Kulkuri's Journeys and Wanderings

Can I Come Camping at Your Place??

2011-08-04T11:06:00.000-04:00

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

One day out of blue I got a letter (this was back in the days of snail mail) from someone who at one time was the girl next door. In the letter she asked if she could come up to my place to do some camping. I sent a reply saying, sure, no problem.

A few weeks later she and a friend hitch-hiked up from Madison. We got reacquainted and partied a lot (that was the summer I was helping my cousin celebrate getting out of the Navy), and there was even pitching a tent and actual camping involved.

Here we are doing the Bonnie & Clyde bit!!

Long story short, she never left!!!!!!!!!!!!

Working on the Railroad One Last Time

2011-08-04T10:47:00.002-04:00

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

The last time I worked on the railroad, it only lasted for a month or two and then I got called to work at a local factory that made ceiling tile.

I had been trying for over two years to get a job at this plant. Considering my experiences with working on the railroad, I thought at least this job would be a year round job not just a few weeks or months at a time like the railroad had been. That damn hindsight , turned out the guy, who had never worked on the railroad before, who took my place on the railroad got the job permanently and worked for several years until he injured himself off the job and the railroad doctor wouldn't OK his return to work.

Anywho, I worked at the ceiling tile plant for 3yrs the first time and for 2 more years later. We were using kraft paper to wrap the packages of lay-in ceiling panels. My job title was "package and wrap". After doing that for a couple of months my fingers were so smooth it looked like I didn't have any fingerprints. The kraft paper wore my fingerprints off.

Back To Working On The Railroad

2011-01-26T15:11:00.002-05:00

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

After working at the sawmill, I was able to work on the railroad for awhile. I found out from my uncle that there was an opening on a paint crew. I applied and got the job on the paint crew. We mostly painted signs along the tracks. Every culvert has a sign with a number indicating the mileage from some point. Before painting the sign we would write the number on the web of the rail with chalk so we could paint the number in black on the sign after it was painted white. One of the other things we painted was the scale used for weighting RR cars before they were loaded onto the ferry that went across the Straits of Mackinac. We had to crawl down under the scale and spray paint the steel parts. Needless to say it was not pleasant, I came out of there all covered with paint. We also had to paint some bridges. One was low enough that when I dropped my brush for red lead, I was able to lower myself off the scaffold and pick up the brush out of the water. Another bridge went over a small stream and a county road. The part over the stream was wooden trestle and the part over the road was steel. We hung scaffolding under the bridge and closed off one lane of traffic at a time. We had a person on either side of the bridge directing traffic just like at some road construction areas. Also because of the traffic, we painted the bridge with brushes so cars going under the bridge on the road would not get overspray on them. The bridge I didn't like to paint was a high one. It was 80 feet from the rail to the water. It had been prepared (chipping off old paint and red lead primer applied) for painting a year or two before. We hung block and tackle over the side of the bridge, tied a ladder to the edge of the bridge to climb down to the plank that was supported by the block and tackle. No safety equipment what so ever. It was hang on with one hand and spraypaint with the other. As I was the low man on the totem pole (least seniority), I would always be on the downwind end of the plank. Even tho I would try to cover up, I still would have trouble getting all the paint off my skin and out of my hair.

When we were painting the bridge over the road, our railroad cars that we lived in were parked in the Soo. One evening I went looking for an auto parts store for something and came back with something different. I don't remember what I originally went to get, but I bought a new throw-out bearing as the one in my car broke while on my way to the store. After buying the new part, I had to drive across town with no clutch. It meant starting the car in first gear and shifting without the clutch. At one light I went thru several changes of the light before I got it fired up as it was slightly uphill and it didn't want to start. After getting back to where I was staying (the railroad cars parked by the roundhouse), then I had to change the throw-out bearing. The car had a four speed transmission that was heavy. I jacked up the car and made a ramp under the transmission to slide it back on. I knew if I dropped it on the ground, I would never be able to lift it back in place while lying under the car. I had to get it fixed by Friday as I had found out that I had been bumped by the foreman and would no longer have a job after Friday. I was able to get my car fixed and drive home Friday after work.

A short time later, I found out there was an opening of a bridge crew and I got the job. We were working on the ferry slip for the railroad car ferry the "Chief Wawatam". One day the foreman said we could go for a ride on the ferry if it was OK with the captain. It was a nice ride across to Mackinaw City in an old ship (it was built in 1911) and when we got there, I learned it would be a couple hours before the ferry was unloaded and reloaded for the trip back. As it was around the time we usually had out morning coffee break, I went to a restaurant for coffee. When I sat down and took off my hardhat, the waitress asked if I worked around there and I said "No, I work in St. Ignace." She had a funny look on here face until I explained how I came to be in Mackinaw City for coffee. The ferry was removed from service in the 80s, and ever since to ship something by rail from St. Ignace, MI to Mackinaw City, MI. it had to make a trip all the way around Lake Michigan.

That job only lasted a couple weeks as the paint crew I was on got shut down for the year and one of the guys I had worked with came back to his job on the bridge crew. Some guys would work on the paint crew during the summer as a painter made the same as a carpenter on the bridge crew, so if you were a carpenter's helper it was a raise in pay.

When The Unemployment Started To Run Out

2011-01-23T14:17:00.006-05:00

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Towards the end of summer when I was down to only a couple of weeks left of unemployment benefits, I got a job at a local sawmill. In a larger sawmill it would have been called working on the green chain. As this mill only had 4 workers, the owner who was the sawyer, a guy that operated the Cary-Lift (which moved the logs and all the wood from the end of the mill) and debarker, the guy who took the pieces after they came off the main saw and either sent them down the line or ran them thru the edger to trim them into boards. Then there was my position, I got to deal with all the pieces at the end of the line. The slabs got put into a rack where they would be bundled, the boards would be stacked after being trimmed to cut out bad areas, the railroad ties would sometimes have to be cut to length then pushed off the end of the line into a pile. All in all it was hard work. I was paid a little over minimum wage which at the time was under $2. I don't remember exactly what my wage was, I seem to remember that maybe it started at $2 and eventually was up to $2.25.

One thing about this job is it was close to home, only a mile away. I could go home for lunch and most days did.

Then just before "Deer Hunting Season" there was an extension to unemployment passed and I asked for and was given a lay-off. That way I was able to go deer hunting while drawing unemployment. I got a 13 week extension and drew it thru the winter. Over a 2 year period I drew a years worth of unemployment as there was the original 26 weeks and two 13 week extensions.

Me on the left and my friend dressed in monkey suits for his wedding.

Above is a picture of me and a friend taken before my friend's wedding. We drove to the courthouse where the wedding was to take place in my truck which was covered with mud as I didn't have time to wash it in between getting stuck out in the woods and going to the wedding. This happened at the time I was working at the sawmill or on unemployment.

Some Thoughts About Things After My Father Died

2011-01-09T16:18:00.001-05:00

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Yesterday seeing a coffee can reminded me of some of the things that happened that summer my father died. When we (my brother and I) were emptying the house there were a number of surprises. We found a large cache of coffee. There were a lot of 3# cans of coffee. Back then the large cans actually held 3# of coffee, not 28 to 34oz like today. We also found many 5# bags of sugar, and a large supply of toilet paper.(One older woman I knew had the bathtub piled high with packages of toilet paper. They had a sauna, so never used the bathtub in the house.)

Another thing we found was a bunch of bottles of homemade wine. There were several different types, strawberry, blackberry and chokecherry are ones I remember. The only one I remember as being undrinkable was the chokecherry, it was so dry, it would make your asshole pucker when you drank it. I was able to get rid of it by giving it to a couple of friends when they would stop by half-drunk already. I'd ask if they wanted a glass of homemade wine. After they had some I'd ask if they wanted a bottle to take with them. They must have drunk the wine while still drunk as this ploy worked every time they came around until I got rid of all the chokecherry wine. They were the only ones that could drink it.

Another thing my brother and I had to do was haul all the stuff my dad picked up at the dump back to the dump. We spent quite a bit of time asking each other why the old man hauled this stuff home. The funny part is that when we were bringing the junk back to the dump(back then most towns and area locations had a dump, not a landfill like today), there were a couple of guys there picking thru the trash. They looked in the back of my pickup and said "That looks like good stuff. Don't throw it over the edge, set it over on the side so we can look thru it." Between the basement and the garage, we made many trips to the dump.

I don't remember how many days we worked at cleaning out the house, but we finally got everything out of it so we could sell it. Last summer I drove by where the house was and all that was left was the sauna my dad built in the backyard. When they sold the farm, my dad took apart a log building that had been used as a shop of some kind and put it back together with sill sealer insulation between the logs. He put in a wall to make two rooms, the changing room and the one for steam.

I'm not surprised the house is gone as it was old and needed a lot of work, I am surprised the garage is gone as that was fairly new. My dad built it on the lot next to the house after buying the two lots next to the house.

Some Things That Happened After I Got Home From The Military

2010-12-07T10:57:00.006-05:00

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

A couple months after I got home my step-mother had gall bladder surgery. She came out of the hospital with some gallstones in a plastic vial. Within a few weeks of the surgery she died. She was buried in a cemetery in an area in Northern Wisconsin that had the same name as the area where she was from in Finland.

A month or so later my dad died. We all joke about how the shock of surviving my step-mother killed him. She had had several husbands and out-lived all except my dad. Not quite sure how many she had, around four or five.

After my dad's funeral, my brothers and I went to a lawyer to arrange for my dad's estate to be probated. He had too many things to not go through probate. If the only thing had been the house or a car, probate wouldn't have been necessary. He had a house, car and a pickup and four sons who got to divvy up these things. Also there was the "Ranch UP on the Tundra" but my name was already on the deed with a survivorship clause. My two oldest brothers lived in states halfway across the country and my next oldest brother had a full time job working rotating shifts. As I was unemployed at the time, I was made the administrator of my dad's estate, such as it was.

Being an administrator wasn't too difficult, had to make a number of trips to the lawyer's office for various things. I was glad we had gotten a lawyer to do the probate because a step-daughter from one of my step-mother's other marriages came around raising all kinds of hell about how she should get everything and my family wasn't entitled to anything from my step-mother's estate. I guess the money she got in the form of mutual funds and/or bonds wasn't enough for her. Michigan law states that everything goes to the surviving spouse, which was my dad because he outlived her. After listening to her (the evil step-daughter) for awhile ranting about she should get everything and we should get nothing, I told her to go see my lawyer. After she left I called my lawyer and warned him that she was on her way to see him. He said, "Good, I'll show where the bear shit in the buckwheat". When I next talked to my lawyer, he said she was the most miserable bitch he'd met. I never heard from her again. I sure was glad I had a lawyer to back me up.

What took the longest was waiting for the house to sell. The vehicles were no problem, we decided I would get the truck and my brother in Georgia would get the car. The value of the car and truck would be figured into the total and be part of our shares. I drove the car down to GA and brought it to my brother. It was in Dec and at the time could not get used to Xmas music with no snow on the ground, so I came home the weekend before Xmas and was greeted by several feet of snow. Anywho, after the house sold (it took like two years), I spilt the money up and sent it to my brothers. By then I had sold the truck in order to make it through the strike at the place where I worked at the time.

Here is a picture of the car at my brother's house.

Draft Card

2010-05-21T09:04:00.004-04:00

When I got home, I had a stack of DD214s and managed to use up most of them. I needed to use one when I signed up for Unemployment Insurance, one for the Draft Board(Selective Service) and I put one on file at the county court house for future reference(glad I did as I have been back a couple of times to get copies). Don't remember where all I needed to bring a copy of my DD214, but used up most of them.

After I brought a copy of my DD214 to the Draft Board, I received in the mail a new draft card. This time it said 4A instead of 1A. 1A meant you were a prime candidate for the draft. As I liked to joke, 4A meant they would be drafting women and priests before me. (Actually that's not true as anyone that's been paying attention to what's happening with the troops these days with call-backs and holds requiring either that they report back to the military or they're forced to stay in past their discharge date.) If they had tried to call me back, I would have gone around the lake and taken up residence in Canuck Land.

A couple of years after I got out, they eliminated the draft. In order to get people to sign up without pressure from the draft, they raised the pay for the military. Before I got out I was making $283.50 a month before taxes as an E-4 with over three years in. When they got rid of the draft, starting pay in Basic Training was $400 a month. My first job out of High School I was making $100 a week before taxes and that was about 8 years earlier, so it still wasn't good money, but it was better than when I was in the military.

Home From The "War"

2010-05-10T15:53:00.009-04:00

When I got home(after straddling that grey dog), I was planning on staying at the 'Ranch' in the "Little House". As it was February, it would be easier to heat the little two room cottage than the bigger house on the place. As it was I barely got the chill out of the place. A friend said I could stay with him and his new wife as he had a spare bedroom. It made sense at the time because I had to walk into my place as the road wasn't plowed for the last 800 feet or so. The snow was 3-4 feet deep, but with snowshoes it wasn't too bad and after awhile the path gets packed and frozen to the point where you don't need snowshoes to walk on it. Also the place didn't have running water, so I would have been roughing it (just like I did before I went into the military).

"The Little House" about 4-5 years after I got home from the war.

I stayed there for a couple of months. We did a lot of partying even tho my friend had a full-time job. My friend's wife had been a stripper up in Fairbanks, AK where they met. She had done a few gigs locally, too. She was a nice person when sober, but could get strange when drunk. One night after drinking, she slashed her face with a razor blade in several places while watching Johnny Cash on TV and I had to haul her downtown to the ER. The doctor on call that night refused to treat her because he figured (rightly) that she was lying about how she injured herself. The doctor that finally sewed her up was from the same small town as us and instead of haranguing her about how it happened, he just calmly sewed up her face while telling jokes.

There were a number of things that happened during the time I stayed with them and by the time I moved back to my place I was a little scared of her, having seen her in action while drunk. Turned out I needn't have been scared of her as she really liked and respected me because no matter how hard she tried, I wouldn't have sex with her. She was my friend's wife and there was no way I would do that. Of course, if she hadn't been married to my friend, it might have been different. She was an attractive woman I would have been ready to jump in the sack with her if it hadn't been for this one little thing, she was married to my friend!!

Anywho, after she set fire to the woodshed and burnt it down, I moved back to my place as things were getting too crazy around there. By then most of the snow had melted and it was easier for me to get in and out of my place. I think my friend and his wife came to some kind of understanding and they made plans to bring her back to Fairbanks. We did a car swap (one dead car for another dead car) and I helped fix up my old T-Bird for the trip to Alaska. We did an engine-transmission transplant and welded patches on the body to plug the rust holes to try and keep the dust out as most of the Al-Can highway is unpaved.

The attacks on my virtue continued, and I continued to resist. Looking back, it does my ego good to think about how often she tried and the things she did to entice me!!!

The Rest Of The Story: my friend brought her back to Fairbanks and left her in the same bar he found her in. He said he tried to leave her on the same bar stool, but there was someone sitting on it that wouldn't move, so she got left on the stool next to it.

The Trip Home

2010-03-26T13:48:00.004-04:00

I left Cape Cod driving this truck. It had it's problems, probably the worst one it turned out was that it would not stay in high gear. It kept jumping out of gear and I was driving with one hand on the shifter and pulling it back into high gear when it would pop out. A few hours into my trip, while on the Mass Pike, I felt something weird. Stopped on the shoulder to check it out and discovered a couple of studs on one of the rear wheels had snapped off and the wheel was loose. Tightened the wheel and continued on my way, but no longer pulling back on the shifter. Some time later got a real weird feeling and pulled over again. Four out of the five studs on the wheel were gone. I sat on the guard rail behind the truck and waited. After awhile a State Patrol stopped and asked what the problem was. I showed him and he called a wrecker. While waiting for the wrecker, the cop said I was smart to sit on the guard rail where I could see the traffic coming at me. He said he had had to dive over the guard rail a time or two because of vehicles coming at him. Seems those videos you see about cars or trucks hitting cars parked on the shoulder are not a recent thing. Probably been happening since there have been more than a couple cars on the road.
Anywho, the studs breaking ruined a new chrome reverse wheel which pissed me off enough that I junked the truck for the tow charge. I could have fixed it, but figured if I didn't even make it out of the state then it would probably not make another thousand miles that I had to go to get home.

I got most of my stuff out of the truck(there were some car&truck parts left), called a cab and went to the bus station. Some things that I had boxed up, I shipped on ahead and bought a bus ticket to my brother's house. Spent some time at my brother's house as I was not in a hurry to get home because it was the middle of the winter and I knew the snow would be asshole deep to a tall giraffe at the 'Ranch' UP on the Tundra.

After several days I bought another bus ticket for the rest of the way home. On the way, I stopped in Detroit and visited my cousin for a few days.

Finally after two weeks or so of traveling I arrived home(or the town with bus service closest to home) and was greeted by a snowstorm.

The next day I went to the unemployment office to sign up. The woman at the unemployment office(the one who acted like the money came out of her pocket) said I couldn't sign up for 'x' number of days because I sold back 'x' number of days of leave. I said count the days since I got out because it has been 'x' number of days. She had to admit I was right and signed me up for unemployment. I was to get the handsome amount of $45 a week. My vacation had started!!!

Normal Military SOP

2010-02-03T15:10:00.002-05:00

In one of my earlier posts I mentioned how we got word on our early discharges. I started processing out the next day. First thing I did was go for a discharge physical. I only got a couple hours sleep the night before thinking about all the things I would do when I became a free man again. Had to lay down twice to get my blood pressure down enough to pass. After that I went around to all the places that I needed process out. Finally I got to the point where the only places left needed a copy of my discharge orders. When it got down to a couple days before my discharge date and still no orders, I was given a copy and sent to an office where multiple copies were made so I could now give a copy to each place that required one.

On the day that I turned in my ID card and got my final check, there on a table in the room for the final processing was a stack of orders for me a half-inch thick.

Shortly before my discharge I got another set of orders. These were for my promotion to E-5. They said the promotion was effective the first of the following month, a couple of days after my discharge!!

Frijoles

2010-01-11T15:06:00.001-05:00

One time when we were standing around bullshitting, a Lifer named Rodriquez asked another Lifer if he had ever had frijoles. The other Lifer said, "Fuck no, I've always had to pay for mine!!"

Cold Temps

2010-01-06T12:29:00.003-05:00

With all the talking heads on the tube talking incessantly about the cold weather, it reminds me of that winter on Cape Cod. I saw a headline on a Boston paper that screamed about "30 Days Below Freezing". I had a good laugh as I didn't think that was anything to put in a paper as news. Where I grew up 30 days with below zero temps was not news. The damp chill from being right on the ocean can cut through to the bone, but isn't news to anyone who has lived there.

That time on Cape Cod I didn't experience a complete winter. I got there at the end of one calendar winter and left half way through the next. On subsequent times living on the Cape I have been through several winters. Those times will be later in this narrative if I get that far down the road in my work history.

Short Pickle

2009-12-08T12:05:00.001-05:00

When we got to the point where we could see the end of the enlistment, we would call ourselves "Short"!! We would make comments like, "I'm so short, I tripped on a dime." And other such remarks like, "I'm so short, I'll only smoke cigars from now on. That way if I get out before I finish, I'll be celebrating!!" Or, "I'm so short, I can walk under the door without opening it."

A friend of mine found a pin shaped like a pickle with Heinz on it. He put it on his cap and called it his Short Pickle. When I was up in Iceland, I got a Marine fatigue cap. After getting the globe and anchor scrapped off the front of it, I started wearing it as my short hat.

This started several months before the scheduled discharge date. One day, we received notice that all short-timers were to report to the base theater the next morning. We all went there first thing in the morning. Finally someone got up on the stage and announced that anyone staying in until their normal discharge date for whatever reason can leave. A few fools got up and left. After they were out of the building, he announced that we were all getting out early, some would be out in a week, all of us would be gone in three weeks. This meant we would have to start processing out. First thing to do was get a physical to make sure you were well enough to get out of the military. I got very little sleep the night before I went for my physical and had to lay down and rest to get my blood pressure down enough to pass the physical.

I had things worked out for getting out, or so I thought. I had started doubling my car payments so I would have it paid off when I got out. When they moved up the date by another two months, (I got out about 4 months early because 'Tricky Dicky' cut the budget and they couldn't afford to pay me) it threw all that planning off. As a matter of fact, I was broke enough at the time that I had to borrow money to pay for items I had lost, like my blankets. The night before I got out, we were scrounging up all the loose change (which consisted mostly of pennies) in order to have enough money to buy something to eat that night.

And even tho we were super-short, we still got hassled. We had to go get haircuts before we could process out of the squadron (I could have used that money to eat). Looking back, I can see it was just another power trip on the part of the sergeant in the orderly room (make them get their hair cut so it'll take them longer to look like long-haired hippies).

Bringing My Car Home

2009-12-02T10:08:00.005-05:00

In the fall of the year that I was stationed on Cape Cod, I decided to go home on leave. I had a feeling that my grandfather had died (when my aunt wrote in a letter that he had left them his car, I had a hunch that he was dead!!), and I wanted to bring my car home because I had two vehicles and could only drive one at a time. At the time my enlistment had about 6 months to go (turned out to be less, but that's another post) and I thought I'd bring my car home and then drive the pickup home when I got out of the military.

I managed to get a leave OK'd because I had leave time accrued and I used the excuse that I wanted to go home to see if my grandfather had died. (Later I found out from my brother and others that they didn't notify me as they figured I wouldn't be able to get there for the funeral anyway. Hell, I could have gotten an emergency leave and flown home, and it would have been a break from the stupid military.) Anywho, I took off for home in Oct.

Most of the trip was uneventful, drove across Taxachusetts, and New York to Niagara Falls. Went across Ontario to Port Huron, MI. It was as I was heading toward the bridge that things started to get interesting. I seem to remember it was almost 100 miles south of the Mackinac Bridge that I ran into snow. My little Corvair had summer tires (back in the day of bias ply tires, you needed different tires for summer and winter, all-season tires started after they started making radial tires), but because the car was a rear-engined rear wheel drive, I figured as long as the snow didn't get too bad, I'd be OK. When I got to the bridge, it was icey, but I thought if I could get up to where the metal grating was, I would have enough traction to get over the top. Once I got over the top and was heading down, I thought, "Oh Shit, I got to stop at the toll booth!!" (Side Note: at the time the toll was $3.75 for cars and several years later the license plate fees were raised and the toll dropped to $1.50 for cars.) After the bridge, I had to go across the UP.

The Seney Stretch is 26 miles straight as an arrow through a swamp. Under good conditions it is tiresome. This time it was in the middle of the night and snowing hard. There was enough snow on the road that my car would slide all over when I had all the wheels on the pavement, so I drove with one set of wheels on the shoulder and one set on the pavement. Had to stop on the Seney Stretch to hack out the snow and ice built up in the front wheel wells as it was getting hard to steer. Every once in awhile I would see lights ahead and think I was almost to Seney and it would be an on-coming vehicle.

It was almost daylight by the time I got to Munising and the snowplows were out. Coming out of Munising there is a hill and the plow had scraped one stretch of pavement bare. My rear wheels were spinning coming up the hill and when I hit the bare patch, it almost stalled, but caught and continued up the hill. Several miles down the road, smoke started coming in the car through the heater vents (the car drew warm air from around the air cooled engine for the heater). I knew something was wrong, but there was nowhere to stop. When the idiot light for oil pressure came on, I pulled over on the shoulder. When I checked the oil, there wasn't any on the dipstick, but there was a lot of oil covering the engine. I hitch-hiked to the nearest gas station (I think it was the Laughing Whitefish Trading Post, a combination store, restaurant, and gas station). I got 3 qts of oil and hitched back to the car. I put in two and took off. Got almost to Marquette and put in the last qt. In Marquette I got a two gallon can of cheap oil. I put in a couple of qts. and drove to my cousin's house where I took a nap. Added more oil and drove to my brother's house.

While the car was parked at my brother's house, my nephew managed to break the shaft on the driver's side windshield wiper. Later we convoyed to the 'Ranch' (was an interesting drive as it was sloppy weather, sleeting, snowing and the wiper on the driver's side was missing) and parked the car there. All together it took 13 qts. of oil to go the last 100 or so miles. This was the second time my car broke down while on my way home, but both times was able to limp the cars home.

I then went to the bank where I had my car loan and notified them I was dropping the insurance because the car was parked as it broke down and then refinanced the loan (this was a last resort as I tried to get a personal loan at a local bank and was turned down because I was in the military) to have money to buy my plane ticket back to Cape Cod.

I was going to rebuild the engine after I got home from the military, but sometime after getting back home as a free man, I learned that my best friend from high school had crashed and burned in his Corvair. Decided against the rebuild but still have the car -- anyone want to buy a rusted hulk?????

Upstate New York

2009-11-04T10:51:00.006-05:00

All this attention to the election in the NY-23 district has reminded me of an enjoyable weekend that I spent in upstate New York and I can still remember parts of it. Some call anyplace out of NYC upstate, but this was really upstate and what I still think of as upstate, the Adirondacks.

A friend whose grandparents lived in upstate NY suggested that we go up there for the weekend. As I had a car, my little Corvair, we would drive up in it. We managed to talk our supervisor into letting us have a long weekend, 3 or 4 days, I forget which, by promising to bring back some fish.

Here is a picture of a '64 Corvair similar to the one I had at the time. This one is a little fancier than mine as my Corvair had plain wheels with dog dish hubcaps.

It was about an eight or ten hour drive from Cape Cod. We drove thru Lake Placid and Saranac Lake to where his grandparents lived. I think he called that place Paul Smith, NY. I know there was a college by the name near there.

Anywho, we did go fishing the next day. We put a rowboat on my car and launched it in a stream. Went upstream and hauled it over a beaver dam into a lake. We did manage to catch a few fish, but they were only hitting one lure. My friend caught a frog and was using that for bait with no luck. When he decided it wasn't working, and released the frog, it started swimming to shore. Just before it reached the shore, there was a big splash and it disappeared.

Another thing we did was some target practice. We had each brought a box of .22 cal. ammunition, which we used in a couple of single shot rifles. A couple of his cousins and their husbands were there also and they had at least 10 times as many .22 cartridges. They were blasting away and not hitting much, whereas we made sure most of our shots hit what we were aiming at. That is the point of target practice after all. Shooting to just burn powder doesn't make much sense.

At night we would go to bars and drink, most of that is fuzzy. One night we went to Rouses Point,NY which is up in the corner where NY, VT and Canada meet. Don't remember much other than that.

We did make it back in time, even tho we got lost in Boston (Damn One-Way Streets). Missed the exit for the Cape and I-90 ended in downtown Boston. When we spotted the Playboy Club, my friend said, "Now I know where we are." After getting our bearings, we got out of Boston and back to the base on the Cape without any more trouble.

Oh Mighty Sun God

2009-10-28T11:28:00.005-04:00

Watching Survivor Samoa last week reminded me of something that happened during the summer on Cape Cod. The contestants were complaining about all the rain they were getting. We didn't have rain like that on the Cape, but we did have a long stretch of days without sun, some rain, but mostly overcast and some days just so humid that the sun was just some indistinct blob in the sky.

Anywho, one day a friend of mine, as we were on our way to work said, "Oh Mighty Sun God what have we done wrong. We'll sacrifice a lifer." Still no sun, so on the following day he upped it to two lifers. Nada, and on the third day it was three lifers. Still Nada, so he upped to three lifers and a First Shirt (a senior NCO directly below the Commander in the chain of command). That day the sun came out and afterwards we always said that in order to get what you want you have to throw in a First Shirt as that was the clincher.

Good Eats, Not!!

2009-09-22T13:27:00.003-04:00

The food in the chow halls was not very good. I may have gained ten pounds in basic, but that was only because I was eating three meals a day. Before I went in the military I was too busy partying and running around to eat regularly. Anywho, like I said the food in the chow halls wasn't very good and I ate a lot at the BX cafeteria and snack bars on base and had pizzas and other stuff off-base. After I made E-4 I was able to go on 'separate rats' (separate rations) which gave me about forty bucks (whatever they figured it cost for a months worth of meals in the chow hall) a month to eat on and meant if I were to eat at the chow hall, I would have to pay for the meal as I no longer had a meal pass. When I was at Dow Airplane Patch, I used to go for midnight chow fairly often. You had to get a pass from the CQ in the barracks and the chow hall started serving around 10 pm or 10:30 pm. It was basically breakfast and sometimes even the grits were good. Which meant I ate breakfast before going to bed and didn't bother eating in the morning before going to work. I could sleep later.

At K.I. I would go off-base to get pasties (rhymes with nasty, not hasty which would be a nipple covering and they are usually not edible).

As for the meals I ate at the BX, they were mostly hamburgers, chili dogs and other stuff on that order. I still remember the chili on the chili dogs as being super thick from sitting under the lights all day. On the weekends I would get a pizza or something off-base. That is basically how I survived while in the military. When I was at Otis on Cape Cod, I only ate one meal in the chow hall and that was while very hungover on Xmas day because no other place was open on that day. (And that was not the last time I had trouble finding a place to eat on Xmas day. While in Anniston, AL in the mid-80's I had the same problem.)

For my last meal at Otis, I was searching for any and all loose change to come up with enough money to get something at the snack bar because I was broke until I got my final paycheck the next morning along with my discharge.

Cars

2009-05-11T11:05:00.002-04:00

Besides the truck and the car I bought for the drivetrain to put in the truck, I also bought a '54 Ford ragtop while stationed on Cape Cod. I had no intention of buying another vehicle, but I was made an offer I couldn't refuse. The guy that followed me from K.I. to Otis had bought a '54 ragtop in addition to the truck he had. Long story short, he got transferred and asked if I wanted the ragtop. I told him I had enough vehicles at the time. He said that he had just bought a new 6 volt battery for the car and would sell the car to me for what the battery cost. (I seem to remember it was only $5 or $10.) I really didn't need or want another car, but I bought it from him just to help him out as he was leaving. I think I fired it up a couple of times and even drove it with the top down once a few blocks on base, but mostly it sat outside of the Auto Hobby Shop on base.

This picture is of a restored car that I found on the intratubes, and not of the car I had.

The car I had was drivable but I didn't have the time to do anything with it. Later on my last day at Otis when I was leaving to go home I gave the car away. I had just cashed my final check at the Credit Union and met one of my co-workers and tossed him the keys and said, "It's parked at the Auto Hobby Shop. It's all yours." Because of the "Early Out" (that's another tale) I had a lots of running around and other things to do in a short period of time and didn't even think about trying to sell the car until it was too late to do anything.

Danny Kaye's

2009-05-08T11:30:00.004-04:00

One of the first places I was introduced to on Cape Cod was a place called Danny Kaye's. When I first saw the name on the sign, I thought it belonged to the comedian Danny Kaye. Turned out it was the first names of the couple that owned the restaurant. It was an Italian-American restaurant and I was told that we all were to order our own pizzas. When the pizzas arrived, they were on large serving trays and were oval. I had never seen anything other than a round pizza before and it was cut into diamonds, lots of diamonds. The first time there I wasn't able to eat the entire pizza, maybe there were too many pieces, or maybe it was the fact that I had had a snack shortly before heading out to the restaurant. Almost every payday several of us would go to Danny Kaye's for pizza and after that first time, I was able to eat all of the pizza.

Twenty One years later I was working on Cape Cod at Otis and went looking for my favorite pizza place. The building was still there, but now it was a Chinese restaurant.

Trucks

2009-05-05T10:15:00.003-04:00

Like I said before I drove out to Cape Cod in my little Corvair. After driving around there for awhile, I realized that the Corvair was not a good vehicle to drive there. Other cars were always pulling out in front of me, seems like a little white car is almost invisible or just poses no threat to other drivers. That is why I bought the pickup in the picture below. Drivers on Cape Cod had a bad habit of creeping out until they were far enough out into the traffic lane that someone would stop to let them in. Whenever I spotted someone trying to creep out into traffic, I would downshift the truck to second gear and step on the gas. If they still kept coming, I would drift to the right and usually they would back up. Summertime was a miserable time to drive on Cape Cod and that was forty years ago. One town just off-base had about 10,000 year-round residents, on some summer weekends like July 4th it would swell to around 100,000.

Notice the broom sticking up behind the cab. A buddy said every truck had to have a broom and he stuck one there.

The other truck in this picture belonged to another guy in the shop. He followed me out to Cape Cod from K.I. and when he saw my truck, he bought one like it. Mine was a '56 Chevy and his was a '57 Chevy. He had a new Cougar that he bought with his re-enlistment bonus and had already wrecked it once while at K.I. and after seeing the traffic on Cape Cod, didn't want to take a chance on wrecking his car again.

I did a lot of work on the truck. It had a worn-out transmission and the rearend was shot. One of the wheel bearings in the rearend wore out and it was so bad that the axle wore a hole thru the top of the rearend housing. I bought a '56 Chevy car and put the entire drive chain from the car into the truck. There were some exciting moments during the process from getting the car to the base to finishing the project. While towing the car to the base, my buddy popped the clutch and started the car. It had a carburetor from a Caddy and the gas pedal linkage worked the opposite of the Chevy and after it started and he let up on the gas, it revved up and was running wide open. This happened to be on the bridge on to Cape Cod and there was a traffic circle at the bottom end of the bridge. He shut it down and didn't try again the rest of the way to the base.

Looking back, hindsight being 20/20, I might have been better off getting rid of the truck and keeping the car, but for some reason I preferred the truck over the car.

Psychic Car Repair

2009-05-04T10:09:00.004-04:00

I drove the Corvair out to Cape Cod. One day it wouldn't start and after checking things out, I figured out that it wasn't getting any gas to the carburetors. I thought it was the fuel pump and got another one from an auto parts store. After changing the pump, it still wouldn't start. Finally found the problem, there was a piece of rubber hose in the gas line where you could disconnect it to remove the engine. It was underneath the engine at the front end of the engine. For some reason I didn't feel like making another trip to the parts store, so I just wrapped it with electrical tape and was able to get it running. Some time later, it might have been a couple of weeks later, I was driving around the area and the car sputtered and died. It would not restart, so I just pushed in the clutch and coasted into a parking lot. While the car was still moving, I said "I think the rubber hose in the gas line at the front of the engine let go." There was an auto parts store within sight, so we hiked to it and I bought some rubber hose to replace the piece on the gas line. After making the repair and we were on our way, one of the guys with me was amazed that I had diagnosed the problem before the car had even stopped moving. I never did let him know that I knew what the problem was because of the half-assed fix I had done before.

Screwing With The Lifers' Minds

2009-04-29T16:01:00.007-04:00

One thing that those of us on the first (and usually only enlistment) liked to do was screw with the minds of lifers. It was fairly easy most of time, or so we thought at the time. One day at Otis while standing around and bullshitting, me and a buddy decided to mess with the shop supervisor's mind. We went into his office and announced we were going to let our hair grow long and grow beards. After he picked himself up off the floor (figuratively), he asked why we thought we could get away with letting our hair grow long and growing beards. My buddy said he was Irish and the Irish used to have long hair and beards. I said I was Scandihoovian and the Vikings had long hair and beards and those funny hats with the horns on them. ( My cousin was in the Navy at the same time and after I told him about this, he would threaten his supervisors that he would start wearing a funny hat with horns on it like the Vikings had.) We said since the blacks could grow Afros because it was part of their ethnic heritage, we thought it would only be fair for us to be allowed to follow our ethnic heritage. In truth I was a little pissed at the hair policy because if my hair started to creep over my ears, I'd get told to get a haircut, but blacks could have an Afro that stuck out an inch.

Now we really didn't mean to grow our hair or beards, but somebody took us seriously. It was either later that day or the next day we had to go see the zebra (lots of stripes E-7,E-8, or E-9) who was the supervisor over all the shops in field maintenance. He chewed us out and told us that there was no way we could grow our hair or have beards. We told him we thought we were being discriminated against and he kinda agreed but said there was nothing anybody could do about it.

Looking back, this may explain why I had to get a haircut in order to process out of the squadron when I was discharged. I probably would have fought more if I hadn't been getting an early out. Tricky Dicky cut the budget and they couldn't afford to pay me so they kicked me out almost 4 months early, but that's another story for another time.

Iceland

2009-04-16T09:05:00.007-04:00

One of my fond memories of Iceland is when some guys from my unit went and added airplanes to the Marine Corps Globe and Anchor on the Marine barracks. Someone cut out a stencil silhouette of the Super Connie (See pic in last post below) and used it to paint blue planes on the globe on both sides of North America. The emblem was on the end of the barracks next to a second floor window and they wondered how it got painted. We had vans like bread trucks and they backed it up to the building, got on top of the truck and did the deed, dropped down and drove away!! Afterwards, they posted an armed guard to prevent it happening again. Jarheads have no sense of humor!! I got a chuckle seeing the bright yellow places where they painted over the planes.

Below is a picture of two radar planes showing the before and after. The Connie is in the foreground and the AWACS is in the background. I used to say the Super Connie had a million dollars worth of electronics in a two-bit airplane. They were all built in the 50's and while searching the Intratubes I found out they didn't get replaced by the AWACS planes until '78!!

Below is a picture of the base at Keflavik, Iceland. Another thing I learned will looking for pictures of Keflavik was that the base closed in 2006. There is no active base left that I was at while on active duty. This picture is probably a fairly recent picture as it looks like there is an airline terminal in the foreground. When I was there the airport terminal for the airlines was in the middle of the base which is in the background of the picture. There is a large building on the center left of the background that might be the hanger I worked in.

One of my souvenirs of Iceland is a transistor radio. It's about the size of a paperback book and has two bands labeled LW (am band) and MW. There was Armed Forces Radio and TV on the base with a radio station on the AM band. There was an Icelandic station on the MW band. One day I had it on the Icelandic station and left the room to go take a shower. When I came back the radio had English coming out of it. I asked my roommate if he had changed the radio to the American station and he said no. Turned out the Icelandic station would alternate between speaking in Icelandic and English. The music was music which is why I had it on the Icelandic station. As for the MW band, after I got back to the states, the only thing I could get on that band was weather.

Armed Forces Radio and TV also had a TV Station. It would come on late in the afternoon and be on all evening. Some of the shows I remember were the original "Lassie" show (where Timmy didn't have a father) and others from the 50's.

When I did Spell-Check it wanted to replace Keflavik with cleavage, but that would be another story!!

New Orders

2009-04-10T10:42:00.004-04:00

I had been at K.I.Sawyer less than a year when one day I got a call from the orderly (never could figure out why it was called that) room and told to go there. When I got there,they said there was a new set of orders for me. The orders were for Otis AFB, MA. I was asked if I would except the orders or was there some reason why I would turn them down. I did some quick mental arithmetic (I still could do that then as I was still young) and figured out that I had a little over a year left on my enlistment and with a minimum of 6 months on a PCS (Permanent Change of Station) I would have less than a year left on my enlistment and no long have enough time left to be eligible for a tour in 'Nam. So of course I said, "I don't see any reason why I could turn down these orders."

I took some leave and then headed for Cape Cod. When I got to the base and turned into the Main Gate, I got a surprise. Instead of a Sky Cop in the shack guarding the base, there was a huge sign on the building saying incoming personal report to building number.... I thought this is great, how in the hell am I supposed to know where this building is?? I drove on to the base down a divided highway for a ways and came to a traffic circle (my welcome to Cape Cod was a traffic circle [or is it a roundabout] at the foot of the bridge on to Cape Cod) and looked around and headed for the nearest building with a flag pole in front. In the building, after looking at my orders, they called the shop where I would be working and someone came to lead me to the shop.

At the Sheetmetal Shop I got introduced to everybody there at the time. When talking to the supervisor, one of the first things he asked me was, "How would you like to go to Iceland next month??" I said, "Not really." He said, "Well, you don't have a choice. Everybody has already been up there and now it's your turn." Turned out 'Everybody' was all the white guys, the black guys got sent to Thailand for their TDY. Since the big one, WWII, Iceland wouldn't let blacks in the country because of something that happened during the war. The guy that was up in Iceland decided to stay another month to get some more per diem (at the time only a couple bucks a day), so I had a little more time to get settled in before leaving.

When I was to fly up to Iceland, we got delayed by fog. I noticed that a guy going up from the Avionics Shop was black. I walked over to the shop and told my supervisor that there was a black guy going up from the EM Squadron. He said they would send him back on the return flight. Well, he flew up with me and flew back with me 30 days later. NATO had pressured Iceland and they were finally allowing blacks in the country. When I told my supervisor that on my return, his reply was that our squadron still wouldn't send blacks up there.

Iceland was interesting, I was there from the first week in May until the first week in June and I wore my parka everyday except the day I got there. There were no trees within sight. Everyday we had to sweep the lava dust out of the hanger. We worked 12 hour days, six days a week. We had EC-121 Super Constellations that were the predecessors of AWACS. We would send them out to patrol the North Atlantic using its radar to keep track of the Russian planes.
Once the plane was launched we didn't have much to do other than the daily sweeping of the hanger. I learned many different types of solitaire and worked on a lot of jigsaw puzzles. After the plane came back we would go out and service it. That included wiping off all the oil from the engines, (I used to say they didn't fly, they slid thru the air on their own oil slick) filling the gas tanks and of course pumping the oil tank full. On an eight hour flight it could use about 40 gallons of oil.

More K.I.

2009-04-09T11:32:00.004-04:00

I would have liked to post some pictures from my time at K.I.Sawyer, but at this time I don't know where they would be if I still have any pictures left of that period in time. I'm pretty sure that at one time I took a picture of my little white Corvair buried in a snowdrift with just the orange ball on the antenna sticking out. There would be times when the base would be shut down because of snow. I would bust my ass getting my car out of the snow where it was parked and leave the base so I wouldn't get shanghaied into shoveling snow on base. Looking back on it, I probably worked harder at getting my car unstuck than I would have if I had stayed in the barracks. (Sometimes people work harder at getting out of work than they would if they just did the job.)

During times like that (base closed because of snowstorms) driving past the end of the runway to get to the main gate would involve driving in 'White Out' conditions. Once while riding with someone else, I got to witness an accident. The guy rear-ended another car in the white out. If memory serves me correctly, it was the guy whose radiator sprung a leak it the 'radio move' and the repaired radiator sprung a leak again.

Moustache

2009-04-08T14:18:00.003-04:00

After I got to my first permanent base (Dow) I was allowed to grow a moustache if I kept it within the limits set in the regulations. As I was only shaving once a week at the time it took awhile to grow enough fuzz on my upper lip to have a moustache. When I first grew a moustache it was so blond that the picture on my ID looked like I had a fat lip. One of the black guys I worked with once suggested I use mascara on my moustache to make it show up better. I never put anything on it, just kept it trimmed according to the regs, although at times I pushed the envelope by letting it extend past the corners of my mouth.

As for the shaving bit, there were times when by Friday it would look like maybe I forgot to shave that morning. It took five days to get a Five-O-Clock shadow!! Sunday night I would shave and be good for another week.

New Fangled Tire Repair

2009-04-01T10:42:00.003-04:00

One day I got a flat tire on my car. I took the flat to the base gas station on K.I. They said they had a new way to patch flat tires. I don't remember if it was a nail or a stone that poked a hole in the tire, but anywho, they reamed out the hole and glued a plug in the hole. The spare tire on my Corvair sat above the engine in back. I guess the heat from the engine was too much for the repair on the tire as after awhile (I don't remember how many days it was) the plug blew out of the tire and it was flat again. I took it back and they put a patch on the inside of the tire and I didn't have a problem with it again.
One of my cousins said that at about the same time period he had a flat tire and took it to a gas station. The owner of the station says "I got a new way to fix flats. I don't have to take the tire off the rim to repair it." He proceeded to ream out the hole and install a plug. After that my cousin told him, "But that tire has a tube in it."

Traffic Lights

2009-03-16T14:28:00.004-04:00

Something recently reminded me about the traffic lights in Maine. I had had very little experience with traffic lights before being stationed in Bangor. I had spent most of my life up 'til then in the sticks where you had to go to a big town to see traffic lights, at most there were only a few flashing caution lights or a flashing 4 way stop light in the county. When I got to Bangor, ME I saw a traffic signal I had never seen before and very seldom since. I was familiar with the traditional traffic signal with the red, yellow and green lights, but I had never seen one before where both the red and yellow were lit up at the same time in all directions. Turns out that was the walk signal in Maine. In a way it makes sense as all traffic would be stopped when people are crossing the streets and would probably be safer.

That was one of the things I learned when I went to driving school at the Dow Airplane Patch motor pool to get my military driver's license. They covered a lot of things, but the guy teaching the course probably had less driving experience (at the end of Basic Training I remember one guy who had never driven a car getting orders to be driver in the motor pool at K.I.Sawyer) than I did, certainly less winter driving experience as I got into an argument with him about driving on snow and ice. He said that if you go into a skid on snow or ice on a curve, you should apply the brakes. That may be what the book told him, but my experiences had taught me that that was a good way to wind up in the ditch. Which is exactly what I told him. I said you should ease up on the gas and steer into the skid to get the car under control and once you got it straightened out you could gently apply the gas. On the test at the end of the course I answered the questions with the info we were given in the class and passed so I could get my license to drive military vehicles.

Moving The Radio

2009-03-03T11:19:00.004-05:00

My roommate got married and moved off-base. He took most of his stuff with him, but one of the things he left to be moved at a later date was an old floor model radio. One day me and another guy decided to bring the radio to where the roommate now lived. The radio was big enough that it wouldn't fit in my car, a '64 Corvair 2dr coupe. The other guy had a Chevy Impala convertible, so we decided to use it to haul the radio. We had trouble trying to get it into the car until we put the top down and then just lifted it up and over into the back seat. If we had laid it down on its side on the back seat, we could have put the top back up. We decided that because we would have to put the top down to remove the radio that we would just leave the top down. In hindsight, putting the top up might have been a good idea as the temperature was about -10 degrees. Anywho, with the heater on high we made the trip to deliver the radio. We got some funny looks from other drivers, especially when we would wave over the top of the windshield. We managed to make the trip without getting frostbite, but the trip back was not so lucky. After consuming a number of beers while warming up (it took a long time, several hours), we headed back to the base. It was a little drunk (a little drunk, maybe a lot) out and doing crazy things like sliding around curves and corners caused us to hit a frozen snowbank. We didn't get stuck in the snowbank, but it caused the radiator to spring a leak. We made it back to the main gate at the base before the car overheated (in below zero weather no less).

Lifer

2009-03-03T11:11:00.003-05:00

After Basic and Tech School, I was stationed at three bases, K.I.Sawyer being the second one. There was a Lifer in the 62nd that had basically spent his entire career with the unit. Other than a couple of tours to 'Nam, he had spent his 26 years with the 62nd. 26 years was one of the magic numbers for retiring from the military because there was a large uptick in retirement pay at the 26 year mark. Anywho, this guy had started with the unit when it was still at O'Hare in Chicago before the 62nd moved up to K.I.

KP

2009-02-20T14:31:00.002-05:00

This afternoon I was listening to Radio Free Georgia and they were talking about the Military Industrial Complex. When they mentioned KBR building bases in Vietnam back in the 60's, it reminded me that this business of privatizing parts of the military is not new. While I was in the military, I only had to pull a few hours of KP and that was because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. We were supposed to do KP while in basic, but our T.I. or D.I. swapped with another flight and we pulled guard duty instead. When I got stuck with KP, I hadn't gotten my pass yet to leave the base so I was in the barracks dayroom watching TV on a Saturday night when a guy came in and rounded up everyone there to go do KP because either someone screwed up the scheduling or a bunch didn't show up for KP. So I got to spend the rest of that night working in the chow hall.

When I got to my first permanent base, everyone was supposed to do a week of KP when they first got there. I never had to because they had hired civilian workers to work in the chow hall. The only military working in the chow hall were those who specialty was food service. All the serving, cleaning pots and pans, peeling potatoes and the other shitty jobs were now done by civilians.

Like I said privatizing is not new. The other day I realized that as of the end of January I have been a free man for 39 years. If you think my saying I became a free man is like getting out of prison, there are many similarities between an enlistment and a prison sentence. (Sometimes the option was either join the military or go to jail, but not in my case.) They even gave me time off for good behavior. Altho the way it was phrased on my DD214 was, "Early Release Due To Budgetary Limitations"!!

More Games

2009-02-18T12:01:00.000-05:00

Back in the day we used to make up funny ways of answering the phone. Like; "County Morgue, you stab'em, we'll slab'em" or "County Morgue, you kill'em, we'll chill'em". One day the phone in the shop rang and someone answered with; "Maggie's Whorehouse, we don't give a fuck for nothing". Turned out the caller was from the Squadron office and may even have been the Squadron Commander (memory escapes me at this time), whoever was very surprised but not as surprised as the one who answered the phone in that manner when he found out who was calling. Needless to say he hang up immediately. A minute or so later the phone rang again and someone else answered in the normal manner giving the name of the shop and name and rank of the person answering the phone. When asked who had answered the phone earlier, the answer was that the phone hadn't rang all morning until just now.

Sometimes someone would come back into the shop after being out of the shop to work on an airplane or for some other reason and when they walked in would be handed a note with a phone number on it and told to call it. Usually it would be a number for Dial-A-Prayer or something similar. (Yes we did have dial phones back them, rotary dial phones.)

New guys were called Jeeps for some reason that I never found out. Anywho, the green guys would have various tricks played on them. One day a guy came in the shop looking for 50 ft of flightline. (The flightline is where the airplanes were parked). He said he was told that we might have some. We told him that we did have some flightline but we couldn't just give it away, however we would be willing to trade for it. When asked what we wanted for 50 ft of flightline, we said we would trade for a bucket of propwash (the air moving behind the propeller.) The guy didn't even question why we wanted propwash when all our planes were jets! This guy didn't work directly on the planes and that may explain why he fell for the gag.

Hamtramck West

2009-02-11T11:40:00.003-05:00

One of the guys I knew at K.I. was Polish. He was happy being there because it was far enough away from Hamtramck (at the time a Polish neighborhood in Detroit) that he didn't hear many Polock jokes, just Finlander jokes. Every once in a while he would tell me about his scheme for becoming rich and tell me about it as he thought up new ideas. First he would develop plastic coated paperclips (he was slightly ahead of his time) and convince the government to replace the regular paperclips with plastic coated ones as they would save on wear and tear on the paperwork. After the government had filled the supply chain with plastic coated paperclips, he would introduce new and improved color-coded plastic coated paperclips. You could have red for Top Secret, yellow for Secret, and blue and green and other colors for other classifications. Of course the government would have to buy the all-new color-coded plastic coated paperclips even though they are fully stocked with the plain plastic coated paperclips. After making his fortune by selling the plastic coated paperclips (color-coded and otherwise) he would invest his money and develop Hamtramck West. He would buy up some desert land out west and build his town. At first he had trouble figuring out how to build basements in the sand, then he hit on the idea of using large shipping crates like they use for shipping household goods overseas. Just sink several of them together in the sand and roof them over and you have a ready made basement. He didn't plan on putting a house on the basements as Poles just lived in the basement anyway. (Jean Shepherd [he wrote A Christmas Story, the one that ran for 24 hours on TBS last Xmas] wrote a story about a Polish family living in the basement while the upstairs part of the house went unused. They even painted the furnace robin's egg blue.) I think the only industry he planned for his town was a brewery.

Playing A Game With Coke Bottles

2009-02-06T15:16:00.004-05:00

Yesterday when The Old Lady mentioned her co-worker and the Mexican Coke and how she had never had coke in a glass bottle before, it reminded me of when cokes came in glass bottles in the coke machine (soda machine for some and pop machine for the rest). I don't remember doing this at K.I. (we might have done it, I just don't remember at this time) but I do remember playing a game with coke bottles while I was in Maine. Coke bottles used to have the city and state of the bottling plant molded into the bottom of the bottle. (No, it didn't say open other end!!) What we would do is decide before going over to the coke machine whether the loser would be the closest or farthest from Bangor. After everyone got a bottle of coke out of the machine, we would all look at the bottom to see where it was from. The loser would give everybody else their dime back.(Yes, they were only a dime back then.) At the most there would only be about 6 or 7 of us in the shop at any one time.

I guess I'm showing my age when I'm writing about coke machines having glass bottles in them, not cans or plastic bottles. So Be It!!

Skis

2009-02-05T10:42:00.004-05:00

While I was at K.I. I bought a set of skis, boots and poles from another GI. But because I broke my leg that fall and didn't get my leg out of the cast until the middle of Jan. and then my ankle was too stiff after being immobile for months means I never got a chance use those skis. Also the doctor (the real one, the orthopedic specialist who operated, not the Air Force one) told me not to try skiing that winter. Anywho, before winter was over I got orders for Cape Cod (that's another story) and so I left the skis, boots and poles at the Ranch.

While I was gone putting in the rest of my hitch, someone broke in and stole my skis and boots. The poles were not in plain sight, so they missed them and the poles were all I had left of my ski outfit. I didn't feel like replacing the skis and I never did ski at a commercial ski hill.

I had been looking forward to skiing at a ski hill with lifts and groomed trails etc..... From the time I was a little kid I had been skiing, but it was on the hills around home and with old skis with binders made out of circles of rubber cut out of innertubes. The innertubes for car tires were kinda weak and you would need two or three on each foot.

More About Getting Home

2009-01-30T14:20:00.006-05:00

I usually would wait until the beginning of May before trying to drive into the Ranch UP on the tundra when the driveway (or road) hadn't been plowed all winter. If memory serves me right, at the time my car died it was snowing. My brother who lived UP on the tundra was following me the last 30 miles from his house to the Ranch when the '58 T-Bird died. He tried to tow it with his car, but because it was snowing, he wasn't able to pull it up the hills and we left it about 5 miles from home. Later I used my dad's pickup to tow it home. (Re: the Ranch, one of my teachers in high school started calling the place the Ranch. I told him that it was a farm and he said anyplace with acreage is a ranch out west, so I figured 'What the Hell' and have been calling it the Ranch since.)

It seems like most of the time when I would come home from farther away it would snow unless I came home in July. But it has snowed in July and every other month of the year at one time or another. My roommate at K.I. bitched about how it had snowed every month the previous year.

Anywho, the first week of May was the time I would plan on so as to be able to drive in without getting stuck in the snow. Sometimes there would still be snow in the shady areas of the driveway and it would take several tries to make it thru the snow.

At this point in time I have moved the timeline up to April. It would depend on what kind of winter it was as to whether it would be the middle of April or earlier.

Some Adventures at K.I.

2009-01-25T11:17:00.005-05:00

This is a picture of a F-101-B with the 62nd markings on it. I ran into one of the people involved in repainting the plane last year. He said it isn't one of the original 62nd planes, that when it was decided to get one for static display at K.I. none of the planes that had been there was available anymore.

As I mentioned in the post about when I got orders for K.I.Sawyer that I thought I would be able to spend time in the old stomping grounds, or so I thought. That summer I had 3 full weekends off where I could go home. Whenever someone would ask how far home was from the base, I would say it depends on whether it is Summer or Winter. They would say what difference would that make and I would say that they don't plow my shortcut in the Winter. It was about 80 miles in Summer and 100 miles in Winter. What ruined most of my weekends was practicing for ORI or TAC-EVAL on most Saturdays and I didn't feel like driving all that way for just one day. Oh, those 3 weekends, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day (Labor Day only because one of the guys in the shop covered my stand-by for me.) Stand-by was where you were on call if they needed someone from your shop at night or on weekends.

ORI and TAC-EVAL were supposed to be surprise inspections to determine how well you can play War Games. The times for these were supposed to be secret so that it would be a surprise when the inspection team came to the base. Rumor had it that the Squadron knew almost to the minute when the inspections would be held. Because of all the practicing I didn't have many free weekends.

One memorable event was when I broke my leg when I fell off the wing of one of our planes. I got called out one night to remove some screws from a panel that the flight line guy couldn't get out. (I was on stand-by that week and got called out at night.) On the Squadron level, screw removal went to Sheetmetal because we didn't have a machine shop whose job screw removal would normally be. When I got up on the plane and asked what screws were the ones that wouldn't come out, the guy pointed at a couple. The panel only had a few screw removed and probably 95% of the screws hadn't been touched. I asked if he had tried getting all the screws out and he said no because he knew that sheetmetal would have to get called out because he had a couple that wouldn't come out. I told him I wasn't going to take all the screws out because he found a couple he couldn't get out. Told him to try getting the rest of the screws out and then call me again. The flightline guy had leaned a ladder used to get into the cockpit of a T-33 against the wing of the F-101 and when I went to get down from the wing it slipped out from under me and I came down tangled up in the ladder and broke my leg. (Did I mention before that we used call Crew Chiefs [flightline types] glorified gas station attendants. Fill up the gas, check the oil, and change tires.) I should have refused to go up on the wing until there was a proper stand to do so, but I just wanted to get it over with and go back to the barracks and back to sleep.

When the ambulance got there, they had me hobble out to the ambulance between two guys instead of on a stretcher. They put me up front, probably because I had to give directions to the driver on how to get off the flightline and back to the hospital.

Because of the broken leg, I got to watch the Olympics on TV. The break was a bad one in that it broke on a spiral instead of straight across. Not one of the base doctors knew how to set a bone because basically they would have been Interns or Residents in a civilian hospital. It took them 3 weeks to figure out what they were going to do with my leg. Finally they had an Orthopedic Specialist come out from the Medical Center in town and operate on my leg. He broke the bone again and set it and put a bolt through both bones above the ankle to hold the short piece of bone in place. A couple of months later an Air Force doctor removed the bolt under a local. First he cut open one side along the scar and found the nut. He started to turn the nut and wondered why it wouldn't come off.(Did I mention I was screaming in pain all the while and someone was holding me down on the table.) I think I told him it's a bolt and you need to get at both ends. He snipped the nut off and cut open the other side of my leg to pull the bolt out. When it was installed, there was a bolt, nut and two washers all stainless steel. What got removed was a bolt, nut, and one washer. When I went back to have the stitches removed, they took a X-ray of my leg and the washer showed up on the X-ray. The doctor said he wasn't going back in to remove it and I said "You damn right you ain't"!! As far I know it is still there just above the ankle.

Musical Cars

2009-01-23T12:53:00.007-05:00

This is the car I left Maine in. The picture was taken at my brother's house in Taxachuesetts while on my way home from Maine. It's a '58 T-Bird that I paid $50 for and put another $50 or so into it and some time to fix it to the point where it was drivable.

This is the garage on the Ranch UP on the tundra where the T-Bird got parked after it died and had to be towed the last 6 miles. 200 miles from home one of the mufflers fell off and helped to keep me awake thru the night. 100 miles from home the transmission lost Drive and I had to drive in 2. About 6 miles from home it died with a bang and a cloud of smoke and had to be towed the rest of the way. It sat in the garage for about a year and a half until it got replaced with another car that died while I was on the way home from Cape Cod. A couple of years after the T-Bird died I swapped junk cars with a friend and he changed engine&transmission in the T-Bird, patched some of the rust on the body and drove it up the AlCan to Fairbanks,AK and back.

This is the car I used when I went to K.I.Sawyer. I had bought this car the year before while home on leave. The reason the parking/turnsignal lights look to be covered by the bumper is that when I bought the car it didn't have a front bumper and the base required a front bumper on which to place the sticker that got you waved onto the base. I happened to have a front bumper for a '57 Ford but obviously there were changes and it didn't fit quite right on a '56 Ford. While at K.I. I bought a '64 Corvair and parked the '56 Ford. While my brother was rebuilding the engine on his car, he borrowed the Ford. Afterwards he said he would go broke buying oil for that car as it used so much. He brought a 5 gallon can of SAE 30 motor oil home from the mine where he worked. I used that oil in everything that required some kind of oil. (Engine, Automatic Transmission and Power Steering.) I eventually sold it for what I paid for it, $50. I have bought more cars for $50 than any other price!! At the time that was a popular price for beater cars.

Orders For My Next Base

2009-01-21T10:52:00.007-05:00

When I arrived at Dow Airplane Patch, I was told the base was going to be shut down in less than two years. Six or seven months before the scheduled closure of the base we all got to put in for base of choice and country of choice. When I was finally notified of where I would be stationed next, I was very surprised. It was K.I. Sawyer AFB, MI. I thought, cool I'll be close to home and get to spend some time on the old stomping grounds. (Turned out to be a lot less time than I had hoped.)

Above is a decal of the 62nd, the Squadron that I was assigned to at K.I. The bulldog was named Tige and I heard that at one time they actually had a dog for a mascot.

After our aircraft were gone, we spent some time going through our inventory of equipment and trying to come up with all that was on the list. If we had extras then we would dispose of them somehow. I wound up with some tools to take to my next base. I packed them along with the uniforms I would not need for awhile in my duffel bag. It weighted over 100 pounds. I had it shipped by the military (when I found out I could ship it for free courtesy of Uncle Sam, I decided to ship it rather than haul it myself), but hindsight being 20/20 I should have thrown it in the trunk of my car and hauled it myself. After I dropped my duffel bag off to be shipped I never saw it again. I didn't miss the uniforms, as a matter of fact I never replaced the lost uniforms. What I did miss was the tools and stuff I had managed to scrounge before leaving.

My next post I will show the car I left Maine with and the car I arrived at K.I.Sawyer with.

Wind Chill Factor

2009-01-16T10:39:00.005-05:00

All the talk lately about what the wind chill temp is in different parts of the country reminded me of what they used back in the day. They didn't bother breaking it down to the degree, instead it was grouped in 'Wind Chill Factors'. There were 4 Wind Chill Factors with 4 being the most severe. The chart would have various shaded areas for the different Wind Chill Factors. The one below is almost like the ones I remember as it is the only one I could find that had 4 zones as to 3 on the other charts I was able to find.

One amusing tale from my time in the land of Mainiacs concerning the Wind Chill Factor. One time they decided to play war games (practice how long it would take to load weapons on our fighters) when the Wind Chill Factor was 4 in which exposed flesh freezes in seconds. As my specialty as a tin tacker (tin bender, whatever) wasn't needed for anything on the airplanes, they had me manning the speedy dry cart. Speedy dry or oil dry is like cat litter and used to soak up oil and other liquids that may spill on the ground so people won't slip in it. On this particular day there wasn't an ounce of speedy dry on the entire base let alone on the speedy dry cart I was manning. If I remember correctly, I even had to go thru the motions of using the imaginary speedy dry while I was out there freezing my ass off!!

Flying

2009-01-08T08:42:00.003-05:00

Doing the post about flying home reminded me of something. Northeast Airlines used the base runway and had what looked like a shack off to the side of the base near the street that ran along one side of the base. Anywho, there were many days when the B-52's and KC-135's of Sac Sucks and our fighters weren't flying because of the weather. The cloud ceiling would be too low or it would be foggy and the military planes would be grounded. Then we would hear either a Northeast DC-6 or DC-9 come in for a landing and taxi over to their terminal? Then a little while later it would take off again, all the while the military planes sat on the ground.

We used to joke about how we had all-weather interceptors and fair-weather pilots. We were sure that in Squadron Operations they had an index card with a hole in the middle and colored blue on one side. Someone from Ops would come outside and hold the card up and if the sky in hole in the card matched the blue on the card, then it was OK to fly.

Flying Home

2009-01-07T10:28:00.004-05:00

While I was stationed in Maine, I flew home on leave. The first leg was on Northeast Airlines.

At the time they were calling these planes "Yellowbird" and used a song about a yellowbird in their commercials. The plane I flew on was a DC-9 like the one pictured. They also used DC-6's to fly in and out of Bangor. After flying from Bangor to Boston, I flew to Chicago on one of the major airlines, which I don't remember which one anymore. I do remember I was flying stand-by and as a result got to fly this leg First Class as those were the only seats left when it was my turn to board. Had my first Vodka Martini and enjoyed it, especially when drinks in First Class were free!!

From Chicago to UP on the tundra, I flew on North Central Airlines. They liked to call themselves the Blue Goose, but some who worked for them and some of us passengers called it the Ruptured Duck!! This plane is a Convair 580, which is the type of plane that I flew on this trip. Eventually all of their fleet was DC-9's before becoming Republic Airlines when they merged with Southern Airlines. Later they bought Hughes Air West which also had DC-9's. The Hughes Air West planes were solid yellow and after Republic bought them, they did an ad saying they were peeling the top banana in which they peeled off the yellow Hughes Air West colors to reveal the Republic colors underneath. (This was about 15 years after my trip.)

A Promotion That Wasn't A Promotion

2009-01-01T11:00:00.006-05:00

While I was at Dow Airplane Patch, I went from Airman Second Class to Airman First Class, but never received any more money each month. When I enlisted, the ranks were E-1 Airman Basic; E-2 Airman Third Class; E-3 Airman Second Class; E-4 Airman First Class. Between the time that I made E-3 and E-4 they changed the titles for the lower ranks. Then E-1 was still Airman Basic, but E-2 became Airman; E-3 became Airman First Class; and E-4 became Sergeant. The rationale was that there were no Third or Second Class Airmen. Also the E-4's were allowed membership at the NCO clubs and by calling them Sergeant, it made them the same as the rest of the NCO's.

My life has had a number of little ironies and this is one of them.

Infinite Wisdom of the Military

2008-12-22T10:09:00.004-05:00

Before I got half way thru my hitch, I knew the military wasn't for me. A couple of examples of the military intelligence that led me to that conclusion are as follows. They sent us a guy who was a painter. We needed an aircraft painter and they sent us a house painter. This guy had about a dozen years of working in Civil Engineers as a painter, painting buildings, houses and other things around the base. When he arrived and was told he would be painting aircraft, he said OK give me a brush and a roller and I'll get at it. Aircraft painting is almost all done with a spray gun. After trying it for a few months and deciding that that type of painting was not for him, he got another job. They put him temporarily in Training. After some months in Training, he got orders that would cross-train him and he would be permanently in Training. When he got those orders he decided to get out of the military even tho he was more than half way to getting in the 20 years needed for retirement.

Another example was the guy that helped me learn what I needed to pass the SKT test for the next skill level in my job. He was what they called a squared away troop. He would spend half the night working on a plane that needed to be fixed immediately and go home for a few hours sleep and put on fresh fatigues and shine his boots and be back first thing in the morning. He really knew his stuff when it came to doing sheelmetal work on aircraft. That's why the Coonass sent us over to the SAC (SAC Sucks) sheetmetal shop for him to teach us more about aircraft sheetmetal than the basics we had learned in Tech School. It's about the only smart thing my supervisor did. One day out of the blue, he got orders saying he would be cross-trained into missiles. He was smart enough that he would have done a very good job at whatever he did, but the guy loved the job he was doing and no way did he want to change jobs. He decided to get out even tho he only needed a hitch or two to get his 20 in. These are a couple of examples of the infinite wisdom of the military.

Learning New Words

2008-12-17T14:20:00.008-05:00

I was an innocent young 19 year old when I got to Dow Airplane Patch. I learned many new things including many new words and phrases. I don't think I had ever had a sub before and there they were called 'guinea grinders' or just grinders. After being called a 'jabroni' a number of times I learned that it meant 'fucking asshole' in Italian. I have never been able to figure out why Italians are called guineas. Worked with a guy back in the nineties that called himself the 'Mini Guinea'. He said that somewhere along the line lots of Italians were working for a guinea a day and that's why they were called guineas and the name stuck.

I learned that a 'Coonass' was a Cajun from Louisiana. My supervisor was a Coonass and so I didn't have a very good opinion of Coonasses because of that. Let's just say I didn't think he was the brightest bulb in the chandelier. They sent us another Coonass straight out of basic to become a welder and he was an even dimmer bulb.

Learned about Down East, which is a direction. According to Wikipedia it refers to the Maine coast from Penobscot Bay to the Canadian Border. Another is when sailing from Boston to Maine, you would go downwind to go East and on the return you would go up to Boston.

When I was there the people were Mainiacs, now they prefer to be called Mainers. I still like Mainiacs and the Air National Guard unit at Bangah (Bangor) still called themselves Mainiacs when I was back there in the mid-80's. While I was stationed there the Guard had F-89's that were pretty much useless. I heard that when our F-101's were flying target for their F-89's, they would sometimes get on the radio and say slow down so we can catch you. When I was back in the 80's they were a tanker unit. I got one of their decals and put it on my toolbox.

I learned how to talk like a Mainiac, and could do a passable Down East accent. A friend (a Mainiac) turned me on to the records Bert and I. If you click on the link you can listen to several of the bits on the Bert and I records. These records helped me get my Mainiac accent right. When I was about to go back there in the 80's, I used the accent to talk to the guys I was working with who were going up to Bangah. They said I was bullshitting them, that nobody talks like that. After we had been there awhile and the leadman had meet the family of waitress he hooked up with, he said, not only did they talk like I had, their accent was so thick he couldn't understand it!!

Aiyah, ain't no sonuva whorah in Bangah can beat my caw!! Aiyah!!

Common Knowledge

2008-12-15T14:29:00.005-05:00

It was common knowledge when I was in the Air Farce, no wait, that's a show on Canadian TV. Anywho, the common knowledge was that when someone flunked out of tech school they became either a cook or a skycop. One example that may prove this was when a guy I knew was removing the engine from his Volvo 544. It had a rod knock or some other problem that required a tear down. With the help of several friends he disconnected everything from the engine and four guys picked up the engine and removed it from the car. As they were about to remove it, a skycop (Air Police) walked by and said, "You know you are not allowed to do major maintenance in the parking lot." The owner of the car said, "I'm just going to overhaul the engine." The skycop said, "OK" and walked on. They carried the engine and later the transmission up to the guys room where he tore the engine apart to see what was required to repair it. We had weekly barracks inspections and before the inspection he put the engine, trans, and related parts in an empty locker. Later he took everything to the Auto Hobby Shop and rebuilt the engine.

I heard skycops would get so bored walking around guarding the airplanes that they would count the rivets on a panel on the plane. I can think of better ways to spend the day or night than walking around an airplane with a rifle in all kinds of weather.

New Photo

2008-12-11T10:59:00.008-05:00

Just put a picture at the bottom of the blog. It is the F-117A built by Lockheed in the Skunk Works. The Skunk Works were started and run by Kelly Johnson (originally from UP on the tundra) and was where many aircraft were developed and made, starting during WWII and continuing to the present day. He had retired by the time that I worked there. Some of the planes are the U-2, the SR-71, the F-104 and the Stealth Fighter among others. I worked on building the first 7 or 8 of the F-117A's while working in Beautiful Downtown Burbank.

What was ironic was that at the Lockheed Employee Store you could buy jackets, t-shirts, caps and other stuff with the Skunk Works Logo or ADP (Advanced Development Projects) on them, but those of us that actually worked there were told not to buy or wear anything with those on them. That way no one would ask questions that we could not answer.

This was another cool aircraft that I worked on. While working on it I could not tell my family about it. The Old Lady swears that while we were in La-La Land that our phone was tapped. Sometimes while talking to a friend, the connection would not be clear and her friend would ask what is wrong with the phone. The Old Lady would say, "Lockheed has a tap on the line, so we can't talk about state secrets, but we can talk about the drug deal that's going down". There would be a click and the phone would clear up!!

F-101B&T-33

2008-12-10T14:21:00.009-05:00

This is a picture of a F-101B after landing with the drag chute deployed. This is the type of aircraft I worked on while at Dow Airplane Patch and at K.I.Sawyer (which I will get to after I get done with my time in Maine). This is not one of the planes that I worked on, but it is one of the better photos I was able to find on the intratubes.

This is a picture of a T-33A. Again this is not one that I worked on. We had F-101B&F and T-33A aircraft in the unit. It was on these types of aircraft that I learned the ins and outs of aircraft repair. We did less work on the T-33's than on the F-101's but the F-101's were flown a lot more than the T-33's. What was interesting about the T-33 was that when the jet engine needed to be removed for maintenance, the whole tail was removed, and then the engine was removed.

Behind the engines under the tail of the F-101 were titanium shingles because of the heat from the exhaust. This was my first encounter with titanium, but not the last by any means. About the only thing I had to do with these titanium panels was to punch holes in new ones when one needed to be replaced.

At the time I thought these planes were old as the F-101's were around 10 years old and the T-birds were older yet. Today some of the planes the services are using are 20 years old or more.

Picture In The Header

2008-12-09T13:34:00.007-05:00

These aircraft are the coolest that I ever worked on. They were made almost totally of composite materials. The fuselage was graphite and the fairings, leading edges and control surfaces were Kevlar. There were metal (titanium and aluminum) parts but mostly it was composite. While working on these I used to joking say I was working on a plastic airplane. It was put together like a small plastic kit airplane in that it had several large pieces (sides, top, and bottom) that were glued together to make the fuselage. All the composite pieces were glued together and the metal was bolted or riveted on. But that is all 14 years down the road from where this narrative is at this point.

H/T to Chris Hanisko for putting the picture on the intratubes where I could find it. I googled "Lear Fan" and this was one of the hits that came up.

Driver's License

2008-12-09T11:26:00.005-05:00

While I was home on leave on my way to Dow Airplane Patch, I renewed my driver's license because it had expired, or so I thought, while I was at Basic and Tech School. I found out much later, maybe after I got out of the service that my license would have been good until 30 days after I got out of the service. Anywho, I renewed my license while home on leave. After I was at Dow I received a letter from the Secretary of State's office that had been forwarded saying that they could not issue a license because of glare on my glasses. This was when they first started putting pictures on the licenses in that state. It said to re-apply at my local office but I was about a thousand miles away from the nearest one, maybe a little closer it you went through Canada. I started the process to get a Maine license and then wrote back to the Secretary of State's office saying I was stationed in Maine and could I re-apply the next time I was on leave? When it was time to go for the tests to get the license, one of the guys in the shop talked the supervisor into letting him accompany me. He could have just let me use his car, which he was willing to do, but he wanted to goof off for the half a day or however long it took for me to do the tests to get my license. He said that because my temp license was expired that I risked getting a ticket if I drove myself. I passed the tests (questions and road test) and got a temporary license. About the time I got my Maine license, I received a license from my home state with the picture area whited out and Valid Without Photo in the white area.
As long as I had that license, sometimes when I would get carded, I would get told that it wasn't any good. I'd ask why not and they would say it says valid without photo. I would ask them what the hell did they think valid meant??
So for a few years I had licenses from two states at the same time.

More Dow Airplane Patch

2008-12-08T11:41:00.009-05:00

On my last post I mentioned how when I arrived I was told stories about how bad the winters were. This photo shows what it was like after one of the worse snowstorms while I was there. When I put this photo up, I noticed my car is in the front row, the second one to the right from the guy walking in the snow. The car is a '58 T-bird so this was taken during the last winter I was there as that is the car I drove when I left Dow Airplane Patch.

This photo shows what winter was normally like while I was there. Everywhere I was stationed I heard stories about cars being buried in snowdrifts. I believed the stories at K.I.Sawyer because my car was buried a time or two while stationed there. What helped me find it was the orange Styrofoam ball atop the antenna. I also heard stories like that on Cape Cod at Otis, but the most snow I saw there at one time was about six inches.

This is a photo of the first car I bought in Maine. I got suckered because it was over ten years old and didn't have rust. I bought it from another guy stationed there who had brought there from the south. The car never was very dependable, when I first got it I had to have a head gasket replaced and the car had such low compression that when it had been run for over half an hour it didn't have enough compression to start. I would have to wait until it cooled off enough to start. I could have overhauled the engine at the auto hobby shop, but I didn't want to tackle such a major job. I either gave it away or abandoned it after getting another car. While I had this car, I bought another car, a '57 Plymouth from someone I worked with and fixed it. When I bought the Plymouth it had a broken torsion bar. I got another from a junkyard and did a couple of other repairs and then sold it for what I had in it. Didn't even get anything for all the work I did on it. Then the guy I sold it to kept bitching about all the things he found wrong with it after he bought it. I kept telling him that he only paid $40 for it and couldn't expect it to be perfect!! In hindsight (being 20/20), I should have got rid of the Ford and kept the Plymouth. Later I bought a '58 T-bird and fixed it up. That is the car that I drove when I left to go to my next base.

Dow Airplane Patch

2008-12-02T16:26:00.004-05:00

I arrived at Dow Airplane Patch in Oct and the ground stayed bare right up to Xmas. I thought I'd see my first green Xmas. Xmas Eve it started snowing and by morning there was six inches of snow on the ground. What a relief, I was spared the horrors of a Xmas without snow!! I spent two winters there and kept hearing stories about the huge amounts of snow that they would get. One story I heard was about was how people were hearing a noise when walking on one spot on a path. When the snow went down, they saw that they had been walking over a car buried in a snowdrift. I thought the winters I spent there were rather mild compared to what I was used to.

One of my memories is that when we had a squadron party they would fill the back of a pickup with ice and cans of beer. Too bad the beer wasn't of a quality to make it drinkable. Black Label beer was one that I could not choke down when sober. Once I was drunk I could drink Black Label. Narraganset beer would slide down my throat just barely. It seemed like those were the only choices, maybe the officers got better stuff, but I don't know. Anywho, we got the cheapest beers.

I learned many things while there. I learned how to work on aircraft (F-101B & F-101F and T-33's). I learned that prejudice is a two-way street. The most prejudiced guy I ever met was a black guy that I worked with. He hated whites with a passion. Also working in the shop was another black guy who would do whatever he could to help you out and it didn't matter whether you were white or black. One day the two of them were razzing me and saying that where I was from they still thought blacks were nightfighters. I slowly looked over both of them and then said, "Say, you guys would be good in the dark."

Charlie Tuna's outfit

2008-10-15T19:05:00.010-04:00

At the end of tech school I got my orders for Dow Airplane Patch in Bangor, ME. During basic we got to pick what state we wanted to go to and I put down California for the state and Germany for overseas. When I told my instructors where I had put in for and where I was going, one of them explained that they use a large map of the country and throw darts at it to determine where you go. I said it looks like it landed a long ways from where I picked. He said no you probably landed right on CA and then they sent you as far away from where the dart landed as possible.

Anywho, I was assigned to the 75th FIS at Dow AFB, ME. Because of the tiger shark on the patch, some of us called it Charlie Tuna's Outfit, also that FIS stood for Frigging Idiot Squadron. As soon as I got there I was told that I would only be there for about 20 months because they were shutting down the base.

The link has pictures and history for the 75th. When I googled 75th FIS I was surprised to see that it appears that the 75th is still around. It has been deactivated and reactivated numerous times since I was in the unit.

The Journey Continues

2008-10-08T11:25:00.004-04:00

When I went to Milwaukee for the Draft Physical, they had some pullman cars on the train and we got sleeper berths. When I went to enlist I rode in coach and was put up in a hotel when I arrived in Milwaukee. The next day I had another physical and it was at this one or the one when I got to basic that I learned that I had a problem with colors. There is this test of circles with colored dots that have numbers in them. When I got half way thru the numbers disappeared. That meant that I couldn't chose any job that required perfect color vision. Anywho, I raised my right hand and swore my freedom away. I got to choose the base for Basic. Normally the Air Force did basic at Lackland AFB, TX. I chose Amarillo AFB, TX and got to spend almost 5 months there for basic and tech school.

This was the first time I flew in a airplane. The first part was in a 707 and when they served the meal(back then almost every flight had meals), when I was asked if I wanted more coffee, I put my cup on a small tray and watched as she spilled some on the tray. I think the second leg was in a DC-3 and the meal was placed on the pillow on my lap. When asked if I wanted more coffee, I was told to hold out my cup. I had a window seat so when I held out my cup it was over the lap of the guy next to me. She didn't spill a drop and I had several refills just to see if she would spill some coffee.

After getting to basic, we got to pick what job we wanted to do during the enlistment. Because of the color thing my choices where somewhat limited. I did get one that was on my list but not the first choice. When basic training was about to end, most of us got orders for where we were going next. Mine were that I got to lug all my stuff (duffle bag, suitcase etc..) several blocks down the street to a barracks that a couple of months before they had pulled the condemned signs off. Then I spent several months going to school to be an Airframe Repairman.

They say that most people lose weight in basic training, well, I gained 10 pounds because I was eating 3 meals a day!! I was down to 175 pounds (the lightest I have been in my adult life if adulthood starts at age 18) when I went to basic and I weighted 185 at the end of basic.

There were a number of things people would say about Amarillo. Like, it's the only place you can stand knee-deep in mud and have dust blow in your face. Stand knee-deep in snow and have dust blow in your face. The trees are beautiful, both of them. My sister-in-law told me about 20 years later that one of them died.

Hiatus is over

2008-09-29T14:41:00.002-04:00

The hiatus is over and I will continue the story of my journey down the road as a wage-slave at a later date. I need to find a couple of pictures of the planes I worked on in the Air Force. While on hiatus I had a chance to get a picture of one of the planes but kept forgetting to go over and take a picture when I was over in the area.

Hiatus

2008-05-23T09:37:00.000-04:00

This blog will be on hiatus for the summer also.

More About that Spring

2008-05-15T08:14:00.003-04:00

I got a notice from the draft board to go to Milwaukee for a pre-induction physical. On the overnight trip down I was in a Pullman Sleeper and on the way back I was in coach. After I got the notice that I was 1A, I decided to join the Air Force. My senior class in high school took the Air Force entrance exam as an aptitude test and I had high scores in all areas. While in high school I had thought about going in the Army and try to get into some kind of construction unit and learn how to operate bulldozers and graders and other heavy equipment. When LBJ and Congress decided to do a huge troop build-up in 'Nam, I changed my mind about the Army. I figured if I was to go to 'Nam, I would like to be in the service that gave me the best chance of coming home alive. I didn't consider the Navy because I didn't like their uniforms. Like I said I had taken the test for the Air Force, so about all I had to do was to sign the papers.

While waiting to go into the Air Force I got a job on the pipeline. It was with a sub-contractor that was clearing the right-of-way. My job was burning brush. It was easy as about all I had to do was to get the pile burning and then walk around and pick up pieces that the dozer missed and throw them on the fire. This was the first job I was fired from. I wanted to fix my car so I could out drinking Friday night and I lied about why I needed to take the afternoon off. When I went back to work on Monday I was told I was fired. That was the first time a so-called co-worker ratted me out to the boss. It didn't bother me because I was to go into the Air Force in a couple of weeks. When I went to get my paycheck, we were told that they would give us the checks next week. The checks didn't arrive before I left and I made arrangements for someone to pick it up and cash it at Old Charley's store and pay off my bill at the store. For some reason the check bounced and had to be redeposited or something. After hearing about the problems with the paycheck, I was glad I didn't work there very long. Because I didn't get my check before I left, I had to borrow $20 from my uncle so I would have money for food and cigarettes until I got paid in the service.

If working for someone else was being a wage-slave, being in the service at that time was more like being a slave. You got room and board and a small amount of money for incidentals and you could not quit.

A Trip down South

2008-05-08T10:14:00.004-04:00

After all the cold weather the beginning of March, when I got my income tax refund I bought a round-trip bus ticket and went to visit my brother and his family in GA. When I left there was several feet of snow on the ground at home. When I got to Georgia the flowers were starting to bloom and the trees were starting to leaf out. I had been at my brother's place for a couple of weeks when one day the phone rang and I was told it was for me. I picked up the phone and said hello. The voice in the phone started speaking Finnish to me. I went "What?" Then the woman said don't you speak Finn? I said yes, but Georgia was the last place I expected to hear someone speaking in Finn to me. Then she asked me how things were in Pelkie and who did I know in Pelkie. I told her I wasn't from Pelkie. Then she said that my name had been in the local paper under Pelkie news saying I was going to visit my brother in GA. Even tho I wasn't from Pelkie, she invited all of us to have coffee with her and her husband. They lived fairly close and we drove over on a Saturday and had a nice chat and coffee.

After several weeks of almost summer, like a fool I decided to head back up to the tundra. I called my cousin to let him know when I was arriving so he could pick me up from the bus at 5am. Well, my cousin and a couple of other guys got drunk the night before and passed out. When the bus arrived, I stepped out and into about 6 inches of snow and slush. Ah Spring, don't you love it?? This was typical spring weather and I knew I was home. Luckily the Laundromat was open 24/7 or I would have had a cold miserable wait. About an hour later my ride finally arrived with a couple of hungover people to take me home.

Seems like most of the time when I went home something strange happened. This was just one of many times when a homecoming didn't go as expected.

30 Weight Oil

2008-05-05T10:05:00.002-04:00

After the Ford job I found another job. This one was at a small plant that made folding table and bench combinations for schools and other places. Some were portable and when they were folded up could be wheeled away. Some were to be built into the wall. After a few weeks I got tired of Detroit and decided to go back up to the tundra.

Before I left Detroit I had the oil changed on my car. It was a nice day in February, temp in the 50's so I had them put in straight 30 weight oil. This was an old car and had only had non-detergent straight weight oil. My dad years before had switched from straight weight oil to detergent and that car used so much oil after that that he had to get rid of it. Anywho, I went back up to the tundra in late Feb. with the heavy oil in my car. The first week in March the temp went down to 52 below zero one night and was at least 40 below for a week. My car was parked outside and would not start for three days. On the third day I put some kerosene in a large can with a rag to act as a wick. I lit it and put it under the oilpan of the car. After awhile the snow was melting off the hood and then I tried to start the car. It fired up like it was Summer. That night I drove it into a snowbank and covered the front half of the car with snow. It went down to 45 below zero that night and the next morning the car started with no trouble and without having to do anything other than shoveling the snow away from the door to get in.

A Little Farther Down the Road

2008-05-02T08:34:00.006-04:00

The job on the Soup Line ( as some of the guys called it ) lasted for a little over 4months and I got laid off just in time for Deer Season. So I went deer hunting and had a good time. Around the end of the year, I went down to Detroit with Screwloose to seek my fortune. Screwloose had relatives there so we had a place to stay and shortly after getting there we both got jobs at Ford's Wayne truck plant where they made pickups, Broncos and medium bus chassis. I worked there 3 nights (6pm to 4:30am) and on the 4th night I quit twice. I couldn't keep up with the assembly line. Where I started was at a transfer point and when the guy doing the transferring would get behind he would shove the frames down the line to lessen the gaps. That meant I had even less time to do my job. I went and talked to a HR person and he talked me into staying. The next job wasn't any better. The guy showed me how to do each frame and then sat back and let me do it. The guy won't do a thing to help me no matter how far behind I got. Finally I told the guy that I hadn't had a break yet and he took over. I went and got my jacket and left. Went back on payday and got my check.

While I was living in Detroit, I happened to do something that gives me a small claim to fame. I worked for the man that put the first ice machines in Hell. One Saturday I was asked if I would help a friend of the people I was staying with, the guy had an ice plant that he wanted to empty so he could do some work on it. I spent the day driving around Detroit with him filling ice machines until the ice plant was empty. I found out later that he had put the first ice machines in Hell, MI. So when someone tries to end an argument with "And the people in Hell want ice water too." Now you can say "They have ice machines in Hell, so it is possible for them to have ice water."

What Flavor Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream are you?

2008-04-30T09:54:00.001-04:00

You Are Marsha Marsha Marshmallow Ice Cream

Outdoorsy and gluttonous, yup, that's you!

What Flavor Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Are You?

Wandering

2008-04-29T14:29:00.002-04:00

Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.

Soo Line Ore Dock in Marquette, MI

2008-04-28T18:40:00.000-04:00

This is where I started down the road to being a wage slave. My first job after high school was as a carpenter's helper on the Bridge and Building crew on the Soo Line RR. This ore dock was originally the DSS&A RR ore dock until the merger with Soo Line. Most of the guys were still muttering about the merger and this was 5 or 6 years after the fact. They still considered themselves as DSS&A. Anyhow the first couple of weeks on the job were spent up on this ore dock. When I would ask what I should do, most of the time the other guys on the crew would tell me it would be quicker for them to do it themselves than to explain how to me and for me to stay out of sight and out of their way so they could finish the job and move on. They had been working on the ore dock for the last 6 months and they wanted to finish and move to a job somewhere else down the tracks. So I spent a lot of time at the far end of the dock throwing iron ore pellets at the seagulls.
The ore dock shut down in the 70's when the last mine supplying ore to it shut down ( the Tracy ). Several years ago the approach to it was removed. There has been talk of converting it to condos. Question; what would they do to get rid of the iron ore dust, encapsulate it?

Hello

2008-04-27T10:48:00.000-04:00

This is just a post to start the blog. Will do more to set up the blog.