I Believe – My Values

Life got a little easier after that first fire fight.   We were assigned to bridge security on Highway 4.  Highway 4 ran from An Khe to Plekui.  In April 1970, our company moved to An Khe.  At Pleiku we slept in under ground bunkers or on the ground. When we got to An Khe we had a large tent and cots and showers.  Of course we weren’t there all the time, but it was nice to have a place to go to when we would come in out of the field.  We would space ourselves several hundred yards apart about 50 yards off the road facing away from the highway.  It was our responsibility to protect the highway so that supply trucks, etc  could safely travel the highway.  Then at night there was no travel on the highway so we would park on all four corners of the bridges. If the bridges weren’t protected the Viet Cong would blow them up to impede travel.

This was pretty good duty because just being there was enough to keep the highway safe.  We would usually do road security between other missions.

It was the spring of 1952.  I was 5 years old and looking forward to starting school in the fall  We didn’t have kindergarten so this would my first year of school.  We lived on the farm north east of Wells. I begin having trouble with my left knee and developed a limp.  My parents took me to the doctor in Bennington and he examined me and x-rayed my knee and couldn’t find anything wrong with it.  My patents decided that I was faking to draw attention to myself.  One afternoon my mom was hosting her women’s club.  All of the women would bring their children and we would play outside in the yard while the moms had club in the house.  That day my knee hurt so bad that I wasn’t able to run and play so I stayed on the front porch.  I sat on the porch and played the sheriff.  When dad came home from work mom told him there was definitely something wrong because I had stayed on the porch all afternoon with all of those kids there.

So mom & dad took me to Minneapolis to see Dr. Foutz.  As I was walking back to the exam room Dr, Foutz said “why that boy has Pertheis disease.  As we learned this is a disease that affects young children, mostly boys age 4 to 10.  It’s a rare disease affecting only 1 -3 in 20,000.  With Pertheis the ball of the hip joint dissolves causing a limp and  pain in the knee.

Dr. Foutz sent me to Salina to Dr. McCray who became my doctor for the next three years.  Treatment involved traction and a brace.  I spent 30 days in Asbury Hospital in the children’s ward flat on my back with my left leg in traction.  For some reason Ray & Fred weren’t allowed to come into the children’s ward to visit me.  The ward was on the ground floor so we were able to open the window by my bed and talk that way.

When I got out of the hospital I had to wear a brace on my left leg and an elevated shoe on my right foot.  I wore this brace for three years and never once walked on my left leg.  My would take me to St, Johns hospital every month for x-rays of my hip.  I found out later that the Cripple Children’s Association covered the cost of my hospital stay, doctor visits and x-rays.  After three years I was so excited to get the brace off and get a pair of regular shoes.  I put on my new shoes and started to walk and fell flat on my face because I had no muscle in my left leg.  I had to use crutches until I got the strength built up in my leg.

Although it was considered an extremely rare disease there were two other boys my age in Ottawa County that had the disease and one older person.  The older guy and one of the guys my age had a limp for the rest of their lives.

So I started elementary school at the Wells Grade School with a brace on my left leg and an elevated shoe on my right foot.  All my siblings had went to school at Sunnyside which was only two miles from our home.  Wells was eight miles from home so we rode the school bus to school.  Our “school bus” was a Ford station wagon with the rear seat facing the back.  The older boys always got the rear seat.  Our bus driver was Frank Comfort.  We spent a lot of time on the bus because we were the first ones to get picked up in the morning and the last to get off at night.

My brace kept my leg stiff and had latches to allow me to bend my knee as I sat down.  When I would run, I ran stiff legged.  The day before Thanksgiving a huge snow storm started moving in.  Frank showed up at mid-morning and told our teacher that he needed to get started taking the kids home.  Our teacher, Mrs. Damarn, ignored his admonitions and said we needed to stay until one pm so that the day would count as a full day.  Frank waited in the parking lot until Mrs. Damarn released us and we headed home.  We didn’t make it.  It took Frank all afternoon to make his rounds.  It was after dark and we were about 2 1/2 miles from our home when we got stuck.  We had just passed Siler’s house so Frank said we needed to walk back to Siler’s.  Since I was wearing a brace, Frank carried me through the drifts to safety.

We spent the night at Siler’s.  There was me, my brothers Ray & Fred, my sister Deanna and Larry Welch.  Larry would have been considered “special” in today’s school system.  When we all got into bed there was a rack of rifles on the wall.  Dixie Siler told us, now don’t you touch those guns.  Of course as soon as Dixie left the room Larry got one of the rifles down and was messing with it.  I was sure he was going to shoot one of us but he didn’t and the rest of the night was uneventful.  Of course there wasn’t any communication so our parents had no idea where we had spent the night.

The next morning we were sitting at the breakfast table and Dixie brought out this jar and ask us to guess what was in it.  Of course none of us knew.  Turns out it was Carmen’s fingers that he had cut off in a farming accident.  A neighbor had gathered them up and brought them to Carmen.

Joyce and I found an apartment in Brown’s Addition and I started looking for a job, again. That Thanksgiving Mom was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer so I was spending a lot of time in Sequim helping Pop until she passed away in January of 1990.  In a short time we also lost Oscar Bell and Uncle Alva.  After I returned to Spokane a position in Customer Service with Northwest Telecommunications became available. I Really thought this was going to be my next retirement job.  Soon after starting work, our lease on the apartment was coming up for renewal with a substantial increase in rent.  We had been complaining about a noisy young man living above us who had won an insurance case.  Management wouldn’t do anything about him so we decided to look for another place and found a duplex on 15th.  While living there I was a part time maintenance man for the complex, three duplexes together.  Joyce and I had discussed the possibility of purchasing the complex but decided to look around.  That’s when we found and bought the house on 29 E. 39th.

It wasn’t too long after moving in that my dream of Northwest Telco being my last job took a turn.  LDDS purchased NWT and they started letting people go.  I stayed on a while as a customer service representative but their service wasn’t the same as before and I quit.  It didn’t take long before Sprint was opening a Cell Phone Store.  I interviewed and was hired.  During the interview they actually encouraged me to apply for manager but I didn’t feel comfortable, not knowing anything about retail.  Sprint sounded like an ideal company.  They promised to be very employee and customer oriented.  For nine weeks we were flown to Dallas, Texas for classes during the week at the Delta Airlines campus.  Then we flew home on weekends.  One weekend, I transferred my round trip ticket to Joyce and she flew down.  Another weekend I was home from training and Spokane had an ice storm and we lost power to the house. The neighbor’s tree actually lost a limb that pulled the cable from our house.  We ended up getting a room at Inn at the Park.  I had to fly back to school and Joe stayed with Joyce until electricity was restored to his house.  I came home later and arranged to have power reconnected to the house.

When school was completed, I returned home and got the store opened.  It was the first Sprint store to open.  The only problem working at a retail store was not getting our work schedule for the week until the Friday before.  I made a number of suggestions to improve that but they got turned down and the promises they made in the beginning went by the wayside.  Sprint needed money so the employee support and customer service suffered.  The store had been open about a year and Sprint sold the building.  A number of us, the higher paid ones, were let go.  I was still in contact with some of the employees working there.  One of the women told me of an incident that happened when she was on a business trip with the District Manager and one of the commercial salesmen.  I recommended she take it to HR and make a complaint.  I was later contacted by an investigator and she eventually won her sexual harassment suit.  I did send out more resumes.  After most interviews I went on I was usually told I was overqualified for the position.  I pretty much gave up.  Mike’s family moved in with us and lived in the basement for a while.  It was pretty fun since we had the kids visiting upstairs quite often.

I started getting into meditation.  The leader of the group I was with was a Native American.  It was an interesting group.  One of the participants claimed to be able to read past lives and it turned out I had been an Indian horse trader and she had been my daughter.  Another interesting episode took place when our leader brought her Peruvian Whistles to a gathering.  We formed a circle where the whistles were placed in middle and, if you got the urge, you picked one up and blew into it.  Soon you could hear music and singing and weird things and visions started happening.  Our leader taught Reiki and I eventually took classes and got my certificate.  As I was thinking about opening a Reiki business, I learned you have to be a nurse, a licensed massage therapist or a minister to touch someone.  Taking a weekend online test to be a minister didn’t appeal to me so I decided to become a massage therapist.  I signed up at Noetic School of Massage.

In order to start classes you had to have a massage so I received my first massage at age 63.  I really enjoyed taking the classes and working with the other students.  One of our classes was a trip to WSU where we studied cadavers.  Another was to EWU where we offered free massages to students.  On the way back from Cheney, one of the massage tables blew out of the back of our instructor’s pickup.  Another car of students and I stopped.  It was very dark and as one of the students was going to step into the middle of the road to get the table I pulled her back just as an eighteen wheeler came along and hit the table.  There was nothing to pick up after that.  Close to graduation we went out to a local ranch for a weekend.  One of the students was an Iroquois Indian from Canada.  We had a bonfire ceremony and she gave everyone an Indian name.  Mine was Brave Buffalo, Ohitika-Tantanka.  After graduation I set up an office at home and at a local tanning salon, Stone Shadow Massage.  I wanted to have more time available for my clients.  A woman I had met, Jenny Ray, was giving a class on hot stone massage up in Canada and I signed up.  She is Native American, Sioux, and started each day outside with a stone pipe ceremony to the four directions and then singing and drumming indoors.  The class lasted two weekends and at the end she had a naming ceremony and gave me Sacred Buffalo, Wakan-Tantanka.  Since I was given two names I can combine them, Brave-Sacred-Buffalo, or, Ohitika-a’-Wakan-Tantanka.  After I had been doing massage a few months I injured my rotator cuff and had to have surgery.  During the surgery nerves were injured in my right arm and I ended up shutting down my massage office.

Around 2004, Mike and the kids moved back in to the basement.  It was fun having them back in the house again.  Then around 2006, I ended up in the hospital with walking pneumonia and a bleeding ulcer.  Pop met his new girl friend, Thelma, when he was attending an annual trucking company BBQ in Anacortes.  Thelma was from Houston, Texas and Pop drove down in his motorhome to be with her.  She didn’t like motorhomes so Pop sold it down there.  A few weeks later, there was a knock on our front door and it was Pop.  He’d had an argument with Thelma and moved out.  We set him up in the front bedroom.  A couple of months later, he took off back to Houston.  He spent a couple of months there and came back to Spokane.  We shifted things around again.  After a few calls from Thelma and her daughter, he returned to Houston again.  A couple times I tried to convince him to get a motel and stay in Houston for a few days instead of moving back up.  His excuse, “You can’t argue with those damn Texans!”  I’m not sure how many times he disrupted our lives moving in and out.  When he came back the last time we told him he had to find another place to live.  He and I found a retirement home about a mile from our house.  He wanted a motorized two wheel scooter that you stand on to move around the retirement home but they said no.  I went on line and found him a three wheeler that he really liked.  He lived there for about three months or so and then asked if he could move back in with us.  We relented.

Life slowed down.  Pop didn’t like to travel very far because he didn’t feel comfortable being far from a bathroom.  Joyce and I were able to take a few trips but didn’t make any extended ones.  Pop really wanted to take a cruise and we had purchased an Alaska cruise for the three of us.  For some reason Pop changed his mind.  It was a good thing I had purchased trip insurance.  Another time, he and I were going to take a trip down to California, Nevada, and circle back up to Washington but he backed out.  Around June or July of 2011, Mike and Nadine purchased the hotel in Kendrick. Their place gave us a great destination to visit away from Spokane.  After Halloween that year we set up a bedroom in what we called the white room.  Later, when the apartment they had been renting out became available, we bought it.  We moved some furniture down and made up the bedroom for Pop.  Joyce and I set the up the living room as our bedroom.  We used the apartment as our home away from home.  In 2012, we decided to sell the house in Spokane.  We moved Pop out and down to the apartment to make the house more appealing to potential buyers.  Joyce and I were still up in Spokane, splitting time between Kendrick and traveling.  Mike thought they could keep a better eye on Grandpa, so they built an extra room in their place and moved him in with them.  Pop mentioned wanting his name on some property.  The Gazette came up for sale so he bought that.  We intended to remodel the inside for us all.  In 2013 the house in Spokane sold.

Joyce and I, with the help of Mike, the boys and Tim, moved down to the Kendrick apartment.  We rearranged things to make it more livable for the two of us.  All we had accumulated for twenty years living in the house didn’t fit in the apartment so we stored it in the Gazette.  Pop and I tried to continue our weekly trips to the casino but as time went by it became harder and harder for him and we finally quit.  In 2014, while Joyce and I were in California, Pop passed away.  Mike and Nadine took care of the arrangements before we returned home.  Later we had a memorial for him in Lacey.  Pop’s ashes are resting on a bookcase in the apartment.

 

 

With the Vega loaded, I headed to Lompoc to pick up one of Chris’s friends, Glynn, who was going to ride along with me up to visit Spokane. That poor Vega was so overloaded it actually squatted in back. Of course the springs weren’t all that good and the back may have been a couple of inches shorter. But it clocked right along. I was happy to have Glynn with me because, surprise, I alternated driving with her and we made it in two days.

With hindsight, it wasn’t the best of moves.  Thinking it would hold the family together, it proved to be just the opposite.  We’re a very close family and I’m proud of everyone and what they have accomplished.  Do I think of the what ifs and the things I would have changed?  Often, but it’s kind of late now.  After twenty-two years in the military, going from top dog to one of the litter was quite a shock to  me.  Thinking back, with my experience and education I thought I would have no problem finding a job with Hewlett Packard.  It didn’t happen right away.

Shortly after getting to Spokane and moving into our house, Mount St. Helen erupted May 18, 1980.  It was surreal.  The first thing I remember is the quiet.  Normally you hear birds in the trees and dogs barking and other nature noises around you.  All of a sudden it was quiet, not a sound.  Then the ash cloud rolled overhead slowly blocking out the sun.  That’s when we started feeling the ash rain down, slowly at first and then faster, covering everything.  The kids had been down at the lake at the Suncrest Community Resort.  They came driving back into the yard, piling out of the car and running into the house.  We turned on the TV to find out what was happening and got the warning to stay indoors.  There was no school for about a week.  Because it happened so fast, people started running low on food and sharing with everyone who live around them.  About three or four days after the eruption, the kid who lived across the street from us rode his bike to the store and bought a bunch of bread for all the neighbors.  We all survived.   Life went back to normal.

A guy we met through church turned out to be the supervisor at the Montgomery Ward Service Department and he gave me a job in their electronic repair shop.  I almost didn’t get it because during indoctrination at the main store, the HR person told me I had to shave off my beard.  Ha!  No way was I doing that and I walked out.  I called my friend and told him.  He went to HR and explained to them I wouldn’t be having contact with customers.  They let me keep my beard.  I worked there for a few months and then they cut back.  Being the last in, I was let go first.  I answered an add for a tech position, maintaining continuous playing music tapes in stores, early Muszak owned by PG&E.  This was before internet and cable.  I know it was before Thanksgiving because we were trying to get the company to put snow tires on my company vehicle.  I needed to drive around and replace the tapes so the stores would have Christmas Music right after Thanksgiving.  I was going to have to do some quick traveling; Eastern Washington, Idaho, Western Montana, to Northeastern Oregon, back up through Idaho and back to Spokane.  PG&E finally got me tires after Thanksgiving and I headed east.  Most of the customers were not happy getting their Christmas music late.  I was not happy because I was pushed.  It’s not fun driving across Montana at night on black ice and seeing the white crosses on the side of the road indicating car accident deaths.  But I made the loop and got back to Spokane and got an interview with HP.  My interview didn’t turn out the way I expected.

There weren’t any electronic technician positions available so I was offered an assembly position.  Hewlett Packard had a really great reputation as a company to work for and I took the position.  Working at Hewlett Packard proved to be frustrating.  Talking to people that had moved up from California with HP when they put the plant in Liberty Lake, this plant was not comparable to other plants.  Instead of people having pride in what they were doing and working together, there was always competition.  It was what I call the “Kaiser Aluminum Mentality”.   Everyone was afraid you were after their job, especially the supervisors.  One of the first things I usually did when starting to work on a new module or component was to re-do the outdated and confusing instruction manuals.  And I did this on my own time, redrawing and simplifying to make them easier to understand and follow.  Supervisors were interested in quantity more than quality.  One particular problem had been evading them for a long time.  After doing some tests on my own, I called the plant that supplied our circuit boards.  I found out they had changed the process.  I shared this information with our engineers, who were thrilled to determine the problem.  My supervisors informed me I was no longer allowed to talk to the engineers but to come to them and they would pass information along.  The engineers were not happy with this and informed the supervisors.

Since Assemblers were allowed to have food at their stations, you always were smelling popcorn.  One time the inspectors complained that they were seeing popcorn in the instruments.  I followed up and, looking under a microscope, found it was not organic popcorn but pieces of packing material.  Later, when I was working final assembly, I was working with the government inspectors.  They weren’t happy with some of the quality being put into the instrument line.  I warned management that we needed to improve or the inspectors were going to shut us down.  Their response, “We’re Hewlett Packard, they wouldn’t dare.”  One day the government inspectors shut our line down until we improved our assembly and testing procedures.  I was pulled off final assembly.

When I was back working on the assembly line, it was after I had stopped smoking and I was drinking a lot of water.  Unbeknownst to me, one of the supervisors started a lottery on how many times I would go to the bathroom.  I found out about it at my annual review.  When my supervisor told me I exploded.  He had allowed that to happen and hadn’t even wondered if there was anything medically wrong.  I went to HR and complained about that and a few other things.  I was transferred to swing shift.  It really didn’t work out and I quit.  I didn’t realize it was going to be so hard finding another job.  Interviewing with other companies, they wanted to know why I would quit a great company like Hewlett Packard.

I kind of laugh, now, when I think about our family.  It is really hard living in a home where everyone is an Alpha.  Over the years, Joyce and I had brought up the kids to be pretty independent.  It was a way to cope with always moving.  At least every three years they had to fend as a family together in order to make the transition.  And you can see it in their families now.  It has been bumpy travel for all four of the kids.  Eventually they each found a strong partner.  One they could share life with, not dominate.  And the grandkids.  Like I’ve said all along, “If I’d known how much fun they are, I’d have had them first.”  Of course we had our own bumps traveling through time.

Chris was using the Vega to drive to school.  When they were redoing Big Sandy, she had to drive on a rough, unpaved road and somehow knocked the flywheel cover off.  Rather than fix it, we sold the Vega for $300.  Which meant that Chris drove that car for the better part of a year or more, free.  On another occasion, Joyce and I had gone for a short trip and before leaving had told Chris to leave the Toyota parked.  When we returned, Chris’s boyfriend, Shawn was trying to saw a stump down in our back yard.  The problem was the Toyota was stuck on top of the stump.  With some finessing and going through a couple of chain saws, we got the car back on the ground.

Since I had an eighty mile round trip to Liberty Lake and work, I decided I needed a more reliable car.  We went shopping and I found a Chevy Luv pick up.  While shopping we decided to make it a double deal and found a nice Plymouth Duster for Chris.  It was a pretty sporty little car.  I had made that deal with Chris that if she could make it to thirty six, same age as I when I got my first ticket, I would take her anywhere she wanted to go for dinner.  The Duster had some pretty good pipes and really rumbled when you put your foot down.  She did that one day, just as a sheriff was going by in the other direction.  I won and I was smart enough not to offer the others the same deal.  Joyce got a call one morning from the Sheriff’s Office, wanting to know if we owned a certain Ford Pinto.  They had come across it in a ditch on the way to Mead High School.  The Pinto was Tim’s first car.  On his way to school after a snow fall the night before, they slid in to a ditch.  By the time we got to the area, Tim and some friends had gotten it out of the ditch and on to school.  Later he got a Toyota Celica that he used while at WSU.  We got a call late one night he was broke down at a rest stop near Moses Lake.  We ended up towing the Celica back to Spokane.

We used to keep the keys to the cars on a board by the back door.  Joyce and I were gone one day and had left the van at home.  Kelly decided to take it for a drive.  While she was driving around Suncrest she saw Mike.  She ducked down but Mike saw her.  I guess he got a lot of mileage out of that information.  After she got her drivers license, Kelly borrowed the Luv one Saturday night.  As I was going to work the next Monday I was having a really hard time with the clutch slipping.  On the way home I had to finally pull off at the Seven Eleven at Seven Mile and call home.  Luckily Mom and Dad were visiting and dad came, adjusted the clutch and I made it home.  When I asked Kelly if she had been hot rodding with it on Saturday, she told me, “Not very much.”  Chris graduated from high school and moved to California with Shawn.  Tim graduated and started college at WSU.  Kelly ran away and we signed a letter of Emancipation for her.  More as a scare tactic than anything.  The attorney explained it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on because until she turned eighteen we were still responsible for her actions.  We sold the house on Greenfield only to have to repossess it when they couldn’t complete the deal.  The House we rented on Rowan turned out to be unlucky.  Mike had wrecked the Buick and had so many tickets the insurance company made us remove him from our insurance.  Joyce and I got a legal separation and she and Mike moved into an apartment together.

At that time, I was still with HP so I found an apartment with a garage out in the Valley.  I emptied the house on Rowan and stored everything in the garage.  Being on swing I was able to get a day time job as maintenance man for the apartment building I lived in and two others, as well as a medical building.  This was when I quit HP.  Because it was hard finding another job I looked into the possibility of starting my own business.  It was going to be a Manufacturing  business.  I had talked to Eastern Washington State Hospital out in Medical Lake and the plan was the business would be employing their patients and they were going to lease me an empty building on the grounds.  It fell through, I couldn’t come up with the financing.  I answered an ad and found work as a car salesman at McCullum Ford.  I then decided to move back to Sequim to stay with Mom and Dad until I could find my own place.  I found a job working as a car salesman in Port Townsend and later for the Toyota dealer in Port Angeles.  I came to realize, I was not a car salesman.  During that time Joyce and I were meeting for weekends in places like Leavenworth.  We were leaning toward getting back together again.  First I drove down to Ventura California, where Chris was living, and tried leaving some resumes there.  Having no luck there, I returned to Spokane, where Joyce and I got back together.

After graduating from DeVry I packed up the Toyota and headed to Point Arguello.  As I crossed Vandenberg I was thinking about having spent my first four years of military service in the Air Force and now, here I was, almost attached to an Air Force Base for my last four years.  Coast Guard Loran Station was not a part of Vandenberg Air Force Base even though some thought it was.  I checked in and would be living in one of the duplexes for a while.  The family was staying in Glendale until the kids finished school and we could make arrangements about the house.  We were considering moving back to Arizona after I retired.  In the meantime, Joyce and I would periodically commute back and forth.

Every month the District Office held a Commanders meeting where all the Officers in Charge of stations and boats would meet and discuss what was happening in the District.  At my first meeting, I was introducing myself to some of the officers when a Lieutenant, aid to one of the Captains in the office, thought he had heard my name before.  Then it dawned on him, the Captain he worked for had been the one that had not wanted to give me the loan for a house.  The Lieutenant remembered he had heard my name in what he called in vain, not in a good way.  We had a laugh about it.  After these meetings, I usually drove over to Arizona for the weekend.  A couple of times Joyce and the kids came over to Point Arguello in the motorhome.  Later, I picked up a used Plymouth station wagon which was much easier to drive around.  Joyce was working in the business office for the Arizona Highway Patrol and had one of their “Bear” t-shirts.  When driving across I10 to California, she wore the t-shirt and made it across the state in record time.

One time after doing some work on the Toyota, I was driving through Lompoc around 5:30 in the morning.  I saw this police car sitting in a parking lot so I held it at thirty five MPH, the speed posted the last time I had seen a speed sign.  As I went by he pulled out and stopped me for doing 35 in a 25 zone.  It was my first ticket.  I went down for the Commanders call where we were discussing complaints from people being boarded by armed Coasties.  I made the suggestion that we should advertise that the Coast Guard was an armed service.  The Admiral at the meeting said, “Come on Sparks, that won’t work”, he was thinking it was a bad idea.  Before I left I told the District Office that if they wanted me at the meeting for a specific reason, call me, otherwise this was the last I would attend.  When I left, I headed to Arizona.  Around Riverside California, I had been cruising with the trucks and hadn’t notice they had backed off somewhat.  All of a sudden a California Highway Patrol was behind me with lights flashing.  I pulled off and got out of the car shaking my head.  I was still in uniform and he asked me what was wrong.  I told him I hadn’t had a ticket in twenty years and this was my second stop today.  He asked to see the ticket, looked at it, and said, “Hell, I would fight this.”  Because of my bad day, he gave me a warning and I drove on to Glendale.  When I went to court they told me to go to the California driving class and if I passed the ticket would be removed from my record.  I later gave Chris the chance of going anywhere she wanted for dinner if she could go twenty years with out a ticket.  I won that bet.

Through an inter service agreement with the Air Force, married couples could get housing on the base.  Being senior enlisted they were opening housing in one of the Officers Housing areas.  We got a field officers house on a corner on Cataldo.  There were still Air Force Officers living around us and they got the option of staying or moving to Officers housing elsewhere on base.  They stayed where they were.  At first we rented out the house in Glendale but sold it about a year later.  The family renting the house had a baby.  One day, when they went into the house, they didn’t realize the baby had fallen in the swimming pool and drowned.  We just couldn’t see ourselves moving back.

Like I mentioned before, some in the Air Force thought that my station was part of Vandenberg.  One day a semi truck and trailer along with a caravan of cars came driving on to the station.  I stopped them and they told me that the Vandenberg Public Relations Office had given them permission to film on  Point Arguello.  I explained that they couldn’t give permission, that this was a Coast Guard Station separate from Vandenberg.  Talking to them a little more, it turned out they were with Ford Motor Company and they wanted to use the Lighthouse for pictures of their new Ford Escort.  The Escort was going to be introduced the next year.  They had three or four prototypes with them.  I went ahead and let them.  They would unload the proto types, which were on VW frames, to take pictures.  Then they would load them up and drive them to Los Angeles where they would be given a new paint job and brought back.  The film crew was there for about a week.  One day, when they were filming, whales were breeching just off the point.  The professional film crew got so excited  not one of them had thought to take pictures.  I later made sure the Air Force was aware that they had no control or say about my station.

The 1air Police once tried coming on to the station to find one of the guys who had illegally parked his car on the Air Force Base.  One of the officers who I referred to as Wyatt Earp tried ordering me around with his hand on his gun.  I told him to get his Sargent of The Guard down there.  When the Sargent got to the station, I pointed to the Air Policeman and told him I want that man off my station and that he was never to set foot on it again.  I cleared up the problem with the parked car and they left.  One time I was driving across Vandenberg with Joe Devriend, his wife, Beverly and Joyce.  I was stopped by the Air Police because  they said I had made a California Stop.  We all agreed I hadn’t.  The next day Joe and I were on Base picking up the mail.  As we came to an intersection we saw an Air Policeman sitting near.  Joe got out, went to the middle of the intersection and directed me through.  Then he got back in the pickup.  There was a law on the books stating  that when a horseless carriage came to an intersection, the passenger was to get out and direct traffic. The looks we got were priceless.

About two miles south of Point Arguello was the old, abandoned, Point Arguello Lifeboat Station.  Although we had no responsibility for the station, it was an interesting place to visit.  The barracks and office were still there as well as the boathouse docks and breakwater.  Vandenberg had plans to bring recovered rockets back through the old station.  We did have responsibility for maintaining Point Conception Lighthouse.  Most of the buildings that had been associated with the station had been torn down.  The Lighthouse remained with a First Order Frenzel Lens, one hundred and eighty two steps down from the top of the cliff.  One of the crews quarters housed the games keeper for Jalama Ranch.  Most of the old garage and an abandoned, concrete house remained on a bluff east of the light.  We cleaned up the concrete house, boarded up the access to the upstairs portion and used the house as a getaway.  In fact, Joyce and I spent a couple of nights there.  Two other couples had spent a weekend there and swore there was a ghost in the house.  While the guys were over at the game keepers house watching TV the wives decided to try to get up stairs.  As they were trying to pull the plywood down, someone told them they shouldn’t be doing that.  They kept on trying and someone yelled, “Don’t do That”.  They found their husbands and asked why they had yelled.  The husbands denied it.  Later, when one of the wives was climbing into her sleeping bag she thanked her husband for getting it warm.  He told her he hadn’t touched it.  Also a radio they had on a window sill started playing.  Nothing like that happened to Joyce and me.  Later a movie company came to Point Conception to make part of the movie, “A Brave New World.”  Until it wore out, I had an Indian Blanket that had been in the movie.  We may still have a couple of rags from the blanket.

One thing I did while at Point Arguello was act as a public relations person.  Even in uniform, when the guys were on base they were asked for ID at the Commissary and Exchange.  Normally, in uniform, you weren’t asked.  I ordered a bunch of hats with, “USCG PT ARGUELLO” on them.  I placed magnetic signs on our vehicles with U.S. Coast Guard Loran Station Point Arguello.  I even tried coveralls with Pt Arguello patches.  The District Office didn’t approve of them.  A lot of the local fishermen, military and civilians from Lompoc knew about the station but not many others.  We were invited to a Masons dinner one time to give a talk about Point Arguello to the wives while the men had their meeting.  It turned into a question and answer session.  One of the ladies there had been the Post Master (she emphasized Master not Mistress) of the Post Office at Arlight.  It had been a little community that had grown up around Point Arguello.  It still has a zip code on file.

While we lived there Joyce and I went on a Marriage Encounter with a group from Vandenberg and Lompoc.  That got us pretty involved in both of the communities.  We were very involved with the Catholic Community in the base Chapel, where I was baptized and became Catholic during Easter services.  Between Marriage Encounter and the church community, we liked to play jokes on one another.  Joyce and I were downtown one time when the kids called.  The Air Police were at our house because someone had Tee Peed the trees in our front yard.  Talking to the Air Policeman he mentioned a lot of that was going on around base.  In fact, it had happened to his First Sargent’s house the week before.  I told him that I knew about it because we had done it and most likely it was his boss that had done ours.  I Guess they left, shaking their heads.

We traded in the motorhome and Joyce’s station wagon for a Plymouth Volare, thinking we would reduce our monthly gas bill.  It didn’t work out that way.  The car was small and very crowded with the whole family. So Joyce and I took the Volare down to Oxnard and found a  large Chevrolet Van.  We were at a fair one time and as we were leaving we noticed a bunch of our friends decorating a Van that looked just like ours.  We honked and waved as we pulled out of the parking lot.  Chris got her drivers license and we found a Vega station wagon for $500.  One day she called the station from Lompoc.  She had been the middle car in a rear end fender bender.  When I and my exec got there she was standing around with friends who had been in the car with her.  I made sure that she and all her friends were ok.  After the police investigated the accident, I made Chris drive everyone home while I sat in the passenger seat.  If I remember right we got $500 from the insurance company for damages and we never got the car repaired.  To me those four years were fun years.

We got word that the Coast Guard was going to decommission Point Arguello and make it an unmanned light.  I Figured it was a good time to go ahead and retire.  I still had a year left for having accepted Senior Chief.  When I called the detailer at Headquarters I learned he was going to send me to Long Beach where there was already a Chief.  I had talked to the Captain in charge of overseeing the building of the new 270 foot ships in Seattle and they could use me there, but the detailer did not agree.  I finally offered to let them take me back down to Chief in order to retire early.  He recommended I write and ask for a waiver which was granted.  Joyce flew up to Spokane to find a house and I started arranging for packers and movers.  When she got back we were ready to leave.  We packed up the Van and hitched up the Toyota and headed to Spokane and Nine Mile Falls.

In Spokane. while we waited for our household goods to arrive we stayed in the home of a friend of Joe’s.  Joe was a priest at St. Thomas Moore church in Spokane.  The church had a hilly parking lot.  It had snowed so I took Chris out in the Toyota and we drove around in the snow, climbing the hill, spinning around, everything I could think of to get her used to driving in the snow.  The one piece of advice I gave her was to feel the car through the seat of her pants.  It would tell her what to do.  She later proved it by driving home up Big Sandy going around a bunch of other cars stuck in the snow.  When our household goods arrived,  we moved into the house on Greenfield in Nine Mile.  I flew back to Point Arguello for the Decommissioning.

I arrived at Point Arguello the night before the decommissioning.  Joe Devriend, my Executive Petty Officer, and the crew had everything ready.  We were expecting quite a crowd.  The Admiral, Commander Eleventh Coast Guard District, and his staff were arriving by helicopter.  VAFB Base Commander was attending as well as a number of friends we had made over the years.  One I was particularly happy to see attend was the former Postmaster of Arlight.  The Admiral was impressed with the turn out. He had been to decommissioning of the two other Loran Stations in his District and they hadn’t had the turn out nor were they as prepared as Point Arguello.  He gave a speech about the history of the station.  I also gave a speech, including some of the history, some of the accomplishments of the station over the past four years, and explaining the closeness of the crew with each other as well as with the Air Force Base and Lompoc.  Then the crew, as Honor Guard, lowered the American Ensign and Coast Guard Ensign that was flying that day.  They folded and brought the flags to me and I presented them to the Admiral.  He did something he hadn’t done for the other stations – he presented the American Flag to me.  We broke for a reception that was held in what had been my quarters.  The Admiral and his staff left taking the guest book and the station copies of our scrapbook with them.  After the decommissioning, all the crew had orders to report to new assignments so they quickly departed.  I have to say we left quite a mess and the Air Force didn’t appreciate it when they took over.  I packed all I wanted in the Vega and reported to the Coast Guard station in Oxnard, where I stayed until my retirement in April, 1980.

Just a little trivia. Popeye originally was in the Coast Guard. He didn’t transfer to the Navy until 1941.

When we got to Port Angeles, we temporarily moved in with Mom and Dad. I found a job at a local Texaco Station. Later I had a call from the Shell representative asking if I would be interested in taking over a Shell station in Forks, but turned him down. We found a cute little house on the corner of 8th and Race and moved in. Mom bought us a Chihuahua we name Pedro Poncho Gonzalez Charlie Brown Towne, Pete for short. We also found a cat we named Gladys. I got a job at Rainer Pulp Mill and Joyce found one at a local Nursing Home close to where we lived. One problem we had was if we mentioned to Mom we were thinking of buying something, we usually got a call from Mom to come over and there it would be. I know she meant well and was trying to help us but it was kind of frustrating. We stopped talking about anything in front of her. I wasn’t happy working at Rainer because I ran into a lot of dangerous situations and it didn’t seem like it would lead to anything in the future. Port Angeles didn’t seem like home anymore.

We had friends that we hung out with. One time, late in 1962, we were at a party with a Coast Guard Telephone Technician. There had been a typhoon go through and he was there replacing telephone wires. While we were talking he was telling me about Electronics Technicians in the Coast Guard and all the extra money, pro pay and the re-enlistment bonuses. Joyce and I talked about it for a while and I called the Recruiting office. They told me that if I was really interested to come to Tacoma. We went over on February 4th, 1963. I told them I was interested in Electronic Technician. They gave me the entrance exam and scored 98%, qualifying me for any position I wanted. I signed up for Electronics Technician. I would have to go to Alameda, California, where they had a training company for prior service. I think they flew me out the next day.

I arrived at the Alameda, California Recruit Training Base, expecting to be assigned to a Prior Service Company, but they had just discontinued it and I was assigned to a regular Recruit Company, Mike 39.  They informed me that I would be there for six of the eleven weeks of normal Boot Camp.  The Company Commander was a First Class Boatswains Mate. After he gave me fifty ups for rolling my eyes, he informed use he hated two things; Air Force and Electronic Technicians.  OOPS!  I was the only one in the Company that had a rank insignia, Seaman.  I ended up doing everything a new recruit does – getting the haircut, doing daily exercises, marching in formation.  At the end of five weeks we were given a mid term where we had to do ten pull ups, fifty sit ups, fifty push ups.  The next week I was ordered to form up in the morning with the class that would be graduating at the end of the week, Mike 34.

We had fire fighting training one day at an old Army Base, where we had to learn how to work together to put out an old building on fire.  Then we had the final, where every thing doubled on the test and I passed.  By the time I received my orders, I had lost two inches around my waist and my uniforms were loose.  I think I was in the best shape of my life.  I was given a couple weeks leave and orders to the twenty eight week Electronics School in Groton, Connecticut.  First I flew home, meeting Joyce in Spokane and then on to Port Angeles.  It was a  short trip but we made the most of it.  It bothered me that I was leaving her for an extended period.  She would be staying with my parents.  She was pregnant and it would be a while before I would be able to see my child.  Chris would be six months old before I got to formally meet her.

The Coast Guard Training Center in Groton was a beautiful base that had once belonged to an old sea captain.  It was near New London and the Navy Submarine Base.  It was pretty impressive seeing them leave the river and enter the ocean, just off our base.  The large, stone, mansion that housed the Base Commander and his family was right across the quadrangle from our room.  I had three roommates going to the same class.  We were a pretty close group and all chipped in to buy a savings bond when Chris was born.  Electronics School was twenty eight grueling weeks, eight hours a day, learning to install,  trouble shoot, tune and maintain a variety of electronic equipment.  We had an exciting break one night.  The Mansion had a Chapel connected to it and it caught fire.  The guys woke me up to see but I went back to bed.  I suspected we would be cleaning things up the next day, and we did.  We shoveled trash into a dump truck and rode with it to the dump,  where I was burned on the ear from flying embers. That was the only time I was burned from a fire while in the Coast Guard.  In the end I graduated as a Third Class Electronics Technician. My orders were to the U.S. Coast Guard Base, Group Office, at the foot of Mount Elliot, on the Detroit River, Detroit Michigan.  Having a couple weeks leave plus travel time, I flew home to Joyce and to meet my daughter.

Getting ready to drive east we decided the MG was not big enough for a growing family and to pull a trailer across the country.  We went down to the local Nash dealer and traded the MG in on a two tone Pink/Mauve Rambler station wagon.  Got a deal on a small U-Haul trailer because it was going back to Detroit.  Loaded all we had and headed East.  We arrived in Detroit late in the evening and pulled off the freeway onto Mount Elliot, turned right and headed to the Coast Guard Station at the foot of Mount Elliot.  It was really dark.  We were hungry and tired but thought it best to just go straight on to the base.  We had pulled off in an area of Detroit that didn’t appear too friendly at the time.  The watch and the Officer of the Day suggested going back out Mount Elliot to Warren, a suburb of Detroit, where we would find restaurants and a motel to stay in.  They told us, when driving on Mount Elliot, to keep our doors locked.  We unhitched the trailer and left it at the base and headed to Warren.  The next day we started looking for a place to rent and found a trailer park with a trailer available.  Drove back to the base, got the trailer, and we moved in.  After settling in, I reported in to the base and the Group Electronic Shop.  It was our first experience of becoming a part of a base family.  I joined a car pool with a couple of the guys that lived out near us.

When I wasn’t working on the base, I was traveling all over the area.  Belle Isle Station was on Belle Isle, just across the river from the base.  We covered all the stations in Group Detroit.   Joyce, Chris, and I spent our first Thanksgiving and Christmas in the trailer in Warren.  I remember we bought a bunch of bathtub toys for Chris that first Christmas.  We wrapped them in a really shiny paper.  She played with the wrapped toys until the paper came off and she had a new toy.  On Christmas eve we were invited to the parents house of one of the guys on the station and were included in their gift exchange.  We received a wrapped box of chocolates and really were made to feel like a part of their family.  We did a lot of socializing on my off time and Chris did a lot of traveling in her car seat and sleeping on someone’s bed with pillows stacked around her.  That spring we found a house, behind the 7/11 where we shopped.  It had been a farm house.  It wasn’t until we moved in we realized that as they added each room to the house, they wired everything in series.  In other words, if a light burned out, all the lights went off like a strand of old Christmas tree lights.  Then we had to go around changing light bulbs until we found the right one.  Before we could move in, we needed furniture.  There was a local store with “such a deal,” three rooms of furniture for $300.00.  We bought a bed, dresser, bedside tables, a kitchen table with four chairs, a couch (hardwood covered with material), a couple of easy chairs and two lamps (we still have the lamps around someplace).

I was up in the attic one day and found where they had wired the whole house.  There was a splice up there about the size of a football, a big fire hazard.  I talked the owner into letting me and an electrician friend from the station rewire the house.  It may not have been totally up to code, but it was a lot safer.  That same friend was a buying a new Pontiac Catalina Convertible, so we drove him and his wife down to the dealer to pick it.  While we were there the salesman brought a 1964 Pontiac Tempest 326 into the shop.  It was a pretty car, Marimba Red, two door, full bench front seat and four on the floor.  It had been a special order for a kid but he was drafted before he could take delivery.  The salesman offered to let us try it out but I said we were going to Harsens Island for dinner.  He said go ahead and take it.  What a car, I burned off the lot, holding the steering wheel for dear life.  It was quite a difference from our 59, straight 6, automatic Rambler.  I took it back the next day for carburetor problems it was having and they fixed it.  I was waiting for our Rambler and the salesman told us to take the Tempest for another day or two.  I returned the Tempest again and the salesman got pretty irate with me.  I said tuff, I wanted my Rambler.  He went out and a few minutes later the head salesman came back wanting to know if I could put any money down.  I just wanted my Rambler.  He was sorry, the Rambler had been sold and was in Florida.  Being half in shock, I said I could probably do $300.  Today, I would have said, “Thank you for my new car.”  We got back at the Pontiac dealer though.  One day I was having the Tempest serviced and the head salesman came out wanting to know if I had changed the engine in the Rambler.  I hadn’t.  Seems when they were checking registration in Florida, the title didn’t match.   It was for a sixty Rambler.  When I had bought ours there had been a 60 on the lot and I think the Port Angeles Dealer had mixed mine up with the other title.

The base had put together a softball team to play in a summer league on Belle Isle.  We were good, but couldn’t always field a full team and had to forfeit a lot and end up playing anyway.  We won almost every time.  It was that summer that I started a tradition of being a catcher.  We’ve had a lot of catchers in the family since then.

That fall, 1964, we got orders to the Coast Guard Cutter Woodbine, a buoy tender/ice breaker out of Grand Haven, Michigan.  Grand Haven turned out to be friendly little town in west Michigan and is Coast Guard City USA.  We found a house, I think it was on Sherman, on top of a hill just a few blocks from where the ship tied up at Escanaba Park.  It seemed like a giant house, two bedrooms on the second floor and downstairs a living room, sitting room, dining room, eat in kitchen and bath.  Our three rooms of furniture hardly made a dent.  We had all kinds of room for the three of us and Joyce found out she was  expecting our second.  The ship was like a big family.  It wasn’t uncommon on the weekends for an impromptu gathering to take place at someone’s house and end up a BBQ, potluck and baseball game at a local park.  Marylou (Midge) Tomborelo, the wife of a First Class Bosin mate, kind of adopted Joyce.  When it was time for Joyce to have the baby, it was Midge who took her to the hospital.  In those days the husband was not allowed in the delivery room, at least not in Grand Haven.  January 14, 1965 Timothy was born.  One time when I went to visit the nurse chased me from the room while Joyce breast fed him.

One of my duties, separate from maintaining the electronic equipment, was as oarsman on one of the lifeboats.  We were holding a drill one day and when we came in alongside the ship, the Captain ordered us to use the monkey lines hanging from the davits to board before the boat was raised.  I was never any good at climbing a rope and as I tried my muscles cramped and I had to slide back down.  Captain Fugaro climbed down the lines to encourage me but I couldn’t, the muscles would not cooperate.  He climbed back aboard, the boat was raised, and I was removed from the small boat crew.

August 4th is the anniversary of the Coast Guard and Grand Haven celebrated it with a festival and parade.  After marching in the parade the ship would have an open house and guided tours.  I was one of the crew assigned as a guide.  Joyce kept me supplied with crisp, white summer uniforms, about three a day, during the festival.  Escanaba Park was named after a the Coast Guard Cutter Escanaba that had been stationed in Grand Haven before it was lost during the second world war. All but two men on board went down in the North Atlantic. The park was on one of the main streets heading to the lake so we had to keep the Woodbine looking good for the tourists passing by.

We covered Lake Michigan from Chicago up to Green Bay Wisconsin.  When we were in Chicago, we normally moored up at Navy Pier.  I was working on a piece of equipment one day and flipped hot solder into me eye.  They took me to the VA hospital and removed the solder but I had to wear a patch for awhile.  Back on the ship, while I was standing on the buoy deck, a kid walked over and wanted to know why I had a patch on my eye.  I told him that we wanted to be a pirate ship, we needed a one eye man with a patch and that I lost so they poked my eye out.  Another time, we were escorting a ship through the ice in Green Bay, when it was announced, “Stand by for Collison! This is not a Drill!”.  I was down in the hold working and I remembered we were escorting a large tanker filled with fuel.  When he hit our stern, I was standing on the mess deck holding on.  We had hit a windrow, a very thick area of ice that had stacked up, and the ship behind had lost control and couldn’t reverse.  Luckily he glanced off our stern, denting and buckling some of the frames.  He got control and we finished taking him in to port.  Will always remember Green Bay Wisconsin, home of Schlitz Brewery, and our tour there once.  After the walking tour we got to go into their tap room for free beer.  I sent a lot of post cards while I was sitting, drinking beer.  People who received them could follow how many beers I seemed to be having.  The more beer, the less intelligible the cards.

We had a new Captain and one night, when I was on duty, a program we were watching was interrupted with news that a United 707 had crashed into Lake Michigan, close to Chicago.  After calling the Captain, we started a crew recall, expecting to get ordered to Chicago and the search.  We had enough crew on board and engines running and under way in fifteen minutes after we received the message to proceed to the area.  Early the next morning we arrived in the area of the crash but there was a thick fog so we hove to and stood bye, until the fog lifted.  We were in the middle of the  floating wreckage and the other search boats had to come to us.  For a week, we were designated On Scene Commanders of the search area, picking up debris and bodies.  Shortly after, the ship received a $1500 check from United Airlines for our recreation fund.

The Woodbine was almost lost one time as we were checking our buoys.  It was lunch time, we were having liver and onions, mashed potatoes, gravy and green beans.  A beautiful day with a two foot sea, hardly rocking the ship.  I had just finished lunch and was standing against the inside bulkhead drinking a cup of coffee, looking out the porthole.  The OD got the ship in a troth and the ship began to roll, first to starboard and then to port.  When it rolled to starboard again, I watched as the portholes went completely under the water.  Then the ship snapped back and started a roll to port again but kept going.  The farther we rolled, the benches with men sitting on them and the tables came out of their holders on deck and were sliding at me.  Liver, onions, gravy, mashed potatoes and men came flying at me, around and in-between my legs.  Eventually the ship righted itself and the crew was able to get up, slipping and sliding out of the mess hall, to check the ship.  Luckily no one was injured.  We later found out that the Enginemen had started holding the engines on line manually as the roll indicator registered 49 degrees.  The ship was designed to have the bridge break away at 52 degrees.

In 1965 the Coast Guard formed Squadron One, a squadron of 82 footers, for Vietnam.  One of the ensigns on board received his orders for training in San Diego.  Joyce and I were concerned that I could be called up but a message came in one day from the District Office, “Request one married ET2 for two-year tour to Keflavik Iceland”.  I called Joyce and asked her if she wanted to go to Iceland.  Where’s Iceland?  She looked it up in the almanac and within 30 minutes of receiving the message our answer was returned to District and we got it.  Joyce found out she was pregnant with our third child who it seemed would be born in Iceland.  Our household goods got packed up for shipment and we loaded up the Pontiac and headed to Washington.  Joyce and the kids would be splitting their time between parents while I went to Loran School in Groton, leaving the car in New Jersey to be shipped.

It was a fun trip from Michigan to Washington.  Chris and Tim stood or sat in the back seat.  There wasn’t a law that kids had to be in car seats back then.  Tim liked to stand behind me and when he saw something he liked he would hit me on the back of the head and he would yell, “Tee, Tee, Tee!” as loud as he could.  One day we pulled off the freeway in North Dakota, looking for a place to eat.  It was a small farm town and we found a little café.  I parked across the street from the cafe and we went in.  The kids wanted chocolate milk.  We put our order in and the waitress came back to the table wondering how to make chocolate milk.  I asked her if she had chocolate to make milkshakes with and told her to mix that in with milk.  She really thought it was a good idea.  As we were eating I looked out the window.  Where I had parked there were no other cars on the block but a car pulled in front of the Pontiac drove up to the end of the block and backed into our car.  I went out and luckily there was no damage.  Later, as we were coming down off 4th of July Pass into Idaho, Joyce started having pains.  We came down off the pass pretty fast.  By the time we reached Coeur d’ Alene the pains had stopped so we went on into Spokane.  After getting everyone settled, I headed East.

The drive alone across the United States is not fun and I did it in three days.  Got stopped in Iowa for failure, or confusion, about dimming lights for on-coming cars.  Showed them my military ID, orders to Iceland, my Michigan registration and my Washington drivers license.  The  policemen suggested I stop and rest at the next rest stop and they wouldn’t arrest me.  I did.  My next stop was in Hershey, Pennsylvania, at my Uncle Gene’s.  He wasn’t there but his Ward was and I got to sleep on a bed.  Then on to Groton for six weeks of Loran C Receiver School.  One thing about having a car at Groton this time, I was able to do some sightseeing on weekends; Mystic Seaport, Cape Cod and some of the surrounding area.  While I was at school, I found out that Joyce and the kids would not be joining me in New York to fly to Iceland.  It seems the Coast Guard was closing their Office in Copenhagen and transferring the crew from there to Iceland.  A Lieutenant JG’s wife was expecting so they were getting the apartment reserved for us.  When school was over, I drove to New York to the Coast Guard Station Stanton Island.  I took the car to Bayonne, New Jersey to be ship to Iceland.  I flew Pan Am to Keflavik, Iceland and lived in the barracks for a few months.

I finally got word that our car had arrived in Reykjavik but had been damaged. When off loading they had dragged straps over the top scratching it.  After it was repair I went to Reykjavik to pick it up.  Between there and Keflavik was thirty miles of paved road.  I opened it up to blow out the carbon.  I eventually put some hot plugs in because the only gas sold off base was 82 octane.  One of the guys I was stationed with was friends with a rock band, The Icelandic Beetles.  When we were visiting them in town one time, one of the band members really wanted to buy my 326 and offered me $8000, which I couldn’t take because of Icelandic Import Laws.   I had found an apartment in downtown Keflavik and wanted to have some supplies for my family arriving soon.  I had gone to the commissary and planned to take the groceries off the base with the family.  While at the station, I was asked to pick up someone at the Reykjavik airport.  Forgetting I had the groceries in the back seat of the car, as I passed through the gate, the Icelandic guard stopped me and confiscated the groceries and gave me a ticket.  Luckily he didn’t find the bottle of booze I had stashed.  I stopped at the apartment, 30 Suddergata if memory serves me, and called Lieutent Harrison, our Commanding Officer, and told him what had happened.  When I got back to the base, he had it all settled.  I would pay a ten Kroner ($10) fine and lose the groceries.

It was five months before I got to meet my daughter, Kelly.  They arrived Thanksgiving 1966.  After picking them up we went to the apartment and everyone got some rest. We were invited back to base to have Thanksgiving dinner. After a few days in the apartment, there was a knock on the door.  When I answered there was a little girl, about Chris’s age, standing there.  She looked up at me and said very slowly, “Will – You – Play – With – Me”.  “Chris!!”  Before long she was just one of the kids on the block, speaking Icelandic.  The Icelandic people were very friendly if you showed a genuine interest in their country.  They were not friendly if you played the role of “The Ugly American”.  One day when Joyce went to the bakery we used, she walked in and saw the girl behind the counter was making it difficult for a very obnoxious woman to place her order.  The girl just couldn’t understand.  The woman finally got frustrated, purchased something and left.  The girl then turned to Joyce and greeted her with a pleasant, “How are you today?”  The Icelandic learn a number of languages in school because they deal with many countries.  Almost all their supplies are imported.  My Mom and Dad told me that Iceland was where they had their name legally changed to Towne (with “e”).  Guess they had added the “e” sometime without making it legal and they figured it would be less confusing in the future in case anything came up.  My birth certificate already had the “e” on Towne.

For about six months we lived off base while they were building officer’s housing.  About the time we were to move on base, we found out that Chris had a medical problem that required she be flown to Germany.  They scheduled her and Joyce to fly out on one of the weekly MAC flights.  And it was arranged that I and the other kids would escort them.  When I went to check in I heard one of the Navy guys at check in telling someone on the phone that he could bump three people off the flight and get them on.  We were the three.  When I checked in he informed me of the bump and said if I didn’t like it to take it to the base commander.  I contacted my commanding Officer, who went to the Navy Base Commander.  We were put back on the flight.  When flying on a military plane back then the seats faced the back of the plane.  As we were landing in Germany I mentioned to Joyce that there seemed to be something wrong.  Three weeks later we were on the same plane to fly back to Iceland and I asked one of the crew.  It seems there had been an engine on fire when we were landing.  While we were gone the station crew moved our stuff from downtown.   Finally we moved into our apartment on base.  And when you move into a new house, you have to have a house warming party.  I was just getting over the mumps when we were planning to have ours, so Joyce went to the base liquor store for supplies.  When she went to pay, she had more than our monthly allotment of six hundred ounces.  The Commanding Officer had to be called and  he surprised them by sending someone over to help Joyce load the car.  It was a good party.  All the parties were good and fun during our stay.

One day our Warrant Officer, another ET and I were sent to Reykjavik to trouble shoot a Loran Receiver on a French Naval Ship.  As I was driving toward the main gate I saw a guy approaching an intersection just ahead of us.  At the time Iceland was right hand drive.  He was going pretty fast and for some reason I suspected he was not going to stop and  was going to turn into our lane.  He did.  I swerved the International Carryall I was driving to the right.  Looking down I saw his VW heading toward our back wheel.  I cranked the wheel left, and down shifted.  The truck went up on its right front wheel and the VW passed below us.  I cranked the wheel right and landed on all for wheels, in my lane and facing the same way I had been going.  I stopped and the Warrant Officer went over to the Navy Petty officer and told him to report to his commanding officer and that he would be making a report of the incident.  We then proceeded on into Reykjavik.  On the French ship we began to check for problems.  We knew their receiver was ok, we had had it at the station for a few days.  It took us about an hour to find they had a bad cable, fix it and depart.  As we were leaving we passed our Commanding Officer and his wife heading to the ship for lunch and gave him a thumps up.  Later my Warrant Officer called me to his office and asked how I missed that accident that morning.  I told him that I had an out of body experience, standing on the corner watching it happen, and I told him the maneuvers I had taken.  He didn’t say much about the out of body but figured the maneuvers were good.

We spent two and a half years in Iceland.  It was a great experience and I would gladly return.  But it was time to leave.  I had been promoted to First Class and reenlisted, getting a really great bonus that would  be payed annually for the next four years.  We landed back in Seattle and with our bonus in hand Pop, Joyce and I went car shopping and found another family car, a used Mercury station wagon.  Loading everyone in the car we headed to Port Angeles and my new station, the Group Electronics Shop, on the Coast Guard Air Station.  We found a house close to Lincoln school.  It was the school where I had attended 4th grade. With what was left of that years bonus we bought some new furniture. The three rooms we had bought in Detroit just wouldn’t do now.  We even bought a used boat that needed some minor repair.  For me, being at the Port Angeles Air Station was one of the best family times we had while I was in the Coast Guard.  There were no extended travel times so I was home pretty much every night.  Along with the boat, we bought camping equipment.  It wasn’t uncommon for us to load everything in the boat and tow it to some park and spend the weekend boating and camping.  There were a couple of stations I serviced, especially Port Townsend, where I could take the whole family and stay in one of their empty family units.  For a work car, I got my 49 Hudson back.  Getting a bug in my bonnet one day, I made it into a pick up, cutting the top off from behind the front seat all the way back.  Guess it was kind of a Towne thing.  Pop and I once cut twenty two inches out of the body and frame of a 42 Hudson he had.

We bought our first house in Port Angeles, 423 South Cedar.  It was a little bungalow style built around 1920 for someone’s Mother-in-Law.  The man that had owned it before was an elderly widower who didn’t really take care of, repair or clean the house.  Before we moved in we had to clean at least a quarter inch of grease from the inside of the kitchen cabinets.  After we were done, it was a house that everyone liked to come to for visits and parties.  It had a huge fireplace in the living room, big enough to put the whole Christmas tree in to it.  After I had set the tree on fire, our next door neighbor came running over to tell us we had a ten foot flame shooting  out the chimney.  One of my fondest memories was when we  would go to Dairy Queen for ice cream cones.  Chris, Tim and Kelly would play a game on the way home to see who could make their ice cream cone last the longest.  I made a rule that if there was ice cream when we got home, I got to eat it.  I did it one time and from then on as we pulled up to the house, the last bites went into their mouths.  It was great fun. Shortly after moving in, I was transferred to the Coast Guard Cutter Winona that was home ported at the Air Station.  Joyce became kind of a house mother when the ship was out.  A lot of the younger wives would bring their sleeping bags over and camp out in our living room while the husbands were out on the ship.

I made Chief while on the Winona.  It is a big thing, with an initiation and party.  It so happened that I was the only one that made Chief between the Air Station and the Ship this particular time.  It was quite a blow out and since I had to drink when ordered by other Chiefs, I got pretty smashed.  It was great fun for them to pour beer over my head if I didn’t answer a question right.  The bad part was, no one saw me leave the party to go home.  I remember I had to stop every now and then driving down the spit and allow myself to focus the road back to one lane.  I made it through the Pulp Mill and up the hill to home.  When I got there, I smelled so bad Joyce made me take my uniform off outside the back porch before letting me in.

One day another Chief Electronics Technician showed up to the ship.  He had been stationed in Rhodes, Greece. While his wife was home in the states she had been killed in a auto accident.  I was thinking that I might be taking his place in Rhodes, a station I had requested a number of times.  But my orders came in and they were for Loran Station Cape Christian on Baffin Island, Northwest Territory, Canada.  Joyce had just found out she was pregnant and here I was leaving, again, for a year.  It put quite a strain on our marriage.

November of 1971, I reported to the First District Office in Boston.  They were  so concerned about what they were hearing about the officer commanding the station that they made arrangements to send me up quick.  Also, the aids to navigation Captain wanted to know what other problems faced the station.  They usually sent personnel up through Winnipeg, Canada to pick up arctic gear.  Instead, I flew out of Boston in a snow storm without artic gear.  I had forgotten my overcoat in Seattle and all I had was my winter uniform and a rain coat.  As we were making our approach into Montreal, I was looking out the left window and could see the glow of the runway lights way off to the left.  About that time, the pilot applied power and we raised back into the air.  The pilot came on the intercom and announced that ground control approach was going to have to realign.  So we circled a few minutes and then landed.  I checked in with the airline, Nordair, that would be flying to the city Frobisher on Baffin Island.  Since I had excess luggage I had to pay, then find a hotel, due to the snow storm.  Next day we landed in Frobisher but weather was too bad to go on.  So I stayed in a hotel in Frobisher.  The next day weather was still bad.  I was pretty low on funds so I put on long my underwear and a fur hat I had picked up when we were in Iceland.  I transferred my hat emblem from my Coast Guard hat to the fur hat.  Then I stayed at the terminal to wait.  Periodically, the Royal Canadian Mounty would stop in and check me out and finally inquired as to why I was there.  Next day we were delayed again so I was going to try to  use my gas card to get cash since ATM’s weren’t around yet.  Finally, Nordair put me up in their facility until weather broke and we could fly out.  We puddle jumped up Baffin Island in a Twin Otter that was not sealed very well so not the warmest plane.  We first landed at Clyde, a little town near Cape Christian.  There was a Mounty there from Cape Christian who saw me and asked if that was all I was wearing.  I assured him that they were flying me directly to the station.  It was going to be an interesting year.

I checked in with the CO and was up front with him about the concern at the District Office.  I did make a few changes that weren’t popular,  but I could cook and since they didn’t have a cook there at the time I sometimes filled in.  Cape Christian turned out to be an interesting year.  One of the first things we tried to order were a couple of snowmobiles.  District turned us down because they thought we would go out and get lost in the tundra.  Almost everyone on the station learned to run our D6 Caterpillars.  You needed something to do so you could get away by yourself and with the D6 you could slam into and level snow drifts on the landing strip.  We had one man scare us by threatening to commit suicide with our station shot gun.  I think he was faking but you can’t take a chance.  Another cut off the fingers of his right hand on the station table saw when he was trying to make his going home box.  Both took some arranging but we got them flown back to Boston.  We would get in new movies every time a resupply plane came in, as well as fresh eggs and bread and other commissary supplies.  We basically ran an open house for visitors, Canadian and Eskimo from Clyde.  The Eskimos always stocked up drinking our cool aid so if they had a carburetor freeze up on the way home, they could defrost it by peeing on it.

With the Canadians we shared fresh eggs and bread.  We got a lot almost every week and their supply came in about once a year.  The station had a beer supply and honor refrigerator where we purchased beer on our off times.  The Canadians weren’t allowed to buy beer directly.  They could buy some through one of the guys on the station but couldn’t leave the station with it.  We had a lot of parties with and without guests from Clyde.  There was an annual Christmas Party for the Eskimo families and kids.  The District would send up a lot of toys for Santa to give away and we would serve a ton of sandwiches,  potato chips and pop.  The Eskimo brought large boxes and when they took their coats off would put them in their box.  Smart idea but when the food was put out, the coats came out of the boxes and food went in to take home for later.  In the spring we were able to get outside more.  On 9 January, a telegraph message was forwarded to me through the District Office, “Jan 8, received via Western Union. Quote, Arrived 730, Mom fine Love Mike, Unquote.”  I looked at it and asked, “Who the hell is Mike?”  The guys standing in the radio room laughed and told me it was my son.  On my birthday, July 26, I left the window open in my room and the next morning had about a half inch of snow on the floor when I woke up.

As the year was coming to an end, I found out we were going to be stationed at Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington DC.  I wrote Joyce to tell her and told her I thought she should buy a new car with air conditioning because of the humidity there.  I placed the letter in the mail bag for the next plane out.  When I got my mail from that plane, there was a letter from Joyce telling me about the car she had just bought, a new 1972 Mercury Colony Park station wagon.  It had all the bells and whistles, we would be driving to DC in style.  In October 1972, I flew out of Clyde.  As I was walking through the terminal in Montreal I noticed a beautiful lady sitting there.  As I got closer I realized it was my wife, Joyce.  We got to spend a couple of days in Montreal and then flew to Boston.  I checked in at the District Office and made my report to the head of Aids to Navigation as he wanted, blaming a lot of the problems on the District Office.  Joyce and I spent a couple of days in Boston then flew to Washington DC to look for a house.

I did a quick stop by the Loran Office I would be working at to get some ideas of where we should look.  The next day we saw a real estate agent in Woodbridge Virginia and she started showing us some houses.  For October it was un-seasonably warm and really hot to me, coming from the Artic.  She refused to turn on her air conditioner because it was October.  We found a house to rent and made arrangements with a friend, Marylou Dills, whose husband I had been stationed with on the Winona, to supervise the unloading of our household goods when they arrived.  Having 60+ days leave, we flew home to Washington.

We landed in Seattle where I was finally able to meet Mike, face to face, after nine months.  We picked up the other kids and headed to Port Angeles.  It was kind of a whirlwind period.  When you’ve been away a year, it takes time to integrate back into a family.  Then there was the house to sell, packers to arrange and moving trucks to get loaded.  When December arrived we were ready and headed over to Seattle to say good bye to our parents.  At Joyce’s Mom and Dad’s, Mike came down with pneumonia.  We spent a few days there until the Doctor said it was ok for Mike to travel and we were on our way.  We arrived in Woodbridge, Virginia, on Christmas Eve.  The house had boxes everywhere and that is pretty much where they stayed.   We found a Chinese restaurant and had dinner.  When we got back to the house we found some of the Christmas decorations and some of the presents and had our first Christmas in Woodbridge.  The next day we joined Marylou and her family for Christmas Dinner and then went home and started the process of settling in.  As a family, we visited a lot of the tourist sights in and around Washington DC.  We didn’t get to a lot of places because of how expensive it was to live in the DC area.  The Smithsonian was one our favorites.  When we had visitors we usually always hit the museum of flight and then some we hadn’t seen before.  I remember one time, when it was raining, there was a river running down the street by our house.  The kids went out and water sledded down the gutter.

After the New Year, I signed in to Headquarters and started working.  When I had visited in October, I had a beard.  I had actually grown it shortly after I made Chief.  The Commanding Officer of my office was expecting me to come back clean shaven.  I didn’t.  The Navy Times had just run a cartoon of a Captain and his Bos’n on the deck of a sailing ship.  The Bos’n was holding the arm of a sailor with half his beard shaved off.  The caption read, “Good job Bos’n, if you let one do it, they all will.”  I posted it on our information board and no one ever mentioned my beard again.  I was called up to the Captain of Aids to Navigation Office about my recommendation for new communication equipment for Cape Christian. They were hesitent to spend money for new equipment because the station would be closing soon.  I pointed out the accidents that required emergency communication.  They approved and sent new equipment.  I had an opportunity to talk to the Commanding Officer that was in charge when I left.  He told me he didn’t know what I had said to the District Office in Boston, but they were getting planes in almost every day for a couple of weeks with supplies that had been on order for years.

Because parking was a premium in DC we were required to car pool.  I joined one that was made up of three officers who enjoyed leaving early to have a late lunch and cocktails at the Officers Club.  We always ran late heading home, an interesting drive.  Luckily, we never had an accident.  It was the fifth year after the founding of the Coast Guard Chief Petty Officers Association and the National Headquarters was in DC.  I became the National Special Projects Officer.  One of my jobs became looking for office space we could rent.  While waiting to move in, I drew and painted a three foot copy of the CPOA patch that would hang there.   I also participated in the fifth Annual CPOA conference.  The Washington DC Chapter held a lunch for some of the Admirals.  I and another Chief escorted a couple to the lunch in our Mercury.  Listening to them in the back seat I almost laughed, they were discussing how it was a Chief could afford a car like that.

I was encouraged to test for a two year advanced training school.  I passed and chose DeVry Institute in Phoenix Arizona.  May of 1974 we packed up everything and were ready to head West.  Because we didn’t know what we were going to be running into or how long it would take to find a house, we flew Chris, Tim and Kelly out to Washington State to my folks house.  Joyce, Mike and I headed West, towing the Vega I had bought while in the car pool.  We  actually headed Southwest, stopping and spending the night in New Orleans at a couple’s house we had been stationed with on the Winona.  I think it was somewhere in Texas I was getting pretty low on fuel and it was time to find a gas station or motel.  I pulled in to a little town late at night and happened to see a policeman.  I stopped and asked him if there was a gas station or, if not, a motel.  He sent me to a station that was closed but said to knock on the door and tell them he had sent us.  We did and we got our tank filled.  I doubt you could do that today.  When we arrived in Phoenix we decided to stay at a KOA camp ground and live out of the back of our station wagon.  Our household goods were scheduled to arrive any day and we figured we would be able to get our camping gear.

I had checked with the District Office in Long Beach to see if they had housing available since they had been arranging housing for the incoming students.  They didn’t have another house available so we started looking for one to rent.  There weren’t a lot of rental houses that would facilitate our family so we decided to buy.  We found one and needed some help with the down payment so I went to Coast Guard Assistance.  In the meantime, mom and dad arrived in the motorhome with the kids.  It was 115 degrees during the day and I wanted to get into our home.  There was a Captain in the District office that needed to approve loans and he didn’t want to approve one for us.  I called him one day and wanted to know why.  He thought we would be taking on too much.  I explained that we would actually be paying less buying than renting.  He persisted and said his officer in charge of arranging housing said there was housing available.  I told him he was being told what he wanted to hear, I had already checked.  But if, in fact, housing was available, I wanted a house by that afternoon since it was 115 degrees and I had four kids living out of a tent and the back of a station wagon.  Mom was standing close to me and couldn’t believe I was talking to a Captain like that.  We got the loan to purchase the house but we had to wait for closing.  After our second week in the camp ground, Mom and Dad thought it was too hot and left.  We packed up our gear and moved out to one of the local rivers and camped for a week, swimming and tubing a lot.  One more week to go before we could close we packed up everything.  We located a Motel, checked in, got our room, turned on the air conditioner and TV and vegged out for a week till we moved in to our home.

DeVry was going to be my station for two years.  When people found out I was in the Coast Guard and stationed in Phoenix, they always asked, “What’s the Coast Guard doing in Phoenix?”  My reply, “Well, the Coast Guard’s motto is Semper Paratus, Always Ready.  With California expected to fall off, we are going up and down the new proposed coast line, building new stations.”  Sometimes I would clarify that I was going to school and sometimes I would just walk away.  School was five days a week, eight to four, so I had a lot of time to be with the family.  We traded in the Mercury and Vega for a nineteen foot Travel Queen Motorhome and a Toyota Corolla.  I drove the Toyota to school which left Joyce driving the motorhome to work at the Highway Patrol business office.  Weekends were spent camping, fishing, swimming and touring all around Arizona.  We went up to Flagstaff in the winter to do some sledding.

I think one of our favorite trips was down in to the Grand Canyon.  Of course we picked the hardest trail to go down.  We all had backpacks and water canteens, even Mike with his pack carrying our lunch and some of his toys.  One of the canteens got knocked over the side and I was getting blisters on my feet.  I had to hold back because Mike was having a hard time.  Close to the bottom Chris and Mike took off and beat us down and I limped in the rest of the way.  We spent the first night in the bottom of the Canyon and the next day headed to Indian Gardens, about half way up.  On the way we were running out of water so I went ahead and found water and refilled the canteen.  I was pretty pooped and asked one of the day hikers going down if they could take the canteen to my wife and kids.  We met up at Indian Gardens and set up camp.  It was a beautiful spot.  At night the cactus on top looked like giants with the moon shining behind them.  The next day we lay on our sleeping bags and watched it rain on top, evaporating before it got  to us.  The next afternoon, we were sitting at our picnic table and this guy came over and sat down.  We didn’t say much, thinking it was a friend of the people next to us.  Turned out, he was from New Zealand and that was how he met people, by just being obnoxious.  He had an orange that he peeled and asked the kids if they would like some biscuits.  We explained they were cookies and they took some.  The next day we headed up.  Chris, Tim and Mike took off.  Joyce, Kelly and I took our time.  The other kids had gotten to the top and found some people we had met in Indian Gardens. They stored their packs and bought them some drinks.  As we were coming to the top, the kids placed a drink on the trail and encouraged Kelly to keep coming. “Come on Kelly,” and out of the crowd we heard, “Kelly, a grand name, may you be blessed with many children.”  What can I say.  We went to our room at the hotel where every one took showers and cleaned up before we went out for dinner.  At dinner we all chowed down: salad, steak, baked potato with all the trimmings, and apple pie alamode.  That evening, we all got sick.  You should never eat a lot of rich food after having been on a bland diet for a few days.  It was a great trip.

Heat was a big problem.  It was so hot during the summer, we usually had our air conditioner set at 80-85 degrees.  One week Joe, Joyce’s brother, and a friend of his, Mick, came to visit.  It was funny watching these two big guys, over six feet tall, come unwinding out of a VW Super Beetle. We didn’t have our pool yet but the neighbor next door told us we could use theirs.  Mick was sitting in the pool one day with a glass of wine and repeating, “I can’t believe they have their air conditioner set at 80 degrees.”

Before graduation, I found out we would be getting orders to Coast Guard Loran Station Point Arguello, California as Officer-in-Charge.  So one week we packed up the motorhome and drove over to check out the station.  To get to the station you have to drive through south Vandenberg Air Force Base.  Port Arguello was a very picturesque station, setting on a bluff looking out over the Pacific.  It had an unmanned light house on a hill above the fog horn on the point.  There were two duplexes, a garage and the Loran building.  My first feelings were I would be taking on a lot of trouble.  You could almost cut the tension with a knife.  We didn’t stay long.  Instead we headed for Disney Land and parked in their camp ground.  We got some really good tickets from one of Joyce’s cousins, Monica, who worked there.  After spending all day in the park, we decided to go out for dinner.  We were walking to the restaurant and Mike, three or four at the time, could hardly walk because he was tired, hungry and just plain in a bad mood.  All the way back to the camp ground, with his mouse ears on, he just kept singing, “M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E,  Mickey Mouse” over and over.

When I arrived in Seattle I was met by an Air Force recruiter and taken to the Air Force facility where they did our physicals. If we passed we were given the Oath to Protect the Constitution. Then as a group, loaded on a bus and taken to SeaTac to fly to San Antonio, Texas. It was my first plane ride, on Braniff Airlines, “The Golden Banana”. I remember looking out the window of the plane and watching the wings flap up and down. Another bus ride and we get off on Lackland Air Force Base. There we were formed up in to Recruit Flights. All the time, a couple of guys who would be our flight leaders are yelling and getting in our faces. We were marched to our barracks and assigned a bunk and locker. Later we were marched to the chow hall and there had to side step through the chow line, still being yelled at and rushed to finish. Then back in formation to march back to the barracks, make our beds, and get assignments for guard duty that night. Finally, taps and lights out. For a while it was quiet, then I would hear sniffling and moans through out the night. The next morning, reveille, the flight commanders walking between bunks pulling covers off, yelling to get dressed and fall out for formation to be marched again to the chow hall and then to the barber shop. They buzz cut of all your hair. Then yelled more as we formed up again and marched to a warehouse to side step through a line to get our sea bag so we would have something to carry the uniforms issued. They ran out of long khaki pants, size thirty two, by the time I got to that portion of the line. But I did get khaki shorts, Bermuda socks and Bush Jackets and short sleeve shirts. Also fatigues, dress shoes and boroughs. Everything but my long pants. Formed up, we marched back to the barracks and told to get out of our civilian clothes and into uniform, fatigues and boroughs. All our civvies we packed into the bags we had brought to be sent home. We were then shown how to lay out our foot lockers and how to hang our dress uniforms on the rods next to our bunks.

After that things settled down into sort of a four-week summer camp. San Antonio in July is really hot, usually 95 degrees by ten or eleven in the morning. When it reached that, all outside activity was stopped. We would have had morning exercises and breakfast, then marched to classes or bused to the gun range. Marching and obstacle courses all took place before it reached 95 degrees. Then we would be marched inside for classes. We all had our assigned jobs; clean barracks or latrines, or guard duty, nothing very strenuous. We really had lots of breaks. It was where I was introduced to Dr. Pepper. I think it was the only pop machines we had on base.  Smoking a pipe was a little awkward so I started smoking cigarettes, Parliaments.  The first weekend we were allowed to go to the Airman’s Club.  I got my club card and bought my first beer, Red Star, a Texas brand.  It was a hot afternoon and after a few beers, maybe two or three, I started sweating and went to the restroom.  I took off my shirt and splashed some water on my face.  Then put my shirt back on and left to go back to the barracks.  I hadn’t notice that when I put my shirt back on, the collar got tucked under.  But the Sargent I ran into on the way back did.  He ordered me to square away my shirt and report to my barracks.  I did, and when I got to my barracks, I tore up my club card.  I think I tore up my club card three times.

We had to take aptitude tests to see what we qualified for.  At the time, the needs of the Air Force came first.  I was given three choices; Air Police, Still Photography and Medics although I came in high for languages too.  I got my last choice, Medics.  So, after four weeks in boot camp, I moved across the base and began eleven weeks of Medic training.  Our flight leaders also participated in the base drill team during their off times.  So we got a lot of drill practice marching to class.  There were times when marching we would come up against a flight of Air Force Academy recruits doing their pre-Academy training and we would march through them.  Medic school included a few WAFs from a separate, nearby barracks, who would form up with us in the morning.  Classes included a lot of first aid, field medic prep, both book and hands on.  Evenings we could go to the Airman’s Club or movies.  On weekends we could go into San Antonio.  Our flight leaders warned us that River Walk was Off Limits to recruits and to watch out when we got off the bus and use a buddy system when walking around downtown.  I pretty much stayed on the base and kept my Club card.  While going to class we were given more aptitude tests.  I scored high for Medic, Dental Tech and X-ray Tech.  I chose X-ray, Medic, Dental Tech.  I got Dental Tech, needs of the Air Force prevailed.

Orders came through to report to Dental Tech School in Montgomery, Alabama.  I was given two weeks leave in route to report in early November 1958.  First I flew home.  An old hand at flying now, I went back to the lounge (they had them in the old days) and sat with a couple of WAFs and the Stewardess to Los Angeles.  During our wait for the plane to Seattle, one of the WAF and I went to the airport bar.  Being in uniform, we didn’t get asked for ID and I tried my first martini.  Turns out gin is not my favorite drink.  On landing in Seattle, I took the Greyhound bus to Port Angeles and home.  I pretty much stayed in uniform the whole time at home.  Mom and Dad wanted to show me off and it was kind of a chick magnet.  But time came to head for Alabama, so I climbed aboard a Greyhound again and headed south, first to San Francisco and then east.

Pulling into Dallas, Texas, I got my first introduction to racism.  Getting off the bus you are greeted with two entrances to the depot, “White and Colored”.  Inside it continued with “White and Colored” restrooms, water fountains and restaurants.  From Dallas, all the way to Montgomery, it was the same thing at all the stops.  In Montgomery, I went out the wrong door to catch a taxi.  The Red Star taxis waiting there were for “Colored Only”.  I had to go back inside and go out the right door and wait for a taxi to the base.  I later learned at the base introduction that it was a $50 fine for a white and colored person to be riding in the same car together.  Apparently, it was one reason the Air Force didn’t have “Colored” airman going to the advanced medical training base where the dental school was because some classes were done across town at Shepard AFB.  They didn’t want to “upset” people.

Dental Tech school was twenty four weeks long so I was there for Thanksgiving.  One of the guys had arranged a blind date for me with a telephone operator downtown.  We got a pumpkin pie from the dining hall and arranged to meet our dates in town.  When we arrived they were sitting in a car and we drove around, trying to find a place open to get whipped cream for our pie before we went to their apartment.  As my date was getting out of the car, she kept unwinding and when finally out, stood over six feet tall.  We had our pie and high tailed it back to base.  Another time I was heading into town with a couple of the WAF who were in school with me.  They wanted to do some shopping.  We kept getting more and more packages, so when it came time to head back to the base, instead of carrying all the packages on the bus, I went to a used car lot and got a car to try out by taking the two back to the base.  I picked up a couple of the guys and we headed back in to town.  The problem was I couldn’t remember where I had gotten the car.  We ended up driving around a long time until I found the lot.  I took the car back and told them it wasn’t quite the car I was looking for.  Just before graduating, I found out that I had passed the entrance exam for the Academy, top ten percent from the state of Washington.  I was told that when I got to my next base they would arrange to get me to my next set of tests.  I found out that my next assignment was going too be Fairchild AFB in Spokane Washington.

I wanted to buy a car that an airman on the base had for sale, a 1954 Hudson coupe.  A pretty car, forest green, with all the bells and whistles.  It did need a valve job but I thought it would make it to Washington and I could overhaul it there.  Problem, I needed my folks to cosign for the $300 loan it would take to buy it and they said no.  So I climbed aboard a Greyhound and headed North.  Around Chicago three guys from the Royal Canadian Engineers boarded the bus and we rotated the back seat so we could stretch out once in a while and get some sleep.  In Billings, Montana, a morning stop for breakfast, we went out to the parking lot and compared marching techniques, especially “To The Rear March”.  They caught a bus going North and I continued on to Seattle and Port Angeles.  I was home a shorter time because I had to get to Spokane.  I got my 49 Hudson packed and headed East.

Arriving at Fairchild, I reported to the 810th Medical Group.  The hospital was just off the west side of the base.  Our barracks was across the parking lot and the Dental Clinic was on base, near the Exchange and Commissary.  After signing in, I showed them my letter to continue tests for the Air Force Academy.  It turned out they would be held at McCord AFB in May.  I caught a ride on a MATS C54 flight for McCord AFB in Tacoma.  After three days there and a battery of tests, physical and mental, I returned to Fairchild on the same C54.  As they approached for a landing you could see the flaps coming down and feel the wheels touching.  All of a sudden, they applied power and took off.  Just the prior year two B52’s had collided on the end of the runway.  You can imagine what was going through my mind as we came around, made our approach and landed.  As we were deplaning we asked what that was all about.  The runway is so long they just wanted to make a touch and go.  A few weeks later I found out that I hadn’t passed Physical Fitness or my English parts of the tests.

Being a male Dental Technician in the fifties and sixties was not a career making position.   Most of the Dentists I worked with were spending their time training and preparing for when they entered private practice so I got to assist in some very interesting projects.  When I asked about working with them in private practice, they were not interested in having a male assistant.  I persevered and enjoyed my time, primarily assisting in oral surgery and dental hygiene.  In these areas I kept a closer, personal contact with my patients.  There were a number of times I went against the norm of rushing my patients through in an assembly line mode.  I was interested in the comfort and care of all my patients and not in the numbers.  This had a tendency to cause friction with senior enlisted and management and it delayed my promotions.

There was so much politics in the Air Force.  At the clinic you had it made if you owned a VW and played pinochle because the senior sergeant did.  I didn’t own a VW and I played better pinochle.  Eventually I was promoted to A1C, not through the hospital but through the Base.  I’m pretty sure that Colonel Freeman, the Oral Surgeon I worked with, was responsible.  While working I started taking evening extension English classes on base through Eastern Washington College of Education and started working out with a personal physical trainer through the base gym.  When I thought I was ready, I applied for the Air Force Academy through the chain of command.  My Squadron Commander, a ninety day wonder Second Lieutenant returned my paperwork, stating I was too average for the Air Force Academy.  Since the Air Force was reducing the number of enlisted on base by eight hundred so I went in the next day and requested discharge.  If I was too average for the Academy then I felt I was too average for the Air Force.  He told me those discharges were not meant for someone like me.

As you can imagine, I became very disillusioned with the Air Force.  I enjoyed my job and continued doing it my way.  I decided to find an after hours job.  I can’t remember how, but I found a part-time job as a Car Hop at a local Drive In called Baker’s Beacon.  To have an extra job, not connected to the Air Force, you have to ask permission.  I did, and received permission to have a part time job as long as it didn’t interfere with my normal duties.  Being a Car Hop was a lot of fun.  Of course, I was kind of burning the candle at both ends and maybe sometime even the middle.  After working until five PM at the clinic, I would go down and work at the drive in, sometime to midnight or later and then maybe go partying. I’d get back in the morning to shower and go to work at the clinic.  I would do that a day or two and then on my day off I would sleep twelve or fifteen hours.  I was temporarily transferred to an extension of Fairchild, Deep Creek, where they kept their nuclear weapons.  The first day I reported there, I walked through the door of the building where the medical facility was located.  As I entered I glanced over and asked this guy standing there where the dental clinic was.  Embarrassed, I realized I was talking to myself in a mirror on the wall.  Being at Deep Creek was kind of a whirlwind period.  Most of the time I didn’t have a patient show up, so the Sargent in charge of the medical clinic wouldn’t wake me up till about noon.  I would drive over to the base in the ambulance and get the mail.  Then on nice days go out to Clear Lake and the Base Resort, go swimming or check out a boat and go pick up a girl at the civilian resort and go water ski.  After, I’d go down to the Beacon and party.  My more impressive dates were to take a girl out to Natatorium Park.  On the way to pick her up I would stop by a florist and buy a white rose and pin it to a card.  It seemed to impress the girls and their mothers.

I took some time off and drove over to Port Angeles.  Pop and I went to Seattle to look for a new car for me.   We found a used 53 Austin sedan.  It was actually a cute little car.  The gear shift was on the column, but backwards; first was where second would be on an American car, 2nd/high, 3rd/reverse, 4th/1st, and reverse pull out the handle push all the way back and down.  Driving home we went around Hood Canal and found out it used oil faster than gas.  One curve I came said 25mph but I hit it about 50.  Dad was behind me and thought I was going to wreck but I bounced around and finally stopped.  We put more oil in and made it to Port Angeles.  Pop and I overhauled the engine.  Then decided to paint it white with turquoise fenders.

One of the places I visited a lot in Spokane was the Sports Car Dealer on Monroe, now Silver Auto Auction.  Back then they dealt in Mercedes, MG and Austin, and Midgets.  I became very interested in an Austin Midget that they raced.  After every race they would bring it back to the shop and completely tear down the engine, polish and rebalance it as they put it back together again.  They offered it to me for $1500.  I called Pop and tried to have him loan me the money or cosign a loan but he wouldn’t so I never got it.  Mr. Baker became aware I was looking for another car.  He had a 60 MG Magnet Mark III, black with red and white leather interior.  We by-passed Dad and he took my Austin in trade and my trumpet as one of the payments.  I got to be pretty well known in that car.  I used to race the motorcycle cops up Division on the way to work.  One night, after getting off at the Beacon a friend stopped in and asked me to drive him around, looking for his girl friend.  We found her and were chasing her around on some of the streets in Spokane when I took a left turn too  fast.  The MG went up on two wheels.  I fell out of the driver seat and as I was trying to get back under the wheel she slowly rolled on to her right side in the middle of the street.  Duke and I and a guy that came to check what had happened, muscled the car back on to its wheels.  I checked oil and water, and we took off.  This time with his girl friend.  Since I had a close relationship with the police that came to the Beacon, I asked if they thought I needed to report the accident.  They felt, since there wasn’t any property damage, that it probably wasn’t necessary.  The next day though, I was called into my Commanders office and ordered back to the base.  He asked about my car and I told him.  It was his recommendation, almost an order, that I report the accident.  I respectfully declined his recommendation.  It didn’t go over well.

It was late summer 1961, and I mentioned to Mom that I would probably be bringing a girl home with me for Christmas.  Then forgot about it.  In November I was riding around with Duke and his girl friend, Karen, and we stopped by this house on Olympic and picked up a friend of Karen’s.  She was introduced to me as Joyce, Mary Joyce Bell, and climbed into the back seat with me.  I can’t remember exactly what we did that day, but we had a great time.  After, when I wasn’t working, Joyce and I spent a lot of time together.  We had been dating about three weeks when the subject of marriage came up and we decided to do it.  On the morning of December 9, 1961, we drove to the Hitching Post in Coeur D’ Alene, Idaho, with Duke and Karen.  First we had to get a blood test, $5.  Then take the drawn blood to the lab, $5.  The results were carried across the street to City Hall for a license, $5.25.  The license was taken back across the street where the minister married us, “For the great and Glorious State of Idaho”.  The idea came up that we should head to Port Angeles so my folks could meet Joyce.  Who thinks of money at a time like that?  About three o’clock in the morning we pulled in to Seattle and realized we had no money and I had to be back to the base Monday morning.  There weren’t ATM’s in 1961 and at three in the morning no place open to cash a check.  So, we headed over to Grandma Dailey’s house.  I knocked on Grandma’s door, she was surprised to see me.  I told her I had gotten married and we were trying to get back to Spokane. I asked if she could cash a check for us.  She told me to go get my bride and bring her in, “And bring in the marriage license too!”.  Grandma wondered if Mom and Dad knew and when I said no, she decided to call them.  When I got on the phone after just waking them up, I said to Dad, “Hi Pop.  How’s it feel to be a father-in-law?”  “Talk to your mother!”  “Hi Mom. How’s it feel to be a mother-in Law?”  “Where are you?”  “At Grandma’s.”  “MOOMMMM!”  Grandma Dailey explained she was looking at the license and Joyce seemed to be a nice girl.  I got back on the phone and told them that I had to get back to the base and we would see them at Christmas.  After promising to hold the check until the 15th, Grandma gave us enough money to get back to Spokane.

Back then you were supposed to ask the AF for permission to get married, before you got married.  So Monday I went to see the Group First Sargent and asked him for permission.  He asked when and I told him, “Last Saturday”.  The First Sargent asked if I was trying to get into trouble.  This was the second time I hadn’t followed a regulation or advice from a superior.  I really wasn’t trying to get into trouble but I reminded him about being too average and all I wanted to do was finish the rest of my enlistment and leave the Air Force.  I got permission to get married and then could get credit for a dependent, pay, housing and medical.  Later that morning I got a phone call at the clinic from Tech Sargent Oscar Bell.  He had read the wedding announcement in the Sunday paper.  “Guess I’m your father-in-law.” “Yep.”  “Guess we should meet.”  “Yep.”  So we set up a time for him to come to the dental clinic.  I went to the front desk and told all in the rooms around mine to come running if they heard a commotion.  At the time I had my own room as a Hygienist.  I went back to my room and adjusted the dental chair so he wouldn’t be able to get out of it fast.  A while later Tech Sargent Oscar Bell arrived.  He was a monster in his winter parka.  I invited him to sit down.  He invited me to come meet his wife and the rest of the family, but I couldn’t bring Joyce.  I told him that was impossible and he left.  I didn’t meet Anna until the following Easter.

That Christmas, we drove over to Port Angeles.  As we pulled up in front of my folks home my cousin, Dennis Buggy, came running out to the car.  He had a clip on tie and all day long he was taking it off and putting it on when ever a car drove by, waiting for us to drive up.  He was the first to meet Joyce.  The whole family was there; Mom, Dad, Aunt Kathy (Mom’s twin), Sam (her husband then), Dennis and Richard and I can’t remember who else.  Mom pulled me aside and told me I should have said something about marriage when I told her I was bringing a girl home for Christmas.  I told her this wasn’t the girl.  That evening we were given the couch to sleep on.  We whispered and giggled a lot, until someone told us to shut up and go to sleep.  The Christmas weekend went pretty good. We got a lot of Wedding/Christmas presents.  All loaded and ready to head back to Spokane, Pop told Joyce, “If you have any problems you come here.” Then he looked at me and said, “I don’t know where you will go.”

Back in Spokane we found a little apartment on lower South Hill.  Actually it proved very convenient because the MG was having battery problems and living next to a hill I could coast and get it started.  In the cold winter it was much easier than using the hand crank.  Later, in the spring, we moved next door to family friends of Joyce’s Mom and Dad.  The only problem was when they came and visited next door, Joyce and I had to keep out of sight and quiet.  I did finally meet her Mom and brother and sisters on Easter, when we joined them for Mass at Saint Stevens Church.  Later I was called into the First Sargent’s office again and asked about my intentions to re-enlist and told them no way.  It was suggested it would be best if I take what leave I had coming and they allowed me to be discharged in June of 1962, a month early.  Anna heard we were leaving Spokane and invited us to come stay the night before we left.  She gave Oscar kind of an ultimatum, he could stay and visit or get a motel room.  We were welcomed back into the family.