September 1963

Barely three months out of high school and a little over a month out of 2 courses of college work, I found myself a slick-sleeved (no stripes or rank insignia) Airman Basic, basic training haircut style still very much in view, lugging my duffel bag and a small suitcase of civilian clothing I’d worn from the recruiting office, headed with a handful of others to Chanute Air Force Base, Illinois.  It was a picture of carrying everything I owned.

As we traveled there was time to think; time having been a rare commodity for the previous 5 weeks, it was almost a new experience.  So many thoughts, some from the old world of individuality and some from the new world of conformance, and some of expectation from the world I had yet to experience, Air Force technical training, fears of the unknown yet to come mixed with the satisfaction of completing the basic training requirements (most, but not all, did).

But the new chapter was about to begin.  I was going to be an Electrical Repairman.  I had scored well on testing for both mechanical and electrical aptitude and was happy to be headed for something electrical/electronic, but TSgt Ormiston hadn’t had much to say about that career field.  In fact, he knew even less about it when “12/60 Pool” shown on the orders was tied to the end of the term.  He did seem sure that the primary AFSC of 42010 meant I was going to be working on aircraft, however.  The mystery of “What next?” in the Air Force deepened, and I had been “in” only 5 weeks.

………………

Chanute Air Force Base, Rantoul, Illinois, located about 120 miles south of Chicago, was a very old looking base, a combination of old brick buildings and World War II style framed wooden barracks; it was a training center for many different Air Force specialties.

Training was conducted for firefighting, various forms of missile repair, numerous electronics courses, weather equipment repair, and other specialties.  The length of courses was highly variable, ranging from only 10 or 12 weeks to the other end of the scale for weather equipment repair, which ran a full year.

There seemed to be three areas of the base in addition to the base housing area, which I never saw as a trainee/student.  I would discover the housing area only in later years when I went back as an instructor.

The mission area of the base was a group of large brick buildings and aircraft hangars given designations such as “P-3” or P-4.”  I assumed the “P” meant “permanent” because they looked as though they had been there forever and were likely to be there for many years to come.  The only new structure was the missile repair training facility.  These buildings served as classroom and training facilities.

Another area of the base, which seemed to have been somewhat recently renovated, consisted of barracks of the style I had been spared at Lackland — typical two-story wooden structures with clapboard siding and latrines on one end of each floor.  They can still be seen in movies of the World War II period on any stateside US military installation.  Those blueprints, probably on a cocktail napkin, or more likely on a brown paper towel, got a lot of mileage. 

The third area was the area to which I was taken.  That was an area where the barracks were of the same type as the refurbished area, but without the refurbishment.  These barracks were in much worse condition and there was a seemingly abandoned gymnasium on the edge of that area.  I say on the edge only because the barracks on the other side of the structure were clearly uninhabited and apparently uninhabitable.  It seemed to be used for nothing other than a meeting place and looked as though it might fall down at any time.  Just being in there for a meeting, what we were to call a “formation,” was dangerous enough.

It took only a few minutes to realize that this, the third area, the rundown low-rent district, was to be my new home.  The glory of being a Basic Training Graduate and Electrical Repairman trainee was fading quickly.

We dropped our gear in an assigned barracks, which looked much better from the inside, and then learned at a meeting in the “gymnasium” that we were not going directly into technical training as we had all thought, despite those orders given to us at Lackland.

Instead, we were actually going into what some called Phase II of our basic training.  Yes, we had graduated Basic Training, and yes we had orders that quite clearly said so, but that wasn’t how it worked.  Looking back, it all makes perfect sense, as many things do in hindsight, but it seemed to be a massive scam at the time.  Quite clearly, we were to be used as slave labor.  Uh, make that “long term detail duty.”

The hindsight version is that all technical training courses begin on a certain day.  You certainly couldn’t have students arriving and beginning courses on any old day of the week, and Lackland wasn’t about to keep graduated basic trainees around, polluting the “I’ll eat you for breakfast” atmosphere in which non-graduated trainees existed.  So, as soon as a flight of basic trainees graduated, they were shipped off quickly and as a result became pegs on the scheduling board of the technical training facilities to which they had been assigned.  It all makes sense, correct?

Well, at age 18, duffel bag in hand and Basic Training completed only a day or two ago, it didn’t.  It was most assuredly a plot, and nobody was explaining anything.  A bunch of Airman Basic folk don’t get explanations.  They just stand where they are told to stand and do what they are told to do.  So just because we got off the bus at a technical training center didn’t mean we were necessarily going to go directly into a classroom.  We had a lot to learn yet, all of the non-technical variety.

The first thing we learned was how the insides of those old dilapidated barracks got to look so much better than the outsides.  The outside was a matter of civil engineering and budgeting, hence their condition.  The inside, however, was a matter for the occupants, who did not need reminding they were BASIC Airman slick sleeve know nothing follow orders peons.  It didn’t seem hard at all to accept the “fact” that despite published orders to the contrary, this was in fact Basic Training Phase II.

Those barracks turned out to be a form of retribution of sorts.  For those who had been in the old style barracks at Lackland, which was the vast majority, it was the perfect opportunity to show those few of us lucky enough to have been housed in the new Lackland structures just how badly the comparison stank.  It was also their opportunity to show us what they had learned about caring for such a place.  Though some tricks of the trade were similar, the human/blanket buffer for instance, there were others we had neither needed nor learned in what now seemed to have been the ivory towers. 

All thoughts of technical training were gone by the end of the first morning.  We had more important things to attend to.

After spending the entire day turning the sow’s ear into a silk purse, one of the first things we had to learn that evening was how the base got things done and occupied the time of technical-trainees-in-waiting.  Shades of dual purpose, the Chow Runner Syndrome, quickly emerged.

The answer was in two simple letters – KP.

Welcome, slick sleeve, to two weeks of KP duty in the single dining hall that provides meals for every student on the base; it was a large structure to say the least. 

There were thousands of students attending classes on two shifts, so there were thousands of meals served every day, and somebody had to keep that place going.  Very non-technical tasks needed to be performed and they required little training — wiping the tables, mopping floors, moving food stocks around, running the Clipper machines that washed the dishes and utensils, cleaning the pots and pans, etc., it all was well within the grasp of trainees-in-waiting regardless of their aptitude scores.  Everyone was eligible, everyone was qualified, and everyone participated.

Each day was an opportunity to do something different, and those who assigned the tasks seemed to know who to stiff with the jobs like scrubbing pots and pans.  Get lazy at any job one day and the next day you’d find yourself scrubbing pots and pans.  Do a good job one day and you might spend the following day working tables and chairs and mopping the vast dining area.  In between was mopping the kitchen area and hauling sacks and large containers around.

Part of my time there was spent peeling potatoes and part of it was pots and pans.  I prefer to think everyone got one day of pots and pans while additional days were for the lazy or the attitudinal.  But, most of my time was spent in the dining area.  Perhaps they recognized my innate qualities of fine future leadership, or perhaps they couldn’t dodge my mopping in the kitchen any longer while all those feet were attempting to dodge and work simultaneously, sometimes under great load. 

Cooking and food prep were a continuous operation, so there was some skill required for even such a simple task as mopping, and I do remember receiving some rather forceful and direct instruction on the matter more than once.

Finally after two weeks and a few days of that unexpected duty, I was ordered to report to my technical training squadron.  That of course meant not only moving to a new squadron for duty, but it also meant moving into a different barracks.

Perhaps Basic Training was finally over.

Or maybe there was a Phase III… 

********************

The barracks in the student training squadron were the same as the ones I had just come from with one great exception.  The barracks in our “Phase II” basic training had been the typical old wartime open bay barracks with rows and rows of bunks.  These, however, though of the same overall construction, has the major improvement that the open bays had been subdivided into rooms and there were two bunks to a room.  There was little free space in those rooms, but at least there was some semblance of privacy and only one snorer to put up with, unless you could also hear yourself snore.

In a matter of more long term significance, my orders of assignment as “Electrical Repairman (12/60 Pool) Airman is awarded Primary AFSC 42010,” apparently exited the personnel system meat grinder by tagging me as an “Aircraft Instrument Repairman, Primary AFSC (Air Force Specialty Code) 42210.”  The “1” was the lowest skill level possible, moving upward to 3, 5, 7, or 9.  A “1” meant knew nothing, could do nothing, and had everything to learn and couldn’t have been more correct.  What’s an “aircraft instrument,” anyway?

………………

Life in the training squadron turned out to be certainly less stressful than life had been in basic training at Lackland.  However, it was still very much a matter of whole person training, with barracks inspections, uniform inspections, and definitely a lot of marching, in addition to the academics.

In this case however, marching wasn’t simply a matter of training, rather, it was a matter of getting everyone from place to place efficiently, though not necessarily in the shortest distance.  Marching was finally utilitarian and not just a training issue, and that was a sure sign of a major change in life.

Maybe we were actually moving into technical training after all; there didn’t appear to be any Phase III, and this is how I would spend my time here, in a 22-week course that would end in February.  On the immediate horizon was technical training during the winter at Chanute.  Just remembering it makes me shiver, and I’ve been much colder places since, but at that time I was a youngster from New Orleans and had never dealt with truly cold weather.

Each day began at oh-dark-thirty and one of the first items of the day was to determine the uniform code.  Before winter set in, this was simply the fatigue uniform.  However, as winter quickly approached, it got more complicated.

We might be also wearing field jackets; field jackets with liners, and gloves, always with liners; field jackets with liners and hoods up; or field jackets with liners and hoods up, and gloves, plus the dreaded but nevertheless welcome face mask.

The face mask, secured by straps over the top and around the back of the head, much like a gas mask, had an outer shell of a plastic-like flexible material and an inner part of wool, which of course contacted the skin.  The nostril spaces were open but shielded and guaranteed that one’s nose would run.  That of course made for a messy and uncomfortable situation, but to go without the mask would have been unthinkable, not because it would have violated the uniform code of the day, but because one’s face would have become frostbitten very quickly.  There was no way to control the running and no way, especially with gloves and liners on the hands, to wipe the mask from the outside.

It is possible, perhaps, that it was actually we of whom Voltaire wrote, maybe in a dream of the future, and only hallucinated about his singular man in the iron mask.  The similarities are notable, and despite being stationed in several cold weather locations afterward I never saw those masks again after technical training, adding to the suspicion that they were in some way instruments of, well, if not torture, at least major irritation.

During the worst of winter I remembered reading of European armies whose losses had stemmed in great part to not being adequately prepared for the bitter cold of winter and I wondered if there had ever been such loss at Chanute.

I don’t remember what time reveille was, but one could work backwards in discerning it.  After reveille, we washed, shaved, dressed, left the room ready for inspection, went outside to join the squadron formation of several flights (6 or 8 as I remember), marched to the chow hall, ate breakfast, reformed, marched the longest way possible to the academic building area, left the formation to the classrooms in the various buildings, and arrived in time for classes that began at 0600.

That meant it was dark every morning regardless of season, and that during the winter months, which was most of the time I was there, it was during the bitter cold hours that we marched to classes in the morning.

There was a street that led directly from our barracks area to the academic area, passing only one block from the chow hall, but that street was also the main vehicular thoroughfare and was therefore not used by marching troops.  In fact, it and its sidewalks were off limits to individual students, too.  May it have been that the base commander couldn’t stand the sight of a single trainee walking past his headquarters building?

The worst part of the march was also the longest.  Shortly after leaving the chow hall, we turned left and marched parallel to the runway and the wide open area before it, both of which were an invitation for winds to come from anywhere in the county, gather together, and attack the moving formation from head-on or directly from the right, and on many mornings that was what happened.  The least bit of moisture had become ice prior to our passing, and being in the middle of the flight was of little help.  Being usually the second or third tallest in any flight assured me of a position in the front, so I served as a constant windbreaker.  The advantage was that I was one of few who could see the approaching icy spots and we would quietly pass the word backward through the moving flight.  But of course someone always didn’t get the word.

Classes lasted until noon, at which time we would reform, march to the chow hall for lunch, and then back to the squadron barracks area for announcements and assignments to details upon occasion.  Details were few though, and it was clear that our priorities should be on the academics.  Failure in a course, resulting in being “washed out,” meant being escorted to the personnel building where you were noted as one not likely to live up to the aptitude scores you had achieved.  The next step was assignment to an AFSC that did not require technical training.  The Chanute motor pool must have had quite a few drivers available as washouts awaited orders directly to their first operational base in their newly assigned AFSC’s.

Remedial training was available in the afternoon for those who needed it or wanted it.  A student could request it, and an instructor could always assign it as being mandatory.  In either case, the instructor notified the student squadron and the student reported for the session that afternoon, walking the same route used by the marching formations.  There were a couple of route shortcuts, but it took only once to be reported to decide that wasn’t a good idea in the long run.

Once the formation reached the squadron barracks area after lunch and had been dismissed, unless they were scheduled for detail or remedial training, students were free until the next morning, needing only to be in the barracks for curfew time that evening, which was regularly checked and enforced.

Afternoons were for checking mail, going to the cleaners, and visiting the Base Exchange for necessities.  They were also for reacting to and preventing a repeat of gigs issued during the day’s barracks inspection, working off an accumulated number of gigs by performing certain details, and preparing everything for the following day. 

Supper was optional and a burger in the cafeteria was always an option, budget allowing, and the theater was well attended.

The cafeteria also served beer – 3.2 beer, if one can truly call that beer.  I don’t know if that 3.2 thing was an Air Force decision or one of other authority, but it was probably a wise thing, considering the fact that the place was populated mainly by 18-year-olds from all walks of life and parts of the country, room and board paid for, and drawing a paycheck for the first time in their lives.  Most of the cafeteria beer was ordered by the pitcher.

After a certain point in training, passes could be requested, and if issued one might actually go through the gate and into the small town, officially “The Village of…, Rantoul.

Even later in training, one might request a pass that allowed travel outside the area on a weekend.  Permission for such a pass required a satisfactory academic record as well as a clean record in the student squadron.  For a short trip, the likely target was the town of Champaign, populated mostly by students, staff, and faculty of the university there, some of whom were tremendously supportive of young airmen, but some of whom were on quite the other end of the spectrum.  The problem was they all looked the same.

For a longer trip, Chicago was easily within reach by train and the Friday evening and Saturday morning trains looked more like wartime troop trains than anything else, at least if you looked at the ages and haircuts of the passengers.

But for those having difficulty with their courses, study was a higher priority than most other things, especially after hearing what the last two or three washouts had been assigned to.

********************

In the years before Chanute, my father gave me some good training in preparation for what was about to begin, though he didn’t know it at the time, or maybe he did in a way.  I know when my sons were growing up, though having them involved with my projects was certainly helpful, sometimes it was just as much a matter of teaching/training.Dad worked for a railroad as a locomotive engineer.  He had a diesel operator’s license from a diesel technical training school and had worked as a diesel engineer on tow boats on the Mississippi River until staying closer to home and changing over to the railroad around the time I was born.  I still remember when he and my mother sat around the dining room table, that table used for dining only on special occasions, as she read him questions in preparation for his engineer’s exam so he could be promoted from fireman and certified as an engineer on diesel locomotives.  As I remember saying it back then, he got to run the train and blow the whistle.

They owned three apartments in addition to our own home and Dad did everything himself.  If the pipes froze and broke, he crawled under there in the cold and damp and replaced them.  He did the painting, drywall, electrical, cement mixing, pipe cutting and threading, and whatever else needed to be done.  And whatever of all that he was doing, I wasn’t far away, and I still recall the smell of the dirt under those houses.

I remember building a roof over a double carport for which I mixed an awful lot of concrete for the post pedestals.  And I remember standing on a ladder holding up a section of railroad track as he secured the other end as a crossbeam.  It was so heavy that the ladder on which I was standing began to slowly crumble under the weight.

Being the only son, and with my sister nine years behind me, the role of helper; tool getter; cement mixer with hoe, shovel, and garden hose; pipe threader, and all around gopher; naturally fell to me.  It set the stage for a lot of variety being the norm.  I learned a lot of skills, some electrical theory and practices, a little of hydraulics, and the names of many, many, tools.  Little did either of us know how helpful all that would become in later years, beginning right there at Chanute.

………………

There were 12 of us in the seminar, and several seminars to the class, each seminar in its own room with an assigned instructor.

Our seminar’s course for Instrument Repairman began in an interesting way — a short tour of all the various blocks of instruction.  Each block covered a group of different types of aircraft instrumentation.

For example, the Engine Instruments block covered such instruments as RPM, exhaust gas temperature, cylinder head temperature, oil pressure, fuel pressure, manifold pressure, engine pressure ratio, and others.

The Flight and Navigational Instruments blocks included magnetic compasses, gyro-stabilized magnetic compasses, directional gyros, rate of turn indicators, attitude indicators (no, not human attitudes, these were what told the pilot his pitch and roll angles, in other words, if he was flying straight and level, upside down, or right side up in a cloud), altimeters, rate of climb/dive indicators, airspeed indicators, true airspeed indicators, and mach indicators.

Then there were also the hydraulic pressure indicators, fuel quantity indicators, landing gear position indicators, and miscellaneous others.

In each block we got a chance to see the training equipment, which meant we got to see the individual types of indicators that are used on various representative aircraft.  It was an almost mind-numbing display when some of the larger aircraft instrument panels were shown in large pictures.  It was a motivating challenge, knowing that we would not only have to learn all those instruments, but also have to maintain them in the field.

Different aircraft were used as representative aircraft in different blocks of instruction, even within individual blocks, and the tour was a tremendously effective way of presenting an overview of the course and of our assigned career field.

We learned later that our tour, or course overview, was not necessarily a regular part of the course and apparently something that our first block seminar instructor did on his own.  It certainly produced a somewhat intimidated but highly motivated group of first day students and our seminar was the better for it.

The course and prospective career field were a good mix of electrical and mechanical in that the sensing units were mechanical mechanisms (diaphragms, Bourdon tubes, ratchet and pawl assemblies, motors, etc.) connected to various forms of electrical devices (variable transformers, potentiometers, rheostats, synchros, etc.,), which were connected by wire to cockpit indicators that contained another mix of mechanical and electrical parts.

Because the transmitters dealt with information from all over the aircraft, we would be working with many other systems and therefore many other specialties, including hydraulics, airfoils/control surfaces (maintained by Aero Repair), and engines, among others.  In short, being in the Instrument Repair career field was going to provide experience and exposure all over the entire aircraft, something I really looked forward to.

As a result of that short tour, I knew I had been assigned to a career field I would enjoy.  I liked variety, and with that range of instrumentation, particularly on larger aircraft where multiples would be a part of the mix (e.g., an 8-engine B-52 bomber has 40 engine instruments), the job could never be routine or boring.  It was only Day 1 and I was already looking forward to the course and working in the field.  There was absolutely no way I was going to wash out of that course, no matter what it took to make it through.

I can’t say that I found any particular part of the course more interesting than any other because, luckily for me, I found the entire course interesting and the prospect of using what I was learning later in the field for actual on-aircraft troubleshooting was a good motivator.

But, the most interesting singular instrument to me was the gyrocompass.  I had learned of gyroscopic principles during physics classes in high school, but this was the first opportunity to actually see gyroscopes in practical use and attached to electrical sensors that could detect their position or changes in position.  To see how it was all packaged to provide data as the aircraft moved about its axes was truly fascinating.

And adding to the mix even more, in 1963 there were plenty of older generation aircraft still in the inventory, so we would learn and maintain not only modern jet aircraft, but also the older propeller and reciprocating engine aircraft, some of which were old enough to have vacuum driven gyros as opposed to the more modern ones based on electrical motors.   We were about to learn as the books of aviation history were having their pages turned.

………………

The first block of instruction consisted of basic electronics, or actually basic electrical theory, “electronics” being a term that had not begun to take hold yet in instrumentation.  We were not of the “electronic” family of specialties such as radio and radar; we were in the “aircraft accessories” group, along with hydraulics, electrical career fields.

Learning began with Ohm’s law, a simple formula for sure, and was pretty much what you would expect an electrician to learn.  As we progressed through the course additional facets of electrical behavior would be added as they were necessary for each portion of the instruction.  This of course meant that the mathematics required for successfully completing of course would gradually build up over a period of time, particularly when dealing with capacitance and inductance based systems.

For some students, even the most basic math requirements were problematic and there was a lot of remedial training going on in those first weeks of the course.  The aptitude tests somehow failed to identify some weaknesses in math capability.

Some systems had amplifiers, so there was a certain amount of tube theory that had to be learned, but for the most part, it was a matter of sensing device in a transmitter connected by wire to an indicator.  It didn’t occur to us at the time that the total number of wires, their overall length, and the number of connectors used, might be a major problem in troubleshooting in the real world.

As we would progress through the course we would learn a tremendous number of technical definitions and would spend a lot of time studying wiring diagrams as we prepared for our tests, which were either weekly or bi-weekly, with no “gimmies” or rounding up.  You either made the grade or you didn’t, and if you didn’t you were likely to be set back a week or two to do that part all over again if remedial training and retesting with a different series test were not judged likely to be successful.

The possibility of being a motor pool driver didn’t look so bad at times, but those times were fleeting and for the most part we pulled together as a class team.  I think our seminar lost two students along the way.

********************

Response to an off-line query about 3.2 beer, pronounced “three two beer” or “three point two beer,” mentioned in an earlier post:

Yes, “3.2” refers to the alcohol content of the beer that was served in the cafeteria.  I think the logic probably was that with all the time and energy expended peeing, as opposed to consuming, it was much more difficult for an individual to become intoxicated than if he had been drinking beer of the usual alcoholic content.  That approach seemed to work, for though there were a fair number of impaired individuals by the end of the evening as curfew approached, there were very few incidents of trouble.

………………

Though our presence at Chanute was certainly all about training, it certainly wasn’t our entire existence.  As the course went on, we became more comfortable with our studies, leaving more time for helping others having difficulty, previewing upcoming material for those behind us, and for recreation.

Locally, there was a USO just a couple blocks outside the main gate and it always offered entertainment, something small to eat, or just a place to “get away.” 

On the weekends there were dances, and in those days the dances were definitely a ladies- choice world, given that the place was a source of continuous re-supply of young men.  Some of the girls attending the dances lived in Rantoul, but there were also those who came from nearby Champaign, about 14 miles away, some of whom were undoubtedly university students.

In the world of USO’s, though I have not attended very many of them, I suspect the most active ones are those overseas and those located near training bases.  The USO there in Rantoul was certainly a good place to be, but it was unfortunately taken for granted by most of us who enjoyed our time there.

A little farther away, in Champaign, there were activities at the university, as well as the usual student hangouts in that local area.  I remember on one occasion, when several of us, one of whom somehow got access to a vehicle, went to a place very close to the university one Saturday evening.  All I remember of the evening was that if we were fishing for girls, we had brought the wrong bait, and the band seemed to be hung up on playing “Louie, Louie” quite a few times during the evening.  The only other thing I remember about the place is that it had a gravel parking lot.  All in all, I’d say that wasn’t really a notable or memorable place.

Chicago, on the other hand, was a much more memorable place with a wide range of things to do.  In addition to it being very, very cold and windy, I have a few very vivid memories of weekends there.

It wasn’t until much later that I would learn, through Lou Rawls’ music, of “The Hawk,” and when I heard it I immediately understood.  I’ve been some cold places in my time now, but there is nothing that compares to standing near the edge of Lake Michigan in the dead of winter with the wind and spray blowing in your face, forming a sheet of ice on everything, including your skin.

Most positive, is the weekend I spent at the Museum of Science and Industry there.  It was a grand place, and though not being one who usually spends a lot of time reading the explanations of exhibits, because I had two whole days in which to explore the place I did a lot of reading and a lot of learning.  I did go back there again several years later, but that first weekend there as a young man exploring a whole new world, both inside and outside the museum, was truly most memorable.

During the weekend of the museum trip, I also learned how different our cultures can be in this country.  While riding on a bus in Chicago, I turned to the person seated next to me, said “Hello,” and thought I would initiate a conversation.

I got a totally negative reception.  Later that same weekend, on a different bus, I tried again.  That reception was like I was an alien from Mars.

I decided, rightly or wrongly, that such a practice, totally normal in New Orleans, was also unique to New Orleans, or at the very least, not common in Chicago.  That social behavior, and the cuisine, are two of the few things I have long wished New Orleans would export.

Starting a short conversation with total strangers on a bus, in a restaurant, virtually anywhere, has always been an accepted, usually welcome, practice there.  In my frequent trips back to visit family over the years I’ve seen it is not as common as it was years ago, but it still lives on.  The evolution of many other things there has been mostly negative for me, but that particular practice has always been a good thing.

In any case, if the mix of different people’s backgrounds hadn’t impressed me during basic training, or thus far in technical training, that pair of incidents certainly did.

On another occasion in Chicago, I learned another social lesson, though I’m not sure of its importance to me in the long run.

Again, it was a bitterly cold weekend and three of us had taken the train from Chanute to Chicago for the weekend.  Whatever it was we were doing all day that Saturday wasn’t impressive enough for me to remember anything of it, but I certainly do remember that evening.

We had assumed that finding a place to stay for the evening wouldn’t be a problem in a city of that size, but what we had not accounted for was how tired we would be after a whole day of walking around the city.  Given the fact that we were three young airmen with very little money in our pockets, our options were limited even if we pooled our resources, so we were naturally looking for a cheap place to stay.

We had been looking for that cheap place all evening and it had been dark for quite awhile, and it was getting even colder.  We were past getting desperate when we saw a narrow doorway with a dimly lit stairway just beyond it.  The sign over the doorway indicated there were beds inside, but the look of the place was not inviting.  After a short conversation that consisted mostly of comments regarding how cold it was, that we needed to get inside someplace, anyplace, and that we didn’t have any other options, we decided to go in.

At the top of the stairs there was a small room to left, and a hallway leading past it.  Immediately to the right there was a chest-high counter with heavy steel bars going all the way to the ceiling, behind which was an absolutely grubby looking clerk.

The sign on the wall indicated that it cost 75 cents, I think, maybe less (?) to stay there for a night. Of the price I am certain that it was definitely under a dollar.  Well, the price was certainly right, though the place didn’t exactly look like anything we had ever seen before.

I remember when we told the clerk that the three of us wanted to spend the night there, he looked at each of us and asked, “Are you sure you want to stay here?”  He said it in such a way that under any other circumstances I’m sure the three of us would have wheeled about and headed directly down the stairs and back onto the street, but under our circumstances that evening we had run out of choices and this was going to be the place, one way or the other.

We probably answered with some reference to the cold outside, but the bottom line was yes, we wanted to stay there that evening.  Money changed hands, and we were each handed a set of sheets and directed to go through the room, down the hallway, and pick any place we wanted to.

I’m sure that clerk, if he had dared to follow us down the hallway into what we were about to enter, would have seen three reactions of which he could have told stories for years to come, but he remained safely behind the bars and in his small space.

Beyond the small room the hallway opened up into a long dark space with closely spaced bunks occupying practically every square foot of the space.  It made the open bay barracks of Lackland, and even those of the dilapidated “Phase II” at Chanute look like the Ritz, what little of it we could see in the darkness, anyway.

The space was filled with the sounds of coughing, hacking, occasional spitting, snoring, and all other manner of sounds that virtually anyone would find revolting.  The smell is very easy to remember but impossible to describe.  The reason for the affordability of our night’s accommodations quickly sank in.

The three of us made our way among the bunks, attempting in the darkness to find three empty ones together.  We soon realized that finding a bunk without someone in it was not really the objective, rather, we needed to find three bunks together that had not only nobody in them, but also nothing else in them.

We finally found our spot and stretched out for the evening.  When morning came it was apparent that none of us had actually slept during the night.  That was probably a good thing, because our next discovery was to be the bathroom facilities.  I’ll spare you any further descriptions of the place and just relate that when we left shortly after awakening, we found a coffee shop nearby and practically killed each other trying to get into the single-stall restroom there.

We had just spent our first evening, and I’m quite sure for each of us it was our last, in what was called in those days “a flophouse.”

Yes, my time at Chanute was for the purpose of training, and I was trained well.  But, not all learning occurred in the classrooms.  18 and learning fast – very fast.

********************

I’d like to say that by graduation time winter had come and gone, but that would have been, and probably was then, wishful thinking.  As we gathered for our seminar picture, we slipped outside into the cold, stood as still as possible, waited for the, “OK, I got it” and hurried back inside.

Travel arrangements had been made for shared transportation by car to O’Hare in Chicago and a flight from Chicago to New Orleans for some time at home, the first since leaving home that previous August.

The trip to San Antonio, Basic Training, and Technical Training were behind me, ending what I considered to be the first phase of my Air Force enlistment of four years.

………………

While in technical training I had received my first stripe, promotion to Airman Third Class, during the month of October.  The promotion orders were somewhat ominous in that the orders contained the sentence, “… promoted to the grade of A3C (Permanent) with date of rank 9 October 1963, effective 9 October 1963.”

Well, the apparent redundancy of the date (it wasn’t actually redundant, but I didn’t understand the system at that point) didn’t bother me; it looked like bureaucratic stuff to me.

But what’s with that “permanent” thing?  Am I to be at one stripe forever?  I mean, it’s certainly better than slick sleeve, but one stripe permanently?

I hadn’t been the only one who caught that on the orders, and I hadn’t been the only one to make a U-turn at the orderly room door and ask the clerk what that meant.

And I hadn’t been the only one to be told, “Don’t worry about it.  It doesn’t mean what it says.  Get out of here.“

………………

The Air Force, always slightly ahead of the other services in social issues, would later decide that terms like “third class” and “second class” were not politically correct, even before “politically correct” was a commonly accepted term, and do away with them, changing forever the names of the rank structure.  But that stripe felt pretty good to me, and the sound of “third class’ rather than “basic” was a welcome one.

Many years later I would be involved in another change of the rank structure, and that one that would make a lot of sense and was one in which the people in the ranks were actually consulted.  During that time I would look back and ask myself if I thought the supposedly demeaning second class and third class labels were really perceived that way by those who “wore” them and I would always come up with the same answer.  No.

My bet would always be that to those who actually achieved those ranks were perfectly happy with the system and that whatever fostered the change had little to do with reality.  In 1964, when I graduated from technical training as an Airman Third Class, it felt pretty darned good.  True, I was still very close to being at the bottom of the totem pole, but that meant there was a big world of possibilities ahead, and that was a good thing.

Third class?  You bet.  And proud of it.

………………

I left Chanute Air Force Base at 0730 on the morning of February 20, 1964, for a couple of weeks with my family, arriving in uniform that evening a little after 5:00 p.m. with a heck of a lot of stories to tell about the whole new world I’d experienced in only 6 months.  Afterward I’d join “the real Air Force.”

Unknown to me then, I would later return to Chanute, several times.  And when I would come back as a newly married young person, I would later see my first son born there.  Chanute was to be a part of my early military and married life in ways I would never expect.

Front row, left end.  Then, 6’ 1”, 155 lbs; today, 6’, 225 lbs. 

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