Draft Card

When I got home, I had a stack of DD214s and managed to use up most of them. I needed to use one when I signed up for Unemployment Insurance, one for the Draft Board(Selective Service) and I put one on file at the county court house for future reference(glad I did as I have been back a couple of times to get copies). Don't remember where all I needed to bring a copy of my DD214, but used up most of them.

After I brought a copy of my DD214 to the Draft Board, I received in the mail a new draft card. This time it said 4A instead of 1A. 1A meant you were a prime candidate for the draft. As I liked to joke, 4A meant they would be drafting women and priests before me. (Actually that's not true as anyone that's been paying attention to what's happening with the troops these days with call-backs and holds requiring either that they report back to the military or they're forced to stay in past their discharge date.) If they had tried to call me back, I would have gone around the lake and taken up residence in Canuck Land.

A couple of years after I got out, they eliminated the draft. In order to get people to sign up without pressure from the draft, they raised the pay for the military. Before I got out I was making $283.50 a month before taxes as an E-4 with over three years in. When they got rid of the draft, starting pay in Basic Training was $400 a month. My first job out of High School I was making $100 a week before taxes and that was about 8 years earlier, so it still wasn't good money, but it was better than when I was in the military.

Home From The "War"

When I got home(after straddling that grey dog), I was planning on staying at the 'Ranch' in the "Little House". As it was February, it would be easier to heat the little two room cottage than the bigger house on the place. As it was I barely got the chill out of the place. A friend said I could stay with him and his new wife as he had a spare bedroom. It made sense at the time because I had to walk into my place as the road wasn't plowed for the last 800 feet or so. The snow was 3-4 feet deep, but with snowshoes it wasn't too bad and after awhile the path gets packed and frozen to the point where you don't need snowshoes to walk on it. Also the place didn't have running water, so I would have been roughing it (just like I did before I went into the military).

"The Little House" about 4-5 years after I got home from the war.

I stayed there for a couple of months. We did a lot of partying even tho my friend had a full-time job. My friend's wife had been a stripper up in Fairbanks, AK where they met. She had done a few gigs locally, too. She was a nice person when sober, but could get strange when drunk. One night after drinking, she slashed her face with a razor blade in several places while watching Johnny Cash on TV and I had to haul her downtown to the ER. The doctor on call that night refused to treat her because he figured (rightly) that she was lying about how she injured herself. The doctor that finally sewed her up was from the same small town as us and instead of haranguing her about how it happened, he just calmly sewed up her face while telling jokes.

There were a number of things that happened during the time I stayed with them and by the time I moved back to my place I was a little scared of her, having seen her in action while drunk. Turned out I needn't have been scared of her as she really liked and respected me because no matter how hard she tried, I wouldn't have sex with her. She was my friend's wife and there was no way I would do that. Of course, if she hadn't been married to my friend, it might have been different. She was an attractive woman I would have been ready to jump in the sack with her if it hadn't been for this one little thing, she was married to my friend!!

Anywho, after she set fire to the woodshed and burnt it down, I moved back to my place as things were getting too crazy around there. By then most of the snow had melted and it was easier for me to get in and out of my place. I think my friend and his wife came to some kind of understanding and they made plans to bring her back to Fairbanks. We did a car swap (one dead car for another dead car) and I helped fix up my old T-Bird for the trip to Alaska. We did an engine-transmission transplant and welded patches on the body to plug the rust holes to try and keep the dust out as most of the Al-Can highway is unpaved.

The attacks on my virtue continued, and I continued to resist. Looking back, it does my ego good to think about how often she tried and the things she did to entice me!!!

The Rest Of The Story: my friend brought her back to Fairbanks and left her in the same bar he found her in. He said he tried to leave her on the same bar stool, but there was someone sitting on it that wouldn't move, so she got left on the stool next to it.

The Trip Home

I left Cape Cod driving this truck. It had it's problems, probably the worst one it turned out was that it would not stay in high gear. It kept jumping out of gear and I was driving with one hand on the shifter and pulling it back into high gear when it would pop out. A few hours into my trip, while on the Mass Pike, I felt something weird. Stopped on the shoulder to check it out and discovered a couple of studs on one of the rear wheels had snapped off and the wheel was loose. Tightened the wheel and continued on my way, but no longer pulling back on the shifter. Some time later got a real weird feeling and pulled over again. Four out of the five studs on the wheel were gone. I sat on the guard rail behind the truck and waited. After awhile a State Patrol stopped and asked what the problem was. I showed him and he called a wrecker. While waiting for the wrecker, the cop said I was smart to sit on the guard rail where I could see the traffic coming at me. He said he had had to dive over the guard rail a time or two because of vehicles coming at him. Seems those videos you see about cars or trucks hitting cars parked on the shoulder are not a recent thing. Probably been happening since there have been more than a couple cars on the road.
Anywho, the studs breaking ruined a new chrome reverse wheel which pissed me off enough that I junked the truck for the tow charge. I could have fixed it, but figured if I didn't even make it out of the state then it would probably not make another thousand miles that I had to go to get home.

I got most of my stuff out of the truck(there were some car&truck parts left), called a cab and went to the bus station. Some things that I had boxed up, I shipped on ahead and bought a bus ticket to my brother's house. Spent some time at my brother's house as I was not in a hurry to get home because it was the middle of the winter and I knew the snow would be asshole deep to a tall giraffe at the 'Ranch' UP on the Tundra.

After several days I bought another bus ticket for the rest of the way home. On the way, I stopped in Detroit and visited my cousin for a few days.

Finally after two weeks or so of traveling I arrived home(or the town with bus service closest to home) and was greeted by a snowstorm.

The next day I went to the unemployment office to sign up. The woman at the unemployment office(the one who acted like the money came out of her pocket) said I couldn't sign up for 'x' number of days because I sold back 'x' number of days of leave. I said count the days since I got out because it has been 'x' number of days. She had to admit I was right and signed me up for unemployment. I was to get the handsome amount of $45 a week. My vacation had started!!!

Normal Military SOP

In one of my earlier posts I mentioned how we got word on our early discharges. I started processing out the next day. First thing I did was go for a discharge physical. I only got a couple hours sleep the night before thinking about all the things I would do when I became a free man again. Had to lay down twice to get my blood pressure down enough to pass. After that I went around to all the places that I needed process out. Finally I got to the point where the only places left needed a copy of my discharge orders. When it got down to a couple days before my discharge date and still no orders, I was given a copy and sent to an office where multiple copies were made so I could now give a copy to each place that required one.

On the day that I turned in my ID card and got my final check, there on a table in the room for the final processing was a stack of orders for me a half-inch thick.

Shortly before my discharge I got another set of orders. These were for my promotion to E-5. They said the promotion was effective the first of the following month, a couple of days after my discharge!!

Frijoles

One time when we were standing around bullshitting, a Lifer named Rodriquez asked another Lifer if he had ever had frijoles. The other Lifer said, "Fuck no, I've always had to pay for mine!!"

Cold Temps

With all the talking heads on the tube talking incessantly about the cold weather, it reminds me of that winter on Cape Cod. I saw a headline on a Boston paper that screamed about "30 Days Below Freezing". I had a good laugh as I didn't think that was anything to put in a paper as news. Where I grew up 30 days with below zero temps was not news. The damp chill from being right on the ocean can cut through to the bone, but isn't news to anyone who has lived there.

That time on Cape Cod I didn't experience a complete winter. I got there at the end of one calendar winter and left half way through the next. On subsequent times living on the Cape I have been through several winters. Those times will be later in this narrative if I get that far down the road in my work history.

Short Pickle

When we got to the point where we could see the end of the enlistment, we would call ourselves "Short"!! We would make comments like, "I'm so short, I tripped on a dime." And other such remarks like, "I'm so short, I'll only smoke cigars from now on. That way if I get out before I finish, I'll be celebrating!!" Or, "I'm so short, I can walk under the door without opening it."

A friend of mine found a pin shaped like a pickle with Heinz on it. He put it on his cap and called it his Short Pickle. When I was up in Iceland, I got a Marine fatigue cap. After getting the globe and anchor scrapped off the front of it, I started wearing it as my short hat.

This started several months before the scheduled discharge date. One day, we received notice that all short-timers were to report to the base theater the next morning. We all went there first thing in the morning. Finally someone got up on the stage and announced that anyone staying in until their normal discharge date for whatever reason can leave. A few fools got up and left. After they were out of the building, he announced that we were all getting out early, some would be out in a week, all of us would be gone in three weeks. This meant we would have to start processing out. First thing to do was get a physical to make sure you were well enough to get out of the military. I got very little sleep the night before I went for my physical and had to lay down and rest to get my blood pressure down enough to pass the physical.

I had things worked out for getting out, or so I thought. I had started doubling my car payments so I would have it paid off when I got out. When they moved up the date by another two months, (I got out about 4 months early because 'Tricky Dicky' cut the budget and they couldn't afford to pay me) it threw all that planning off. As a matter of fact, I was broke enough at the time that I had to borrow money to pay for items I had lost, like my blankets. The night before I got out, we were scrounging up all the loose change (which consisted mostly of pennies) in order to have enough money to buy something to eat that night.

And even tho we were super-short, we still got hassled. We had to go get haircuts before we could process out of the squadron (I could have used that money to eat). Looking back, I can see it was just another power trip on the part of the sergeant in the orderly room (make them get their hair cut so it'll take them longer to look like long-haired hippies).