environment for crawly things and it's all but impossible to get rid of them. But I'll save the "vermin stories" for later...

Here's a pictures of one of my (many) roommates from when I was in basic electronics:

 I seem to recall he was Cuban-American - and (as you can see) smoking was allowed in the dorms... The rooms were clearly "institutional". There was a bed on either side with a table in between, and each of us had a (painted wood) locker / closet / drawer thing located on either side of the door - and that was about it... Judging from the view out  the window, we were on the second floor (I was on B shift at the time) on the north side of the building (B or C bay?) .

The electrical system in the dorms was marginal so we were not allowed to have any appliances of any sort in our rooms. That is why the existence of "cheese in a aerosol can" was so incredibly important. The BX had all the available flavors in great quantities (together with a large variety of snack crackers) because that (and beer) was pretty much what we all lived on between meals (you were not allowed to take food from the chow halls).

BTW: There was one notable exception to the "no appliances" rule. A guy on the 1st floor whose dorm room was (intentionally) closest to the TIs' office he had this old "percolator" style electric coffee pot from which he supplied the TIs with their first cup of coffee in the morning... Yeah - that pot was beyond gross. It had never been cleaned, and he never dumped out the leftover coffee. Every morning he simply added fresh grounds, topped it off with water and re-percolated it... I wouldn't touch the stuff, but he couldn't function without it and the TIs loved it. Apparently it did tend to wake you up :-)

I also vaguely recall that there were a number of day rooms scattered throughout the building. One of them had a ping-pong table and others had TVs but I hardly spent any time in them... My only specific memory of watching TV is from a Saturday afternoon when one of the guys in the room was sipping away at a big bottle of cough syrup... His buddies were like "Blood - what the hell are you doing? That sh*t's dangerous! ... You do know that you can afford real booze, right?" ... And he was like "Yeah... But I like this better..." I'm not sure why that particular event stuck in my memory. I guess I'd never encountered anyone with a cough syrup habit before :-)

Historical note: That was back before "blood" was a gang reference... The term was similar to "brother" except it implied something deeper. For example, a white guy could address a black acquaintance as brother, but calling him blood would not have gone over very well...)

It's probably obvious that I'm struggling with how to tell the "Keesler story"... I suspect I'll just end up muddling through it one post at a time (like I've been doing for the the past 3+ years).

And next up will be "marching"...

Vulnerability

When I arrived at Keesler AFB in April of 1973 I have to admit that I was "a little bit off" mentally... That was because I had spent the past 6 weeks (in basic training) being conditioned to do exactly what I was told without thought or hesitation... That's fine in a "military" context, but at some point you end up venturing back out into the real world where the ability to make decisions is actually kind of a bonus :-)

Now - you 'd think that once basic was over it'd be pretty simple to "turn your brain back on". Especially considering that you'd been using it for your entire life up to that point (except maybe when you were drunk, stoned  - or at school). But it turns out not to be quite that easy. It's kind of like trying to start a mower that has been sitting for too long. You keep yanking on the rope but nothing much happens...

BTW: It was kind of a shock to discover that while I was at Lackland AFB the world had gone on without me... Everyone was like "Oh, you're in the military? That's nice!" Yeah - they had absolutely no clue what I'd been through... I'm not sure what I expected - it just seemed inconceivable that such a major change in my life could be met with such total indifference by everyone else... But I digress :-)

I wasn't the only airman who ended up psychologically vulnerable after basic training. As a matter of fact, there was an entire community outside the west gate of Keelser AFB that depended on it (that's the gate closest to to the triangle)... There were businesses that sold used cars, stereo systems, jewelry - you name it. All vastly overpriced and being purveyed by persons (often attractive women) who were experts at separating young (and still witless) airmen from their money.... The TIs even warned us about it during our first week at Keesler (they had an orientation session covering local laws, customs and hazards)... Funny that they didn't say a word about the Biloxi police - more about that later.

Now... I wouldn't have ever set foot in that stupid jewelry store if not for one of the guys I used to hang out with. We were outside the west gate and I was like "Dude. Don't even think about going in there." and he was like "I just want to check it out. What could go wrong?", and the next thing you know some lovely young lady was doing this "Mother's Day is coming up - don't you love your mother?" number on me and a couple of hundred bucks later I owned a diamond pendant and it turns out my mom doesn't even like diamonds. Yeah - lesson learned... But at least I didn't spend $500 at the stereo shop next door like some of the guys did. (Adjusted for inflation that's "mucho dinero").

Of course, it wasn't just the civilians outside the gate who messed with the "pingers". The old timers (airmen who'd been at Keesler for more than 3 weeks) did it too. The most common ruse was "hurricane watch".  They'd try to convince you to stay up on the roof all night to watch for approaching storms...
Here's the weird part: Even though you knew it was total B.S., all those mind games they played during basic training had left you unable to trust your own judgment... It was kind of like when you were a little kid and someone told you something completely outlandish (like "meat comes from dead cows", or "there is no Santa Claus") and you couldn't tell if they were kidding or not.

Of course, I don't think anybody actually fell for it, but that wasn't really the point... It was just so much fun to mess with people who were so completely "off balance" :-)

It took a couple of months, but I did eventually find the balance between soldier and "sentient being".... All it took was going from "following orders without thinking" to "following orders while thinking they were stupid but keeping my mouth shut about it"... It wasn't really that hard :-)

The Next Phase Begins

When I arrived at Keesler AFB in Biloxi, MS back in April of 1973, all the technical schools were running from 6 AM to midnight in 3 shifts named (not surprisingly) A, B and C. (It was quite well organized - almost as if it were a "military operation".) I spent most (but not all) of my time on "A shift" (6AM to noon), which meant I had to be in front of the dorm sometime around 5AM for the daily briefing after which we "formed up" on the road behind the building and marched to school... As I recall, that meant getting up sometime around 4:15 AM... And I'll have more to say about that in a later post.

Aside: All the dorm buildings in the "Keesler triangle" were demolished and rebuilt a few years ago (as was Cody Hall where most of the electronics schools were) so there is almost nothing left that I remember. They even got rid of the roads that ran across the triangle. Back in my day Falcon Street ran near the bottom and Phantom Street across the middle. Our buildings were located between the two streets not too far from the southwest corner.

The bowling alley (now the Vandenberg Community Center?) was across Falcon Street from the dorm, we were right next to one of the chow halls and a only a block or two from a small BX (base exchange), so it was actually a pretty good location. The only downside was the distance from the schools. We had to march across almost the entire base of the triangle (on Falcon), then halfway up one side and across the flight line (past the reviewing stands) to hangar row where the training buildings were... That was well over a mile and we did it twice a day (there and back)... Yes - I know that's not terribly far, but we're talking about the Mississippi Gulf Coast here (think heat, humidity and torrential rain)...

OK - this part was really cool:
I was originally scheduled to graduate from radar maintenance school in mid-January 1974 which meant I'd have a 2 week break for the Christmas holidays (it's called "Keelser Exodus" now) then I'd have to return for a couple of weeks to finish my training. But based on my test scores I was allowed to take Basic Electronics Training self-paced. That normally took something like 10 weeks (out of the 39 week total), but I completed it in 4 weeks which allowed me to finish radar maintenance school at the end of November. And that meant I got to spend about a month at home over the holidays before heading to my next assignment... But I'm getting ahead of myself :-)

I recently ran across some comments online indicating that there's a lot of people on "power trips" at Keesler these days, but I don't remember it being at all like that back in 1973 and I can think of a handful of possible explanations:

First: The military was not all-volunteer yet... Those of us who enlisted were mostly hippies in search of free food and career training. The point is I don't remember anyone being particularly "Gung Ho" :-)

Second: My squadron was made up entirely of electronics trainees. We tended to be smarter than most (according to our Qualification Exam scores) and our stay at Keelser was lengthy (6 to 9 month). So it's possible that the TIs in our outfit were more lenient with us than in some of the other outfits.

Third: The drinking age on base was 18 and beer was super cheap. (Two for a quarter on Tuesday nights at the airman's club). Yeah - we were "toasted" a lot of the time.

Fourth: If they had somehow managed to round up all the "dope" in the triangle it probably would have filled a semi trailer... OK. That's a slight exaggeration, but there was a lot if it - and if you got caught all they did was slap you on the wrist and make you pee in a cup for a while afterward. (That was officially known as "Operation Golden Flow".)

Keesler was still undeniably a military base... In addition to all the marching and saluting you had to keep your room clean, floors shined, fatigues starched and pressed and boots polished, and school could be tough at times... But I don't recall there being any homework, which meant we had lots of free time... And sometimes we even did things that didn't involve getting wasted :-)

So yeah - I have to admit that (on the whole) I had a pretty good time.

Next Stop - Biloxi

The Monday morning after basic training ended (4/9/73) we all boarded the charter buses that would take us away from Lackland AFB... Most were headed to the airport, but for those of us going to tech school at Keesler AFB (Biloxi, MS - about 600 miles away) that bus was our conveyance for the entire trip.

Aside: There were some Air Force career fields (like cable puller) that required no formal training (I will have more to say about cable pullers in a much later post), and airmen with those jobs were sent directly to their first assignments... I also seem to recall that some folks were able to go home for a week or two before their training started, but I didn't get a chance to return to Oregon until sometime around June... That was a long time to wait...

One of the first things I remember about the bus ride (other than leaving the main gate at Lackland) was that we had been segregated by gender (women in the front, men in the back). A few of the guys were making remarks about it until one of the WAFs at the front of the bus stood up and yelled "Hey! Y'all need to shut up... We ain't had none for 6 weeks neither... We all just as horny as you!!!"... Yeah - that pretty much left everyone speechless :-)

All I remember from the rest of the trip is that we were in our dress uniforms, we stopped for lunch in Houston (at a large cafeteria) and for supper somewhere near New Orleans. And after that it wasn't much further to Keesler AFB.

I guess this is as good a time as any to say a few words about Biloxi:
Back in 1973 the Mississippi Gulf Coast was not like it is today - and not just because there were no casinos... In August 1969 (less than 4 years before I arrived there) hurricane Camille made landfall just west of Biloxi with a 20+ foot storm surge and sustained winds in excess of 190 MPH. It pretty much wiped everything off the map... (Apparently Katrina did a "repeat performance" in 2005)... By the time I got there a lot of it had been rebuilt, but there were areas along the coast that remain vacant to this day. (Just overgrown driveways and the remnants of foundations)... Even before Camille, that part of Mississippi was not particularly well off, and when you factor in the damage to the shrimp and oyster industries it would be an understatement to say that the area was "economically depressed"... I realize I'm being very judgmental here, but compared to everyplace else I'd ever lived it was kind of a sh*thole (a sentiment that was shared by most of my fellow airmen). We used to describe it this way: Gulfport is the *sshole of the world, and Biloxi is 6 miles up it :-)

I don't recall the exact sequence of events after our arrival at Keesler AFB, but I do recall boarding blue Air Force buses headed for our dorms in "the triangle". (My squadron was in the southwest corner)... And everywhere we went people were yelling "Ping! Ping!" at us... Yeah - recent arrivals from Lackland were referred to as "pingers" on the base. I've heard different theories on the meaning - it was either a "newbie detector" thing or it was the sound our hair made as it grew out... Neither explanation made much sense.

Another aside: It was a huge relief to discover that tech school wasn't anything like basic training... Yes - there were TIs (training instructors), and we had to march to school in formation every day, and we occasionally had to do floors, clean latrines and mow lawns. ... But there was no P.E. and no mind games. And the TIs rarely yelled at us - they just made sure we followed the rules. Yeah - all in all it was a pretty easy time...

And one final note:
Shortly after we got there we were given a safety briefing on the local area... One of the things I distinctly remember was that we were not allowed to go barefoot on the local beaches. Apparently there had been too many injuries from broken bottles and beer can pull-tabs... (Yes - I'm saying the beaches were filthy).
Also, there was one particular gate they told us never to go out on foot, especially at night... So, on our second night at Keesler about 7 or 8 of us decided to walk to the beach but somehow got turned around. (They didn't give us maps.) We were a few blocks off the base when we realized that we seemed to be the only Caucasians in the vicinity - and everyone was staring at us - and a car full of guys had just driven slowly past us for the second time... And we were all like "I'm betting that was the gate we weren't supposed to go out". We made it back to the base without incident, but I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if there had only been a few of us...

And that was my home for the next 8 months...

Conclusions

On the morning of Friday April 6, 1973 I awoke with a sense of relief, and disbelief... After 6 weeks of Air Force basic training it was finally going to be over.

But before I get to that, I just realized that I've left out a very significant event from the final week: the 1.5 mile run... Long story short - if you didn't finish in less that 12 minutes you didn't complete basic training... Now, that may not sound particularly fast, but it's actually about 2/3 the pace of an Olympic marathoner. And when you factor in combat boots (and asthma) it wasn't easy at all. (I was more worried about that run than anything else during basic.)
Actually, they had prepped us pretty well - we had started at 1/2 mile and gradually increased the distance throughout basic, so all but a couple of guys made it on the first try - myself included. (I did not want to do that again.) Afterward the drill sergeants continued working with the "stragglers" until they passed, so everybody graduated...

I don't remember a whole lot about that final Friday, but I seem to recall that the pace was fairly leisurely. At some point during the morning we changed into our dress blues (AKA bus driver uniform) for the ceremony, and that's when it became apparent that very few of us could tie a Windsor knot. That resulted in a brief period of chaos as everyone ran around the dorm trying to find someone with the necessary skills, so it came to pass that I had a long line of guys waiting for me to tie their ties for them. Yeah - that was kind of weird :-)

We marched over to the parade grounds (which was on the opposite end of the base) and got in formation with the other graduating flights...As I recall, there were some parents in attendance but not very many. That's probably because back in 1973 airfares were roughly triple what there are today (adjusted for inflation) and most of the guys' families couldn't afford it.
Then we marched past the reviewing stand, there was some speeches, we threw our hats in the air, our drill sergeants congratulated us and told us not to call them "sir" anymore ... and that was pretty much it.

Later in the day that they gave us back our "civvies", and someone with a Polaroid captured the event for me. (At the time I didn't fully grasp the significance of the moment):

As you can see, I had already gotten my Airman First Class stripes sewn on. (The laundry shop did that "while-you-wait"). The 2-stripe promotion at the end of basic was one of the "perqs" of signing up for 6 years... And I can't help but notice the tan line from the fatigue cap :-)

We weren't scheduled to depart for tech school until Monday morning so we had the weekend to ourselves. A few guys took the opportunity to head into San Antonio but most of us stayed on base... It's kind of hard to explain why. Personally, I just needed some time to decompress from the constant stress - to get used to feeling "human" again - not having to worry about every single word and movement. (It ended up taking about 3 months to fully recover)... And to be honest, I wasn't exactly sure what the rules were at that point :-)

I remember going bowling with The Grinch on Saturday, and in the evening we went to the the Airman's Club. They had a live band (I remember them playing "The Cisco Kid" by War) and there were some WAFs (Women in the Air Force) in attendance. As I recall, they were getting plenty of attention :-)

And that was the end of basic training...

Although I made it through with my "sense of self" intact, I was definitely not the same person... My life up to that point had been an exercise in avoidance... Discomfort, effort, conflict - you name it, I avoided it... My first grade teacher summed it up nicely on my report card: "Peter has to take more pride in his work", "his attitude is 'just get by'", "to him, work is something to bypass as much as possible".

Basic training changed that... Almost every day for 6 weeks I had been pushed well beyond the point of mental and physical exhaustion and in the process discovered a strength inside of me I never suspected was there. Obviously, fear was a motivator, but when it came right down to it I made a commitment to myself (and to everyone around me) to do what needed to be done regardless of the difficulty or discomfort... One step at time... minute by minute ... hour by hour ... day by day... I pushed myself through to the end.

As of this writing (2013) I've been married for 38 years, raised 3 children, completed a BS in Computer Science while working half time, completed a Juris Doctor while working full time, and (with the exception of a few weeks after leaving the military) have never been unemployed. I honestly cannot imagine having done any of that without the self-discipline and determination I learned during those 6 weeks.

Like I said before - who would have guessed? ... :-)

The End Draws Near

My mood improved dramatically as April 6th, 1973 drew closer. That was my final day of basic training at Lackland AFB... At the beginning every moment had felt like an eternity. It was like "Groundhog Day". We woke up every morning stuck in hell, and no matter what we did we couldn't change the outcome... But as April approached it became undeniably clear that it was actually going to end.

One of the "rites of passage" I haven't mentioned yet was going to the "career facility" on base to start the paperwork for our future job/training assignments. (I think that was around the 4th week or so)... I had enlisted for 6 years which meant I had a guaranteed career field (ATC Radar Repair), but most of the guys didn't get their assignments until the final week of basic. (Sometimes it was one of their preferences, often it wasn't.)

Aside: When one guy found out he was going to be a Security Policeman he started running all over the dorm yelling "You're under arrest!" and pretending to shoot everyone... And I was like "They are seriously going to give him a loaded weapon???"

But the main thing I remember from the career facility was that it was totally staffed with civilian women. (I hadn't seen one "close up" for over a month.) BTW: This was the dark ages (before computers) so everything was typewritten and I remember the room being filled with the distinctive clacking of typewriters. (I don't think my children have ever heard that sound...)
I ended up at the desk of an Hispanic woman in her late 20s (wearing way too much eye makeup) and I remember thinking that under ordinary circumstances I wouldn't have given her a second look, but after more than a month of basic training being that close to her was almost intoxicating - she could not have been more attractive to me. (Hmm, I wonder if that had something to do with how much I missed my mother?)
She also could not have been more icy or distant (she never once made eye contact)... Then it occurred to me that she probably spent her entire day dealing with young men staring at her like a hungry dog eying a slab of meat... I bet that got really old after a while :-)

And some more random memories:

One of the places we were allowed to go during the last couple of weekends was a cafeteria operated by the BX (base exchange). And the main thing I remember about it was the jukebox (I really missed listening to music), and specifically, the song "Superstition" by Stevie Wonder. (One of my all time favorites - it had reached  #1 shortly before I started basic)...
Also - this one time there was a huge black airman there and whenever anyone played a country song he'd walk over and unplug the jukebox... Now - although I agreed with his taste in music I thought it was an incredibly rude (and potentially dangerous) thing to do... Yeah - things got pretty "heated" and I was really not in the mood to get stuck in the middle of race riot. (There was still a lot of tension back in 1973.)

Another aside: I cannot recall a single race related incident in our flight. (Nor was there a single theft - or any incident of any sort.) There had been some "unease" at first but it dissipated quickly. A few weeks into basic one of the guys who had spent his whole life in Harlem (and didn't trust anybody) said to me "You know... You're alright!" (That is actually one of my best memories from basic). Yeah - when it came right down to it everyone turned out to be pretty cool...

Next random memory: There was a guy (Airman Tolson) in the flight who could type over 110 words per minute with 100% accuracy. (That's insanely fast on an electric typewriter.) He ended up being a male admin (commonly known as a "titless WAF" back in the day - yeah, not very politically correct...)

And a final note: Late February to early April turned out to be the perfect time to be at Lackland... Not too hot, and not too cold... I just checked the historical records, and 1973 was the wettest year ever for San Antonio (52 inches total, 1.5 in March) so it must have rained during those 6 weeks, but I honestly don't remember it... I was just glad that I wasn't there for Christmas. We heard rumors that the TIs had made everyone sling their laundry bag over their shoulder and march around the building chanting "Ho! Ho! Ho!"... I'm not sorry I missed that :-)

All that remains now is to cover graduation and sum it all up - and that will be the topic of my next post.

Mr. Little and The Grinch

My squad (element) leader during Air Force basic training at Lackland AFB in the spring of 1973 was a somewhat eccentric character by the name of Michael Little. As I recall, he was a Flight Officer in the Civil Air Patrol and had joined the Air Force with the intent of eventually becoming a mercenary in Belize (a Central American country then engaged in a conflict with Guatemala). He had been corresponding with their military leaders, and yes - I thought that was pretty odd.

So, one Sunday afternoon near the end of basic they loaded a bunch of us onto a bus and hauled us off base to help prepare a nearly little league field for the upcoming season... BTW: It felt really strange to be out in the real world after more than a month in hell, and it felt even stranger be treated as if we were human. Yes - the "civilian" adults were even expressing appreciation (as if we were there by choice)... It was just too weird :-) But that's not the point of the story:

At one point someone was moving some rocks near the edge of the field and uncovered a sizable rattlesnake. Everyone was freaking out and trying to decide if they should kill it when Airman Little ran over yelling: "What is wrong with you guys? He won't hurt you!" Then he non-nonchalantly picked it up and carried it off into the woods...

After a brief period of stunned disbelief somebody asked him why he wasn't afraid of being bitten and his response was something along the lines of:  "Snakes don't generally bite when you disturb their hibernation, and even if they do it's treatable... Plus, I've been bitten by more venomous snakes than I can count."
Obviously, that statement required a bit more clarification, and it turned out that his father was a biology professor in Georgia whose specialty was "swamp critters", and Airman Little had spent a significant percentage of his life deep in the Okefenokee Swamp helping his father do field research...So yeah - he had a great deal of experience (good and bad) with things "creepy and crawly" - and that actually explained a lot :-)

Now - if you were expecting there to be more to the "Little" story, I'm afraid that's about it... He was just an all-around "interesting character" (and a huge Tolkien fan)... When we got to Keesler AFB (tech school) we hung out at first, but then he borrowed a sizable chunk of money from me to buy a wig (seriously!) and he didn't pay it back until a couple of months after he promised. I was so mad that I didn't spend much time with him afterward...
It was a invaluable lesson: People who borrow money from their friends do so because because they can't manage their own. So (despite their best intentions) they almost invariably have problems paying it back...

And on to the second topic:

Everyone called Airman Juneau "The Grinch" because ... well ... there was a slight resemblance:

FYI: This picture was taken at Keesler AFB sometime during the summer of 1973 (and that's my 1968 Barracuda convertible he's leaning on).

Despite the fact the The Grinch grew up in Florida close to the Okefenokee Swamp, there was no connection between him and Little. (As a matter of fact, I don't think they much liked each other.) The reason I've included them in the same post is because they were the two guys from basic training that I spent the most time with later on...

I suppose I should mention Airman Copley too... The main thing I remember about him was that he wore auto-darkening prescription glasses and the TIs were always giving him crap about them (sunglasses were "verboten" in formation). So, he kept a note is his pocket documenting that they were medically necessary... (Funny - I hadn't thought about that for many years.)
And I shouldn't leave out Airman Eubanks... He was married, and a smoker, which made basic training extra tough... I honestly wasn't that fond of him (he was kind of a jerk) but his wife (Georgette) was really nice - but I'm getting ahead of myself :-)

As for my connection with The Grinch? Early during basic training Juneau and I discovered that we were the only ones in the flight who had signed up to be Air Traffic Control Radar Repairmen which meant that we were going to be seeing a lot of each other for months to come, so we figured we might as well hang out... There's not much else to say at this point, except that he was basically a "hick" (but a lot brighter than he seemed).  And he had one hell of a temper, especially when he was drinking, which (after basic) was most of the time...

So - I guess there's no real point to this post... Just memories and observations - " fabric of life" kinds of things... And it also means that I'm getting close to wrapping up basic training...

Sigh... I don't think I've done a very good job of capturing just how "hellish" it really was. I guess it's one of those things you can't fully understand unless you've been there :-)