Joining the Air Force

Don't know if I ever told anyone exactly how it was that I ended up in the military, but it was a story. I started to say, interesting, but I suppose that all depends upon the perspective. There's probably quite a few of you that could care less why, or how, or when... so it might not be interesting at all. But, it's a story.

As a teenager, in small town America, I was the baby of the family, and my older brother's had gone off long before I hit my teens. One of those married and started a family. The oldest joined the Navy right after high school, and pretty much had made a career of it. The married one, at some point, decided he needed employment and training pretty bad, and he went and joined the Army.

My Grandfather, long before, had been a GI in World War II. My Dad somehow missed out - I think he was "flat footed" - and graduated right after WWII, and so missed the Vietnam draft because by that time he was a little too old. But still, I had several "military" connections.

The Sailor in the family did well... He got schooling, training, saw the world. He'd go back every so often for more training - he was stationed in Pearl Harbor for a few years. The Army brother ... well, his career was shorter, and pretty rocky. I suppose the Army has a reputation for not being "nice" to people, and .. well, at one point, he went AWOL for a while to avoid being seperated from his family. It effectively denied him the opportunity to re-enlist, but other than that, it was mostly just a slap-on-the-hand punishment. Still, for me, a negative view on the military.

But back to my teenage years. My Father died when I was 14. My brother just older than me, and I, well, we did what we had to do to keep food on the table, and my Uncle moved in with us, as well. Between us all, we managed to keep the lights on and life went on.

None of us had a lot of money. Mom was partially disabled, and couldn't really work, and Social Security gave us some income, but I am really not sure how we made it through those years, to be honest. But one thing I was sure of, I would never, EVER, be Government Issue (GI). One thing I knew - was that a GI was actually property of the United States Government. This is true - you sign on that dotted line - you belong to Uncle Sam.

At graduation time, I was 5th in my class. I had a scholarship to the University of Arkansas, which was some 150 miles or more from my hometown. I also had no car. I had worked weekends and summers for a long time, but had not saved much of anything - as any extra money tended to go into books and cassettes, and not to the future.

So, I decided college could wait. I'd go to work full time at the place where I was already employed part time - a quartz crystal mining company. It was right down the road from our house, less than a mile - and I could walk, or ride with my older brother, if I needed to.

I worked in the cleaning department, where we'd take the large chunks of rocks, with sandstone bases, and clear quartz points clustered up and growing out of the rock, which would be totally covered in thick, hard, red clay mud, and clean them. First would be a carwash type sprayer, just knocking off the worst of the mud. Then we'd put them in large trays and lower them into large vats full of oxalic acid, which would help dissolve the mud and allow the crystals to come out looking much prettier than they had first appeared. As an additional workload, I inherited my duties from when I had been a "weekend" employee, which was using the lawn mower and weedeater around the owner's house, the warehouse, and the retail outlet and campground on the back end of the property.

The owner was one of those guys who was the nicest guy, nicest neighbor in the world, when he wanted to be, and the biggest a-- .. ahem, excuse me, let me change the wording here a little bit - the biggest jerk in the world when he was so inclined. One afternoon, he came and got me from the cleaning area. He was hot. Very, very angry. It seems he had gotten on his big John Deere tractor, attached the bushhog to the back and started cleaning up around the fields around the property.

Around his house, a kit-home log cabin, was a picket fence. My job, or part of it, was to keep the yard mowed. Off to the side, beside the picket fence, was a steel-sided storage shed, wich a bunch of odds and ends in it. It faced the road, and then, back behind it was the edge of one of the fields that I mentioned above. When the owner was cutting the tall, tall grass in that area, outside the yard, back behind the storage shed, it seems he forgot that at one point a well had been drilled there. A water well.

In modern times - for those of you on city water with no idea what this means - when a well is drilled, a white (usually) pipe about 5 or 6 inches in diameter is placed down the well shaft to keep it from caving in. Usually, this comes up a few inches to a foot or two above ground level and is then capped off, with a removable top so that access may be gained to it if the need should arise. The pipes carrying water up are then inside this white shaft, and usually exit it below ground level and carry the water to the well pump, which might be located in a wellhouse or the basement of the house, or something similar.

At any rate, here he was, mowing away and whacked the top right off of that well cap with his bushhog. And, he came to get me. Yep. I'd been working there on weekends and summertimes for about three years, and one of my additional duties, as I described before, was mowing and weedeating the yard. However, since he hit the wellcap in the edge of the field - well - that was my fault, you see.

I should have had the foresight to go out there with the weedeater, and cut a wide swatch around that wellcap... then put some kind of pole up there, by it, and tie a brightly colored ribbon to the top - so he'd be sure to miss it. He told me all of this - I should have done each of those things. Down to the red or orange ribbon on top of the tall stick.

Yep. In those three or four years, I had never done this. So, him hitting that well was MY fault. Well, sir, it got me to ponderating on this business of working, for barely above minimum wage, at a dead end job. Now, it was like drugs. I am not saying anything against folks that want to use drugs. More power to 'em. But when I was about eleven, it dawned on me that I was a smart enough feller that I didn't need to be tempted into drugs. I had seen folks that had their brains fried from a little too much weed. There's no way I'd ever be that guy. So I stayed away from it. There's no pull, never has been.

Well, this was like that... Why was I, this smart kid, 18 years old - a bright future ahead of me, somewhere, working here, at a dead end job with no hope for a brighter future - no hope for training. Perhaps I'd make enough someday to buy a cheap car or truck but still... I needed to do something different.

That little voice started nagging me - maybe the military isn't so bad after all. I mean, I had done very well on the ASVAB when it was given a year or so earlier - and I kept getting all these flyers from recruiters in the mail. Finally, I started talking to people.

I talked to my Navy brother - he said, knowing what he knew then, he'd probably have gone into the Air Force - perhaps better training. Talked to my brother who had a short-lived Army career, and he said if he'd do anything over again, he'd probably have done the Air Force - they were reputed to have the best facilities, best food, best girls. I talked another friend who'd been in the service at some point, and he mirrored that thought.

I'd ask every person I met who had some military connection - and almost everyone agreed - "Go Air Force" - whether because basic training is easier, or for a hundred other reasons. Almost everyone. There was this one guy - who kinda sealed it for me - who told me, "Well, I was in the Air Force, Security Police. If I was to do it again, I'd go in the Marines. I wanted to tote a big gun...." I said, "Thanks" and walked away, thinking, "Uhh... Yeah, right." Where was this guy working? In the grocery store stocking shelves.

So, I went to the recruiter, who sent me to the MEPS (Military Entry Processing Station) in Little Rock, and I did another test, and the Air Force guy there said, "What do you want to do? You did well enough, you can pick anything you want." I had no idea, so I said, "What do you have in computers?" And, there was a Communications Computer Systems Operator with a 3 month wait, but a 6 year enlistment with E-3 out of basic training, or a Communications Computer Systems Programmer job with the same requirements, except about a 9 or 10 month wait.

At that point, I didn't even know how to turn a PC on. Other than the old Apple IIe's that were in the library at school, or the Tandy's in the tech room, I didn't know anything at all about computers. I did know that I didn't want to wait almost a year, and 3 months - wow - that sounded perfect ... Time to "clean up", relax, work out, do nothing, or anything, or whatever I wanted.

And 3 months later, I was in, and the rest, as they say, is history. I do not regret joining the Air Force. Turns out I was an operator for about a year, then moved into systems management and, well, basically, I do the same thing today, fifteen years later, but on the "outside". I am paid well, and work in a decent environment. I've been with my company for 8 years already, after doing six in the Air Force. Still work with computers, day in and day out.

And now, once in a while, when I cannot sleep, I get up and type boring stories into my computer and post them to the net for anyone in the world wide web to read.

Note: It was pointed out to me that I had already told this story, in a similar form right at about a year ago. It is a post entitled Government Issue. It's all right - you ramble enough, sooner or later you'll repeat yourself....