My memory is not exact on this so I will tell the story as best as I can. I left Guam for home early in the year 1966 to see Joyce and smooth over an issue we were having. I got home and we resolved the problem. My orders were to report back to Long Island, New York. One of our squadron planes was at the Lockheed overhaul plant there and I could hitch a ride back to Guam on that plane. We flew from Long Island to Point Mugu, California and spent the night there before transiting to Midway Island. The flight took about 7 ½ hours. We landed in the late afternoon. Midway is 1300 miles from California. It has a 7800 foot long runway, which was used by the US navy in WW-2 and later for airborne early warning planes that flew from there to Alaska, then turned back to Midway on long flights as part of America’s radar defenses during part of the cold war with Russia.
I took a walk around the small island. Every part of it was nearly flat and I could see the ocean in every direction. I felt sorry for all the sailors stationed there for a year at a time. There was little to do and it must have been a long year for those sailors. I dropped in on the enlisted men’s club there for a beer or two. I had been in some crazy places in the Philippines, but nothing rivaled Midway before that. Tempers were short, beer cans were flying and scuffles were frequent. Usually enlisted clubs on bases were calm and mundane, but not on Midway. It struck me as being wild there. I left the club after dark to walk back to the barracks. The Albatrosses were camping out on the sidewalks, refusing to move and the sidewalks were littered with bird excrement. The birds wouldn’t move so I had to nudge them with my foot to get them out of my way. They responded with feigned, wounded cries. There was nothing on that island that I found appealing and I was happy to leave there for Guam the next morning. We nay have stopped the next day at Barber's Point in Hawaii before leaving for Guam the next morning.
My tour of duty ended on Guam a few months later and I returned home on leave. We packed everything we owned into a small car and headed to California for two of the better years we had. It was non-stop fun for us. Those years were, as the movie star Martin Mull said, “Like high school, but with money.” In later years, back in California and at the naval training center in Millington, Tennessee were also great times for us as were our years on the farm. Overall we had our ups and downs as all marriages do, but over the 58 years with Joyce, I will say I would not trade them for any other lifetime or any amount of money on earth.
That, my friends, is why it has been so difficult to live on without her.
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