Onward and Upward
The Baptist Church had organized a number of families so that we could spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with families in town. Being very shy, I was not a very talkative guest, actually I must have been very boring. Still I enjoyed being with them. Christmas Day the temperature was in the upper sixties. Very unMichiganlike. I enjoyed my five month stay in Denver.
One weekend I decided to hitchhike to Leadville, CO which is a very picturesque town. Returning, I got a ride with a man from Ohio. He was scared to death and drove in the middle of the road at about 15 miles per hour. The road was in good shape. 20 years later on a vacation I was in a very bad storm on the same mountain and drove about 5 miles an hour. Leadville was very charming then.
Just after Thanksgiving our group was commanded by a new Tech Sergeant, my old lab partner. He had washed out of the Air Force Academy. He was a hard ass. He did not know how to march troops. When you march men, you can help them (and returning to the mess hall we were marching in the dark) by counting cadence. It goes hup, two, three, four…. He would often go hup, two, three, hup. Well the hup is supposed to go with your left heel striking the pavement. So with each of his short cadence, he caused 120 people to try to change step. It was pathetic. He never could figure it out. His uniforms were tailor made and he often wore white gloves.
He also decided that the club 658 needed to be inspected. He arranged to be part of an inspection that was already scheduled—this was early December and I had not suffered any inspections since October 8th. We cleaned our areas up quite a bit, nothing like basic training, but clean and neat. There were about a dozen barracks to be inspected. He came with a lieutenant and an aide. He went down the other side of the lower floor writing everyone up. When he came to me, he was not happy with my locker (this was not a foot locker but a good sized standing locker) arrangement. He did not like how my stripes were sown on. His aide asked my name. I paused and stuttered Smith. His aide didn’t bother to write it down. Just as he was about to leave the barracks was called to attention again. The lieutenant put his hands on his hips and turned to stare at the bozo who had called us to attention. Then a two star general and his aide (a major) came around the corner. They had been inspecting the other barracks. The first group came to attention as the general inspected us. It took him 10 minutes max (the first crew had been in our barracks for 30 minutes and were less than half finished). The general complemented us on how great our barracks was. We couldn’t say anything of course but we all were grinning.
My bunkmate was a pleasant young man. He was in the photo school. He became very ill and was hospitalized for a few days when he would have taken his first test. By the time this test could be rescheduled, he had already completed the second test with a perfect score. Then he failed the first test. The school was in a quandary. If he had failed the first test at the right time they would have washed him out, but he did so well on the harder material they decided to let him retake the test next time it was offered. He got a perfect score on the third test and failed the first test again. In a rare moment of making sense, the Air Force decided he didn’t need to take the first test.
About half a block away from 658 was a photo hobby shop. The Air Force provided a lot of vocational opportunity. I used some of my free time to learn how to function in a dark room. There was free photo paper, chemicals, projectors and other equipment. It was fun. I have acquired other dark room talents but that may have to wait a while before I write about that~working title, "50 Shades of Beige".
After Christmas all of the guys in the barracks started talking about the parties they were going to on New Year’s Eve. Their goal was to get drunk and hopefully laid. Since I had no desire for either of these activities, I stayed in the barracks with another guy. We watched the New Year’s festivities from New York, then Chicago, then Denver. Then we decided to have some fun with our missing friends. We short sheeted a number of bunks. One bunk we took apart and laid the mattress on the floor.
One of the drunken revelers returned and stared at the bed laying on the floor. He then picked it up and took it into the latrine. The bunk's owner arrived at about the same time. Found his bed lying in the latrine; carried it back and threw it down on top of his bed frame which was still folded up on the floor. He kept looking at the bed. It didn’t look right. After a minute or so he shrugged his shoulders did a nice pirouette and fell into his bunk. He never could get into his shorted sheets. In the morning, we were questioned as to whether we had seen any strangers in the barracks—they never suspected us.
Just to the right of my bunk on the other side of the lockers was airman Grinnin. He was a very strange man. When he was really mad at someone he would give them the finger. Only trouble, it was not his middle finger but rather the ring finger of his right hand. This was immediately labeled the Grinnin Finger by the group.
In December it became clear that I was doing well in class so I spent more time out at night. I started playing pool. I was so bad that a sergeant would play me using only his left hand (he was right handed). I did get better but was never in the same league as the GI’s who played every day.
In mid January 1961, they asked us in small groups what further training we were interested in. I chose F-102 radar systems because it would give me a week’s leave before I had to start training. There were about a dozen choices, B-52 systems, F-104, F-106 are all that I can remember. I had no idea what any of the choices might mean to me later. I wanted to go home to see my girlfriend Carol. My next training would be at Webb Air Force Base in Big Spring, Texas.
I think it was the first week in February that we graduated. A friend and I took the train from Denver to Detroit for leave. I don’t remember much of the trip. No sleeper car this time, just coach seats but I had learned how to sleep anywhere. I remember going to sleep across several seats with almost no one in the car and awakening to a car full of people. No one complained about us taking up more space. People must have felt sorry for us. I remember coming into the Detroit station. It seemed like another world to me. My duffel bag got off the train somewhere along the way. It arrived the following day.
I don’t remember much from my first leave. It was the first time I had been home in five months. I do remember spending time with my girlfriend, Carol Winner. She was still in high school. Her parents had moved to Pearl Beach, Michigan. Since she wanted to graduate from Clawson High School, the let her room with Ms. Vera Clack. Ms. Clack had been my first through third grade teacher. I would spend about an hour saying good night to Carol in front of Ms. Clack's home. One night she came out to bring Carol in. Maybe she knew what was on my mind.
For reasons that make no sense to me now, I bought a round trip ticket from Denver and a ticket from Denver to Big Spring. That made the trip from Detroit to Texas about a week instead of two days. The train from Denver went to Colorado Springs and I loved looking at the mountains. From Colorado Springs we went east then south to Dallas. I had quite a layover in Dallas. It was quite a surprise to see the Dallas train station for the second time in 1999—it hadn’t changed on the outside in any way.