 |
| The house I grew up in. Taken about 1940 |
| Ten days later I left JAX on a train to San Antonio where a military bus would take me and other recruits to Lackland. We had a layover in New Orleans where I saw a television set for the first time in a store window. On the train I met a pair of card sharps who cleaned me out of the $15 my mother had slipped me when I left home. What a slick team they were. In uniform of sergeants, like two GIs on their way to a new assignment. I believe they were leftovers from the war riding the rails and living off pilgrims like me. Come on, they said, let's kill the boredom with a little low stakes poker game, ten-cent ante with a quarter limit. I thought, what the hell I might learn something about the game and I could afford to lose $5. In five minutes I was cleaned. I didn't know a quarter limit could build a $50 pot after the opening bet. Well hell, I got taken. I dug $2 out of my shoe to buy my girlfriend in Jax a perfumed scarf from a Mexican peddler at a stop in Texas. I thought it was a good buy but a few months later I found out she was embarrased when she opened the package in front of her mother and the tacky perfume odor was overpowering. Eleven weeks of Basic Military Training, BMT, beginning the middle of March, 1949. A jumble of memories; fifty men to a two-storey wood fire-trap barracks left over from World War Two. They filmed one while it burned to the ground in thirteen minutes. Reveilie before sunup, screaming people shouting orders, brush your teeth, shit and shave before chow after a five minute quick time march to the mess hall at 0600. Tests every day the first week, shots for every disease known to man except Japanese Beetles. That was for later, with a square needle if you were going to the Far East. March, march, march everywhere you went. To class? March. To KP? March. Gas attack training? March, and sing! There's a long, long nail a'grinding, into the sole of my shoe. It grinds a little deeper, every other mile or two...and on and on, until I finally got to sit down and pull that damn nail out! Or how about... I don't know but I've been told, Eskimo pussy is mighty cold, Sound off! One, two Sound off! Three, four Sound off! One, two, three four...three four! An old favorite retread from World War Two, The biscuits in the Air Force they say are mighty fine, One rolled off the table and killed a pal of mine. Or any of a hundred stanzas... The coffee in the Air Force they say is mighty fine, it's good for cuts and bruises and tastes like iodine. But the most favored marching song of our time was "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon." The J Wayne movie had just come out and we were true believers. In her hair, she wore a yellow ribbon She wore it in the springtime in the merry month of May. And when, I asked her; why she wore the ribbon? She said it's for my lover who is far, far away. And Close Order Drill, hour on hour until we became a pretty fair marching team. I grew up a lot in those three months but part of me was still a homesick, floundering kid. A recruit's pay, as I remember was $110 a month. Of that we got $50 and the rest was kept in escrow so we wouldn't go home to Momma stone broke. $50 wasn't bad considering cigarettes were $1.50 a carton and a bowl of chili or a milkshake at the canteen was $.25. There was no beer or booze on the base and we couldn't |
 |
 |
| LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE MARCH, 1949 |