I suppose in a way it is a game. We start life with no score and then try to gain points along our journey. My game began just before the end of WW-2. My mother loved me and I loved her. She encouraged me every step of the way. She told me how smart I was and that she expected great things from me. I was a child and if mom said I was smart, then I was smarter than anyone around me. I wasn’t, but I believed I was. My grades reflected the truth that I was not all that intelligent, but I wrote that off as I wasn’t really trying because I didn’t care to have high grades. I went through grade school as mediocre Joe and went through high school the same way. Out of 125 in my graduating class, I was at 115th on the list. It made me wonder who brought up the last 10 below me? That was childhood.
Life began at 16 and at a full gallop, chasing skirts anywhere and everywhere. Girls were the most wonderful thing in the world! At the age of 16, dad and I went car shopping and I got my first car. I was on top of the world, winning the game of life big time.
At 17, two events occurred that changed my life. The first was when my car radio quit working (bear with me on this point). I stopped at a radio repair shop not far from home and this man took a radio that was not working and made it well. That set off an alarm in my head; that's what I wanted to do with my life! That is what I planned on doing. The second event changed my life forever. That happened the night I met Joyce, two months before I turned 18.
I was encouraged to go to college, but with 5 other siblings there was no money to send me to college. I decided to go into the armed forces and learn how to repair radios there. There were 2 Marines that came to our house, all dressed in their impressive dress blues. My only question for them was can you guarantee I will learn about radios? Their answer was a snide comment, “The only thing we guarantee is that we will make you a man!” That ended things for me and they left our home. I went to the courthouse to join the AirForce, but the recruiters were out to lunch. Along came a navy recruiter one afternoon when I was repairing a tire at the gas station where I was working. He asked me if I liked repairing tires? I told him I was probably going to become a mechanic. He replied, I could get you into the navy and you could work in electronics and have clean hands instead of dirty ones if you qualify on our exams. That meant radio repair school for me. I took the exams and was qualified for any aviation electronics school. That sealed the deal for me. I signed up for a delayed enlistment until September of 1963. Joyce was going off to college a week after I enlisted and I did not want to be around all of our familiar places without her being with me.
This post is getting rather lengthy, so I’ll continue it perhaps tomorrow.
Brother Bill
No comments:
Post a Comment