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...