“Where to?” asked the cabby. I gave him my address. He told me that he was an ex-marine. I was taught that once a Marine always a Marine. He told me that I should try and forget about what had happened at the airport. He said that kind of stuff was happening more often. It’s just not something you would see in a small city like Ft. Wayne.
I rang the doorbell and my mother answered with a big hug and a kiss. She was so surprised. The first words that came from my father, “Where’s your leave papers?” I showed him. “Where’s your return ticket?” I showed him. I thought to myself, he hasn’t changed, what a jerk. My sister Cathy came to me and gave me a big hug. My little brother, Eric, came from his bedroom. What the hell? His hair was long, I mean long! So now that I was gone my dad took a little easier on my brother, letting him get away with a lot of crap. My father always demanded that us boys have short hair. After all we weren’t hippies.
It didn’t take very long for me to want to return to base. After I changed into street cloths. I wanted to go work on my car that I had almost finished before I went to boot camp. I looked in the back yard, no car. No car! “Where in the hell is my car?” I exclaimed. “I sold it.” said my father. “I sold it to the next door neighbor” he said. “You know it only took him a little while to fix it.” “All he had to do was reconnect the brake lines.” I asked him for the money and he said that he only got $50.00 for it and he took the family out to eat. I asked him where my tools were and he said that he was keeping them to pay for the rent of my car sitting in his yard. I now remembered why I had left to begin with. I returned back to base a few days early.
Saddened by my father selling my car, just because I have the same name as he, and him basically ripping me off, I decided to concentrate on my career as a Marine. I excelled in demolitions, so I was asked to attend a school in Norfolk, W. Virginia. The school was called Atomic Demolitions Munitions. This required a secret clearance. The F.B.I. would have to go back into my life seven years and do a security check. So that I would be clear to attend this course.
What a shock it was for my parents, teachers, neighbors, friends and former employers. Needless to say I don’t think that a boy from a small town in Indiana and only 19 could have done much to not be rewarded with the pleasure of attending this school.
I learned a lot about explosives, and the type that I learned about the most was thankfully one that I never had to deploy. There a lot of practice on the procedures of deploying this type of explosive. I was part of a team when I returned to Camp LeJeune. As a result of doing well I became the Commanding Officers driver. I drove a jeep wherever he needed me to drive. I also was a chaser. A chaser is the one that escorts prisoners from the brig to court and back as well as taking the prisoner to the PX for toiletries.
This wasn’t a bad job to have, except it got a little boring. I soon was assigned another job. This job would be tied to the base USO and recreation departments. I had an office with a desk with a type writer. What do you know my first job as a pen pusher. This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I joined. I thought I would be like John Wayne. I really wanted to fight for my country. I believed in peace and I wanted to bring it to all people that wanted it.
After a few months I signed up for orders to Okinawa, Japan.
