Chapter Seventeen - USAF and the Almo

Chapter Seventeen
USAF & the Alamo
In July after graduating from high school in May of 1955, I headed off to Kansas City to be sworn in and start my four year enlistment in the United States Air Force. A fairly large group of us recruits boarded a train for San Antonio, Texas. It was my first time and my only time to ride in a sleeper car. I had an upper berth quite like the one featured in the Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis movie "Some Like It Hot". I don’t remember much about the train ride to Texas probably because I was setting off on a new adventure on my own that would take over four years of my life.
One of the first things I remember on arriving at basic training at Lackland AFB in San Antonio was the infamous hair cut. It was an experience pretty much like what you see in the movies. I don’t think it took two minutes for them to cut my hair. We all looked pretty much bald. We were dressed alike and marched every where in a group. The concept was to breakdown any tendency toward individualism. We were a group of sheep so to speak following every command of the TI. Church services on Sunday were pretty popular because they gave you a chance to get out of the barracks and be somewhat on your own.
There were a couple of things I could never understand about the thinking of the service. One day when a large groups of recruits where at the base movie theatre for some kind of class, the sergeant in charge asked if anyone knew how to work a popcorn machine. A few guys eager to get some free popcorn volunteered even though I don’t think they knew anything about popcorn machines. After the sergeant got his volunteers he informed them that their assignment was not working the popcorn machine but to clean the bathrooms. He then said, "let that be a lesson for you, never volunteer for anything." The other thing that seems to work against what would be good for the air force had to do with inspecting our barracks by our commanding officers. We had to take the blankets from our beds to buff a paste wax which we had applied to the floor on our hands and knees. It gave a real nice shine to the floor. However, our TI would tell us if an inspecting officer were to asks how we shined the floor we were to answer "with GI wax and burlap sacks, sir!" Also, the top tray in our footlockers would have rolled up, unused underwear and socks as well as a unused tootbrush and tube of toothpaste. Once again, if an inspecting officer asked us if we had inspection gear in our foot lockers we were to reply "No, sir!"
Another vivid memory about basic training was running the obstacle course. At the beginning of the course they had a device with a rope hanging down that you were suppose to use to swing over a small body of muddy water. It looked like a simple task to perform. When the rope swung back towards you, you jump out and grab it to swing across the water. The problem for me was that the guy who went before me released the rope going to the side. So, instead of swinging straight back to me it went more in a "S" pattern throwing my judgement off. The next thing I knew I was face down in the muddy water and had to finish running the course all wet. There was a lot of crawling in the course so I finished up pretty mucky looking.
Basic training lasted about eleven long weeks; however, the last few weeks we had more liberty of movement and was able to go into San Antonio. I was able to do the tourist thing and go to the Alamo which was impressive when you think of the event that occurred there. San Antonio has what they call "The River Walk" and when I was there it wasn’t a place you’d want to go. Since then they have done a lot of development and is now a tourist attraction. There’s a scene in the movie "Salena" where she and Chris are sitting on a bridge over the River Walk. Pretty cool!
Also, my cousin Mary Jane and her husband were living in San Antonio at that time and I got to go visit her a few times. She’s Uncle Roy’s daughter and sister to my cousin Dick who was the one I was riding in back of on the bicycle when I caught my foot in the spokes of the wheel.
I also found time to take some ballroom dancing lessons at the Arthur Murray Dance Studios. I learned a few basic steps for the Rumba, Samba and the Waltz. I had a crush on my dance instructor because she showed an interest in me. I was too young and impressionable to realize that showing interest in the student was part of her job.
When we finished our basic training about a dozen of my fellow airmen and myself were selected to go to Randolph AFB which was next door to Lackland AFB. We were put into an intensive 3 to 4 weeks of English Grammar training followed by a couple of weeks training in Russian. We were tested all along and especially at the end. I had a score in the top group of the class and had an early choice of foreign language and school I wanted to go to. We were going to be trained as foreign language specialists. As I remember our choices of schools were Syracuse, NY – Monterey, CA and Indiana University. Some of the choices of languages were Hungarian, Czech, Polish and Russian. I ended up choosing Polish at Indiana University. Also several of my friends made the same choice.
The next chapter – An Indiana Hoosier.