Sitting back today avoiding the heat, which is again 100
degrees with a humidity of 13%, I was remembering some of my old teaching
partners at the naval aviation technical training center at Millington Tennessee.
The first I remembered was Ray Myers, an old navy chief
who taught with me early on. Ray was a great guy when we were teaching radar
special circuits. There was a class where we taught about radar transmitter
triggers. Ray always called them transmitter trickers. After a while new
students in our two week class would ask me on our first day of the new class
when we would have the class on transmitter trickers, the word had spread.
Later I had a teaching partner from Texas and for the
life of me I cannot remember his correct name. He was a real country guy and it
showed. His favorite thing to say when students didn’t understand the class
material was, “Well shucky dern.” And that became his name. Students would ask,
“where is shucky dern?” I don’t know if or what they ever asked about me.
Another teaching partner was a Marine staff sergeant
whose name escapes me at the moment. He would tell new students that I was part
of the enlisted astronaut program and had just transferred into naval technical
training. They all bought it hook, line and sinker.
The training center was chock-full of old time navy
chiefs and it was a good place to be. The sea stories were terrific and those
old chiefs were dedicated to the navy and what it stood for. There was a wealth
of electronic knowledge there. That was of course over 40 years ago. When I was
first there in training myself, there were instructors who had served in old
navy squadrons that used blimps, with flights that lasted for days at a time.
One of my instructors was a blimp veteran from those days. He was a big fat
fellow and during classes other instructors would open the door and yell, “cast
a line, there’s a blimp adrift!” It was all good-natured fun to them.
