Little Battle Creek

Last night I was watching TV just like any other night of the week, and while a commercial was on I was flipping the channels like I always do. As I was going up and down on the TV guide channel my eye caught the word Jefferson. Hum, I thought, it's on the history channel at that, but for some reason when I saw the word Jefferson, George Jefferson came to mind. So I punched in the number for that channel to further read that it was the live and legacy of Thomas Jefferson. But still my mind saw George Jefferson, and I thought, wow, some body took the time to research the corrector of George Jefferson. How he stated out as a neighbor to Archie Bunker and went on to get his own comic show, movin' on up to the east-side. When I realized the mistake I made I started laughing and it brought back a memory from my childhood, and why everyone said I wasn't the brightest blub in the pack.

On the main road to town, there was a creek that passed under the highway, and right about here was a sign. At first glance I thought it read Little Battle, so I just thought it was the name of the creek, Little Battle Creek. Well after my brother died my dad thought it would be a good idea to take mother on a trip to see her family for Easter. So we loaded up the station wagon and hit the road. With my dad you always left at zero dark early like 4am. This was in the mid 60's, if there were any interstates they were just starting out. We had to take state highways all the way from Hicks, Louisiana to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I don't know how many I had seen but there were a lot of signs that read Little Battle. I thought to myself, “Wow, this is a big ass creek.” 

Every once in a while I would get to sit shot-gun, to help my dad look for signs. We passed by another Little Battle Creek and I happened to mention it to my dad that I thought it had to be the biggest creek in the world. I told him it was crisscrossing the highway all the way from Louisiana. He asked me to show him the next time I saw the sign, so a couple of few miles down the road we came upon another sign. I pointed it out to him so he pulled over. He told me to read the sign again, I said it's not going to change what it read. But after looking at it long enough I saw what it really said, Litter Barrel.

I hope you weren't drinking something when you read that part. Remember I was about 13 when this happened, but to this day my family will not let me live it down.

But that's OK, I get them back on the return trip, stay tuned to hear the rest of the story.

THE PARROT FLOWER

THE PARROT FLOWER
This is a flower from   Thailand .
It is also a protected species and not allowed to be exported.
This will be the only way we will be able to view this flower.
THE VERY RARE PARROT FLOWER.

Proper English

English was not my original language, nor one of my favorite subjects in school. My original language was gibberish. English is such a hard language to learn with all the silent letters and such, as a matter of fact my favorite subjects were shop and PE. I could always count on getting good grades on these subjects. School was always such a struggle for me, I didn't get much help at home because my mother dropped out of school in the fifth grade because she had problems with school. My father graduated from high school but he was hardly ever around and when he was he wasn't. I had a really hard time with spelling, no one ever taught me how to sound the word out, the only thing my father taught me was how to memorize words. I think there's only so much you can memorize and that was my problem.

I pretty much taught myself how to spell better. I loved writing letters to my friends, as I was writing the letter I would underline all the words that I knew where wrong. When the letter was finished, I would reread it and underline more words that I thought were wrong. I would then look up the underlined words in the dictionary and correct them, then I would rewrite the letter with the correctly spelled words. As time went on there were fewer and fewer words I had to look up. Now with all this techno stuff, "spell check", I once again have gotten lazy. That's why I say if you find a mistake please email me and let me know. I don't even care if you just leave it in a comment, I'm not embarrassed any more. I just love to tell stories and you can't do that without writing. I'm trying to train a talk it type it program, I started this writing with it but it got frustrating about half way through. Later y'all. UnclePaul

Armed Forces Indoctrination Center

I know I said I would be doing this the next day, unfortunately other things came up and I couldn't write any thing.

On March 12th at 1pm I was on the bus headed for Oklahoma City. I arrived at OKC around 5pm, I forget the name of the hotel that they had us in, it was across the street from the Holiday Inn. The Armed Forces Indoctrination Center rented the 5th and 6th floors. They gave me a voucher for supper at the restaurant across the street. When I got to my room my roommate was there, we meant with a couple of other guys and decided to see what kind of trouble we could get into. We walked around for a while and ended up in a bar. We told the bar tender that we were there to go into the service the next day. He said anyone old enough to join the Army and fight for his country was old enough to drink in his bar. We didn't leave till about midnight, everybody was buying us rounds, we didn't pay for anything. When we got back to the hotel there were more guys there, we were running the halls, Indian wrestling, and just having a good olé time. At about 2am the hotel called the MP's to come put us to bed. At 6am they were beating on our door telling us we had 15 minutes to be down in front of the hotel to get the bus. We were all out side waiting, making jokes and singing and just having a great olé time, most of us were still kind of tipsy. People in the Holiday Inn were shouting out their windows for us to shut up. An hour later the bus showed up, we could have had another hour of sleep. When we got to the indoctrination center they served us a continental breakfast, after they drew our blood of course.
First was the physical exam, which didn't take long at all, they checked all your holes. The last one, the butt check, we were all lined up in a circle with the doctor in the middle with a flashlight. We all had to turn around, drop our drawers, bend over, and spread our cheeks, I don't know what he was looking for, but what ever it was he didn't find it. After that was more testing, now with paper and pen, there were five different tests, they were all multiple choice. We had lunch in between. The rest of the day we were busy filling out forms, the same forms that we filled out at the recruiters office. Then you got a chance to talk to the “Career Counselor”. You were suppose to be able to tell him what you wanted to do while in the Army, but really it was he telling you what you were going to be doing in the Army. When my turn came up I told him that I wanted to be a carpenter. That I always did well with that in school, I liked making things with my hands. He told me that the army didn't have carpenters any more, that was all taken care of by civilians now. But with my test results I would be a great generator mechanic, I scored really well on recognizing tools. I said, “What's there to recognize, you showed a wrench, a pair of pliers, a flat head and a phi-lip’s head screw driver and a hammer?” I never had any interest in mechanics, I knew where the oil went and where the gas went, other then that I could look at the engine and shake my head all day. But then he said the magic words, “And you do some work with wood.” Now remember the emphasis is on the word “some”. I told him to go ahead and sign me up then, I was kind of naïve about how things worked, I didn't think he would lie to me, I mean, why would he lie? (I found out later that he had a quota to meet.)
By four o'clock we were sworn in, to protect the Constitution of The United States against any foreign or domestic enemies. So help me god. I wonder if they say that anymore? We flew in a small twin-engine 20 passenger plane, then a chartered bus ride for two hours. We were taken to our barracks at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, that would be home for a few days. We later called it Fort lost in the woods, Misery. The first week is spent getting you ready for the Army. The Sargent woke us up by beating on the trash can with a stick, this was 5am, we had 30 minutes to wash up, shave and be out in front of the barracks. We had thirty minutes to eat. Then we got our heads shaved, the bold head was nothing new to me because of my dad being in the service, I was never allowed to grow my hair. Then we had to fill out more forms, yes you guessed it, these were the same forms that we filled out at both the recruiters and the IC, talk about killing trees. After lunch we were lined up and taken through the warehouse to get our uniforms. They provided everything from underwear, tees and socks, to work clothes, dress uniform, pair of dress shoes, two pair of boots, duffel bag (which they gave us last), field jacket, rain coat. The rest of the day was spent getting our uniforms ready, and packing up what ever we brought with us to send home to mom with a thank you letter for putting up with us all these years. Day two was spent learning how to march, the start of getting shots. Every week we went through the shot line, there would be two medics, one on each side of the door and as you walk by they would give you the shots with these guns. Sometimes if you were moving too fast the gun would take a chunk of meat out of your arm, your doing half quick march the whole time. The next seven weeks you were nothing but Army, you talked Army, you read Army, you even dreamed Army. Everything you touched was OD green, OD stands for “olive drab”. Day four we were issued our field gear, back pack, again given to us at the end of the line, shovel, canteen, metal dish and cutlery, tent, field jacket, etc. etc. When we got everything into the back pack it weighed in at 40 pounds, you carried this everyday. The tent was funny because there were two different kinds. The old ones had buttons, where the newer ones had snaps, you always had to make sure you were buddied up with a person that had the same as you.
After our Drill Sargent got us settled into our new barracks, that would be home for the next seven weeks. “If you were lucky enough to be able call yourself Soldier”, when he got done with you. Do you remember the scene from Stripes? The one where they are all in a circle and each one took turns talking about themselves. Well, that's what our Drill Sargent did after we got all settled down. We had to at least say who we were, where you were from, and what you were going to do in the Army. I got very pissed when I found out that there were 3 guys going to carpenters school. I felt like I had been fucked and didn't even get a kiss. I think that is when my attitude started going down hill.

My Career Path, Continued

Alright, so when we got back to the states, it was around Christmas time. When Christmas vacation was over I would be going to the same high school that my Aunt and Uncle went to. This was going to be an exciting thing for me, they weren't in high school any more. But I had started school at their elementary school when they were still going there. But it didn't quit happen that way. We ended up at some god forsaken abandoned Air Force Base in Burns Flat, Oklahoma, “Clinton AFB”. They were sending military families that had husbands going to Vietnam to live there while they were gone. No one had asked me anything about going there. I didn't want to go, and I knew if I asked to stay with a relative would have been out of the question. By the time we got settled in, school had already started. I need to tell you I was not very good at school, if there had been classes for slow people back then I would have been in them. I struggled all through school, with not much help from my parents, my mom dropped out of the sixth grade. My dad graduated from high school, but he wasn't around much and when he was, he wasn't. He would hit the bottle as soon as he got home from work. So catching up with the other guys wasn't going to happen, I think I knew it when they first suggested it in Germany. I tried for a few weeks but just couldn't hack it, so I dropped out of the tenth grade.

There wasn't much to do in Burns Flat, it was just a little ole' town, with a gas station on both sides of town. I guess it shriveled up when the Air Force moved out. So looking for a job was pointless especially at sixteen and a half. March came in like a lion and took me with it. I gave my mom an ultimatum, sign me into the Navy or watch me run away. We had a fight the night before, one of many, because she didn't like me going out every night and she needed me to take care of the kids, yada, yada, yada. Well, I was tired of being father, I was tired of taking care of everyone else. I had wanted to go into the Navy ever since I saw my uncles in uniform. So on March 11th we drove to Clinton, OK. In the basement of the courthouse is where the recruiters offices were. So I went straight away to the Navy office, which was across the hall from the Marines. The recruiter basically told me to go back to school and come back and see him when I graduated. Well, I knew that wasn't an option. Everything I had ever read told me that I did not want to be a Marine. You have to remember I had very low self-esteem at this point of my life. So down the hall I went, the Air Force guy told me the same thing. By this time my mom is grinning from ear to ear, she thinks she's getting her way. I was desperate, so I sat down with the Army Sargent. He told me that since I was volunteering for the draft I would only have to serve two years active duty instead of three and he could guarantee an AIT school (Advanced Individual Training) for me. Which means I wouldn't be a grunt, (infantry) , not that there is anything wrong with being shot at, “I'm just saying.” But they would talk to me about that after the testing in Oklahoma City. When we left there I had Trailways bus tickets in hand for the next day going to O KC.

Tomorrow I'll talk about my time in O KC, and my start in the US Army