VIII
THE FORK IN THE ROAD
1
April, 1977
Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi, Mississippi
NOW THIS I CAN LIVE WITH
Last night, when we checked into billeting here at Keesler, they issued us each a Xeroxed set of instructions, including a simplistic little map that showed us how to get from the BAQ (“Bachelor Airman’s Quarters") to the In-Processing Building (a short three-block walk). It also included the dress code (fatigues, with shirts untucked), along with the time we’d need to actually be there, and the paperwork and utensils we’d need to bring with us. All of it formal, polite, welcoming and professional. Not a swear word or a denigrating comment or even a command in it.
Wow.
So this is what it’s like.
This morning, I am a whole new man. This morning, not a single vestige of Basic Training remains in my life, and that feels good.
Right now, I’m an Airman in the United States Air Force. My fatigues might still need a little tailoring (so that I can quit looking like I’m wearing a green tent), but they’re broken in, and they’ve got actual markings on them—USAF over my left breast pocket, and STIPP over the right.
I’m strolling around a military base—not marching, or storming, or directing a squad under my command. I’ve got orders for Air Traffic Control School in hand. I’m bullshitting with my buddies, not a formation in sight, nobody bullying us or yelling at us or giving us work details. And my hair’s even starting to come back in, looking more like a short crew cut now rather than just a dark stain on my naked scalp.
Now this I can live with.
Again, the Grand Anti-Climax… the Welcome to Keesler paperwork.
I give them copies of my orders and records, telling them who I am, what I’ve done, and where I’ve come from. And they give me forms and packets telling me what I’m about to become, what I’ll be doing, and where I’ll be going to do it. Seems like a fair enough trade.
Everyone that’s in the room with me right now was on the bus yesterday. But, unlike the red-tape shuffle of in-processing at Lackland, here we’re all excited about our looming prospects. Hell, most of us can hardly contain ourselves. We giggle and chuckle, play a little grab-ass, and practically rupture a spleen laughing at even the slightest attempts at humor by the head Paper Wrangler at the front of the room.
Then, with all the T’s dotted and the I’s crossed, another guy takes the podium—an officer this time—who proceeds to enlighten us on the mission and the history of Keesler Air Force Base. Naturally, according to his rendition, Keesler is the golden nugget in the jewel case of the United States Air Force. Its presence here outside Biloxi has apparently done everything from revitalizing the Mississippi Gulf Coast economy to perfecting a cure for cancer. He mentions the ongoing clean-up (in which we might soon very well find ourselves involved, he says) of the post-Hurricane Camille devastation. It hit a summer or two ago, trashing a couple hundred miles of waterfront—demolishing docks and bridges, tossing boats far inland, and flattening seaside homes and buildings. Most of the work’s been done already, he says, but Keesler, as the largest governmental presence in the area, is committed to the ongoing effort.
Oh goody.
We find out that the majority of us—the only exceptions being a couple of guys slated for the Weather School—will still have a couple of weeks to kill before our classes begin. And during that time, we will be on what they call “Casual Status” (which, in English, means that we will become the resident slave labor pool). So now might be a good time to take our first leaves. Granted, in the mere month-and-a-half that we’ve been in the Air Force, we’ve barely accrued about three days of leave time, but it is possible to take some in advance. It’s our choice. But once our classes begin, we won’t be able to take leave until after graduation. I opt not to take advantage of the offer. The three-day Memorial Day weekend (my 20th birthday) is only a month-and-a-half away, and spending those three days in Miami with friends and family ought to be enough to tide me over.
THE FORK IN THE ROAD
1
April, 1977
Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi, Mississippi
NOW THIS I CAN LIVE WITH
Last night, when we checked into billeting here at Keesler, they issued us each a Xeroxed set of instructions, including a simplistic little map that showed us how to get from the BAQ (“Bachelor Airman’s Quarters") to the In-Processing Building (a short three-block walk). It also included the dress code (fatigues, with shirts untucked), along with the time we’d need to actually be there, and the paperwork and utensils we’d need to bring with us. All of it formal, polite, welcoming and professional. Not a swear word or a denigrating comment or even a command in it.
Wow.
So this is what it’s like.
This morning, I am a whole new man. This morning, not a single vestige of Basic Training remains in my life, and that feels good.
Right now, I’m an Airman in the United States Air Force. My fatigues might still need a little tailoring (so that I can quit looking like I’m wearing a green tent), but they’re broken in, and they’ve got actual markings on them—USAF over my left breast pocket, and STIPP over the right.
I’m strolling around a military base—not marching, or storming, or directing a squad under my command. I’ve got orders for Air Traffic Control School in hand. I’m bullshitting with my buddies, not a formation in sight, nobody bullying us or yelling at us or giving us work details. And my hair’s even starting to come back in, looking more like a short crew cut now rather than just a dark stain on my naked scalp.
Now this I can live with.
Again, the Grand Anti-Climax… the Welcome to Keesler paperwork.
I give them copies of my orders and records, telling them who I am, what I’ve done, and where I’ve come from. And they give me forms and packets telling me what I’m about to become, what I’ll be doing, and where I’ll be going to do it. Seems like a fair enough trade.
Everyone that’s in the room with me right now was on the bus yesterday. But, unlike the red-tape shuffle of in-processing at Lackland, here we’re all excited about our looming prospects. Hell, most of us can hardly contain ourselves. We giggle and chuckle, play a little grab-ass, and practically rupture a spleen laughing at even the slightest attempts at humor by the head Paper Wrangler at the front of the room.
Then, with all the T’s dotted and the I’s crossed, another guy takes the podium—an officer this time—who proceeds to enlighten us on the mission and the history of Keesler Air Force Base. Naturally, according to his rendition, Keesler is the golden nugget in the jewel case of the United States Air Force. Its presence here outside Biloxi has apparently done everything from revitalizing the Mississippi Gulf Coast economy to perfecting a cure for cancer. He mentions the ongoing clean-up (in which we might soon very well find ourselves involved, he says) of the post-Hurricane Camille devastation. It hit a summer or two ago, trashing a couple hundred miles of waterfront—demolishing docks and bridges, tossing boats far inland, and flattening seaside homes and buildings. Most of the work’s been done already, he says, but Keesler, as the largest governmental presence in the area, is committed to the ongoing effort.
Oh goody.
We find out that the majority of us—the only exceptions being a couple of guys slated for the Weather School—will still have a couple of weeks to kill before our classes begin. And during that time, we will be on what they call “Casual Status” (which, in English, means that we will become the resident slave labor pool). So now might be a good time to take our first leaves. Granted, in the mere month-and-a-half that we’ve been in the Air Force, we’ve barely accrued about three days of leave time, but it is possible to take some in advance. It’s our choice. But once our classes begin, we won’t be able to take leave until after graduation. I opt not to take advantage of the offer. The three-day Memorial Day weekend (my 20th birthday) is only a month-and-a-half away, and spending those three days in Miami with friends and family ought to be enough to tide me over.
The briefings and presentations drone on through the morning, with ten minute breaks at the top of every hour. And after a couple of these breaks, it becomes apparent that we are all of like mind on at least one issue—we may be excited and proud to be here, but by now we’re also pretty uniformly sick to death of tired, timeworn recitations and familiarization briefs. This stuff is slated to wrap in time for lunch, then the rest of the day is ours to do with as we please. And for that, I think I can endure what remains of the process. At the eleven o’clock intermission though, they throw in a new wrinkle.
“Okay, gentlemen,” says the skinny Tech Sergeant, fiddling with his watch to the tune of a roomful of stretching and yawning and desk-chairs sliding on faded linoleum, “let’s take ten… no, make that twenty.” Then he looks back up at us. “Radio maintenance and air traffic control trainees only, I’ll need you to hang around for a couple of minutes here first. We’ve got a short supplemental briefing for you in the next room. Then you can join the others.”
That raises a few eyebrows, but… what the hell. Myself, and Airmen Wexler, Podulka, Dumas, and Connors, plus about a half dozen other guys that I presume are future radio maintenance types, shuffle through the proffered doorway, while the rest of the room empties out into the hallway and thence to the break area.
Damn. I could have used a twenty-minute stroll in the sunshine too.
2
AN ALTERNATIVE CAREER OPTION
Waiting for us in the small side room is a slide projector, a cheap free-standing screen on a tripod, and a Master Sergeant, braced in a bold stance of parade rest. His skin is tanned and creased like worn saddle leather. His jump boots are polished to a mirror gloss, and he’s wearing camouflaged fatigues—the first I’ve seen since joining the Air Force—which are covered in large pockets, tailored to fit his cast-iron physique like a glove, and pressed and starched into rigid origami. He’s also wearing sunglasses—indoors. What is it with these guys?
We shuffle warily into the room, wading through the desk-chairs in a slowly dispersing pattern that avoids the front-and-center seats which seem to fall within the almost visible force-field this guy is radiating.
“Gentlemen!” he suddenly barks without moving a muscle outside of his lips and lungs, “Please, take a seat, somewhere where you can see this screen. I’ve got a short presentation for you—less than ten minutes in length—then you can go join your buddies outside on break.”
We drop into the nearest chairs, and sit up quickly, ramrod straight. It seems to come naturally in the presence of a guy like this.
“My name is Master Sergeant Beaudry,” he announces proudly, “And I am here today to offer you an alternative career option.” Oh, here we go again. “This option is available only to radio maintenance personnel and air traffic controllers, which is why you’re the only ones in this room right now. It’s called Combat Control. Please watch the screen.” Then he breaks out of his parade rest with a crackle of starch and a creak of boot leather, and marches to the back of the room. There he snatches up the projector’s remote and kills the lights.
Cheesy disco “action music” minces from the tiny speaker on the side of the projector, tinny and vapid and embarrassingly rinky-tink, followed by the clatter-snick of the slide tray dropping its first slide into the light. Gawd.
But that first slide comes out a-swingin’.
Suddenly, filling the screen to all four corners, a dark image appears—a near silhouette—of a military skydiver suspended against a twilit sky. Straps and baggy sleeves are frozen in mid-flutter, torn by the one hundred mile an hour slipstream. Bags and weapons and web gear are attached seemingly helter-skelter all over his body. He’s wearing a helmet, goggles, and even a fighter pilot’s oxygen mask, and staring straight at the photographer. Above and behind him, the ass-end of a C-130 transport aircraft, distorted by the wide-angle lens of the camera, is open and dribbling more skydivers across the sky.
“COMBAT CONTROL” is printed in bold white letters across the bottom, and a round emblem full of parachutes and lightning bolts is in the corner, declaring First In, Last Out.
Whoa! Cool.
Why have I never heard of these guys?
As it turns out, Combat Control is the Air Force’s very own elite “commando” unit (my choice of words, not theirs). Every major branch of the military apparently has at least one: the Army’s got their Rangers and Green Berets, the Marines have their Force Recon guys, and the Navy’s got their SEALs. Well, the Air Force has Combat Controllers, their very own running, jumping, shooting, sneaking, sniping, throat-slitting, judo-chopping, hostage-rescuing, scuba diving “men-o-machismo.” And before you can even think about signing up, you have to first be either an air traffic controller (since their primary mission has to do with controlling aircraft on drops, air strikes, or running resupply ships in and out of their own improvised air strips), or as a radio maintenance man (qualified to maintain any and all of their varied communications gear, thereby making a CC team self-sufficient in the field). Recruiting potential candidates here at the Air Traffic Control School, before they’re qualified to even look out a tower window, is just a matter of breeding their heroes right from the military cradle.
So to speak.
And yes, I am intrigued. It’s not exactly “me”—it’s certainly not what I signed up to do—but this seems to offer all the cool stuff that that paramedics movie first offered back at Lackland, only without all that grody “medical stuff” that gave me the shivers and turned my stomach over.
Tell me more.
The slides go on to show these Special Ops guys in all the various and sundry manifestations of their job… faces painted like Indian warriors (who only have two shades of green to play with), lying in wait in tall grass, sighted sniper rifles draped in camouflage and pointed downhill… two of them, wearing dark blue berets, in the middle of an open field, both looking boldly skyward, one releasing a weather balloon, the other on one knee, talking into the handset of a portable radio… a guy up to his neck in swamp water, rigging a brick of plastique to a bridge piling… two guys flipping and kicking the shit out of each other in some martial arts display… a whole conga line of these crazy bastards, all bundled up in white, weapons and packs on their backs, shooshing down a powdered slope on skis… a six-man team rising out of the surf in the middle of the night, weapons drawn and dripping, dragging an inflatable Zodiac power-boat up onto the beach… and, of course, the obligatory shot, taken from inside a C-141’s cargo hold, with the ramp down and open, as a half dozen of these guys hurl themselves out into the blinding white abyss at thirty-thousand feet.
Now that’s the kind of military I'm interested in.
To someone—like me—looking to get an actual military experience out of the Air Force, this is heady stuff. This is the physical, rigidly disciplined, expertly trained, worldly, heroic stuff that I’ve been looking for. And I still get to be a cool air traffic controller at the same time! What’s not to like?
As the lights come up, and Sgt. Beaudry strides—and I do mean STRIDES—back to the front of the room, I look around to see who else is sharing my intrigue. And the answer is a big fat “nobody.” Not one of the ten others in attendance shows even the tiniest trace of interest. In fact, most of them are swapping nervous glances, or even overt chuckles, as if to say is he crazy? Do I look that stupid?
“Here at Keesler Air Force Base,” Sgt. Beaudry resumes, oblivious to the expressions of disbelief around him, “you’ll start at the most basic level, called Phase I. This is strictly an exercise and work-out regime, intended to prepare you for the more difficult schools that will follow, and will run in conjunction with your Tech School schedule, either before or after each day’s classes, depending on whether you have a morning or afternoon school shift. We work out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can begin as soon as you sign up. Which means,” he adds conspiratorially, “if you start right away, you’ll be exempt from Casual Status duties on those days we work out.” Oo, I like that! “Any questions?”
None. Just a room full of people avoiding his gaze.
I am stunned. Sgt. Beaudry doesn’t seem to be.
“All right, gentlemen, that’s it. Have a nice day.” And he turns around to square away the little pile of brochures he’s brought along. Just giving his audience a chance to bolt while his back is turned, I guess.
And they do. The room is empty before I’ve even fully risen to my feet.
I continue to putter and delay though... curious, but unsure what to ask, interested, but unsure how to begin, and wondering if I’m not completely out of my mind just for thinking about it.
Sgt. Beaudry busies himself for the requisite number of seconds, then turns to find me standing there, alone among the empty rows of desk-chairs. He seems pleasantly surprised—in much the same way I imagine a shark would react if it turned to find that it was being followed by a curious snorkeler.
And he smiles.
3
CASUAL STATUS
Sweeping a parking lot.
That’s what they’ve got me doing now—sweeping a goddamned parking lot.
All by myself. Just me and one ratty old straw whiskbroom!
Are you friggin’ kidding me here?
It’s barely 10:30 in the morning, and I’ve already worked up a couple of fairly impressive blisters on both hands, right there in the webbing of each thumb. And for all that, all I’ve really been able to finish so far is one long row, sidling between the cars, brushing the grit and detritus out into the open lane, then systematically herding it all down to the curb at the end. The same end that the wind has been blowing it towards all day anyway (I had to learn that one the hard way—no Master Parking Lot Sweeper am I).
So this is what “Casual Status” means—menial busywork, of a disinterested and improvised nature (on the part of those who have to concoct these stupid time-consuming details), back-breaking, blister-raising, sweat-wringing labor for those of us too dense to take advantage of the many offers to go on leave instead. I mean, come on! Sweeping a public parking lot?
“Okay, gentlemen,” says the skinny Tech Sergeant, fiddling with his watch to the tune of a roomful of stretching and yawning and desk-chairs sliding on faded linoleum, “let’s take ten… no, make that twenty.” Then he looks back up at us. “Radio maintenance and air traffic control trainees only, I’ll need you to hang around for a couple of minutes here first. We’ve got a short supplemental briefing for you in the next room. Then you can join the others.”
That raises a few eyebrows, but… what the hell. Myself, and Airmen Wexler, Podulka, Dumas, and Connors, plus about a half dozen other guys that I presume are future radio maintenance types, shuffle through the proffered doorway, while the rest of the room empties out into the hallway and thence to the break area.
Damn. I could have used a twenty-minute stroll in the sunshine too.
2
AN ALTERNATIVE CAREER OPTION
Waiting for us in the small side room is a slide projector, a cheap free-standing screen on a tripod, and a Master Sergeant, braced in a bold stance of parade rest. His skin is tanned and creased like worn saddle leather. His jump boots are polished to a mirror gloss, and he’s wearing camouflaged fatigues—the first I’ve seen since joining the Air Force—which are covered in large pockets, tailored to fit his cast-iron physique like a glove, and pressed and starched into rigid origami. He’s also wearing sunglasses—indoors. What is it with these guys?
We shuffle warily into the room, wading through the desk-chairs in a slowly dispersing pattern that avoids the front-and-center seats which seem to fall within the almost visible force-field this guy is radiating.
“Gentlemen!” he suddenly barks without moving a muscle outside of his lips and lungs, “Please, take a seat, somewhere where you can see this screen. I’ve got a short presentation for you—less than ten minutes in length—then you can go join your buddies outside on break.”
We drop into the nearest chairs, and sit up quickly, ramrod straight. It seems to come naturally in the presence of a guy like this.
“My name is Master Sergeant Beaudry,” he announces proudly, “And I am here today to offer you an alternative career option.” Oh, here we go again. “This option is available only to radio maintenance personnel and air traffic controllers, which is why you’re the only ones in this room right now. It’s called Combat Control. Please watch the screen.” Then he breaks out of his parade rest with a crackle of starch and a creak of boot leather, and marches to the back of the room. There he snatches up the projector’s remote and kills the lights.
Cheesy disco “action music” minces from the tiny speaker on the side of the projector, tinny and vapid and embarrassingly rinky-tink, followed by the clatter-snick of the slide tray dropping its first slide into the light. Gawd.
But that first slide comes out a-swingin’.
Suddenly, filling the screen to all four corners, a dark image appears—a near silhouette—of a military skydiver suspended against a twilit sky. Straps and baggy sleeves are frozen in mid-flutter, torn by the one hundred mile an hour slipstream. Bags and weapons and web gear are attached seemingly helter-skelter all over his body. He’s wearing a helmet, goggles, and even a fighter pilot’s oxygen mask, and staring straight at the photographer. Above and behind him, the ass-end of a C-130 transport aircraft, distorted by the wide-angle lens of the camera, is open and dribbling more skydivers across the sky.
“COMBAT CONTROL” is printed in bold white letters across the bottom, and a round emblem full of parachutes and lightning bolts is in the corner, declaring First In, Last Out.
Whoa! Cool.
Why have I never heard of these guys?
As it turns out, Combat Control is the Air Force’s very own elite “commando” unit (my choice of words, not theirs). Every major branch of the military apparently has at least one: the Army’s got their Rangers and Green Berets, the Marines have their Force Recon guys, and the Navy’s got their SEALs. Well, the Air Force has Combat Controllers, their very own running, jumping, shooting, sneaking, sniping, throat-slitting, judo-chopping, hostage-rescuing, scuba diving “men-o-machismo.” And before you can even think about signing up, you have to first be either an air traffic controller (since their primary mission has to do with controlling aircraft on drops, air strikes, or running resupply ships in and out of their own improvised air strips), or as a radio maintenance man (qualified to maintain any and all of their varied communications gear, thereby making a CC team self-sufficient in the field). Recruiting potential candidates here at the Air Traffic Control School, before they’re qualified to even look out a tower window, is just a matter of breeding their heroes right from the military cradle.
So to speak.
And yes, I am intrigued. It’s not exactly “me”—it’s certainly not what I signed up to do—but this seems to offer all the cool stuff that that paramedics movie first offered back at Lackland, only without all that grody “medical stuff” that gave me the shivers and turned my stomach over.
Tell me more.
The slides go on to show these Special Ops guys in all the various and sundry manifestations of their job… faces painted like Indian warriors (who only have two shades of green to play with), lying in wait in tall grass, sighted sniper rifles draped in camouflage and pointed downhill… two of them, wearing dark blue berets, in the middle of an open field, both looking boldly skyward, one releasing a weather balloon, the other on one knee, talking into the handset of a portable radio… a guy up to his neck in swamp water, rigging a brick of plastique to a bridge piling… two guys flipping and kicking the shit out of each other in some martial arts display… a whole conga line of these crazy bastards, all bundled up in white, weapons and packs on their backs, shooshing down a powdered slope on skis… a six-man team rising out of the surf in the middle of the night, weapons drawn and dripping, dragging an inflatable Zodiac power-boat up onto the beach… and, of course, the obligatory shot, taken from inside a C-141’s cargo hold, with the ramp down and open, as a half dozen of these guys hurl themselves out into the blinding white abyss at thirty-thousand feet.
Now that’s the kind of military I'm interested in.
To someone—like me—looking to get an actual military experience out of the Air Force, this is heady stuff. This is the physical, rigidly disciplined, expertly trained, worldly, heroic stuff that I’ve been looking for. And I still get to be a cool air traffic controller at the same time! What’s not to like?
As the lights come up, and Sgt. Beaudry strides—and I do mean STRIDES—back to the front of the room, I look around to see who else is sharing my intrigue. And the answer is a big fat “nobody.” Not one of the ten others in attendance shows even the tiniest trace of interest. In fact, most of them are swapping nervous glances, or even overt chuckles, as if to say is he crazy? Do I look that stupid?
“Here at Keesler Air Force Base,” Sgt. Beaudry resumes, oblivious to the expressions of disbelief around him, “you’ll start at the most basic level, called Phase I. This is strictly an exercise and work-out regime, intended to prepare you for the more difficult schools that will follow, and will run in conjunction with your Tech School schedule, either before or after each day’s classes, depending on whether you have a morning or afternoon school shift. We work out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can begin as soon as you sign up. Which means,” he adds conspiratorially, “if you start right away, you’ll be exempt from Casual Status duties on those days we work out.” Oo, I like that! “Any questions?”
None. Just a room full of people avoiding his gaze.
I am stunned. Sgt. Beaudry doesn’t seem to be.
“All right, gentlemen, that’s it. Have a nice day.” And he turns around to square away the little pile of brochures he’s brought along. Just giving his audience a chance to bolt while his back is turned, I guess.
And they do. The room is empty before I’ve even fully risen to my feet.
I continue to putter and delay though... curious, but unsure what to ask, interested, but unsure how to begin, and wondering if I’m not completely out of my mind just for thinking about it.
Sgt. Beaudry busies himself for the requisite number of seconds, then turns to find me standing there, alone among the empty rows of desk-chairs. He seems pleasantly surprised—in much the same way I imagine a shark would react if it turned to find that it was being followed by a curious snorkeler.
And he smiles.
3
CASUAL STATUS
Sweeping a parking lot.
That’s what they’ve got me doing now—sweeping a goddamned parking lot.
All by myself. Just me and one ratty old straw whiskbroom!
Are you friggin’ kidding me here?
It’s barely 10:30 in the morning, and I’ve already worked up a couple of fairly impressive blisters on both hands, right there in the webbing of each thumb. And for all that, all I’ve really been able to finish so far is one long row, sidling between the cars, brushing the grit and detritus out into the open lane, then systematically herding it all down to the curb at the end. The same end that the wind has been blowing it towards all day anyway (I had to learn that one the hard way—no Master Parking Lot Sweeper am I).
So this is what “Casual Status” means—menial busywork, of a disinterested and improvised nature (on the part of those who have to concoct these stupid time-consuming details), back-breaking, blister-raising, sweat-wringing labor for those of us too dense to take advantage of the many offers to go on leave instead. I mean, come on! Sweeping a public parking lot?
But I guess that’s what I get. I had two ways out of this, and I opted out of both of them.
I could have been in Miami right now, burning up a little advance leave, showing off the five o’clock shadow on my head, and telling my first war stories to any and all who would listen. But no. I decided to save my accrued leave for later, banking it away for an even bigger, better vacation nearer the end of the year. Or something like that. Besides, I knew I’d be in Miami over the three-day Memorial Day weekend anyway, just a little over a month away.
I also could have signed up for that Combat Control program that Sgt. Beaudry sold so convincingly, which would have superceded this slave labor and given me something else to do with my empty hours. But no, I had to go and call my Mom with the exciting news about this bold new career change I was considering—“I’ll get to jump out of airplanes, scuba dive at night, in cold, polluted, enemy waters, skulk through the jungle in camouflaged fatigues, learn the martial arts, and get to know all the ninety-eight different ways to eviscerate an enemy sentry with a plastic Spork!” (all those things a genteel mother loves to contemplate for her firstborn son). Needless to say, this was a sales pitch wasted on an unappreciative audience. Rather than expressing any curious enthusiasm, or even a little pseudo-encouragement for my adventurous scheme, she had instead listed the far greater number of perfectly logical reasons why such an idea was crazy, at least for the likes of me. I’d hung up the phone, disappointed with the surprisingly negative direction the conversation had veered, but, at her insistence, having vowed to postpone my decision for a few more days—or weeks—just to give myself a little time to think it all through.
Well, I gotta’ tell ya’—one more day of this parking lot detail, and I suspect my capacity for circumspection will be rather severely curtailed. I mean, at this rate, I’ll never play the violin again.
I stop and mop the sweat out of my eye sockets—Jeezy Pete, it’s like sponging out a couple of bird baths—and stare grimly at the next row of parking spaces that awaits me. Hmmm.
Joining a bunch of rowdy lunatics for a few hundred sit-ups and a couple miles of running in this soggy heat every other day is starting to sound pretty damned good right about now. Combat Controllers probably don’t care as much about which direction the dust is being blown by the wind.
Yeh, screw it. It’s time to take this to the next level.
I could have been in Miami right now, burning up a little advance leave, showing off the five o’clock shadow on my head, and telling my first war stories to any and all who would listen. But no. I decided to save my accrued leave for later, banking it away for an even bigger, better vacation nearer the end of the year. Or something like that. Besides, I knew I’d be in Miami over the three-day Memorial Day weekend anyway, just a little over a month away.
I also could have signed up for that Combat Control program that Sgt. Beaudry sold so convincingly, which would have superceded this slave labor and given me something else to do with my empty hours. But no, I had to go and call my Mom with the exciting news about this bold new career change I was considering—“I’ll get to jump out of airplanes, scuba dive at night, in cold, polluted, enemy waters, skulk through the jungle in camouflaged fatigues, learn the martial arts, and get to know all the ninety-eight different ways to eviscerate an enemy sentry with a plastic Spork!” (all those things a genteel mother loves to contemplate for her firstborn son). Needless to say, this was a sales pitch wasted on an unappreciative audience. Rather than expressing any curious enthusiasm, or even a little pseudo-encouragement for my adventurous scheme, she had instead listed the far greater number of perfectly logical reasons why such an idea was crazy, at least for the likes of me. I’d hung up the phone, disappointed with the surprisingly negative direction the conversation had veered, but, at her insistence, having vowed to postpone my decision for a few more days—or weeks—just to give myself a little time to think it all through.
Well, I gotta’ tell ya’—one more day of this parking lot detail, and I suspect my capacity for circumspection will be rather severely curtailed. I mean, at this rate, I’ll never play the violin again.
I stop and mop the sweat out of my eye sockets—Jeezy Pete, it’s like sponging out a couple of bird baths—and stare grimly at the next row of parking spaces that awaits me. Hmmm.
Joining a bunch of rowdy lunatics for a few hundred sit-ups and a couple miles of running in this soggy heat every other day is starting to sound pretty damned good right about now. Combat Controllers probably don’t care as much about which direction the dust is being blown by the wind.
Yeh, screw it. It’s time to take this to the next level.
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