Once Upon a Time ...

3708 BMT Squadron, Flight 0512
(Source)

A long, long time ago, Ma and Pa OAFS loaded their oldest son into the family motor vehicle for the long-ish (~80 miles) drive to Manchester, NH. There to drop said son off at a hotel where he would be spending the night on his very last day as a civilian.

I remember the hotel, vaguely. It reminded me of one of those old West hotels where basically you have a bed, a chair, a window - no curtain on the window, mind you - and a washstand. Oh wait, this didn't have a washstand, it might have had an actual bathroom, I don't quite remember, might have been one of those "have to go down the hallway" to use the toilet kind of places. After all, it was (shudder) forty-eight years ago.

I don't remember much of the processing through the Manchester AFEES¹ that morning. There was a bus from the hotel, as I recall, and there were six of us headed to San Antonio to be in the Air Force. For some reason, unknown to me, I was entrusted with everyone's paperwork. Six big envelopes, all sealed. Perhaps it was my year of Army ROTC, which was in my records, which should have given me a single stripe upon entry but hey, the USAF sucked at paperwork back then. They probably still do. (Of course, not telling me that did save them a few bucks, not that I really cared.)

Whoa, Sarge, wait! Army ROTC, WTF? Have you mentioned that before? (Yes, here, here, and here.) So let's just say that I felt no trepidation upon entry into Air Force Basic Military Training, I mean six weeks? Come on. Boy Scouts have it rougher. Anyhoo.

I don't remember much about the plane ride to San Antonio, other than we had to land in Houston as storms were making air travel in and out of San Antonio a bit dicey that night. Two of the knuckleheads traveling with our group thought that it would be a good idea to go exploring, I offered my opinion that that was a bad idea. They didn't listen. Needless to say, they missed the flight to San Antonio.

Upon arrival at Lackland Air Force Base (nowadays known as Joint Base Who-Gives-A-F**k, and I don't, I'm old school) there wasn't a lot of yelling, or if there was, it wasn't very impressive, at least not to me.

Some junior airman wanted to get "all up in my grill" over having six packages of paperwork and only four bodies, I pointed out that I was tasked with delivering paperwork, not bodies. I won that stare down. (You have to learn early who can yell at you and who cannot, the Smokey Bear hat is a dead giveaway that they can yell at you.)

We got to stand at attention behind our racks (beds to you of the civilian persuasion) for most of the night while we waited for the rest of our flight to arrive. I discovered that while there was a microphone in the barracks, there was no camera. So I sat down. Which freaked out my fellow soon-to-be-airmen.

The rest of the flight showed up, we got about two hours of sleep and then ...

Drum roll please ...

Twenty-four years later I retired.

Yes, I plan on filling in that 24 years at some point here on this blog-o-mine. But not today.

😉

¹ Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Stations, nowadays they're called Military Entrance Processing Stations (MEPS). That change occurred in 1982, Manchester doesn't have an entry point anymore.

Editors Note: Yes, I am in that picture at the start. A much younger me.