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 :-)