My Life
Chapter 2: Early Life in the Service

Copyright© 2014 by Barneyr

I went home that afternoon and at supper, I said I had enlisted. My father pulled back his hand to swat me, and I said, "Try it and you won't live to see tomorrow." I guess he really looked at my face and knew the steel in my voice and eyes said he did not want to tangle with me today. My mother said they would miss me. I don't think that was a real sentiment either. My sister got up from the table and went to her room and cried. I didn't feel sorry for her; she had been their favorite for many years now, and I wasn't going to be their whipping boy or her patsy anymore. I had turned 18 that day, and I was no longer under their rule. I was a man now, and I had control over my life for the very first time. It felt kind of good to have that kind of control. I had grown to 6'-0" and 190 pounds of muscle, and I had very strong arms from milking cows every day.

I caught a Greyhound bus the next morning in the city along with about twenty other guys, and we headed for Buffalo for indoctrination and physicals. There were probably two hundred guys in this big gym, and we lined up by last name so Bob and I stuck together again. We went from table to table getting prodded, poked, and asked questions. Then we went into a room and there were ten of us lined up, and we were to drop trou and turn our heads and cough when the doc stuck his finger up by our balls. We had eye tests, hearing tests, and I'm not sure just what all kinds of tests. Shortly after the hernia tests we were allowed to get dressed and wait in an auditorium for any other guys who passes the tests. The tests took about four hours, and we hadn't eaten since about 08:00 in Westfield on the way up here. The bus stopped then and everyone piled out into a restaurant, and we all had scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee. It was almost three now, and I for one was getting hungry. Very soon after I thought that, four guys in uniform came in and the Army guy called people's names and told them to follow him. Next the Marine called some more names, and more people left, then we were called for the Air Force, and those left I assumed were Navy. We were herded off to a class room and next given the oath of office, and then we were given a manila envelope with our names on it and told to guard it with our lives as those were all our records. We were herded again out to another waiting bus and the Air Force guy took us to another restaurant, and we had a lunch of BLT and soda or water. After eating it was then back on the bus, and we were taken to the airport. At the airport, Andrew Adams was given all our records and assigned our leader. He was the first guy alphabetically so he was put in command. Funny thing was he was a meek little guy about 5'-4" and maybe 130 pounds.

Anyway, they led us out to a DC-3 or an AC-47 Skytrain version according to the Air Force, and we flew to O'Hare in Chicago. We waited around for an hour and then boarded a DC-2. This was just a little smaller version of the DC-3 which could take 21 passengers, where the DC-2 could take 14. There were only 12 of us going to Lackland AFB, San Antonio, Texas. Funniest thing as soon as we took off we developed engine trouble and had to land in Joliet, Illinois. We boarded another C-47 and flew down to Texas for our new life as recruits.

We landed at Lackland Air Force Base and were put on a bus and then unloaded in front of a two-story barracks building with a fan on each end above the doors. We stood there until some guy in starched fatigues came up to us and started yelling something fierce. He had heel taps on and yelled at the top of his lungs. We were all marched up and down the road for about an hour and then marched into the barracks and assigned beds by last name. Bob and I were assigned a bunk bed, and I got the lower, him the upper. Next we were marched over to the mess hall for supper, and then marched back to the barracks. Everywhere we went, we marched. The next morning at 6:00am we were woken up with the banging together of two metal garbage can lids. We got up, showered, shaved, and got dressed in our clothes from the day before. Then we were marched to get our new uniforms. We got everything from underwear right up to include our green hats that we had to starch and put on a coffee can to dry so it would be stiff and round. We got haircuts down to bald heads and then marched back to the barracks to put all our stuff away.

Next, we learned to spit shine our shoes, even our brogans (That's work boots for you and I). And learned how to fold and stack our clothes in our foot lockers, so we could pass inspection. For us, it was eight weeks of pure hell. I think our floor held 34 or 36 bunks and before the eight, weeks were over a quarter or more were empty. We had classes on how to dress, how to salute, history about the Air Force, lessons on the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) We also had daily inspections by the DIs, (Drill Instructors) and by the Lieutenant or squadron Captain. We even had an inspection toward the end of the eight weeks by a full bird colonel. Then the hell was over, and we were assigned schools. Bob and I were picked for the Bomb Navigation School at Lowery AFB, Denver Colorado. At that time, most guys were sent by train to their schools, but we were flown up to Amarillo AFB, in Amarillo, TX. We dropped about ten guys off there for jet engine mechanic school and then flew up to Denver to drop the rest of us off.

We arrived just before Thanksgiving and for the next twelve weeks, we were in what they called Fundamentals, and then we would be going to Systems Training or Sets for another eighteen weeks before graduating and getting our first permanent assignment. We did get a week's leave in February when we finished fundamentals before starting Sets.

I had a couple of interesting things happen during fundaments. One was our roommate, had a white 1957 Chrysler 300C convertible. Man we had fun in it. It drew girls like bees to honey. The other was that on New Year's Eve the three of us each got a bottle of Sothern Comfort and crashed in a motel in Colorado Springs and started celebrating at each hour from the international dateline to local time. Needless to say we were toasted by midnight our time. The next morning, we headed out to climb Pike's Peak. Because it was winter, you could only drive up so far, and we parked the car and then climbed the rest of the way on foot. Wow what a view from up there. I have pictures somewhere of that view. However, I did have a scare on the climb up. I was climbing in a shallow valley like affair when I felt my feet slipping out from under me, and I was suddenly sliding on pure ice. I went about three or four hundred feet, and then I felt soft snow, so I dug my heels in, and stopped after about thirty feet. I moved over to the edge of the valley and climbed back up to join Bob and Claude Worthington, the guy with the great car. Needless to say we were all three sober when we reached the top. We went back down by way of the road and then returned to the base.

February rolled around; we all passed our fundamentals classes, and we all headed home for a visit. I met my parents at the bus station I had left from and what a difference. I think my father was actually proud of me in my uniform. I didn't have but one stripe on my sleeve, but I had an Air Force Small Arms Expert Marksman ribbon opposite my name badge on my dress blue uniform.

During that week home, I dated Joyce and found out from my cousin Susan, that she had not been idle while I was gone. She had been seen with Paul Horner, a semi friend of mine – well I knew him from school. He was my age and worked in a bank in town. Now I knew Paul to be a real horn dog and if the girl didn't put out he never bothered with her past three or four dates. However, Paul and Joyce were seen dating quite a bit. They were at the Saturday night square dances and the local teenage restaurant hangout and at the movies now and again. So when I got home, I called Joyce and asked to see her. She was so happy I was home, and we went out, and I took her to a place I knew about that we could talk and make out.

Things went well the first two nights we went out; it was more getting back to know each other. I was up to touching her over her clothes and things were progressing to where we were when I left for the service. The next to the last night I was home; we were in her home on the couch, and her parents were asleep, and we were getting into it, and I reached down to slide my hand up her leg under her full skirt, and she closed her legs. I thought okay, not now. So we kissed some more, and I moved my hand further and she closed her legs again. I asked what was wrong. "Joyce we have gone further than this before I left, I though you really loved me. I wanted something to remember you by when I will leave day-after tomorrow."

"Jim, I'm sorry, but I can't do that with you anymore. I'm not that kind of girl now. I love you, but I have to wait until we get married."

"I see. But I hear that Paul Horner is getting much more than I was ever allowed, and now you are telling me no and yet you also say that you love me, how can that be? So who is it, me, or Paul?"

"I think you need to leave." She said crying.

I left and never looked back. I guess absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder. I guess it just means you find someone new.

I was down the whole return trip to Denver. Bob was flying without a plane, his girl and he had three days of hot sex before we headed back to school, me I had nothing except a broken heart.

When Sets started I was on the "C" shift schedule, and Bob was on "B" shift. A Shift was 8:00am to 4:00pm and B was 4:00pm to midnight, and C was midnight to 8:00am. This went on until about halfway through the course when A shift became so depleted by dropouts that Bob and I both got to move to days.

At first, I threw myself into my lessons and didn't party or anything. Then Claude talked me into a night on the town. I met a woman Beverly Conner, and we hit it off quite well. She was in a secretarial school in Denver, and we went out, and she knew I needed to catch the 10:45 bus out Colfax to the base, so I could make school five nights a week. There was no school on Saturday or Sunday. Those nights I got to spend all night with her. She felt that she could not go on when she flunked one of her tests, and I talked and fucked her out of her depression. Anyway, we broke up and then I started dating lots of girls. For about a three-month period I was going out with 27 different women and bedding 25 of them. One of the ones I did not sleep with was the daughter of a general on base and the other was more like a sister to me. But the others, boy did I have fun. I kind of made up for my dry spell since Joyce.

I had a lot of fun there in Denver, and I was kind of sad to leave there, but new adventures awaited me. While in Denver, I had worked out and grown a little more, I was now 6'-1 —" tall and weighed in at 195 pounds of solid muscle. I played handball and racquetball almost the whole nine months in Denver. That plus all the ladies I pursued gave me a new lease on life.

There was one night we had partied up on Lookout Mountain overlooking Golden Colorado. There was a bar up there that we could drink 3.2 beer and we celebrated a tough final. Anyway, I had a 1947 Plymouth that I bought for $50.00 from some guy that was leaving the base for his permanent duty station. I think he was going to Castle AFB, California. Whatever, I drove the Plymouth down the mountain and straight through the base and ran out of gas about five miles past the base. We slept it off in the car and had to hike to a gas station about a mile back and get a can with a couple of gallons of gas to get us back to base. Thank god it was a Saturday night we went drinking so we weren't counted as AWOL the next morning.

The funny thing about that old car, is when I bought it, it had two rods knocking in the engine. So I went to a junk yard, bought another engine from a 47 Dodge, and put it in the trunk in case the Plymouth engine died on me. When I hitchhiked back to Denver almost a year later that car was still on base, and I found the owner after he came out of the BX. I asked how he liked the car as it was once mine. He said he liked it fine, but it had three rods knocking now. I explained about the engine in the trunk, and he couldn't believe that he had a spare and never knew it. That next weekend he changed the engine out and the last I knew it was still on base running like a champ.

Sets ended, and we got our assignments. About half of our class put in for the east coast or south and the other half for the West Coast. Ten of us, Bob included got the furthest east of anyone. We got Lincoln AFB, Lincoln, Nebraska and B-47 bombers. Everyone else in our class of forty-seven students got the West Coast. Most got B-52's at Beale AFB, Castle AFB, or March AFB. The class that graduated two days behind us got a choice assignment of B-58 Hustlers at either Carswell AFB, TX or Little Rock AFB, AR. I kind of envied them since we were going to work on the oldest bomber in the USAF inventory, and they went to the newest.

At Lincoln, it took a while, but soon I had another bevy of women whom I went out with. I had arrived at Lincoln in late June of 1961 and until February of 1964, I played the field and had lots of fun. Bob and I didn't room together, but Bob was across the hall from my room. I say my room, there were two of us to a room with the showers, and bathrooms down the hall in the middle of the barracks. The barracks were pretty much the same as in Basic at Lackland, except the fans above the doors. This was cold country, and we had radiators under the windows to provide steam heat. There were three boilers in a room at the end of the barracks where the steam was generated for the whole building. It was the same setup in Denver at the fundamentals barracks on the north side of the base, but this was coal fired and one of our duties before or after class was boiler duty. Someone had to man the boilers 24-7 to keep the heat up all winter long. When we moved over to the barracks for Set's school, the boilers were gas fired and boiler duty disappeared.

Anyway, I worked industriously and played hard from June of '61 to, I guess November of '63 when I met Sandy Hollis. I felt kind of like I did for Joyce way back when, and we had what I thought was a good thing going. We went out Friday and Saturday nights, danced and had fun bowling or going to movies. I got caught drag racing my 57 Plymouth Savoy in town, and I was grounded for two weeks in early February of '64. Sandy had some special Valentine's Day party she wanted to go to, but I wouldn't come off suspension until the Saturday the 15th. Of course the party was Friday night and she was pissed. I explained that I could party the next night and so she went to the party on Friday and set up a party at her apartment for Saturday evening. But she wanted some guys to come too, so I rounded up five guys to come to the Saturday party.

I got pissed at Sandy, and I started dancing with anyone who would dance with me. That is when I met Kathy. I danced with her several times, and something happened during that night; I think I fell madly in love with someone I probably would have never met except for that party. Kathy was 5'-3, and was about 180 or 200 lbs or chunky, I guess you could call her. She was not obese but mainly round. However, the inner beauty that I saw that night shone through all the exterior of her. She was brash, and exciting, yet there was a slight hesitation there too as though she couldn't quite believe that this handsome guy was dancing with her and not his girlfriend. I did talk her out of her phone number and later after everyone left I told Sandy that I was through with her. She never wanted to be around me that night, and I had really missed her and wanted to just be with her that night but no; she had to get this party together and then after she argued with me; she ignored me all evening. I said I couldn't be with someone who was that petty because I had to break a date with her for Valentine's Day.

The next weekend I called Kathy and talked to her until I ran out of dimes for the phone booth I had called her on. She finally let me come to her apartment, and somehow the rest is history. We didn't date really, like go out on a date until after we were married. One night about two weeks after we met she and a girlfriend Carole wanted to get out of the apartment and go somewhere. We drove to an old shale quarry, and Carole Masters was with her boyfriend at the time. Kathy was sitting on a rock and complaining about her job at the laundry. She worked the front counter of a laundry, but had worked in the back too. She was complaining about the pay.

"Kathy, I know of a job that pays $95.00 a month."

"Yeah, doing what?"

"Cooking and cleaning for me."

"I'll take it."

That simple I had proposed, and she accepted. At the time, married people in the service, the wife received a check for $95 a month as separate rations. Thirty four days after meeting, we were married. We sold Kathy's pop bottles to get a marriage license and I never even slept with her before we were married, well that is not quite true. One night some guy was threatening her roommate, (not Carole, but Maryanne), and so I slept that night on the floor next to the pull out couch that Kathy and Maryanne slept on. I did that for two or three nights. An apartment came open in her building, and we moved from her studio apartment to a one-bedroom apartment down the hall. This building was above a strip center of businesses downstairs and ten apartments upstairs. There were a two bedroom, seven one bedroom, and two studio apartments there. Shortly after we moved to our one-bedroom place the owner liked us, and we got the additional; job of on-site apartment managers. The owner was a miserly Jew, and we only got a break on the rent instead of free rent for taking care of the apartments and finding renters.

One of my fondest memories of my days in Nebraska was when I put the Dodge D-500 engine in my two door 1957 Plymouth Savoy with the two-speed Powerflite transmission. A friend who was a state trooper had to sell his 57 D-500 engine from his 62 Dodge Polara police car since they were changing to Oldsmobiles, and they could no longer keep owner engines in their cars. So I bought the engine and then later put a 413 Ramcharger intake on it with the biggest Holly carbs I could find on it. Needless to say it ran like a scalded ass ape. It could run with the Chevy 409s the 415s the GTO 428s and the Ford 403s which were being street raced at the time. Gordon our friendly state trooper had just got his new 1963 Olds Dynamic 88 with the hopped up 394 CID that was originally rated a 345 hp, but with some minor tweaking at the factory for the police vehicles, it was more like 380hp. They were rated for doing about 135 to 140 mph on the highways for police pursuit. Anyway after he got his car out of the shop, we wanted to test the speed of my Savoy against his 88. So we went out west of Lincoln to the part of interstate 80 that had not opened yet and we took off with both cars from a standing start. Gordon was checking my speed with his new radar unit and I was walking away from him at 141 mph and I decided that was plenty fast enough for me. I did have a lot of fun with that car.

During my time at Lincoln, I attended winter survival training at Fairbanks Alaska; however, this was during the start of winter 1962-63, and it was far colder in Lincoln that it was in Alaska during our training. The winters in Lincoln were brutal. The wind would come out of Canada and there was nothing to stop it, and it would be ten to twenty degrees below freezing with wind chills down to about fifty below. There were times when we were only allowed outside in the weather for ten to fifteen minutes at a time before we had to return to the step-vans to get warm and after five times outside, we had to rotate back to our building to warm up before frostbite set in.

Lincoln was the last time I was assigned to work on B-47 Bombers, but not the last time I actually worked on one. That story comes later when I was in Greece.

During our cross country travels in the mid to late 60's Kathy and I have had many adventures with our cars. I was stationed at Lincoln AFB, in Nebraska. My folks were in Lakewood, New York, in the western part, south of Buffalo at the south-east end of Chautauqua Lake. So in order to see my family, we were forced to travel Interstate 80 a lot.

This particular trip was at Christmas time 1964 after we were married in March. We had a 1955 Pontiac Star Chief Convertible with no heater. The heater core was cracked so I had bypassed the heater with my hoses. In order to keep heat in the car, we had to keep the engine warm and running. We had driven as far as we could, and since we were strapped for cash, we did not stop at a hotel for the night. Somewhere in Ohio we stopped on a wide shoulder and slept some. Karen woke up with her teeth chattering and told me we had to get going before we froze to death.

I started the car, and we drove to my parent's mobile home. We were cold and hungry, but still alive. I suppose if we had stayed there much longer we might have had major frostbite damage or even froze to death. We found out later that it got down to 20 below that night in the Ohio valley where we were. I don't remember the small town where we were that night.

It may be funny, but we never traveled again in winter without a very good heater in the car. But then shortly after returning to Lincoln, we sold the car, and I have never had another car without a good heater.

Another trip home to New York happened around late 1964 or 1965. I was 21 or 22 and been married almost a year. I had just got my 1957 Plymouth Savoy back in a trade and we were going to drive from Lincoln Nebraska to Jamestown New York and return. Let me go back a bit to set the mood.

This was a wonderful car, 2-door sedan, Powerflite Transmission (two Button) and a different engine. It originally came with a 6-cylinder when it was owned by my good friend Larry Ross. He was traveling back and forth between a small town in Illinois and Lincoln Nebraska every other weekend to see his girlfriend. He had blown up two engines during his travels back and forth, and his third was just limping along. He finally got tired of it and sold it to me for $50.00 in 1963. I was even able to find a newer engine for it.

Our good friend, Larry's and mine, Gordon Pride, was with the Nebraska State Police and in 1963, all trooper vehicles would no longer have owner engines in them. They also moved from Dodge cars to Oldsmobile's for the troopers' patrolling the interstate. Therefore, Gordon had to remove his 1957 Dodge D500 police cruiser engine out of his 62 Dodge patrol car. I could buy this jewel for only $100.00.

Now, thank goodness for the military base hobby shops. I could swap engines along with making all the adapters needed at the hobby shop. I now had a screaming machine that I could pick up women with. I drove it for several months and even run it at our local drag strip. My roommate at the time had a 1962 Chevy 409/409 2-door hardtop. This was the one with dual 4-barrels, 409 cubic inches, and 409 horsepower. His had the long ratio 4-speed manual transmission.

Now I don't know if anyone else remembers those days of street racing, but it was a dangerous but fun time. He and I put a set of cutouts on his duals, and we would go street racing with it. Sometimes we would take my Plymouth. We were racing against 403 Fords, 413 Plymouth's, 428 GTOs and then the new 425/425 Chevy's. This was the start of the muscle car era.

Anyway, back to the story. I got tired of being beaten with my Plymouth, so I started looking around for some more carburetion. I found a guy that was selling his 413 Ram-Charge manifold, and I traded some other parts I had been left over from one of my other cars I had before this one. I also got some nice big 4-barrels to put on the new manifold. Currently I had about a 400 cubic inch engine with dual 4-barrels on that cross feed 413 manifolds. Now I was the equal of most of the rest of the bunch we raced with.

After about a year, I got tired of it, and sold it to some guy on the base and found a 1950 Ford flathead V-8 with fewer miles and much better gas mileage. That Plymouth with the dual 4s only got about 8 miles to the gallon if you didn't push it too hard. Otherwise, it got about 5 or 6.

Move forward in time about a year and the guy I sold the Plymouth to was now being shipped out to Korea. He needed to sell the car before he left. I needed another car as my new wife needed transportation, and she liked the car. I bought it from him for about $200.00, and everything was as it was. Really bad gas mileage but fast and sharp looking. The gas mileage was terrible, so I swapped the 413 manifold for a regular 4-barrel manifold so I could at least drive a week or more on a tank of gas. (This was way back when regular gas was only about $0.32 per gallon.) Some months later we planned a trip to my folks in western New York. We took the Plymouth as it was the only car we had then. We had no problems getting there but on the way back we had a really hard time.

We had to go on a detour in Cleveland Ohio and broke a rear spring. It was about 4:30pm on a Friday night. I limped into a gas station and the owner/mechanic put it on a lift to see what was wrong. That is when we found the left rear leaf spring was broken. He made a phone call to a friend who had a junk yard down the road. This gentleman was just locking up for the weekend and opened back up to answer the phone. He had a spring, and he brought it by the station on his way home. I guess the station owner let him know we were from Nebraska, from our plates, and we were a young couple on a limited budget. I had told him I was in the military, and we needed to get back to the base in Lincoln.

The gas-station mechanic changed the rear spring set and only charged us $10 over the cost of the spring. I think it cost us about $20-25 for all of it. We had started the trip with just over $200.00 and had spent about half of it by then. However, that much put a big crimp in our spending money. We figured that if we drove straight through we just had enough money for gas, but none for anything else. It had cost us over $80.00 for gas on the way out and we now only had about that left. We did buy two big bags of licorice, one red and one black. We drove straight through from Cleveland to Council Bluffs Iowa when I filled the tank the last time. When I finished I had just enough money left to be able to buy one Pepsi. We drove to Lincoln and arrived at my in-law's house about 10:30 at night. We asked for food. We didn't care what, just food. Mom and Dad had had peppered steaks that night and there were 2 left over. We devoured their leftovers and then collapsed on their couch. We finally made it back to our apartment around 1:00am.

To this day, Kathy will not eat licorice, in fact; she doesn't even like to look at it, let alone taste or smell it. Several months later we traded the Plymouth in on a newer car. I seem to remember now, that the new car was a 1962 Oldsmobile F-85 4-door sedan. However, I have a lot of fond memories of that Plymouth.

Then the next year (1966) I got an assignment, Beale AFB, Maryville, California. It said my new AFSC (Air Force Specialty Code – same-same as MOS for the Army) was B-58 Hustler Bombers. This was the latest and greatest, but I didn't know there were any stationed at Beale. Well that was a ruse. We were really going out there to work on the SR-71 Blackbird. However it was such a hush-hush project the codes were all over the map as far as what aircraft we were to work on. A couple years later they assigned us a new code that was SR-71 specific. So we packed up all our worldly possessions into a 1961 VW bug and headed west on our long awaited honeymoon and a trip to the sunny land of California.

Ably edited by WSV; proofread by prissy_35503. All errors, though are mine.

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