Recruitment

I don't think I mentioned this before, but I had considered joining the Air Force back when I turned 17 (to avoid any chance of ending up in the infantry), but apparently I wasn't the only one who thought of that because there was a long waiting list. However, by the beginning of 1973 the troop levels in Vietnam had been cut almost ten fold and nobody had been drafted in over a year, so by the time I showed up at the Air Force recruiter's office in Eugene Oregon the "backlog" had evaporated.

BTW: For anyone who hasn't dealt with a military recruiter, it's an interesting experience (kind of like buying a used car) - one that probably hasn't changed much since 1973... Yeah - during basic training a bunch of us compared notes and the only thing that differed was the brazenness of the lies. (It was almost amusing)... But I'm getting ahead of myself :-)

The first order of business when I got to the recruiter's office (after assuring him I had a high school diploma) was taking the military entrance exams. And (given my past performance on aptitude tests) it wasn't a huge surprise that I scored high enough to qualify for any enlisted job in the Air Force. (Note that flight crew positions required a college degree so those were not available to me.)

Aside: I distinctly remember having some kind of weird mental block on the "spatial" problems: Basically, there was an outline of a flattened shape with a bunch of fold lines and marked corners, and the question was something like "If you cut out this shape and folded it along lines T through Z would corner A be touching corner B, C or D?" ... That's normally the kind of thing I'm really good at, but for some reason my brain just didn't feel like dealing with it that morning... I ended up scoring an 85 on that section which was still high enough to qualify for any job, but it wasn't as high as the other sections.

The recruiter was really excited about my scores and told me that if I signed up for 6 years (instead of the usual 4) I could pick the exact job I wanted and I would be promoted to "Airman First Class" (2 stripes) right out of basic training. (That was actually true)... He sent me home with a stack of literature, including a booklet that described every enlisted job in the Air Force (together with the requirements, etc)... BTW: I recall being rather amused by some of the job titles, like "Protective Coating Specialist" for "painter" :-)

Over the next few weeks I spent many hours poring over that "jobs" booklet. (I no longer recall exactly how many times the recruiter called, but I'm sure it was a bunch - they're kind of persistent). I started out focusing on the aircraft maintenance jobs but I noticed that the required test scores weren't as high as I expected (60s?)... I mean - why waste high test scores on something that didn't require them, right? ...

Aside: The job that everyone wanted (including me) was repairing flight simulators. That was in the days before video games (the Atari Pong arcade machine had just been introduced) so the idea of being able to "pilot" a jet fighter simulator was about the coolest thing anyone could envision (short of flying the real thing). That's why that field had an 18 month waiting list (at least that's what my recruiter told me - it was probably true - he really wasn't as bad as most of them).

It was the electronics jobs that required the highest entrance scores (80 or higher), so I refocused on those and started looking at how long the technical training was. (I figured the longer the school the more I'd learn). And one of the longest schools at the time (9 months) was for job code "30331" aka "Air Traffic Control Radar Specialist".

Another aside: I don't think I mentioned this, but when I was in Tyler Texas in 1970 but I had dabbled in electronics a bit - rewiring my Telecaster and repairing my amp. I had also worked my way through a mail order electronics course Bernie had loaned me. I found it all rather intriguing and even looked into a local trade school (ITT tech?) but nothing ever became of it...

So it came to pass that around mid-February of 1973 I decided to sign up for 6 years with the guaranteed job of ATC radar repairman... At the time it seemed like a leap into the unknown (a rather frightening one), but it ended up being one of the most important life-changing decisions I've ever made -  second only to proposing to the woman I've been married to for the past 38 years :-)