I Want You!

July 1, 1970. It was hardly a day that will go down in infamy, but it picked up my world and shook it like a snow globe. Everything I knew was scattered hither and yon. This was the day of the draft lottery, and my birth date came in at number 116. That was well within the target range. I had just started a new job a few weeks before and was making plans for a car and a place of my own.

So what to do? Either find some way out of it, or go. That seems simple enough, but I felt no urge to be shot at. Actually, my options were few. My screwing around in high school had left me with grades so low that any college deferments I might try for were out of the question, and I had no family situation that would keep me home. I was absolutely 1A material. Some of the guys suggested ways I could fail the physical but I figured the induction folks had already seen anything I could think of, and probably then some. I also had no urge to run off to Canada.

So the only alternative left was to at least get a little control over what I was going to do by joining another branch. I had no urges to be cramped up on a boat for long stretches either, so I opted for the Air Force. So, after the couple of weeks it took me to muster up the nerve, I went down to the old health department building and talked to the recruiter.

A week or so later I was at the induction center in Knoxville for my physical. To this day I remember the smell of the place. I don’t know if it was stale cigarette smoke, the medicine, or the stuff they used to clean the place or a combination of these, but it was strong and made a lasting impression. I got the usual pokes and prods. They looked at everything – mind, body and soul – and also look into both ends. And, like I thought, I was definitely 1A.

I rode the Trailways bus back to Loudon and waited for the recruiter to call me with a date. He did. Report back to the induction center on the 15th of November. It felt so strange leaving Loudon. I told myself and everybody that asked that I would be back, but I think deep down, I knew I wouldn’t be coming back. Not to live anyway.

At Knoxville, I stood in a room with 20 or 30 other guys, all going to different branches of service and lifted my right hand, taking the oath that would definitely mean there was no turning back. Out of all those guys, just two of us, me and a guy named George Taylor, were going to the Air Force.

We went to the airport to go to Texas, on what would be my first plane ride. It was an old Southern Airways plane that had the boarding ramp that dropped down out of the rear of the plane. I will admit to be a little nervous on takeoff, but it didn’t take long to realize this was actually fun. We made one stop in Memphis and then went on to San Antonio. On that last leg, the plane was mostly full of guys going to basic training, so they let us have a couple of extra beers even though most of us were underage.

After we landed, a guy in uniform herded us into a room where we sat and sat and sat while they waited on more trainees. They called us Rainbows, a name that became more apparent the next day when we marched around the base in our civilian clothes of every color imaginable, while everyone else was in green fatigues.

Around 11pm, they put us on buses and took us to the base. The first stop was a mess hall called Hell’s Kitchen. The food was excellent, and I was very hungry. Everybody was, and we ate a lot and ate it fast, which was good, because about a half hour later we were back on the bus on the way to our dorm. They put us to bed about 1am and I remember falling asleep not long after I laid my head down. Good thing too, because the next morning would start very early and be very long.

When I Became A Working Man

My memories of graduation are fuzzy. I remember all of us gathered in the hallway, waiting to process in, and I remember heckling a little when they announced Mr. Blount would not be returning the next year. My remark brought a comment from Wayne Poole. He looked over and said, “What do you care? You won’t be here.” He was right of course, and I’ve chalked it up to my “boy” side making one last outburst before I moved on.

But that is it. That’s the limit of my graduation memories. I don’t remember walking across the stage or the speeches or anything. Somewhat sad for such a monumental event, huh?

Somewhere around graduation, give or take a week, I applied for and got a job at Maramont. This was the first of only two times in my life that I punched a clock, and the symbolism was even apparent to me. It’s a simple act --- pick up your time card, drop it into the clock and then put it back in the rack --- but it meant so much more than that. It was a rite of passage to manhood. I was no longer a school boy getting paid part time wages for part time work; I was a man making a man’s wage. A productive member of society.

This was the second big step in a very short time. Now, I could start figuring out what I wanted to do with my life and set up some goals; a car, my own place, heck, even a wife and kids. Little did I know that less than a month away was an event that would change everything before I even had time to start.

My first job at Maramont was as a spot welder on the assembly line. The guy one station up the line from me put 3 short pipes between two flanges and sent it down to me. I took it and pressed the ends into a spot welder with 3 heads that lined up with the pipes and welded them to the flanges. I hated it. The first night there (I worked 3 to 11) they gave me nothing for protection, just said, “Here, do this.” Let me tell you, when you hit the pedal to trigger the welder, bits of red hot metal flew everywhere, mainly on me. By the end of the shift, my shirt looked like a sieve because of all the holes in it. Later they gave me gloves, goggles and an apron.

My supervisor didn’t act like he was overly impressed with my work and I was equally unimpressed with him. It was like there was a problem, but he would never say what. Was I slow? Was the work subpar? What? He never said. He just wasn’t happy about something. Finally, he said the thought I wasn’t strong enough, which made sense to me since the pieces weighed every bit of half a pound, but he was the boss, so he swapped me with another guy.

He put me on the boxer at the end of the assembly line and I loved it. It could get busy when the line was in full swing but I didn’t mind. I picked up the finished muffler, put it on a box, pressed a foot pedal and the machine folded and glued the box and then pushed it down into a drying chute. And when the line shut down for whatever reason, well, that was even better. I can remember a period of little more than a week that the line didn’t budge and I sat there the whole shift drawing my pay. Plus, Jimmy Brantley was on the other boxing machine and he had a way of keeping things light.

The Well Is Not Completely Dry, But....

Things have really slowed down around here, huh?  Call it post reunion blues or something, but it sure is slow.   I heard one blogger call it DBF, or Death By Facebook.  And that is not aimed at any Facebook users, the Lord knows I go there a lot myself.  There is definitely more to do over there than there is over here.

Anyway, I do think there's going to be a change in direction on here, I'm just not sure what it will be yet.  Maybe jumping into the time when we all started to become the parents.  The trials and missteps of learning parenthood, and getting used to that other person sharing our bed.  :)

What do you think?