Christmas in Milwaukee

It's been a LONG time since my last post... Wow... Time flies! As of this writing I have recently "retired" after 33 years of developing software for a living. It'll be interesting to see where life takes me from here... And back to the Christmas of 1973:

When Karina and I arrived in Milwaukee it was to be our first "joint visit" with dad since that disastrous occurrence in New York (in 1971) when everyone (but me) ended up screaming at each other and my dad hit me when I tried to defuse the situation. Then a few days later he told me to go back to Texas and drive my "shitty Ford", which was just fine by me :-)

I'm not sure why, but this visit was completely different... It might be because I was now an A1C in the Air Force (instead of a shiftless hippie) and Karina had just enlisted in the Army - or maybe dad (who had just started working for Allis Chalmers) was less stressed... Regardless, we had a really nice time.

And while I'm on the "Army" topic:
Enlisting in the military was a really bizarre thing for Karina to do. (Why on earth the Army???) She was equal parts "free spirit" and "loose cannon" and (up until that point in her life) had never shown any signs of exercising the slightest bit of self discipline or self control... Furthermore, she was my "big sister" and had always been the "trailblazer" while I (very cautiously) followed in her footsteps - and now she was suddenly taking cues from me... It was beyond weird...

And a bit more on that topic:
Karina was scheduled to start basic training at Fort Jackson (South Carolina) in early January (1974). Up to that point WACs had been trained separately at Fort McClellan (Alabama), but as part of the Army's effort to expand the careers available to women they had just formed a WAC training Battalion at Fort Jackson (where the male recruits were trained). And (unfortunately) Karina had the misfortune of being assigned to one of the very first classes there. (Apparently the training was much more physically demanding than at Fort McClellan)... But more on that at a later date.

And back to Christmas:
As I mentioned in an earlier post, dad was renting a condo at the corner of E Kane Place and N Summit overlooking Lake Michigan. (Kareem Abdul Jabbar also lived in that building.)
I don't remember a whole lot about the week I stayed there other than the food was excellent and Karina gave me a stuffed gorilla (named George) for Christmas... BTW: George remained with me for the next 20 years or so until he starting losing all his stuffing from being played with too much, but I'm getting ahead of myself :-)

I can't recall exactly when I flew back to Eugene, but it was probably before New Year's Eve because I had to report to my first "real" assignment (McClellan AFB in Sacramento) on the morning of January 3rd. Karina, on the other hand, stayed at dad's until it was time to leave for basic...

And in the interest of finally moving forward with my blog I'm going to go ahead and hit "publish" on this post - right now :-)