Off We Go, Into the Wild Blue Yonder

This last week of May is the 50th anniversary of a very memorable time of my life. On May the 24th, 1959, at the ripe old age of seventeen, I caught a train from Stanley, North Dakota to the Armed Forces Induction Center in Fargo. After a day of poking and prodding with fingers, tongue depressors, needles and various strange instruments, the Army doctor declared me fit for service…barely. I had to plead with him to ignore my flat feet, but at last he reluctantly acquiesced to my groveling. He told me my feet were bad enough to avoid service, but that was the last thing I wanted. After the many months of waiting for high school to end so I could enlist, it would have been an emotional tragedy to return home to face my friends as a seventeen-year-old nonstarter.

When it came time for all of us Air Force enlistees to leave Fargo for Lackland AFB, the NCO preparing our processing paperwork pulled what I considered at the time to be an evil trick. I was the youngest, the skinniest, and the shyest kid in our group of six, so he decided to put me in charge. I had to wear an arm band that signified that I was a temporary Staff Sgt, but I didn’t have a clue what a Staff Sgt was supposed to do. The NCO told me it was a simple job, and that all I had to do was carry all the paper work in a sealed packet, and to make sure that everyone stayed together, and that nobody got lost…simple. Sure!

When we arrived in Kansas City via Northwest Airlines, we had about a three hour layover before we were scheduled to catch an Air Force charter flight to Texas. Somehow, I let the older guys talk me into taking a cab into KC. It was around midnight, so the downtown nightlife was in full swing. Besides me, there were two other guys under 21, so we couldn’t enter the bars, but the guys that were of legal age wanted to grab a beer. I desperately tried to talk them out of it, but naturally, I lost, so there we were…three kids…one wearing a dumb armband…standing outside a bar waiting for the older guys to drink their beer. One drink turned into three or four and I began to panic over the idea that they would get drunk and I couldn’t get them back in time to catch the plane. I just knew I’d be facing a court martial on my very first day in the Air Force!

Fortunately, common sense prevailed and we all made it back in plenty of time to board our flight to San Antonio. Then things got interesting. Welcome to the Air Force, Rainbows!