Epilogue - Down Mississippi Way

"Hurricane Hunters" such as these aircraft, the WC-130J (right) and C-130J-30, are part of the Air Force Reserve's 403rd Wing located at Keesler Air Force Base, MS.
(U.S. Air Force Photo/Tech. Sgt. James B. Pritchett)

So the long awaited dream of a commission was DOA. I headed home, back to Colorado, couldn't put enough distance between myself and Medina Annex. And yes, this scene ran through my head a few times...

But hey, no hard feelings, right?

I got home on the morning of 2 April, a trip documented here. While The Missus Herself was rather irked that I had walked away from a $650 raise, and The Naviguesser was somewhat aghast that his old man had actually "failed" at something, the daughters were cool with having Daddy home again.

Thing is, I looked like death warmed over. I went down there at 185 pounds, came back hovering around 170. I hadn't weighed 170 pounds since high school. All my clothes and uniforms hung on me. I forgot to mention just how bad the food was at Medina, but I did mention that here. I wouldn't feed the slop they served up to my worst enemies. Hell, I wouldn't even feed it to the OTS staff. (Heh, they inflicted that chow on themselves, with no help from me!)

But a month off with home cooking and nothing to do restored my weight to its then normal level. The month passed quickly and all too soon the movers showed up to pack us out of our apartment so we could hit the road to Mississippi.

They were three hours late, they were lazy inefficient idiots, and they helped themselves to some of my property. Which was discovered later and I discovered that the Air Force in the '80s seriously didn't give a shit if movers stole things. Hey, we'll reimburse you, they said. At about half of what the stuff was worth. Bastards. Movers and the Air Force. On my last two moves I didn't lose a thing. I took pictures, told the movers that if any of my things "went missing," I'd be back.

So rather than hit the road around noon, we were on the road to Biloxi around 1700. No, we didn't make it far the first day. Maybe a hundred miles east of Denver, where we decided to hold up in a Motel Six until the next day. I do believe that The WSO, all of two and a half, mentioned that while the car ride was fun, couldn't we go home now? So she could sleep in her own bed?

Struck me that although the older two had "been there, done that" in terms of PCS* moves, this was The WSO's first move. She eventually got used to the idea that home was now in front of us, not behind us. For a while that is, the school in Biloxi would only be three months.

Three months on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the summer: May, June, July, and about half of August. Yes, as I mentioned yesterday, it was a very hot and humid summer. But we overcame, we improvised, we adapted. In short, we were together and we had fun.

We found a place to live in Long Beach, right across the road from the beach. Fully furnished, pots and pans and all the amenities. Maid service and a pool. We never actually went to the beach, going to the pool meant not having to cross a four lane highway with three small kids. Also the water in the Gulf was shallow. I swear, one had to wade out to the Continental Shelf before the water got above one's waist. An exaggeration yes, but not by much.

Now the place was small but it was well-furnished and cozy. It was also air conditioned, a very important thing, down Mississippi way, where opening the car door after school was like opening the oven door to check on the turkey on Thanksgiving. Yes, Tarzan would have had trouble with that heat.

Our maid was this grandmotherly black lady of about seventy, she loved telling stories to The Nuke and The WSO, they loved having her pay attention to them. Odd thing though, every now and then The Nuke and The WSO will pronounce a word in a rather odd way. They actually say it like an older black woman from Mississippi. Like when we got to Germany.

Coming home from work, The Nuke ran up to me and said, "Daddy, daddy, our town has a wint meal!" Those last two words actually came out in a Southern drawl,

"A what?"

"A wint meal!"

Eventually it dawned on me, having seen it on my way home that very day, that what our town had was a wind mill. Odd the way kids pick things up, innit?

Anyhoo. Though our place was a good sixteen miles from the base, I didn't mind it much. Truth be told, I don't like living too close to a base. Too many pawn shops, tattoo parlors, dive bars, and other places designed to separate an airman from his pittance of a pay check.

One drawback to living so far out was that my school started at 0600. In order to be alive, alert, and presentable at such an hour, I had to get up at 0400. Lovely.

Also, unlike every other Air Force school I had ever been to, this school was a full eight hours long. Started at 0600, an hour for lunch, all down at 1500. Because you know programming a computer is hard. People go to college to learn that stuff.

Well, d'uh.

Even so, it was a vacation for me. Assignments took maybe a half hour to complete, if I took my time. Yes, I was freaking sleepy all the time, but it beat working for a living.

A couple of incidents from the school have stuck in my mind all these years. One was on the very first day when a class leader was to be selected. Our squirrel of an instructor, she was a nice civilian lady but a real squirrel, in fact, that was her nickname, Squirrel, she told us that! Anyhoo, she said she had looked at our records and Staff Sergeant NotMe would be the class leader as he had the most time in grade.

Raising my hand I said, "Uh, I object, I think you might be wrong there Ma'am. Staff Sergeant NotMe, what's your date of rank?"

"01 December 1984."

"Alrighty then, guess I'm the class leader, 01 December 1979."

"Should have looked just a bit closer Ma'am. Now let's get on with this computer programming stuff, shall we?"

Our class was composed of people who had been the Air Force for a few years and were cross training (I wonder if they had had to wait two months) and young guys just out of Basic Training. Most of the young guys knew computers very well. The older lot, not so much.

Anyhoo, the other incident I remember is a young instructor explaining to the younger airmen that this, the school, was not the "real" Air Force, but was...

"Yeah, I'm going to have to stop you right there Sarge."

Turning to me with a puzzled look, he asked, "Did I misspeak?"

"Why yes, yes you did. This is the real Air Force. I'll bet they treat you new guys like crap back at your squadrons, right?"

A lot of head nodding on that point.

"Well, instructors like to tell you that the "real" Air Force isn't like that. And to a certain extent they're correct. But make no mistake, when you get to your first permanent duty station you are going to find sergeants and officers who are going to treat you like crap. If you get a civilian job someday, it'll be the same. Assholes are everywhere."

"They're not just instructors at training bases. Now, computers Sarge, I believe that's why we're here?"

The school staff pretty much left me and my class alone. Probably because we were a pretty savvy bunch, We had a tech sergeant in another class who thought very highly of himself, but wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer in computer terms. I overheard him telling one of my airmen that his average in the course was 89.

"Hell Sarge, our class average is 95. You'd be the dumbest guy in our class."

I rescued the kid before TSgt Dumas (not pronounced that way) could jump all over him, but I was proud of the kid. We had very high morale in our class. Everyone made it, we even picked up a kid from another class who had been set back for not making the grade. We helped him out, showed him a few tricks of the trade and he made out fine.

It was a great bunch. Whoa...

Another incident (a third this would be) just popped into my head, the day Sergeant Cook and I nearly caused an international incident.

We were out on break and saw two guys from another class smoking and acting like big shots. Two Egyptian lieutenant colonels. Yes, in other countries the officers had to do the thinking work, conscription, dontcha know, doesn't yield a high class of recruits in some (most?) Third World countries. When kids learn (maybe) to read and write then go to work on papa's farm, it kind of limits their opportunities.

Anyhoo.

The two light colonels went sashaying past us into the building when Cook (one of the funniest guys I've ever met) starts whistling this...

Then I started, well, you know, walking like an Egyptian. We had each other in hysterics. I don't think the actual Egyptians noticed, but the school commander did. He was right behind us.

"Ahem."

"Hahahaha, ha, oh shit..."

"Good afternoon Sir!" I barked.

Shaking his head, the commander opined, "Knuckleheads." but he said it with a grin as he walked off.

Heh. We were incorrigible.

I look back on my time in Mississippi with great fondness. I was there again for the NCO Academy, a six week course a couple of years later. Another pleasant experience, good classmates, good instructors. But the family was back in Omaha and I missed them dearly. I drove out to our old condo when I was there.

Big mistake. I could almost hear the echo of my kids' laughter in the little yard outside our door. (We had a corner unit on the ground floor, a place for the kids to get outside and play was awesome.) I was nearly overwhelmed with homesickness. Damned allergies started acting up. Might have been the beach dust...

Still and all, I have fond memories of the Gulf Coast, so I was devastated at the damage caused by Katrina. Most of the places I remembered, and loved, were gone. Literally blown away by the storm, including our little place by the beach.

The view looking south, there used to be more trees here. This is across the road from where we lived.

This empty lot is all that remains of the condo complex where we spent three and a half great months.

We were in the building in the yellow circle. Our place was at the top, in the front.

It's sad to see a place you lived, a place you loved, destroyed like that. Just gone.

But we keep it in our hearts, we have to, it's all that's left.

And so ends the saga of the Old AF Sarge's journey to O-land**. All to the good I suppose, after all, Old AF Captain just didn't have the same gravitas.

Ah well...






* PCS = Permanent Change of Station
** O-land = Officer land. D'uh.