In my last few posts I covered my drive home from Biloxi Mississippi to my mom's place in Coburg Oregon after completing Air Force tech training in 1973, leaving off just as I pulled into my mother's driveway. But before continuing I decided take a hiatus and dig out all the old letters I had gotten from my mother and sister during that time to refresh my memory... Not surprisingly, there were many odds and ends I had forgotten about, but the real surprise was that my sister Karina had already enlisted in the Army by then (but had not yet reported for basic)... I mean, I knew she enlisted at some point, but I thought it was many months later... And I'm getting ahead of myself... Back to the topic of this post:
As I've mentioned many times before, sometime around 1969 my mom started making extra money giving readings as an astrologer and psychic counselor... The astrology part was kind of funny because her math skills weren't good enough to construct an accurate chart (back in those days you had to be able to interpolate the tables in an ephemeris) but I honestly don't think it mattered because (assuming she wasn't actually psychic) she had an extraordinary ability to read people (it was beyond uncanny)... And because her "devotees" regarded her as a mystic being they'd follow her advice despite the fact that it was totally obvious (go figure). But unlike most "psychics", she didn't do it for the money. She simply needed to be surrounded by people who admired and adored her. (My sister and I left something to be desired in that regard.)
So, by the time December 1973 rolled around (and I rolled into the driveway) mom had been in the area for over a year and had assembled quite an entourage. And after I nursed the Barracuda to the closest gas station that was still open (this was during the gas crisis) we spent the next couple of weeks making the rounds of her followers.I don't really remember much about them - they were the usual assortment of people (from housewives to hippies to college professors) "looking for answers".
I recall spending an evening at one couple's house (the guy was an audiophile and had a high end reel-to-reel tape system) while a big holiday bash was going on across the street. The road where my car was parked was dimly lit and when we left for home I didn't notice anything amiss, but the next morning when I backed the car out of the garage I discovered a huge dent right behind the driver's door. The folks we had been visiting contacted their neighbors (who contacted their guests) and nobody would admit to having backed into my car (probably too drunk to notice)... Since I only carried liability coverage the repairs were going to have to come out of pocket and I was seriously pissed! (I never did fix the car before I sold it that summer. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)
I really wish I could remember more, but I don't think anything else significant happened during those couple of weeks. It was just nice to be back in the civilian world after 10 months of military training.
Karina and I didn't spend Christmas in Coburg because we had made arrangements to fly to Milwaukee to be with our father and stepmother for the holidays. Mom acted all stoic about it and I think she expected us to feel guilty, but we were so used to her "martyr" routine we didn't react as much as she would have liked...
I had booked a morning flight to Portland (for some reason Karina was already up there), but the Eugene airport was fogged in and the flight couldn't land so the airline hired cabs to shuttle all the passengers up to the Portland airport. (That wasn't a problem for me since my connecting flight didn't leave until mid-afternoon anyway)...
When I got there I (eventually) met up with Karina, and when we checked in for the flight to Milwaukee I learned that I had been upgraded to first class because of the earlier snafu in Eugene.
Aside: This was back in the days before air travel was deregulated. Flying was still something of a luxury and the airlines were quite profitable - they would attempt to compensate you for the slightest inconvenience (hard to imagine for those who didn't experience it)... Furthermore, stewardesses (that's what they called flight attendants) were invariably young and attractive and wore super short skirts... But, despite being quite memorable, that's not particularly relevant to the matter at hand :-)
Karina absolutely freaked out. She was adamant that I was not going to be up in first class while she was stuck in coach. It wasn't so much that she wanted company - she flew by herself all the time. She just felt it would be grossly unfair if I got to sit in first class and she didn't. (That's how my sister was wired - never an unselfish thought)...
Now, you'd think it would be easy to decline a first class upgrade, but the flight was overbooked and the only way I could stay in coach was if they moved someone else to first class and (for some reason) they were highly reluctant to do that... I still remember how puzzled the ticket agent was that someone was refusing an upgrade. Yeah - I couldn't believe it either...
Eventually the ticket agent got everything sorted out and I ended up in a middle seat between Karina (next to the window) and a very sweet, attractive (in a "girl next door" kind of way) young woman. It was clear that the young lady (who was in her late teens) had never flown before and (other than giving her some hints about the seat belt and air vents, etc) I didn't say a word to her the whole way... It's not that I didn't want to - I tried. It was just that I was too painfully shy to make any words come out. (I got the impression she was almost as shy as I was.) Yeah - given all the things I've forgotten in the 40 years since I mystified as to why I can still remember what the girl looked like (let alone that we were seated on the right side of the plane just in front of the wing)...
As I always say, the likelihood of me remembering something is inversely proportional to it's relevance :-)
Next up - Milwaukee and beyond.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Home Again
After my "sunrise moment" near Deming, New Mexico (described in the prior post) I continued west across Arizona on I-10 and into California, eventually stopping for the night at a Holiday Inn somewhere on the east edge of the Los Angeles metro area. (It might have been in San Bernardino). I remember choosing it because it was the closest one to L.A. that was still relatively affordable.
I did have a memorable "glitch" the next morning:
My 68 Barracuda convertible had this weird problem where if you started it first thing in the morning and then shut it off after a minute or two it would refuse to start again. (Any other time it would start just fine)... It drove me nuts because I couldn't find anything wrong. I rebuilt the carburetor - the choke was adjusted properly - the vacuum pull-off was working. Even "twiddling" the choke by hand didn't help... I never did figure out what was causing it, but since the problem was easy to avoid I didn't sweat it...
Then the next morning when I left the Holiday Inn I completely forgot. I drove around the corner to a gas station and shut it off... The station was incredibly busy given that it was 5 o'clock in the morning, so when the car wouldn't start after being filled up I had to push it away from the pumps. I keep trying to start it every couple of minutes (I was really worried about running the battery down), then after about 15 minutes it started like nothing had happened and I got back underway.
Aside: As I've mentioned in my prior posts, this was shortly after the start of the Arab oil embargo, and as I approached California the gas prices had started to climb... By the time I got to L.A. it was up around 60 cents a gallon (more than twice what I had paid in Texas two days earlier). But I still hadn't encountered any shortages.
I don't remember very much about the rest of the trip north... It had only been 15 months since I had driven up and down the entire length of I-5 (the road trip from hell) so there was nothing new to see... I don't even think I swung past McClellan AFB (my next assignment) as I passed though Sacramento on my way home to Eugene...
I'm pretty sure I spent that night at the Holiday Inn in Redding, California. That was where Bernie (my sister's ex-husband) lived, but didn't stop by to see him... I was too close to home to waste time socializing :-)
The main thing I recall from the next day is that by the time I got to the Oregon border gas had climbed to $1 a gallon - if you could find any... Everywhere else along my route you could get all the gas you wanted, but Oregon had run dry... (It sure seemed to me like there was some manipulation going on.)
I had also been worried about encountering snow on Siskiyou Summit, but (once again) my luck held out and the only problem I encountered the rest of the way to Eugene was that all the gas stations were closed.
Actually, I was headed a few miles further north... As I've mentioned before, my mom had recently moved from the apartment in Eugene to a lovely little rental house in Coburg, Oregon. I don't think there was anything wrong with the old place. She just couldn't stand to stay anywhere for very long...
Aside: You'd think that someone who had been forced to flee her birthplace during WWII would want to settle down somewhere, but not mom... That was just one of the many things I never understood about her... I guess the point is that (to us) home was more about being with loved ones than being in any particular place...
Finally... Shortly before noon on Sunday December 2nd 1973 (almost exactly 5 days after leaving Keesler AFB in Mississippi), I pulled into mom's driveway (running on fumes) at the end of North Willamette Street in Coburg.
It was good to be home.
I did have a memorable "glitch" the next morning:
My 68 Barracuda convertible had this weird problem where if you started it first thing in the morning and then shut it off after a minute or two it would refuse to start again. (Any other time it would start just fine)... It drove me nuts because I couldn't find anything wrong. I rebuilt the carburetor - the choke was adjusted properly - the vacuum pull-off was working. Even "twiddling" the choke by hand didn't help... I never did figure out what was causing it, but since the problem was easy to avoid I didn't sweat it...
Then the next morning when I left the Holiday Inn I completely forgot. I drove around the corner to a gas station and shut it off... The station was incredibly busy given that it was 5 o'clock in the morning, so when the car wouldn't start after being filled up I had to push it away from the pumps. I keep trying to start it every couple of minutes (I was really worried about running the battery down), then after about 15 minutes it started like nothing had happened and I got back underway.
Aside: As I've mentioned in my prior posts, this was shortly after the start of the Arab oil embargo, and as I approached California the gas prices had started to climb... By the time I got to L.A. it was up around 60 cents a gallon (more than twice what I had paid in Texas two days earlier). But I still hadn't encountered any shortages.
I don't remember very much about the rest of the trip north... It had only been 15 months since I had driven up and down the entire length of I-5 (the road trip from hell) so there was nothing new to see... I don't even think I swung past McClellan AFB (my next assignment) as I passed though Sacramento on my way home to Eugene...
I'm pretty sure I spent that night at the Holiday Inn in Redding, California. That was where Bernie (my sister's ex-husband) lived, but didn't stop by to see him... I was too close to home to waste time socializing :-)
The main thing I recall from the next day is that by the time I got to the Oregon border gas had climbed to $1 a gallon - if you could find any... Everywhere else along my route you could get all the gas you wanted, but Oregon had run dry... (It sure seemed to me like there was some manipulation going on.)
I had also been worried about encountering snow on Siskiyou Summit, but (once again) my luck held out and the only problem I encountered the rest of the way to Eugene was that all the gas stations were closed.
Actually, I was headed a few miles further north... As I've mentioned before, my mom had recently moved from the apartment in Eugene to a lovely little rental house in Coburg, Oregon. I don't think there was anything wrong with the old place. She just couldn't stand to stay anywhere for very long...
Aside: You'd think that someone who had been forced to flee her birthplace during WWII would want to settle down somewhere, but not mom... That was just one of the many things I never understood about her... I guess the point is that (to us) home was more about being with loved ones than being in any particular place...
Finally... Shortly before noon on Sunday December 2nd 1973 (almost exactly 5 days after leaving Keesler AFB in Mississippi), I pulled into mom's driveway (running on fumes) at the end of North Willamette Street in Coburg.
It was good to be home.
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Sunrise
The date was November 29, 1973 and (having just completed tech school at Keesler AFB in Mississippi) I was on my way home to Eugene, Oregon for my first extended leave since joining the Air Force in February.
I left Argyle, Texas (my prior stop) early that morning headed for Deming, New Mexico (where I had a reservation at the Holiday Inn)... The distance was over 700 hundred miles, but since it was Interstate through the plains and desert I figured I could make it in a lot less time than my self-imposed daily limit of 12 hours. (They didn't enforce the speed limit on rural interstates back then.)
To be honest, I don't remember a darn thing from that day's drive (there's nothing more boring than driving across west Texas), but I remember arriving in Deming in the late afternoon (as planned), and after checking in and having dinner at the hotel restaurant I spent the rest of the evening lounging around in front of the TV...
Aside: Before I left Keesler I was concerned about gas availability because the Arab oil embargo had been in effect for 6 weeks, but there were no worries so far. Gas was plentiful and dirt cheap (less that 30 cents a gallon).
Now - before I get to the next part of the story I want to say a few words about breakfast - namely that back in those days I rarely ate one... Yeah - I had gotten into the habit of skipping breakfast when I was 13 years old, and (with the exception of basic training) I didn't start again until after I got married... Of course, during basic I didn't have a choice. (And you'd have to be crazy to skip meals when doing something that physically demanding.) But the point is that my travel plans did not include breakfast. The idea was to get up, get dressed, get in the car and drive.
It was still pitch black out when I got onto Interstate 10 westbound the next morning (November 30th). And after about a half hour or so I started (inexplicably) feeling a bit peckish, so when I saw the Stuckey's sign at the next exit I stopped to grab a snack...
Now for those who are unaware, "Stuckey's" was a combination gas station, restaurant and candy store that was always open... Back in those days there were Stuckey's locations all over the country, but for some reason they almost all disappeared within the next decade... But none of that has anything to do with the story at hand :-)
When I stepped up to the counter I had absolutely no idea what to order, but after perusing the menu board for a minute or two I realized that what I wanted more than anything in the world at that particular moment was a chocolate milkshake (I hadn't had one in a really long time), so that's what I got...
Yeah - it must have been an odd thing to order at 5:30 AM, because I remember the waitress staring at me with a puzzled expression on her face for a couple of seconds before saying "ok..." and heading off to make my milkshake... Then it was back on the freeway.
All of this leads up to one of those amazing moments that I've never forgotten:
To begin with, I had been under stress since the age of 12 - constantly moving from place to place at the whim of my mother and sister - always trying to be the "voice of reason" but never having any say. And during all those years every penny I had went to the household - I couldn't afford myself even the simplest pleasures... Then I joined the Air Force and spent the next 10 months surrounded by TIs (training instructors) subject to the rigors of military life... And finally, just a few days earlier I had graduated with honors from one of the most academically challenging tech schools in the Air Force... It was the most significant accomplishment of my life up to that point.
So it came to pass that I found myself cruising across the New Mexico desert with the top down and the cold early morning air wafting around me. Everything I could see was bathed in the reds and purples of the pre-dawn light, and I was sipping on the best milkshake I could ever recall having... And that's when it hit me.
Everything I had gone through in past 8 years was finally over. I suddenly felt a sense of peace and well-being that I had never experienced before... Nothing could have made the moment more perfect.
And that's the "sunrise" story :-)
I left Argyle, Texas (my prior stop) early that morning headed for Deming, New Mexico (where I had a reservation at the Holiday Inn)... The distance was over 700 hundred miles, but since it was Interstate through the plains and desert I figured I could make it in a lot less time than my self-imposed daily limit of 12 hours. (They didn't enforce the speed limit on rural interstates back then.)
To be honest, I don't remember a darn thing from that day's drive (there's nothing more boring than driving across west Texas), but I remember arriving in Deming in the late afternoon (as planned), and after checking in and having dinner at the hotel restaurant I spent the rest of the evening lounging around in front of the TV...
Aside: Before I left Keesler I was concerned about gas availability because the Arab oil embargo had been in effect for 6 weeks, but there were no worries so far. Gas was plentiful and dirt cheap (less that 30 cents a gallon).
Now - before I get to the next part of the story I want to say a few words about breakfast - namely that back in those days I rarely ate one... Yeah - I had gotten into the habit of skipping breakfast when I was 13 years old, and (with the exception of basic training) I didn't start again until after I got married... Of course, during basic I didn't have a choice. (And you'd have to be crazy to skip meals when doing something that physically demanding.) But the point is that my travel plans did not include breakfast. The idea was to get up, get dressed, get in the car and drive.
It was still pitch black out when I got onto Interstate 10 westbound the next morning (November 30th). And after about a half hour or so I started (inexplicably) feeling a bit peckish, so when I saw the Stuckey's sign at the next exit I stopped to grab a snack...
Now for those who are unaware, "Stuckey's" was a combination gas station, restaurant and candy store that was always open... Back in those days there were Stuckey's locations all over the country, but for some reason they almost all disappeared within the next decade... But none of that has anything to do with the story at hand :-)
When I stepped up to the counter I had absolutely no idea what to order, but after perusing the menu board for a minute or two I realized that what I wanted more than anything in the world at that particular moment was a chocolate milkshake (I hadn't had one in a really long time), so that's what I got...
Yeah - it must have been an odd thing to order at 5:30 AM, because I remember the waitress staring at me with a puzzled expression on her face for a couple of seconds before saying "ok..." and heading off to make my milkshake... Then it was back on the freeway.
All of this leads up to one of those amazing moments that I've never forgotten:
To begin with, I had been under stress since the age of 12 - constantly moving from place to place at the whim of my mother and sister - always trying to be the "voice of reason" but never having any say. And during all those years every penny I had went to the household - I couldn't afford myself even the simplest pleasures... Then I joined the Air Force and spent the next 10 months surrounded by TIs (training instructors) subject to the rigors of military life... And finally, just a few days earlier I had graduated with honors from one of the most academically challenging tech schools in the Air Force... It was the most significant accomplishment of my life up to that point.
So it came to pass that I found myself cruising across the New Mexico desert with the top down and the cold early morning air wafting around me. Everything I could see was bathed in the reds and purples of the pre-dawn light, and I was sipping on the best milkshake I could ever recall having... And that's when it hit me.
Everything I had gone through in past 8 years was finally over. I suddenly felt a sense of peace and well-being that I had never experienced before... Nothing could have made the moment more perfect.
And that's the "sunrise" story :-)
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Stormy Weather
Back in 1973 there weren't any major highways between Biloxi and Jackson, so when I headed north out of Keesler AFB in the early afternoon of November 27th the only things that stood between me and Interstate 20 were 170 miles of rural roads and some epic bad weather...
As I mentioned in my prior post, people were being advised not to travel, and a quick check of the historical records reveals that there were 7 tornadoes resulting in 4 deaths and 75 injures (not to mention countless severe thunderstorms) in Mississippi that day... And I was dumb enough to drive through it.
In the decades since, I have attempted to describe to people how heavy the rain was, and they typically respond with "Yeah - I've driven in rain like that"... Ummm, no... you haven't... (Not unless you've been on the Gulf Coast during a major storm.) A few years ago I was on a freeway in Portland when there was an all-time record setting downpour. Compared to what I experienced that day in Mississippi it was a light sprinkle.
Then people always ask why I didn't pull over... Pull over where??? As if I could see where the shoulder was (or that I'd be less likely to get tail-ended there)... Heck - there were times I couldn't see past the end of my hood. I had to roll down my window and look straight down to try and catch a glimpse of the yellow line... In retrospect I was lucky that most folks heeded the advisories and stayed home. The roads were pretty much deserted (except for a single idiot G.I. in a 68 Barracuda convertible) and I made it through without incident.
By the time I reached Jackson it was 5:30 PM. The weather had finally cleared but it had taken me over 5 hours to get there (2 hours longer than expected). Then as I was heading west through downtown on Interstate 20 I saw one of the weirdest things I've ever seen on a freeway:
I was in the far left lane of a 4 lane stretch (3 plus an exit lane) when the car in front of me suddenly came to a complete stop and put on his right turn signal (apparently that was his exit)... Here's the weird part: The other 3 lanes of traffic immediately stopped and let him make a right turn across the freeway - as if that kind of thing happened all the time... I didn't stop laughing for 10 minutes...
As I headed out of Jackson it was already getting dark and I was still 400 miles from my destination. I didn't stop for dinner, but I did fill up around Monroe Louisiana (the Barracuda had roughly a 330 mile range). I briefly considered stopping for the night in Shreveport, but since I was going to spend the next day resting anyway I decided to just grit it out.
The only other thing I remember from the that evening is how creepy it felt driving through the bayou late at night. The windows were down (I was trying to stay awake and dry the car out), there didn't seem to be another vehicle on the road, and (for some reason) the shadows of the mossy trees just sent chills down my spine...
It was around 2AM when I finally pulled into the McDaniels driveway. Stella had waited up for me (although she didn't seem particularly worried)... Their son Stephen (a couple of years younger than me) had recently gotten married so she set me up in his old room, and for the first time in 5 months I didn't have to sleep on a military bunk.
When I (finally) got up the next day I made the rounds of the people I used to hang out with with when I lived there. Turns out not much had changed in the year and a half since I'd left Argyle... I spent a bit of time with Brenda (the young lady who called me "the best buddy a girl could ask for"). To tell the truth, now that I was a bit older I found her a little bit irritating :-)
Steve and his new wife (Jeannie) were away on a trip and they didn't get back until late that evening so I only saw them for a few minutes... BTW: Jeannie turned out to be a skinny little 15 year old with short red hair (Steve always did like 'em young). I'm not sure how long their marriage lasted, but when I visited again 10 years later they were divorced.
And early the next morning I set out for my next stop - Deming, New Mexico.
As I mentioned in my prior post, people were being advised not to travel, and a quick check of the historical records reveals that there were 7 tornadoes resulting in 4 deaths and 75 injures (not to mention countless severe thunderstorms) in Mississippi that day... And I was dumb enough to drive through it.
In the decades since, I have attempted to describe to people how heavy the rain was, and they typically respond with "Yeah - I've driven in rain like that"... Ummm, no... you haven't... (Not unless you've been on the Gulf Coast during a major storm.) A few years ago I was on a freeway in Portland when there was an all-time record setting downpour. Compared to what I experienced that day in Mississippi it was a light sprinkle.
Then people always ask why I didn't pull over... Pull over where??? As if I could see where the shoulder was (or that I'd be less likely to get tail-ended there)... Heck - there were times I couldn't see past the end of my hood. I had to roll down my window and look straight down to try and catch a glimpse of the yellow line... In retrospect I was lucky that most folks heeded the advisories and stayed home. The roads were pretty much deserted (except for a single idiot G.I. in a 68 Barracuda convertible) and I made it through without incident.
By the time I reached Jackson it was 5:30 PM. The weather had finally cleared but it had taken me over 5 hours to get there (2 hours longer than expected). Then as I was heading west through downtown on Interstate 20 I saw one of the weirdest things I've ever seen on a freeway:
I was in the far left lane of a 4 lane stretch (3 plus an exit lane) when the car in front of me suddenly came to a complete stop and put on his right turn signal (apparently that was his exit)... Here's the weird part: The other 3 lanes of traffic immediately stopped and let him make a right turn across the freeway - as if that kind of thing happened all the time... I didn't stop laughing for 10 minutes...
As I headed out of Jackson it was already getting dark and I was still 400 miles from my destination. I didn't stop for dinner, but I did fill up around Monroe Louisiana (the Barracuda had roughly a 330 mile range). I briefly considered stopping for the night in Shreveport, but since I was going to spend the next day resting anyway I decided to just grit it out.
The only other thing I remember from the that evening is how creepy it felt driving through the bayou late at night. The windows were down (I was trying to stay awake and dry the car out), there didn't seem to be another vehicle on the road, and (for some reason) the shadows of the mossy trees just sent chills down my spine...
It was around 2AM when I finally pulled into the McDaniels driveway. Stella had waited up for me (although she didn't seem particularly worried)... Their son Stephen (a couple of years younger than me) had recently gotten married so she set me up in his old room, and for the first time in 5 months I didn't have to sleep on a military bunk.
When I (finally) got up the next day I made the rounds of the people I used to hang out with with when I lived there. Turns out not much had changed in the year and a half since I'd left Argyle... I spent a bit of time with Brenda (the young lady who called me "the best buddy a girl could ask for"). To tell the truth, now that I was a bit older I found her a little bit irritating :-)
Steve and his new wife (Jeannie) were away on a trip and they didn't get back until late that evening so I only saw them for a few minutes... BTW: Jeannie turned out to be a skinny little 15 year old with short red hair (Steve always did like 'em young). I'm not sure how long their marriage lasted, but when I visited again 10 years later they were divorced.
And early the next morning I set out for my next stop - Deming, New Mexico.
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Leaving Biloxi (Woo Hoo!)
When I woke up on the morning of November 27th, 1973 at Keesler AFB I could scarcely believe that the day had finally arrived... I was done with tech school, everything I owned was
packed into my '68 Barracuda, and I was ready to leave Biloxi behind... Furthermore, I didn't have to report to McClellan AFB (in Sacramento) until January, so I was going to be spending a month at my mom's place in Eugene, Oregon before heading south again...
The best part was that (for the first time in my life) I was about to embark on a major road trip where I was in complete control of the arrangements, and not wishing to repeat the "interesting" experiences I'd had traveling with mom and/or Karina I tried not to leave anything to chance:
1) In order to avoid any possibility of hitting winter weather I was taking the southern route (through Los Angeles).
2) I didn't want to risk falling asleep at the wheel so I was limiting myself to 12 hours (about 600 miles) a day.
3) My plan was to start driving around 5AM so I could reach my daily destination before dinner. That way I could have a leisurely meal, unwind in front of the TV for a couple of hours and still get a good night's sleep.
4) To make sure that I didn't end up lying awake all night on a lumpy mattress in some cheap motel I made reservations at Holiday Inns along the route (about $15 a night back then).
Aside: I should probably mention that planning a road trip back in 1973 was a lot more involved than it is nowadays... You had to get maps (the kind that most people couldn't fold properly) for your entire route, and you had to use a ruler and do math to estimate the driving distances... Then if you wanted to plan your overnight stays you had to get hold of the booklets published by each hotel/motel chain that listed their locations, amenities and rates... Yeah - it was kind of a pain, but I did kind of enjoy it... And I digress...
In the weeks leading up to my departure I had gone over every inch of my car to make sure it was in perfect operating condition, which reminds me of another story I forgot to tell:
One day (a couple of months earlier) I was in a hurry to get somewhere (something involving Juneau) when I noticed a puddle under the car. Yeah - my water pump was dripping. But no problem - there was a car parts place right outside the gate and I was pretty quick with a wrench so I got to work... I was in such a hurry I decided not to pull the radiator - I figured if I was really careful I could work around it without damaging it, and within 20 minutes the new pump was in and I was tightening the last fan blade bolt... That's when my box-end wench slipped off the bolt and tore a small hole in one of the radiator tubes...
Yes... My effort to save 5 minutes had ended up costing me 2 hours and $10 (mucho dinero in 1973) to get the radiator repaired... Lesson learned. I never made that mistake again.
And back to the morning of November 27th:
The car was gassed up and ready to go. All the travel arrangements had been made (and memorized). All that remained was the graduation ceremony, saying my goodbyes and hitting the road... But nothing ever goes that smoothly.
First: The Arab oil embargo had gone into effect 6 weeks earlier and there were rumors of gas shortages all over the country. (There was nothing I could do about that.)
Second: Although it was sunny in Biloxi, there were severe weather alerts (including tornadoes) for the rest of the state and we were strongly advised not to travel by car that day... Yeah - I didn't care. There was no force in heaven or hell that was going to keep me at Keesler one second longer than necessary.
Finally: After the graduation ceremony I discovered that they wouldn't let us out-process until noon because that's when our shift "officially" ended. (Seriously?) ... It didn't make much sense to me but, hey - it was the military.
I had planned on arriving in Argyle Texas (about 600 miles away) around 10 PM to spend the following day with the McDaniels (the people I lived with while my mom was in the hospital), but the later departure time meant I wouldn't get there until after midnight so I called Stella and told her not to wait up.
After graduation I sat around in my civvies anxiously twiddling my thumbs waiting to sign out. And when they finally gave us the green light I said my goodbyes, hopped in the car and headed north toward Jackson.
I can't recall ever being happier to be on my way home :-)
The best part was that (for the first time in my life) I was about to embark on a major road trip where I was in complete control of the arrangements, and not wishing to repeat the "interesting" experiences I'd had traveling with mom and/or Karina I tried not to leave anything to chance:
1) In order to avoid any possibility of hitting winter weather I was taking the southern route (through Los Angeles).
2) I didn't want to risk falling asleep at the wheel so I was limiting myself to 12 hours (about 600 miles) a day.
3) My plan was to start driving around 5AM so I could reach my daily destination before dinner. That way I could have a leisurely meal, unwind in front of the TV for a couple of hours and still get a good night's sleep.
4) To make sure that I didn't end up lying awake all night on a lumpy mattress in some cheap motel I made reservations at Holiday Inns along the route (about $15 a night back then).
Aside: I should probably mention that planning a road trip back in 1973 was a lot more involved than it is nowadays... You had to get maps (the kind that most people couldn't fold properly) for your entire route, and you had to use a ruler and do math to estimate the driving distances... Then if you wanted to plan your overnight stays you had to get hold of the booklets published by each hotel/motel chain that listed their locations, amenities and rates... Yeah - it was kind of a pain, but I did kind of enjoy it... And I digress...
In the weeks leading up to my departure I had gone over every inch of my car to make sure it was in perfect operating condition, which reminds me of another story I forgot to tell:
One day (a couple of months earlier) I was in a hurry to get somewhere (something involving Juneau) when I noticed a puddle under the car. Yeah - my water pump was dripping. But no problem - there was a car parts place right outside the gate and I was pretty quick with a wrench so I got to work... I was in such a hurry I decided not to pull the radiator - I figured if I was really careful I could work around it without damaging it, and within 20 minutes the new pump was in and I was tightening the last fan blade bolt... That's when my box-end wench slipped off the bolt and tore a small hole in one of the radiator tubes...
Yes... My effort to save 5 minutes had ended up costing me 2 hours and $10 (mucho dinero in 1973) to get the radiator repaired... Lesson learned. I never made that mistake again.
And back to the morning of November 27th:
The car was gassed up and ready to go. All the travel arrangements had been made (and memorized). All that remained was the graduation ceremony, saying my goodbyes and hitting the road... But nothing ever goes that smoothly.
First: The Arab oil embargo had gone into effect 6 weeks earlier and there were rumors of gas shortages all over the country. (There was nothing I could do about that.)
Second: Although it was sunny in Biloxi, there were severe weather alerts (including tornadoes) for the rest of the state and we were strongly advised not to travel by car that day... Yeah - I didn't care. There was no force in heaven or hell that was going to keep me at Keesler one second longer than necessary.
Finally: After the graduation ceremony I discovered that they wouldn't let us out-process until noon because that's when our shift "officially" ended. (Seriously?) ... It didn't make much sense to me but, hey - it was the military.
I had planned on arriving in Argyle Texas (about 600 miles away) around 10 PM to spend the following day with the McDaniels (the people I lived with while my mom was in the hospital), but the later departure time meant I wouldn't get there until after midnight so I called Stella and told her not to wait up.
After graduation I sat around in my civvies anxiously twiddling my thumbs waiting to sign out. And when they finally gave us the green light I said my goodbyes, hopped in the car and headed north toward Jackson.
I can't recall ever being happier to be on my way home :-)
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Another Summary
It was Tuesday, November 27th, 1973 when I completed the 30331 (Air Traffic Control Radar Repair) course at Keelser AFB in Biloxi, Mississippi. That was a significant milestone in my life, so I figure this is a good time to (once again) summarize the events leading to that point:
As I've mention numerous times before, I graduated from high school in 1970 (at the age of 16) convinced that I was neither particularly bright nor particularly useful (thank you school system)... Since the primary function of my brain seemed to be the creation of random (and semi-humorous) distractions I could never maintain focus long enough to accomplish much of anything... And despite my lifelong interest in technology it was clear from my high school math and science grades that I had absolutely no aptitude for such pursuits... It seemed like the only thing I was good at was playing my 1953 Telecaster, but since we were constantly moving from place to place I could never get established with a band.
So it came to pass that in the winter of 1972 (two and a half years after high school) I concluded that unless I did something drastic my life was going to continue to suck, so I went down to the recruiter's office and took the Air Force entrance exam... I wasn't really surprised that I got top scores (although the recruiter was so excited he almost wet himself). I had always tested well (I figured it was an "idiot savant" kind of thing).
The next thing I knew I was at Lackland AFB undergoing basic training. Up to that point my primary goal in life had been to avoid any form of pain or discomfort (when things got unpleasant I would simply quit). But in basic training quitting is not an option - the drill sergeants just make things even more unpleasant. So I learned to tough it out ... just one more step - one more pushup - and by the time basic was over there wasn't really any "quit" left in me...
Tech school brought two more things I had rarely (if ever) experienced in my life:
The first was stability. It had been a very long time since my life wasn't being constantly disrupted by circumstances outside of my control. (I can't begin to express what a relief that was).
The second was academic success. Turns out I was actually really good at math and science (apparently the pace in high school was just way too slow for me). That was a huge surprise. I graduated with honors at the top of my class without even breaking a sweat. It was (up to that point) the most significant accomplishment of my life. (The first of many.)
And there you have it :-)
But before I move on I just wanted to say a few more words about Airman Juneau (aka "The Grinch"):
Juneau and I had gone through basic training together and were roommates for most of my 8 months at Keesler, and although we had some really good times he was (for the most part) a serious pain in the ass. He drank too much, had a volatile temper, and was really annoyed that I got better grades than he did. On a couple of occasions he got so torqued off about something that I went out and slept in my car rather than deal with his sh*t. (It was impossible to have a rational discussion with him.)
He did mellow out a bit in October when he fell in love with one of the WAFs in the triangle. She was a redhead with glasses and tattoos (uncommon for a woman in the early 1970s), and was (as near as I could tell) every bit as temperamental as he was (definitely a match made in hell).
I never saw Juneau again after tech school but a few years later I ran into a sergeant who had worked with him at his first assignment and he filled me in on the rest of the story:
Apparently Juneau and the WAF got married before leaving Keesler and ended up being stationed together (I no longer recall what base). Their relationship was a constant "firestorm", and it really hit the fan one night after a huge fight when his wife called the base commander's home phone and woke him up at 3 o-clock in the morning to tell him what a jack-hole Juneau was... I don't remember what the final outcome was (other than divorce), but the story didn't surprise me in the least... Enough said...
And it's finally time to put Keelser AFB in my rear view mirror :-)
As I've mention numerous times before, I graduated from high school in 1970 (at the age of 16) convinced that I was neither particularly bright nor particularly useful (thank you school system)... Since the primary function of my brain seemed to be the creation of random (and semi-humorous) distractions I could never maintain focus long enough to accomplish much of anything... And despite my lifelong interest in technology it was clear from my high school math and science grades that I had absolutely no aptitude for such pursuits... It seemed like the only thing I was good at was playing my 1953 Telecaster, but since we were constantly moving from place to place I could never get established with a band.
So it came to pass that in the winter of 1972 (two and a half years after high school) I concluded that unless I did something drastic my life was going to continue to suck, so I went down to the recruiter's office and took the Air Force entrance exam... I wasn't really surprised that I got top scores (although the recruiter was so excited he almost wet himself). I had always tested well (I figured it was an "idiot savant" kind of thing).
The next thing I knew I was at Lackland AFB undergoing basic training. Up to that point my primary goal in life had been to avoid any form of pain or discomfort (when things got unpleasant I would simply quit). But in basic training quitting is not an option - the drill sergeants just make things even more unpleasant. So I learned to tough it out ... just one more step - one more pushup - and by the time basic was over there wasn't really any "quit" left in me...
Tech school brought two more things I had rarely (if ever) experienced in my life:
The first was stability. It had been a very long time since my life wasn't being constantly disrupted by circumstances outside of my control. (I can't begin to express what a relief that was).
The second was academic success. Turns out I was actually really good at math and science (apparently the pace in high school was just way too slow for me). That was a huge surprise. I graduated with honors at the top of my class without even breaking a sweat. It was (up to that point) the most significant accomplishment of my life. (The first of many.)
And there you have it :-)
But before I move on I just wanted to say a few more words about Airman Juneau (aka "The Grinch"):
Juneau and I had gone through basic training together and were roommates for most of my 8 months at Keesler, and although we had some really good times he was (for the most part) a serious pain in the ass. He drank too much, had a volatile temper, and was really annoyed that I got better grades than he did. On a couple of occasions he got so torqued off about something that I went out and slept in my car rather than deal with his sh*t. (It was impossible to have a rational discussion with him.)
He did mellow out a bit in October when he fell in love with one of the WAFs in the triangle. She was a redhead with glasses and tattoos (uncommon for a woman in the early 1970s), and was (as near as I could tell) every bit as temperamental as he was (definitely a match made in hell).
I never saw Juneau again after tech school but a few years later I ran into a sergeant who had worked with him at his first assignment and he filled me in on the rest of the story:
Apparently Juneau and the WAF got married before leaving Keesler and ended up being stationed together (I no longer recall what base). Their relationship was a constant "firestorm", and it really hit the fan one night after a huge fight when his wife called the base commander's home phone and woke him up at 3 o-clock in the morning to tell him what a jack-hole Juneau was... I don't remember what the final outcome was (other than divorce), but the story didn't surprise me in the least... Enough said...
And it's finally time to put Keelser AFB in my rear view mirror :-)
Saturday, May 10, 2014
Almost Gone
By the late fall of 1973 my time at Keesler AFB was nearly over... Yes, I was actually going to graduate as a fully trained 30331 (Air Traffic Control Radar Repairman).
Of course, as the day approached we were all a bit apprehensive about our first assignments. We had filled out preference cards and most of the guys asked for locations in Germany or Italy as their first choice, but after spending a year in a boarding school in Bad Godesberg I had absolutely no desire to cross the Atlantic again... No, all my preferences were as close to home as I could get.
Unfortunately, the equipment I was being trained to repair was only found at real Air Force bases (with runways and planes and all) and there hadn't been one of those in Oregon since the late 1950s. As of 1973 the only bases within a day's drive of Eugene were (in order) McChord (Tacoma), Fairchild (Spokane) and Mountain Home (Idaho), followed by Beale, McClellan, Mather and Travis down in the Sacramento area. So, I had my fingers crossed for McChord.
I was only slightly bummed when I found out I had been assigned to Nellis AFB in Nevada... I mean, being stationed on the outskirts of Las Vegas is definitely a plum assignment (especially compared to Alaska or Greenland) but I really wanted to be a bit closer to home... Then right before graduation my assignment was changed (without explanation) to the "1833rd EIS" (Electronics Installation Squadron) at McClellan AFB in Sacramento. Although it wasn't my first (or second or third) choice, at least it was within a day's drive of home... But I'm getting ahead of myself :-)
I was about to tell one final tech school story when it suddenly dawned on me that I haven't said a single word about floor buffers:
The industrial units the military uses are wondrous beasts. They weigh in at over 100 lbs with the "business end" spinning rapidly driven by a 1.5 horsepower motor. In the hands of an inexperienced operator they are a source of both great destruction and great merriment. There's nothing funnier than watching a newbie slam the buffer into the wall, or tilt the handle the wrong direction and get whacked in the nuts, or inadvertently run over the power cord - and you have to be a special kind of stupid to try and ride one (search the internet for 'floor buffer fail').
Yes - the military is obsessed with shiny floors. You wax them, you polish them, then you strip them because there's too much wax. It's a never ending cycle... The point is that if you are in the military you spend countess hours on floor maintenance... I'm tempted to go into gory detail about the finer points of buffer operation (it's actually kind of fun once you get it down) but I suspect nobody really cares, and since I don't have any particular stories to tell I figure I've already said enough.
So... As I mentioned in a prior post the radar maintenance training was broken up into sections, and at the end of each section we had to thoroughly clean the classroom which included waxing and buffing the floors (and no - this isn't a buffer story).
At the end of our very last section (our final day of school) we were prepping the room for the usual floor waxing, and just as we were stacking all the chairs out in the hallway the fire alarm went off...
Of course, everyone evacuated the building in a calm and orderly fashion, and we waited, and waited, and waited... Finally, word went around that it was a false alarm...
We were incredulous. I mean, what kind of moron would set off a false alarm in a military building? Not to mention that we were seriously angry at having wasted 20 minutes standing around on our very last day of school. That meant we were really going to have to hustle to finish the classroom before the shift ended.
So we filed back upstairs where we were informed that we were the morons who set off the alarm... Yes, when we were stacking the chairs in the hallway someone (not me) inadvertently bumped the switch...
And that's how it all ended...
Of course, as the day approached we were all a bit apprehensive about our first assignments. We had filled out preference cards and most of the guys asked for locations in Germany or Italy as their first choice, but after spending a year in a boarding school in Bad Godesberg I had absolutely no desire to cross the Atlantic again... No, all my preferences were as close to home as I could get.
Unfortunately, the equipment I was being trained to repair was only found at real Air Force bases (with runways and planes and all) and there hadn't been one of those in Oregon since the late 1950s. As of 1973 the only bases within a day's drive of Eugene were (in order) McChord (Tacoma), Fairchild (Spokane) and Mountain Home (Idaho), followed by Beale, McClellan, Mather and Travis down in the Sacramento area. So, I had my fingers crossed for McChord.
I was only slightly bummed when I found out I had been assigned to Nellis AFB in Nevada... I mean, being stationed on the outskirts of Las Vegas is definitely a plum assignment (especially compared to Alaska or Greenland) but I really wanted to be a bit closer to home... Then right before graduation my assignment was changed (without explanation) to the "1833rd EIS" (Electronics Installation Squadron) at McClellan AFB in Sacramento. Although it wasn't my first (or second or third) choice, at least it was within a day's drive of home... But I'm getting ahead of myself :-)
I was about to tell one final tech school story when it suddenly dawned on me that I haven't said a single word about floor buffers:
The industrial units the military uses are wondrous beasts. They weigh in at over 100 lbs with the "business end" spinning rapidly driven by a 1.5 horsepower motor. In the hands of an inexperienced operator they are a source of both great destruction and great merriment. There's nothing funnier than watching a newbie slam the buffer into the wall, or tilt the handle the wrong direction and get whacked in the nuts, or inadvertently run over the power cord - and you have to be a special kind of stupid to try and ride one (search the internet for 'floor buffer fail').
Yes - the military is obsessed with shiny floors. You wax them, you polish them, then you strip them because there's too much wax. It's a never ending cycle... The point is that if you are in the military you spend countess hours on floor maintenance... I'm tempted to go into gory detail about the finer points of buffer operation (it's actually kind of fun once you get it down) but I suspect nobody really cares, and since I don't have any particular stories to tell I figure I've already said enough.
So... As I mentioned in a prior post the radar maintenance training was broken up into sections, and at the end of each section we had to thoroughly clean the classroom which included waxing and buffing the floors (and no - this isn't a buffer story).
At the end of our very last section (our final day of school) we were prepping the room for the usual floor waxing, and just as we were stacking all the chairs out in the hallway the fire alarm went off...
Of course, everyone evacuated the building in a calm and orderly fashion, and we waited, and waited, and waited... Finally, word went around that it was a false alarm...
We were incredulous. I mean, what kind of moron would set off a false alarm in a military building? Not to mention that we were seriously angry at having wasted 20 minutes standing around on our very last day of school. That meant we were really going to have to hustle to finish the classroom before the shift ended.
So we filed back upstairs where we were informed that we were the morons who set off the alarm... Yes, when we were stacking the chairs in the hallway someone (not me) inadvertently bumped the switch...
And that's how it all ended...
Saturday, May 3, 2014
More Odds and Ends
I seem to have covered all the major stories I intended to tell about my times at Keelser AFB in 1973, but there's still some (mostly pointless and unrelated) stuff that doesn't fit anywhere in particular, so I'm just going to cover it here.
First story:
One day I found a tree frog on the latrine wall (no idea how it got there). It was a tiny thing - about two inches long with suction cups on its toes - totally cute (and harmless). So I took it out into the hall to show to some of the guys and I was about to turn it loose outside when somebody had the bright idea of introducing it to the WAF admin who worked in the squadron office. (Yeah - I'm not sure at what age boys outgrow the whole "scaring girls with frogs" thing, but apparently it's well into adulthood)... Since Mike (the bay rope) dropped by the office almost every day he figured he had the best chance of catching her off guard, so he headed off with the little critter to make the introductions while the rest of us remained in the dorm (going about our business)...
Mike stayed gone for a very long time... Apparently, when he set the frog down on the WAF's desk she started screaming uncontrollably and couldn't stop - she ended up not being able to breath and they had to call the paramedics... Of course, the squadron commander came running out of his office at the first scream (who would have guessed that anybody could be that afraid of amphibians?) and needless to say, he was not the slightest bit amused - Mike ended up in in a fair bit of trouble...
What's the point of the story? Heck if I know, other than it would make an excellent hypothetical for a tort law class (IIED). But you'll be happy to know that the frog was completely unharmed (except maybe for some hearing loss from all the screaming) and was returned to its "natural" environment :-)
Next story:
There were 3 chow halls in the triangle (one was right next to our dorm), and one day some of us happened to eat at a different hall and discovered that although they all served the exact same menu there was a significant difference in edibility.
So my baymates and I made a habit of regularly stopping by the other chow halls and (over time) we compiled a list of where to eat depending on what was being served... BTW: No particular chow hall was consistently better than the others - each had good and bad fare (ours had french toast so greasy it wasn't fit for consumption). But on any given day there was reasonably good chow to be had if you were willing to walk a bit.
So why do I remember all of this? Because of the way people reacted when they discovered we had gone through the trouble of figuring it all out... Like, we'd see some guy heading for the nearby chow hall and we'd be like "Dude! Are you crazy? They're serving such-and-such - you seriously need to go to the north chow hall!" and he'd get this half-puzzled, half-amazed look on his face. Yeah - I don't think it ever dawned on most guys that they were allowed to eat at other chow halls let alone that the food quality varied... And that's yet another story with no real point - just more memories about being an "old timer" at Keesler.
And a semi-related one:
I'm surprised at how few memories I have of actually eating in the chow halls (I guess when you do something every day it just doesn't stick around in your brain) but there is one particular ketchup related incident I remember quite clearly - it was one of those "how stupid can you get" things:
One day I was eating lunch and was about to put some ketchup on my fries when I noticed that the "tear here" arrow was pointing to the middle of the packet... I remember being totally puzzled by it. I mean, why on earth would anyone design a ketchup packet that opened in the middle??? The packet didn't appear to be different from any other ketchup packet, but I figured "Why would they tell you to open it in the middle unless that's where it was supposed to be opened?"... So - after one heck of lot of effort I managed to tear it open and the ketchup ended up everywhere but on my fries.
I was seriously pissed off... Not only had some moron designed a ketchup packet to open in the middle, but the darn things didn't work for sh*t! (How rude...) Then I flipped the packet over and realized that the fast food logo on it was mislocated by almost half the length of the packet... Yeah - the Air Force had picked up some misprinted ketchup packets for cheap...
So, why did I actually try to open a ketchup packet in the middle just because that's where the arrow was pointing? And what kind of person would even notice the arrow in the first place? Why do I remember it so clearly after 41 years??? All good questions :-)
Moving on:
By the end of that summer I'd pretty much concluded that the Air Force was a typical mindless, and inefficient bureaucracy.Then in mid-October OPEC announced an oil embargo (the one that led to the infamous gas crisis), and a couple of weeks later I saw President Nixon on the evening news announcing an "energy independence initiative" that included reducing energy use in government buildings.
When I got to school the next morning I discovered that half of the fluorescent tubes had been removed from every light fixture in Cody Hall (a big building) and it was the same in every building I was in that day... Yes... Within a matter of hours an order had gone from the White House to the Pentagon to every military installation in the U.S. resulting in hundreds of thousands of tubes being removed from light fixtures literally overnight. I was absolutely blown away... From that point on I never doubted the military's ability to mobilize on a moments notice. (Lesson learned.)
So, I guess that's enough for now... Over the next couple of posts I'll try to wrap up "tech school" so I can move on to my one and only assignment in the "real" Air Force.
First story:
One day I found a tree frog on the latrine wall (no idea how it got there). It was a tiny thing - about two inches long with suction cups on its toes - totally cute (and harmless). So I took it out into the hall to show to some of the guys and I was about to turn it loose outside when somebody had the bright idea of introducing it to the WAF admin who worked in the squadron office. (Yeah - I'm not sure at what age boys outgrow the whole "scaring girls with frogs" thing, but apparently it's well into adulthood)... Since Mike (the bay rope) dropped by the office almost every day he figured he had the best chance of catching her off guard, so he headed off with the little critter to make the introductions while the rest of us remained in the dorm (going about our business)...
Mike stayed gone for a very long time... Apparently, when he set the frog down on the WAF's desk she started screaming uncontrollably and couldn't stop - she ended up not being able to breath and they had to call the paramedics... Of course, the squadron commander came running out of his office at the first scream (who would have guessed that anybody could be that afraid of amphibians?) and needless to say, he was not the slightest bit amused - Mike ended up in in a fair bit of trouble...
What's the point of the story? Heck if I know, other than it would make an excellent hypothetical for a tort law class (IIED). But you'll be happy to know that the frog was completely unharmed (except maybe for some hearing loss from all the screaming) and was returned to its "natural" environment :-)
Next story:
There were 3 chow halls in the triangle (one was right next to our dorm), and one day some of us happened to eat at a different hall and discovered that although they all served the exact same menu there was a significant difference in edibility.
So my baymates and I made a habit of regularly stopping by the other chow halls and (over time) we compiled a list of where to eat depending on what was being served... BTW: No particular chow hall was consistently better than the others - each had good and bad fare (ours had french toast so greasy it wasn't fit for consumption). But on any given day there was reasonably good chow to be had if you were willing to walk a bit.
So why do I remember all of this? Because of the way people reacted when they discovered we had gone through the trouble of figuring it all out... Like, we'd see some guy heading for the nearby chow hall and we'd be like "Dude! Are you crazy? They're serving such-and-such - you seriously need to go to the north chow hall!" and he'd get this half-puzzled, half-amazed look on his face. Yeah - I don't think it ever dawned on most guys that they were allowed to eat at other chow halls let alone that the food quality varied... And that's yet another story with no real point - just more memories about being an "old timer" at Keesler.
And a semi-related one:
I'm surprised at how few memories I have of actually eating in the chow halls (I guess when you do something every day it just doesn't stick around in your brain) but there is one particular ketchup related incident I remember quite clearly - it was one of those "how stupid can you get" things:
One day I was eating lunch and was about to put some ketchup on my fries when I noticed that the "tear here" arrow was pointing to the middle of the packet... I remember being totally puzzled by it. I mean, why on earth would anyone design a ketchup packet that opened in the middle??? The packet didn't appear to be different from any other ketchup packet, but I figured "Why would they tell you to open it in the middle unless that's where it was supposed to be opened?"... So - after one heck of lot of effort I managed to tear it open and the ketchup ended up everywhere but on my fries.
I was seriously pissed off... Not only had some moron designed a ketchup packet to open in the middle, but the darn things didn't work for sh*t! (How rude...) Then I flipped the packet over and realized that the fast food logo on it was mislocated by almost half the length of the packet... Yeah - the Air Force had picked up some misprinted ketchup packets for cheap...
So, why did I actually try to open a ketchup packet in the middle just because that's where the arrow was pointing? And what kind of person would even notice the arrow in the first place? Why do I remember it so clearly after 41 years??? All good questions :-)
Moving on:
By the end of that summer I'd pretty much concluded that the Air Force was a typical mindless, and inefficient bureaucracy.Then in mid-October OPEC announced an oil embargo (the one that led to the infamous gas crisis), and a couple of weeks later I saw President Nixon on the evening news announcing an "energy independence initiative" that included reducing energy use in government buildings.
When I got to school the next morning I discovered that half of the fluorescent tubes had been removed from every light fixture in Cody Hall (a big building) and it was the same in every building I was in that day... Yes... Within a matter of hours an order had gone from the White House to the Pentagon to every military installation in the U.S. resulting in hundreds of thousands of tubes being removed from light fixtures literally overnight. I was absolutely blown away... From that point on I never doubted the military's ability to mobilize on a moments notice. (Lesson learned.)
So, I guess that's enough for now... Over the next couple of posts I'll try to wrap up "tech school" so I can move on to my one and only assignment in the "real" Air Force.
Monday, April 21, 2014
Classmates and Others
The topic is (once again) Air Traffic Control Radar Repair school at Keesler AFB back in 1973... As it turned out I didn't really know any of my classmates - they were mostly married (so they didn't live on base) or in other squadrons... Of course, Airman Juneau (my roomie) and I had originally been scheduled to go through the program together but I ended up in the self-pace Basic Electronics class and skipped a month ahead of him. (Thank goodness - he was hard to take in large doses.) But I do have a few stories.
First, I want to mention Combat Controllers:
A lot of people don't realize that the Air Force has "elite" special forces. Yup, they do... The two major groups are Pararescuemen and Combat Controllers. Both undergo Army Airborne and Combat Diver training (focus is on undetected infiltration), and are taught how to survive anywhere on the planet... In addition, the Pararescuemen (who rescue downed pilots) are fully qualified paramedics, whereas the Combat Controllers (who coordinate airstrikes) are FAA certified Air Traffic Controllers. Both spend years in training and the washout rate is as high as any elite force in the military - basically, these guys are pretty badass :-)
So, why am I mentioning this? ... Because the Combat Controllers through Air Traffic Controller school at Cody Hall, and we used to see them outside during breaks... They were easy to spot - they wore berets, their fatigues were always starched and pressed, and their boots were polished to mirror-like perfection... But the main reason I remember them is that they would kiss each other on the lips... I mean, I kind of understand the whole "brotherhood" thing, but the kissing always struck me as a bit over the top :-) But I digress...
Yeah - it's funny the things that stick in your mind. The only thing I remember about one of my classmates is he was always walking around singing "Tube steak, tube steak, tu-tu tu-tu tu-tu-tu-tu tu-tu tube steak!" (Apparently he made that up as an homage to his "package" which he was quite fond of)... And another guy would yell "Yo Rinny!" all the time. (That line was from a 1950s TV series featuring a German Shepherd named Rin-tin-tin.) Yeah - I have no idea what that was about either, but (once again) that's the only thing I remember about the guy...
However, I do remember quite a few things about the sergeant who sat next to me in my classes (but not his name). He was from rural Oklahoma and was half Native American (he didn't look it - I would have guessed Hispanic), and he had a wife and kids.
He'd spent 12 years as a Navy aircraft mechanic (on a carrier) and had gotten fed up with spending so much time at sea (and having recurring nightmares about propellers), so he decided to transfer to the Air Force and retrain as a radar tech.
Yeah - apparently they had prop planes (surveillance?) on the carriers, and spinning propellers were totally invisible in the dim lighting on the hangar deck. Also, the area was cramped and crowded and there was so much noise coming from everywhere you couldn't hear the props either, so you just had to be constantly aware of your surroundings... Then shortly before it was time for my deskmate to re-up his supervisor had a momentary lapse and walked right into prop (instant death) hence the nightmares...
But my favorite one of his stories was about the Navy advancement exam. Now - back in the day those exams were impossible to ace. Some of the questions were intentionally ambiguous, while others had multiple correct answers and the "right" answer wasn't the most correct one - plus, very few people finished it in the allotted time. The point is that the odds against anyone getting 100% were (intentionally) extremely high...
But there was one major flaw: The exam had a two page "fill in the circle"answer sheet, and my deskmate was looking over them (for questions he had skipped) when he suddenly realized that the pattern of dots on the second page was the inverted mirror image of the first (apparently they graded both pages by flipping over the same scoring template). So he used that info to cross-correlate his answers and aced the exam.
Of course, his perfect score raised major red flags, and when he explained what had happened he was told that he had "cheated" (the issue went all the way up to the Pentagon). But since he never had access to privileged info nor did he make use of any unauthorized materials, the charges were eventually dropped...
I don't doubt the story for a second - the guy was wicked sharp (between the two of us we always had the highest scores in the class - and no, we didn't cheat), and I suspect that I found the story so compelling because of my feelings about rules and regs. To wit:
It all starts with a simple goal. And rather than tell their rank and file workers "This is what you need to accomplish - use your best judgement and behave ethically", a bureaucracy will invariably create rules, processes and policies that serve to take away all discretion and avoid any accountability... The problem is that no matter how carefully rules are written there are always circumstances (and interpretations) that lead to different outcomes from was intended.
Furthermore, most bureaucrats don't know (or care) about their actual objective - adhering to the rules becomes their only goal. Even when circumstances have changed to the point where the rules make absolutely no sense they still doggedly follow them to the letter. (Like after WWII when Holland forced Jews to pay back taxes on property seized by the Nazis because they were still the "owners of record" while they were in concentration camps... Yup. That's bureaucracy in action...)
Now - I'm not implying rules are always bad. (I actually like them because they give me something to bend.) They're only bad when those who follow them don't understand their purpose and are never permitted to use discretion...
And the point is that although my deskmate clearly violated the "intent" of the exam (to answer the questions based solely on his knowledge of the material) he didn't violate a single rule... So, did he "cheat"? ... Well, that's an interesting question, isn't it?
First, I want to mention Combat Controllers:
A lot of people don't realize that the Air Force has "elite" special forces. Yup, they do... The two major groups are Pararescuemen and Combat Controllers. Both undergo Army Airborne and Combat Diver training (focus is on undetected infiltration), and are taught how to survive anywhere on the planet... In addition, the Pararescuemen (who rescue downed pilots) are fully qualified paramedics, whereas the Combat Controllers (who coordinate airstrikes) are FAA certified Air Traffic Controllers. Both spend years in training and the washout rate is as high as any elite force in the military - basically, these guys are pretty badass :-)
So, why am I mentioning this? ... Because the Combat Controllers through Air Traffic Controller school at Cody Hall, and we used to see them outside during breaks... They were easy to spot - they wore berets, their fatigues were always starched and pressed, and their boots were polished to mirror-like perfection... But the main reason I remember them is that they would kiss each other on the lips... I mean, I kind of understand the whole "brotherhood" thing, but the kissing always struck me as a bit over the top :-) But I digress...
Yeah - it's funny the things that stick in your mind. The only thing I remember about one of my classmates is he was always walking around singing "Tube steak, tube steak, tu-tu tu-tu tu-tu-tu-tu tu-tu tube steak!" (Apparently he made that up as an homage to his "package" which he was quite fond of)... And another guy would yell "Yo Rinny!" all the time. (That line was from a 1950s TV series featuring a German Shepherd named Rin-tin-tin.) Yeah - I have no idea what that was about either, but (once again) that's the only thing I remember about the guy...
However, I do remember quite a few things about the sergeant who sat next to me in my classes (but not his name). He was from rural Oklahoma and was half Native American (he didn't look it - I would have guessed Hispanic), and he had a wife and kids.
He'd spent 12 years as a Navy aircraft mechanic (on a carrier) and had gotten fed up with spending so much time at sea (and having recurring nightmares about propellers), so he decided to transfer to the Air Force and retrain as a radar tech.
Yeah - apparently they had prop planes (surveillance?) on the carriers, and spinning propellers were totally invisible in the dim lighting on the hangar deck. Also, the area was cramped and crowded and there was so much noise coming from everywhere you couldn't hear the props either, so you just had to be constantly aware of your surroundings... Then shortly before it was time for my deskmate to re-up his supervisor had a momentary lapse and walked right into prop (instant death) hence the nightmares...
But my favorite one of his stories was about the Navy advancement exam. Now - back in the day those exams were impossible to ace. Some of the questions were intentionally ambiguous, while others had multiple correct answers and the "right" answer wasn't the most correct one - plus, very few people finished it in the allotted time. The point is that the odds against anyone getting 100% were (intentionally) extremely high...
But there was one major flaw: The exam had a two page "fill in the circle"answer sheet, and my deskmate was looking over them (for questions he had skipped) when he suddenly realized that the pattern of dots on the second page was the inverted mirror image of the first (apparently they graded both pages by flipping over the same scoring template). So he used that info to cross-correlate his answers and aced the exam.
Of course, his perfect score raised major red flags, and when he explained what had happened he was told that he had "cheated" (the issue went all the way up to the Pentagon). But since he never had access to privileged info nor did he make use of any unauthorized materials, the charges were eventually dropped...
I don't doubt the story for a second - the guy was wicked sharp (between the two of us we always had the highest scores in the class - and no, we didn't cheat), and I suspect that I found the story so compelling because of my feelings about rules and regs. To wit:
It all starts with a simple goal. And rather than tell their rank and file workers "This is what you need to accomplish - use your best judgement and behave ethically", a bureaucracy will invariably create rules, processes and policies that serve to take away all discretion and avoid any accountability... The problem is that no matter how carefully rules are written there are always circumstances (and interpretations) that lead to different outcomes from was intended.
Furthermore, most bureaucrats don't know (or care) about their actual objective - adhering to the rules becomes their only goal. Even when circumstances have changed to the point where the rules make absolutely no sense they still doggedly follow them to the letter. (Like after WWII when Holland forced Jews to pay back taxes on property seized by the Nazis because they were still the "owners of record" while they were in concentration camps... Yup. That's bureaucracy in action...)
Now - I'm not implying rules are always bad. (I actually like them because they give me something to bend.) They're only bad when those who follow them don't understand their purpose and are never permitted to use discretion...
And the point is that although my deskmate clearly violated the "intent" of the exam (to answer the questions based solely on his knowledge of the material) he didn't violate a single rule... So, did he "cheat"? ... Well, that's an interesting question, isn't it?
Monday, March 31, 2014
Radar School
It's probably time to say a bit more about the "Air Traffic Control Radar Repair" program at Keesler AFB back in 1973. I really don't remember that much about it because each day was pretty much the same as the one before, but there were a few highlights.
A quick recap: The classes were conducted in the old Cody Hall, and it was the longest training course at Keesler at the time (ran for about 6 months after Basic Electronics). I spent that entire time on "A shift", meaning I attended school from 6AM to noon, and (supposedly) there was a lot of homework, but I certainly don't remember doing any (and I was an honor graduate - still have the certificate somewhere).
The program was broken into 2 or 3 week sections (each covering a major radar subsystem) with a smattering of telephone, radio and air conditioning stuff thrown in at the end. Basically, we spent all day sitting at our tables annotating schematics with colored pencils while the instructor explained the operation of the circuits... Each section was taught by a different instructor - some were Air Force sergeants and some civil servants (retired military).
Now - the instructors loved to mess with the students, and it wasn't always clear when they were doing it. For example:
There were some push-pull amplifiers where the vacuum tube symbols were drawn as vertical pairs - one right side up and the other upside down. The instructor told us to label the upside down ones as "gravitrons" because they were actually mounted upside down in the cabinet so gravity could aid the electron flow. (I didn't write that particular one down, but some of the other guys did)... Then there were the "high-tide wobulators" (there really is such a thing as a wobulator, but not in our equipment, and they are definitely not affected by tides.) However, the "quadrature detectors" and the "Walman low noise circuits" turned out to be real, so you just never knew... I'm sure there were lots more, but I've mercifully forgotten them...
And speaking of humor, there was one incident that I found particularly amusing:
During one of our classes (taught by a young sergeant) an old civilian instructor burst through the door and said:
"I'm sorry to interrupt the class, but I've got some bad news"
Sarge: "What's going on?"
Civilian: "Well, it's going to be tough sledding... Really tough sledding..."
Sarge: "OK... Why?"
Civilian: "I'm telling you... It's going to be tough sledding... That's all I can say..."
This went on for another 20 or 30 seconds, and finally this happened:
Sarge: "Will you just please tell me why it's going to be tough sledding?"
Civilian: "Well... It's the middle of July... There's no snow"
Then he turned around and walked out without cracking a smile...
Yeah - that old guy was our instructor for one of the later sections and he definitely had an "interesting" sense of humor. He suffered from early stage Parkinson's disease (which affects your balance and coordination) and told this hilarious story about getting stopped for drunk driving. (It was mostly "physical shtick" so it doesn't lend itself to retelling.) We definitely had some good times :-)
Finally - my earlier mention of quadrature detectors reminds me of a story that doesn't really belong here, but it speaks volumes about the military in general and there really isn't a better place to tell it:
The quadrature detector circuit consisted of 4 vacuum tubes (in a bridge arrangement) that had to be perfectly matched or the circuit wouldn't work. Hence, if any one of the tubes went bad you had to replace all 4 of them, so (naturally) every maintenance group always stocked at least that many (preferably all with the same batch number)...
Then around the time I left Keesler some doofus at the Pentagon ran a bunch of computer analysis on the Air Force parts inventory and determined that (based on average failure rate) nobody should need more than 2 of those particular tubes in stock, so they forced everyone to turn in their "excess" inventory. (I leaned about this while doing some work at Travis AFB in 1974 - story yet to come.)
Now, if this had happened in the "real world" someone would have sent a memo up the chain explaining why stocking only 2 tubes was idiotic, but in the "military world" there is simply no provision for challenging orders, so the restriction remained in place...
The funny thing was, you were still expected to get your job done. Saying "I can't fix the system because you took my parts away" was not an acceptable answer...
And there were similar issues with our filing system. Most of the records were required to be disposed of after 6 months, but then you'd invariably get a call from NorthCom HQ asking for specifics about something that happened 9 months earlier, and responding with "I have no clue" was not an option.
The end result was that most everyone had stashes of things they weren't supposed to have, and whenever you needed something that wasn't readily available through "official" channels there were "scroungers" who somehow managed to make things appear... So, basically, the system worked despite itself :-)
But those stories are yet to come...
A quick recap: The classes were conducted in the old Cody Hall, and it was the longest training course at Keesler at the time (ran for about 6 months after Basic Electronics). I spent that entire time on "A shift", meaning I attended school from 6AM to noon, and (supposedly) there was a lot of homework, but I certainly don't remember doing any (and I was an honor graduate - still have the certificate somewhere).
The program was broken into 2 or 3 week sections (each covering a major radar subsystem) with a smattering of telephone, radio and air conditioning stuff thrown in at the end. Basically, we spent all day sitting at our tables annotating schematics with colored pencils while the instructor explained the operation of the circuits... Each section was taught by a different instructor - some were Air Force sergeants and some civil servants (retired military).
Now - the instructors loved to mess with the students, and it wasn't always clear when they were doing it. For example:
There were some push-pull amplifiers where the vacuum tube symbols were drawn as vertical pairs - one right side up and the other upside down. The instructor told us to label the upside down ones as "gravitrons" because they were actually mounted upside down in the cabinet so gravity could aid the electron flow. (I didn't write that particular one down, but some of the other guys did)... Then there were the "high-tide wobulators" (there really is such a thing as a wobulator, but not in our equipment, and they are definitely not affected by tides.) However, the "quadrature detectors" and the "Walman low noise circuits" turned out to be real, so you just never knew... I'm sure there were lots more, but I've mercifully forgotten them...
And speaking of humor, there was one incident that I found particularly amusing:
During one of our classes (taught by a young sergeant) an old civilian instructor burst through the door and said:
"I'm sorry to interrupt the class, but I've got some bad news"
Sarge: "What's going on?"
Civilian: "Well, it's going to be tough sledding... Really tough sledding..."
Sarge: "OK... Why?"
Civilian: "I'm telling you... It's going to be tough sledding... That's all I can say..."
This went on for another 20 or 30 seconds, and finally this happened:
Sarge: "Will you just please tell me why it's going to be tough sledding?"
Civilian: "Well... It's the middle of July... There's no snow"
Then he turned around and walked out without cracking a smile...
Yeah - that old guy was our instructor for one of the later sections and he definitely had an "interesting" sense of humor. He suffered from early stage Parkinson's disease (which affects your balance and coordination) and told this hilarious story about getting stopped for drunk driving. (It was mostly "physical shtick" so it doesn't lend itself to retelling.) We definitely had some good times :-)
Finally - my earlier mention of quadrature detectors reminds me of a story that doesn't really belong here, but it speaks volumes about the military in general and there really isn't a better place to tell it:
The quadrature detector circuit consisted of 4 vacuum tubes (in a bridge arrangement) that had to be perfectly matched or the circuit wouldn't work. Hence, if any one of the tubes went bad you had to replace all 4 of them, so (naturally) every maintenance group always stocked at least that many (preferably all with the same batch number)...
Then around the time I left Keesler some doofus at the Pentagon ran a bunch of computer analysis on the Air Force parts inventory and determined that (based on average failure rate) nobody should need more than 2 of those particular tubes in stock, so they forced everyone to turn in their "excess" inventory. (I leaned about this while doing some work at Travis AFB in 1974 - story yet to come.)
Now, if this had happened in the "real world" someone would have sent a memo up the chain explaining why stocking only 2 tubes was idiotic, but in the "military world" there is simply no provision for challenging orders, so the restriction remained in place...
The funny thing was, you were still expected to get your job done. Saying "I can't fix the system because you took my parts away" was not an acceptable answer...
And there were similar issues with our filing system. Most of the records were required to be disposed of after 6 months, but then you'd invariably get a call from NorthCom HQ asking for specifics about something that happened 9 months earlier, and responding with "I have no clue" was not an option.
The end result was that most everyone had stashes of things they weren't supposed to have, and whenever you needed something that wasn't readily available through "official" channels there were "scroungers" who somehow managed to make things appear... So, basically, the system worked despite itself :-)
But those stories are yet to come...
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
The Blow Up
The topic is (once again) my life in the Keesler AFB triangle during the late summer and fall of 1973... As I mentioned in the prior post, the guy in the picture wearing a stocking cap was our bay rope, and since I don't remember his name I will just call him Mike... He was an "outdoors" type from rural Montana(?) and in addition to being very personable he was amazingly good at telling "shaggy dog" stories.
Aside - I've always wondered why they were called shaggy dog stories so I finally looked it up. Apparently one of the early variants went on at great length about how shaggy a particular dog was, and the punchline was someone saying "That dog's not so shaggy"... So the term describes a long, involved story that ends unexpectedly.
Of course, shaggy dog stories are only as good as the person telling them. The whole point is to get drawn in deeper and deeper, and then be blindsided by the ending - and Mike was the master. It wasn't unusual for the entire bay to gather in his room when he was in a "story telling" mood...
Now - to be honest, I can't tell a shaggy dog story to save my life (I just don't have the patience), but I do recall some of the punchlines:
You're 30 years old and you still believe in witches?
It's a long way to tip a Rari.
Pardon me Roy, is that the cat that chewed your new shoes?
That's the beer that made Mel Famey walk us.
Silly rabbi, kicks are for Trids!
Yeah - it was that kind of thing... But that's not the main topic of the post. This is:
One Saturday morning 5 of us "bay mates" (me, Juneau, Mike and 2 others) were sitting around drinking beer trying to think of something interesting to do for the rest of the day when someone came up with the idea of building a car model. As it turned out, we were all "up for it" so we pooled some money and one of the guys ran over to BX and came back with a Revell model of a 1969 Camaro Z/28 and an assortment of paints and supplies.
We were just in the process of unpacking the box when a tall skinny GI with glasses (Tom?) suddenly said "Wait just a sec!", ran back to his room and returned a few seconds later with an M80.
Now - "M80" is the generic term for "big-ass firecracker" but that's not what I'm taking about here. The article in question was a genuine military issue "M80 Explosive Detonator Simulator" - basically a 1/4 stick of dynamite. (We asked him where he got it, and he said the less we knew the better.) We spent a few minutes deciding how to modify the model to accommodate the device (without anyone questioning the wisdom thereof) and we got underway.
The next couple of hours were quite enjoyable. Mike divided responsibility for preparing, assembling and painting the various components amongst us, and it didn't take long until the Z/28 was fully assembled (with the M80 nestled in place of the back seat). We continued adding little touches (including plug wires) until everyone was satisfied at the result... Yes - it was a thing of beauty!
As we worked on the model we continued depleting our supply of Old Milwaukee, so when it came to discuss the next steps the only question raised was how far outside the door to set it off... I mean, we didn't want it too close to the dorm (damage avoidance), but whoever lit the fuse had to have enough time to get back inside before the boom. Since nobody was sure how fast the fuse would burn we compromised on a spot on the lawn 25 feet from the building.
So - the rest of us waited by the stairwell as Mike sauntered out with the his lighter, then a short while later he ran back inside screaming "Fire in the hole!" and slammed the steel door... For a couple of seconds we weren't sure it was actually going to go off - then it hit.
I don't think any of us expected the explosion to be that violent. We immediately ran outside and found nothing but a hole where the Z/28 had been. We did a quick scan of the nearby windows (amazingly enough, they were all intact) and realized that we could still hear echoes of the blast reverberating from miles away... It instantly dawned on us that an explosion of that magnitude would not go unnoticed, hence it might behoove us to be elsewhere :-) So I made a beeline for my 68 Barracuda (with Juneau and one other guy in tow) while Mike and the remaining guy headed for another car and we got our butts out the east gate as fast as we could.
We returned to the base many hours later halfway expecting to be arrested, but (much to our relief) we discovered that we were in the clear... The triangle did get locked down shortly after we left and a bunch of security police showed up, but since nobody really knew what had happened (and the evidence had been blown to smithereens) the SPs eventually shrugged and left. Of course, given the location of the blast hole (and our conspicuous absence) some of the guys figured it was us but kept their suspicions to themselves.
Another aside: I can't imagine an explosion on a military base being treated so casually these days, but back in 1973 terrorist attacks were a relatively new thing (that only happened overseas) so Americans weren't the least bit worried... Regardless, it was still a monumentally stupid thing to do :-)
Postscript: About a month later I was hanging out next to a tree about 100 yards from "ground zero" and I spotted one of the tires off the Z/28 nestled among the roots. I took it back to the dorm and we all had a good laugh and added it to the collection of bits and pieces we had gathered during the days and weeks that followed...
I've never been sure why, but my memories of that day invariably bring a smile to my lips. It was indeed "a date that will live in idiocy" :-)
Aside - I've always wondered why they were called shaggy dog stories so I finally looked it up. Apparently one of the early variants went on at great length about how shaggy a particular dog was, and the punchline was someone saying "That dog's not so shaggy"... So the term describes a long, involved story that ends unexpectedly.
Of course, shaggy dog stories are only as good as the person telling them. The whole point is to get drawn in deeper and deeper, and then be blindsided by the ending - and Mike was the master. It wasn't unusual for the entire bay to gather in his room when he was in a "story telling" mood...
Now - to be honest, I can't tell a shaggy dog story to save my life (I just don't have the patience), but I do recall some of the punchlines:
You're 30 years old and you still believe in witches?
It's a long way to tip a Rari.
Pardon me Roy, is that the cat that chewed your new shoes?
That's the beer that made Mel Famey walk us.
Silly rabbi, kicks are for Trids!
Yeah - it was that kind of thing... But that's not the main topic of the post. This is:
One Saturday morning 5 of us "bay mates" (me, Juneau, Mike and 2 others) were sitting around drinking beer trying to think of something interesting to do for the rest of the day when someone came up with the idea of building a car model. As it turned out, we were all "up for it" so we pooled some money and one of the guys ran over to BX and came back with a Revell model of a 1969 Camaro Z/28 and an assortment of paints and supplies.
We were just in the process of unpacking the box when a tall skinny GI with glasses (Tom?) suddenly said "Wait just a sec!", ran back to his room and returned a few seconds later with an M80.
Now - "M80" is the generic term for "big-ass firecracker" but that's not what I'm taking about here. The article in question was a genuine military issue "M80 Explosive Detonator Simulator" - basically a 1/4 stick of dynamite. (We asked him where he got it, and he said the less we knew the better.) We spent a few minutes deciding how to modify the model to accommodate the device (without anyone questioning the wisdom thereof) and we got underway.
The next couple of hours were quite enjoyable. Mike divided responsibility for preparing, assembling and painting the various components amongst us, and it didn't take long until the Z/28 was fully assembled (with the M80 nestled in place of the back seat). We continued adding little touches (including plug wires) until everyone was satisfied at the result... Yes - it was a thing of beauty!
As we worked on the model we continued depleting our supply of Old Milwaukee, so when it came to discuss the next steps the only question raised was how far outside the door to set it off... I mean, we didn't want it too close to the dorm (damage avoidance), but whoever lit the fuse had to have enough time to get back inside before the boom. Since nobody was sure how fast the fuse would burn we compromised on a spot on the lawn 25 feet from the building.
So - the rest of us waited by the stairwell as Mike sauntered out with the his lighter, then a short while later he ran back inside screaming "Fire in the hole!" and slammed the steel door... For a couple of seconds we weren't sure it was actually going to go off - then it hit.
I don't think any of us expected the explosion to be that violent. We immediately ran outside and found nothing but a hole where the Z/28 had been. We did a quick scan of the nearby windows (amazingly enough, they were all intact) and realized that we could still hear echoes of the blast reverberating from miles away... It instantly dawned on us that an explosion of that magnitude would not go unnoticed, hence it might behoove us to be elsewhere :-) So I made a beeline for my 68 Barracuda (with Juneau and one other guy in tow) while Mike and the remaining guy headed for another car and we got our butts out the east gate as fast as we could.
We returned to the base many hours later halfway expecting to be arrested, but (much to our relief) we discovered that we were in the clear... The triangle did get locked down shortly after we left and a bunch of security police showed up, but since nobody really knew what had happened (and the evidence had been blown to smithereens) the SPs eventually shrugged and left. Of course, given the location of the blast hole (and our conspicuous absence) some of the guys figured it was us but kept their suspicions to themselves.
Another aside: I can't imagine an explosion on a military base being treated so casually these days, but back in 1973 terrorist attacks were a relatively new thing (that only happened overseas) so Americans weren't the least bit worried... Regardless, it was still a monumentally stupid thing to do :-)
Postscript: About a month later I was hanging out next to a tree about 100 yards from "ground zero" and I spotted one of the tires off the Z/28 nestled among the roots. I took it back to the dorm and we all had a good laugh and added it to the collection of bits and pieces we had gathered during the days and weeks that followed...
I've never been sure why, but my memories of that day invariably bring a smile to my lips. It was indeed "a date that will live in idiocy" :-)
Saturday, February 22, 2014
The Bay
The title of this post does not (as one may think) refer to a body of water - it instead refers to a section of a dorm building in the Keesler AFB triangle back in 1973 consisting of six(?) dorm rooms (2 airmen each) with a common corridor and a shared latrine.
As I've mentioned before, I spent my last 4 months at Keesler on the 1st floor bay just south of the squadron T.I.'s office. That particular bay was populated (intentionally?) with airmen who were in long term electronics courses, hence there was very little turnover - meaning I got to know more about a lot of the residents than I ever wanted to :-)
But first, let me "recap" what made the experience so interesting:
Those of us in electronics training at Keesler had gotten the highest scores on the military entrance exams (showing a particularly strong aptitude for math and science) yet for one reason or another had not continued on to college and, furthermore, had made a conscious decision to enlist in the military even though there was still a war going on in Vietnam... Of course, the war was winding down - and not nearly as many people went on to college back then as they do now, but it was still a pretty "oddball" demographic.
Some (like myself) were socially inept, had self-esteem issues and/or couldn't afford college. A lot of us had been "hippie" types and consequently couldn't find jobs. Some (like Juneau) drank a bit too much while others "smoked" a bit too much, and a few had gotten in trouble with the law - and when you factor in "above average intelligence" it made for some interesting dynamics :-)
Here's a picture of some of the guys from my bay (I think Juneau took this one):
I'm the second from the left (in the blue Olympia Beer T-shirt). The guy next to me in the stocking cap was the bay "rope" and the one on the opposite end (with the cigarette) was one of the most obnoxious jerks I've ever known. (I think his name was Ron, so that's what I'll call him.)
Ron clearly had a massive inferiority complex. He was the type of person who was never wrong about anything, and if you implied otherwise he would respond by getting in your face and yelling profanity laced insults at you.
Aside: I don't think our current (and subsequent) generations can fully appreciate how pointless it was to have a factual argument back in those days. This was before the internet, so if you wanted the "truth" you pretty much had to go to the library and spend hours poring through newspapers and periodicals. It was really frustrating not being able to prove your point.
Anyway - given how easy it was to set Ron off, antagonizing him became something of a sport amongst his fellow bay-mates... My favorite involved Mark Farner, the front man and lead guitarist for Grand Funk Railroad. At some point during that summer a false rumor circulated that Mark had died and Ron was absolutely devastated - he totally worshiped the guy.
All the rest of us were like "Seriously??" I mean, this was in the back in the day of guitar gods like Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix and Duane Allman (both recently deceased) and lesser knowns like Johnny Winter, Jeff Beck, Mike Bloomfield and Alvin Lee... I'm not saying Mark Farner wasn't a good guitarist, but still - seriously?? So whenever Ron started to get on my nerves I'd just say "Mark Farner is dead" and watch him explode :-)
Another one of Ron's issues was that simply wouldn't listen to anybody: That summer he bought a stereo kit, and when he started assembling it his roomie came over said "Dudes! You have got to see this!". Juneau and I walked across the hall to discover that Ron was using a 100 watt heat gun to solder all the components onto the circuit board... Now - you can get away with doing that to resistors and capacitors, but transistors are extremely heat sensitive and anything hotter than a 35 watt soldering iron is highly likely to fry them... We all told Ron as much, but he reacted with his usual "You guys don't know what you're talking about!" - so we just shrugged and left.
Of course, the stereo didn't work (surprise, surprise) and he absolutely exploded, screaming that Heathkit sold him faulty parts and he was damn well going to get his money back... Not sure how it ended up (he never said another word about it) but it was all so typically "Ron".
Another aside: Up until the mid-1970s things like TVs and stereos were really expensive, mostly due to labor costs. (In the late 60's a color TV was about 1/4 the cost of a new car.) Then almost overnight everything changed. Hundreds of discrete components were replaced by a handful of "chips", the manufacturing moved to Asia (with increasing levels of automation), and before long you could buy the finished product cheaper than you could build it yourself. The point is that up until the mid to late 1970s there were literally millions of electronics hobbyists building their own stuff and within a decade there were hardly any left... Sad... But I digress...
The final story involves Ron and the new roommate of the guy at the end of the hall (the one who brewed the extremely strong coffee):
Now - the roomie seemed totally normal to everyone except Ron, who kept trying to convince us that the guy was totally nuts. He just wouldn't shut up about it. He went on week after week until we were totally sick of hearing it. We were all like "Geez Ron - what's your problem? He's fine! Just give it a rest!"
Then the coffee guy came back from a weekend away to discover that his roomie had spent the entire time marching around the room in a little circle (there was a path worn in the linoleum). They escorted the roomie to the hospital (never to return) and we later learned that he'd been given a Section 8 discharge...
Yes - as shocking as it was to learn that the guy really did have mental health issues, it was nothing compared to the shock of discovering that Ron was actually right about something :-)
As I've mentioned before, I spent my last 4 months at Keesler on the 1st floor bay just south of the squadron T.I.'s office. That particular bay was populated (intentionally?) with airmen who were in long term electronics courses, hence there was very little turnover - meaning I got to know more about a lot of the residents than I ever wanted to :-)
But first, let me "recap" what made the experience so interesting:
Those of us in electronics training at Keesler had gotten the highest scores on the military entrance exams (showing a particularly strong aptitude for math and science) yet for one reason or another had not continued on to college and, furthermore, had made a conscious decision to enlist in the military even though there was still a war going on in Vietnam... Of course, the war was winding down - and not nearly as many people went on to college back then as they do now, but it was still a pretty "oddball" demographic.
Some (like myself) were socially inept, had self-esteem issues and/or couldn't afford college. A lot of us had been "hippie" types and consequently couldn't find jobs. Some (like Juneau) drank a bit too much while others "smoked" a bit too much, and a few had gotten in trouble with the law - and when you factor in "above average intelligence" it made for some interesting dynamics :-)
Here's a picture of some of the guys from my bay (I think Juneau took this one):
I'm the second from the left (in the blue Olympia Beer T-shirt). The guy next to me in the stocking cap was the bay "rope" and the one on the opposite end (with the cigarette) was one of the most obnoxious jerks I've ever known. (I think his name was Ron, so that's what I'll call him.)
Ron clearly had a massive inferiority complex. He was the type of person who was never wrong about anything, and if you implied otherwise he would respond by getting in your face and yelling profanity laced insults at you.
Aside: I don't think our current (and subsequent) generations can fully appreciate how pointless it was to have a factual argument back in those days. This was before the internet, so if you wanted the "truth" you pretty much had to go to the library and spend hours poring through newspapers and periodicals. It was really frustrating not being able to prove your point.
Anyway - given how easy it was to set Ron off, antagonizing him became something of a sport amongst his fellow bay-mates... My favorite involved Mark Farner, the front man and lead guitarist for Grand Funk Railroad. At some point during that summer a false rumor circulated that Mark had died and Ron was absolutely devastated - he totally worshiped the guy.
All the rest of us were like "Seriously??" I mean, this was in the back in the day of guitar gods like Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix and Duane Allman (both recently deceased) and lesser knowns like Johnny Winter, Jeff Beck, Mike Bloomfield and Alvin Lee... I'm not saying Mark Farner wasn't a good guitarist, but still - seriously?? So whenever Ron started to get on my nerves I'd just say "Mark Farner is dead" and watch him explode :-)
Another one of Ron's issues was that simply wouldn't listen to anybody: That summer he bought a stereo kit, and when he started assembling it his roomie came over said "Dudes! You have got to see this!". Juneau and I walked across the hall to discover that Ron was using a 100 watt heat gun to solder all the components onto the circuit board... Now - you can get away with doing that to resistors and capacitors, but transistors are extremely heat sensitive and anything hotter than a 35 watt soldering iron is highly likely to fry them... We all told Ron as much, but he reacted with his usual "You guys don't know what you're talking about!" - so we just shrugged and left.
Of course, the stereo didn't work (surprise, surprise) and he absolutely exploded, screaming that Heathkit sold him faulty parts and he was damn well going to get his money back... Not sure how it ended up (he never said another word about it) but it was all so typically "Ron".
Another aside: Up until the mid-1970s things like TVs and stereos were really expensive, mostly due to labor costs. (In the late 60's a color TV was about 1/4 the cost of a new car.) Then almost overnight everything changed. Hundreds of discrete components were replaced by a handful of "chips", the manufacturing moved to Asia (with increasing levels of automation), and before long you could buy the finished product cheaper than you could build it yourself. The point is that up until the mid to late 1970s there were literally millions of electronics hobbyists building their own stuff and within a decade there were hardly any left... Sad... But I digress...
The final story involves Ron and the new roommate of the guy at the end of the hall (the one who brewed the extremely strong coffee):
Now - the roomie seemed totally normal to everyone except Ron, who kept trying to convince us that the guy was totally nuts. He just wouldn't shut up about it. He went on week after week until we were totally sick of hearing it. We were all like "Geez Ron - what's your problem? He's fine! Just give it a rest!"
Then the coffee guy came back from a weekend away to discover that his roomie had spent the entire time marching around the room in a little circle (there was a path worn in the linoleum). They escorted the roomie to the hospital (never to return) and we later learned that he'd been given a Section 8 discharge...
Yes - as shocking as it was to learn that the guy really did have mental health issues, it was nothing compared to the shock of discovering that Ron was actually right about something :-)
Friday, January 24, 2014
Trivial Pursuits
One thing I remember about the dorm environment at Keesler AFB is that fads tended to spread really quickly, and so it was with "line control" planes during the spring and summer of 1973.
The "devotees" were divided into 2 distinct groups:
The first were the recreational / creative types. They made planes out of things like beer cans and cigar boxes - the stranger the better (I'm amazed some of them actually flew)... That group tended to use the standard ".049" cox engines and congregated in the area in front of the squadron building.
The second group consisted of the speed / skill types... Their planes were much larger (2 to 3 foot wingspans) and were hand crafted out of balsa and silkspan with engines 5 to 10 times more powerful than the ones the "creatives" used. Some of those planes reached actual speeds of 90 MPH, which necessitated a lot of space - so that crowd used the baseball fields across Falcon Street.
Aside - I need to step back in time here:
When I was 10 years old I really wanted a line control airplane but my mom wouldn't buy me one (they were too expensive) so I saved up my allowance and got myself a Cox F4U Corsair. (The price was around $12 in 1963 which is roughly $100 in 2014). It was absolutely beautiful, and I was totally fascinated by it. I spent countless hours examining how the controls and the engine worked - I loved that thing... But the first time I actually fired it up it scared the living crap out of me. I had no idea the freaking thing would be that loud, and as a result I wouldn't get anywhere near it when it was running.
So, that summer my dad and I would occasionally head over to the playground at Chatham Park Elementary School (Havertown, Pa) and he'd fly it while I watched from a "safe" distance... He was really good (not surprising since he'd been a WWII fighter pilot) and a sizable crowd gathered whenever we were there.
One day dad was making some low altitude passes around the playground when a poodle (apparently thinking the Corsair was a noisy bird) came running out of the crowd, jumped up and caught the propeller in it's mouth... The pooch stood there stunned for a few seconds (I'm betting that really hurt) and then ran off yelping with it's owner close behind (neither the plane nor the dog suffered any significant harm)... It took me a long time to stop laughing. I mean, we were all watching the plane going around and suddenly it had a mid-air collision with a flying poodle... Yeah - maybe you had to be there :-) But the point is that although I really liked line control planes I had no desire to fly one.
And back to 1973:
My roommate Juneau was one of the guys that went totally hardcore. He got hold of a used ".35" engine and a plane kit, and we got to work.
Now - up to that point I'd had no idea what was involved in building a high-performance model plane... The kit was nothing more than a bunch of balsa ribs and spars that you had to glue together to form the airframe. The real "art" was covering the entire thing in silkspan (a thin material similar to vellum paper) which came in sheets. You had to cut and fit it over and around the wings, tail and fuselage (without wrinkles) while applying coats of "dope", which causes the silkspan to shrink and harden. You also had to mount the engine and fuel tank, route the control lines, get all the flight surfaces working and balance the whole mess - the point being that it was a lot of work... (Painting it would have been pointless given the life expectancy so we just left it "raw".)
Yeah - I quickly became Juneau's "tech"... It's not that he couldn't do the work himself - it's just that patience wasn't his strong suit. (Quite the opposite, actually.) But I really enjoyed building things (thank you OCD) so I didn't mind...
Over time Juneau got good enough to fly with the "big boys", doing figure 8's, inside loops, outside loops, wing-overs - all kinds of stuff... It's hard to convey in words just how impressive it was to watch those guys fly. Those planes were incomprehensibly fast, and the maneuvers were crisp and instantaneous - it made me dizzy just watching.
And the aerobatics were only part of the challenge. The "pilot" had to remember to sequence his stunts so if one loop twisted the control lines the next had to untwist them... And most importantly, he had to know when he was flying inverted because the slightest twitch of the control lines in the wrong direction would turn the plane into kindling. And that was Juneau's Achilles Heel - he was "inversion impaired"...
That's not to say he crashed every time he flew - but it happened often enough to where (over time) I lost enthusiasm for repairing the wadded up remnants. (I did get really good at it, though.)
Yeah - I guess this is another one of those posts that doesn't really have a point (other than highlighting the extent of my panic disorder when I was 10 years old) - it's just something that (for some reason or another) stands out in my memory..
And it was nice to reflect on some of the good times that Juneau and I had when we weren't busy getting on each other's last nerve :-)
The "devotees" were divided into 2 distinct groups:
The first were the recreational / creative types. They made planes out of things like beer cans and cigar boxes - the stranger the better (I'm amazed some of them actually flew)... That group tended to use the standard ".049" cox engines and congregated in the area in front of the squadron building.
The second group consisted of the speed / skill types... Their planes were much larger (2 to 3 foot wingspans) and were hand crafted out of balsa and silkspan with engines 5 to 10 times more powerful than the ones the "creatives" used. Some of those planes reached actual speeds of 90 MPH, which necessitated a lot of space - so that crowd used the baseball fields across Falcon Street.
Aside - I need to step back in time here:
When I was 10 years old I really wanted a line control airplane but my mom wouldn't buy me one (they were too expensive) so I saved up my allowance and got myself a Cox F4U Corsair. (The price was around $12 in 1963 which is roughly $100 in 2014). It was absolutely beautiful, and I was totally fascinated by it. I spent countless hours examining how the controls and the engine worked - I loved that thing... But the first time I actually fired it up it scared the living crap out of me. I had no idea the freaking thing would be that loud, and as a result I wouldn't get anywhere near it when it was running.
So, that summer my dad and I would occasionally head over to the playground at Chatham Park Elementary School (Havertown, Pa) and he'd fly it while I watched from a "safe" distance... He was really good (not surprising since he'd been a WWII fighter pilot) and a sizable crowd gathered whenever we were there.
One day dad was making some low altitude passes around the playground when a poodle (apparently thinking the Corsair was a noisy bird) came running out of the crowd, jumped up and caught the propeller in it's mouth... The pooch stood there stunned for a few seconds (I'm betting that really hurt) and then ran off yelping with it's owner close behind (neither the plane nor the dog suffered any significant harm)... It took me a long time to stop laughing. I mean, we were all watching the plane going around and suddenly it had a mid-air collision with a flying poodle... Yeah - maybe you had to be there :-) But the point is that although I really liked line control planes I had no desire to fly one.
And back to 1973:
My roommate Juneau was one of the guys that went totally hardcore. He got hold of a used ".35" engine and a plane kit, and we got to work.
Now - up to that point I'd had no idea what was involved in building a high-performance model plane... The kit was nothing more than a bunch of balsa ribs and spars that you had to glue together to form the airframe. The real "art" was covering the entire thing in silkspan (a thin material similar to vellum paper) which came in sheets. You had to cut and fit it over and around the wings, tail and fuselage (without wrinkles) while applying coats of "dope", which causes the silkspan to shrink and harden. You also had to mount the engine and fuel tank, route the control lines, get all the flight surfaces working and balance the whole mess - the point being that it was a lot of work... (Painting it would have been pointless given the life expectancy so we just left it "raw".)
Yeah - I quickly became Juneau's "tech"... It's not that he couldn't do the work himself - it's just that patience wasn't his strong suit. (Quite the opposite, actually.) But I really enjoyed building things (thank you OCD) so I didn't mind...
Over time Juneau got good enough to fly with the "big boys", doing figure 8's, inside loops, outside loops, wing-overs - all kinds of stuff... It's hard to convey in words just how impressive it was to watch those guys fly. Those planes were incomprehensibly fast, and the maneuvers were crisp and instantaneous - it made me dizzy just watching.
And the aerobatics were only part of the challenge. The "pilot" had to remember to sequence his stunts so if one loop twisted the control lines the next had to untwist them... And most importantly, he had to know when he was flying inverted because the slightest twitch of the control lines in the wrong direction would turn the plane into kindling. And that was Juneau's Achilles Heel - he was "inversion impaired"...
That's not to say he crashed every time he flew - but it happened often enough to where (over time) I lost enthusiasm for repairing the wadded up remnants. (I did get really good at it, though.)
Yeah - I guess this is another one of those posts that doesn't really have a point (other than highlighting the extent of my panic disorder when I was 10 years old) - it's just something that (for some reason or another) stands out in my memory..
And it was nice to reflect on some of the good times that Juneau and I had when we weren't busy getting on each other's last nerve :-)
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Morning, Afternoon and Night
During the first part of my training (Basic Electronics) at Keelser AFB in 1973 life was rather chaotic. Not only was I trying to adapt to yet another dfferent environment, but those of us in the "self-paced" program were constantly getting shuffled from room to room (and even shift to shift). It was rare to have the same roommate for more than a week. But once I started Air Traffic Control Radar Repair training the dorm situation settled down significantly. Yeah - after you'd been there for a few months the T.I.s stopped shuffling you around so much. As a matter of fact, I remained in the same room (in the first floor bay next to the office) with the same roommate (Airman Juneau aka The Grinch) for the last 4 months of my training...
Once again, here's the picture of Juneau from an earlier blog entry. (It was out of context at the time, but it did help explain the nickname.)
This was outside the auto hobby shop at Keesler AFB during the summer of 1973, which reminds me of a somewhat related story:
One day when Juneau and I were working on the 'cuda (it might have been the day this picture was taken) I inadvertently locked my keys in the trunk while putting some tools away. Luckily, I kept a spare set back in my room and even more luckily (so I thought) a couple of airmen in a '68 Camaro offered to give me a ride to the triangle while Juneau stayed behind to keep an eye on my car.
Now - the round trip should have taken 10 or 15 minutes, except every time the driver saw anyone he knew he pulled over to talk to them. And as it turned out, he knew a lot of people, so the round-trip ended up taking over an hour (it would have been faster to walk). I was a bit irritated at first but by the time I got back with the spare keys I was pretty amused by the whole thing... Juneau (on the other hand) was all "WTF??" (He didn't think it was the least bit funny).
Aside: Another time Juneau and I took the car to the auto shop to replace a bad U-joint. I had never done that before but the "book" made it sound pretty easy. And it was, until we tried to get the old joint out of the yoke. We had removed the retaining clips but we still couldn't get the stupid thing to budge. We were trying to press it out with a bench vise (the shop didn't have a hydraulic press) and were having no luck, when an old retiree (who had been rolling his eyes as he watched us) couldn't stand it anymore. He came over with a big hammer and an old bolt and whacked the joint apart in about 30 seconds. I was like "Oh... So that's how you do it..." But I digress...
Back to main topic:
The biggest problem with being on "A shift"was having to get up so early (around 4:30AM). That's because the daily briefing (in front of the building) started at 4:45AM and the formation marched off to Cody Hall around 5AM. Hence, getting 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep would mean hitting the sack around 8:30PM, which none of us was willing to do... The solution was to split our sleep schedule in half: 3 or 4 hours after lunch - and another 3 or 4 after the evening's "festivities".
Now - you would think that never getting more than 4 hours consecutive sleep would have serious side effects, but I did it for months without any issues. Except for one day late in the fall of 1973:
I surfaced from a deep sleep and realized it was starting to get light out. When I saw "4:57" on my clock I totally panicked. Not only had I missed the morning briefing, but if I didn't get outside immediately the formation was going to leave without me. So I bailed out of bed (Juneau was already gone - I was seriously pissed that he didn't wake me), threw on my fatigues and boots, grabbed my books and ran out to Falcon Street. Luckily, the formation was still there so I headed for my usual spot - but someone I didn't recognize was already there... Then I looked around at the other guys and realized I didn't recognize any of them... They were all like "Who the f*** are you and what are you doing here?"
At that point I was so seriously disoriented (not to mention groggy) that I was literally nauseous... Then it finally dawned on me (pun intended) that it was lighter out than it should be - and furthermore, the sun was in the wrong place... I stood there for few moments as it all sank in and finally said "This is C shift - isn't it..." They were all like "Well, duh!"... And I was like "Oh... I thought it was A shift".
Yeah - I had woken up from my afternoon nap thinking it was already the next morning. Everyone thought it was pretty hilarious - and I guess I did too :-) I just couldn't believe how long it had taken me to figure out what had happened... I blame it on the adrenalin...
You know, it's funny - whenever I find posts about Keelser online they make reference to how hard tech school is and how much work there is... I honestly don't remember it that way... I have no recollection of ever doing homework (so I had lots of free time) and I still aced almost every test. Yeah - all in all it was a pretty good time :-)
Once again, here's the picture of Juneau from an earlier blog entry. (It was out of context at the time, but it did help explain the nickname.)
This was outside the auto hobby shop at Keesler AFB during the summer of 1973, which reminds me of a somewhat related story:
One day when Juneau and I were working on the 'cuda (it might have been the day this picture was taken) I inadvertently locked my keys in the trunk while putting some tools away. Luckily, I kept a spare set back in my room and even more luckily (so I thought) a couple of airmen in a '68 Camaro offered to give me a ride to the triangle while Juneau stayed behind to keep an eye on my car.
Now - the round trip should have taken 10 or 15 minutes, except every time the driver saw anyone he knew he pulled over to talk to them. And as it turned out, he knew a lot of people, so the round-trip ended up taking over an hour (it would have been faster to walk). I was a bit irritated at first but by the time I got back with the spare keys I was pretty amused by the whole thing... Juneau (on the other hand) was all "WTF??" (He didn't think it was the least bit funny).
Aside: Another time Juneau and I took the car to the auto shop to replace a bad U-joint. I had never done that before but the "book" made it sound pretty easy. And it was, until we tried to get the old joint out of the yoke. We had removed the retaining clips but we still couldn't get the stupid thing to budge. We were trying to press it out with a bench vise (the shop didn't have a hydraulic press) and were having no luck, when an old retiree (who had been rolling his eyes as he watched us) couldn't stand it anymore. He came over with a big hammer and an old bolt and whacked the joint apart in about 30 seconds. I was like "Oh... So that's how you do it..." But I digress...
Back to main topic:
The biggest problem with being on "A shift"was having to get up so early (around 4:30AM). That's because the daily briefing (in front of the building) started at 4:45AM and the formation marched off to Cody Hall around 5AM. Hence, getting 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep would mean hitting the sack around 8:30PM, which none of us was willing to do... The solution was to split our sleep schedule in half: 3 or 4 hours after lunch - and another 3 or 4 after the evening's "festivities".
Now - you would think that never getting more than 4 hours consecutive sleep would have serious side effects, but I did it for months without any issues. Except for one day late in the fall of 1973:
I surfaced from a deep sleep and realized it was starting to get light out. When I saw "4:57" on my clock I totally panicked. Not only had I missed the morning briefing, but if I didn't get outside immediately the formation was going to leave without me. So I bailed out of bed (Juneau was already gone - I was seriously pissed that he didn't wake me), threw on my fatigues and boots, grabbed my books and ran out to Falcon Street. Luckily, the formation was still there so I headed for my usual spot - but someone I didn't recognize was already there... Then I looked around at the other guys and realized I didn't recognize any of them... They were all like "Who the f*** are you and what are you doing here?"
At that point I was so seriously disoriented (not to mention groggy) that I was literally nauseous... Then it finally dawned on me (pun intended) that it was lighter out than it should be - and furthermore, the sun was in the wrong place... I stood there for few moments as it all sank in and finally said "This is C shift - isn't it..." They were all like "Well, duh!"... And I was like "Oh... I thought it was A shift".
Yeah - I had woken up from my afternoon nap thinking it was already the next morning. Everyone thought it was pretty hilarious - and I guess I did too :-) I just couldn't believe how long it had taken me to figure out what had happened... I blame it on the adrenalin...
You know, it's funny - whenever I find posts about Keelser online they make reference to how hard tech school is and how much work there is... I honestly don't remember it that way... I have no recollection of ever doing homework (so I had lots of free time) and I still aced almost every test. Yeah - all in all it was a pretty good time :-)
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