In our last episode, I found myself
medically cleared for military service.
And I missed a math test.
So, I had that going for me...
1976
“This
is just a four-year camping trip to you, isn’t it?”
-Tom Spagnoula
January 25
McDonalds
Bridgeport,
Connecticut
“So,
you’re going though with it, huh?”
I
regarded Tom Spagnoula, the friend I had known since second grade, with
puzzlement.
“It’s
not like I’m taking off for boot camp tomorrow, ya know. We still have six months of school
left.”
“True,”
he said, “but once you swear in Wednesday, they’ve got you. It’s called Delayed Entry for a reason.
You’re going to go eventually.”
He
looked on the floorboard between his feet.
“Hey,
beer’s gone.”
NOTE:
The drinking age in Connecticut in 1976 was 18. It’s now 21. So, you see, it was our generation which screwed it up for
everyone else. Of course, Tom and
I were only 17 when this took place so...forget I ever said this.
 |
| 19 years old Possibly one of the reasons the drinking age was raised. |
I had
driven the 45 minutes from Wallingford to Stratford to visit a few friends in
my mom’s canary yellow Ford LTD Country Squire Station Wagon with faux wood
paneling.
 |
| I know what you're thinking. Chick magnet. You mean it's not? |
And
not just because Tom said he’d boost a couple six-packs of Carling’s Black
Label from his dad’s stash in the basement.
“Let
me ask you something,” he said as I pulled in front of the newly-renovated fast
food joint featuring eat-in dining
(Stratford didn’t have a McDonald’s back then). “This is just a four-year camping trip to you, isn’t it?”
I had
spent six years with Tom in the Boy Scouts. While there, we learned how to pitch a tent in a blizzard,
build a fire with only one can of gasoline, and amputate limbs with a
jackknife.
Sometimes even on people who needed it.
 |
| Strangely, we never understood why girls didn't find this look sexy. |
Except
I was banking heavily on that whole “girl in every port” thing.
 |
| Carling Black Label Favored by Dads, old ladies, and teenagers who are too young to buy good stuff on their own. |
He
shrugged.
“Two
cans of which rolled under your seat.”
Probably not a good idea to mention that we were drinking and driving.
Oops.
My
bad.
**********
January 28
AFEES
Part II
New Haven,
Connecticut
Today I
swore (or affirmed, whatever that is)
that I would support and defend the Constitution of the United States against
all enemies, foreign and domestic.
The
foreign part I got. That would be
anyone who viewed Jerry Lewis as a comic genius, quoted Marx (Karl, not
Groucho), didn’t shave (especially women), wore dress shoes with blue jeans, wore
dishtowels on their heads, wore Speedos at the beach, wore Speedos anywhere, thought cologne was as good as
soap, drove on the wrong side of the road, believed dental hygiene was a fad,
humped anything that moved (French only), humped anything that didn’t move
(French again), loved the Beatles/hated the Monkees (oh, wait, that’s
everybody), or were tired, huddled masses yearning to be free.
 |
| "Oh, zat Jerry Lewis! He ees-how you say?- le comic genius, non?" |
As far
as who was or wasn’t a domestic
enemy?
According to one of the noted philosophers of the 20th
Century, my father, that was simple:
Hippies.
Make
no mistake. Even though I agreed
to surrender four years of my life to the U.S. military in exchange for a mop
and a chance to be shot at, I wasn’t due to “shove off” (not as dirty as it
sounds) for another seven months.
Leaving
today was for those poor souls surrounded by wailing girlfriends. Even though I was going to go through
the same thing that summer, I felt sorry for them. They were given a set of orders, vouchers for two packets of
Saltines, and directions to the train station.
I had
enlisted in the Delayed Entry program.
The Navy’s version of people lay-a-way, “Delayed Entry” enabled
recruiters to boost their numbers during traditionally slow parts of the year-you
know, like from January to December (after all, it hadn’t been that long ago when
we said “good luck with that” to Saigon).
That way, they didn’t need to worry about a troublesome “quota” system
or press gangs in front of strip clubs.
Prospective recruits, on the other hand, were “locked-in” to a specific
recruit training center. Unlike
today, the Navy had three boot camps in 1976-Great Lakes, Illinois, San Diego,
California, and Orlando, Florida (although recruits in Orlando were required to
wear mouse ears).
Since
I could not abide the heat, Florida
was out. I considered San Diego, as well, but was convinced (wrongly,
it turned out) that Southern California is an inferno in the summer. I figured that boot camp in Illinois,
while it could turn chilly, would be the most comfortable.
 |
| Plus, I didn't think I could take Orlando seriously. |
“Great
Lakes, please,” I said.
As it
turned out...on the day I arrived in northern Illinois it was 98 degrees with
humidity at “swamp.” The night
before I left, we had to assign several people to prepare to dig us out from an
approaching blizzard. Which never
came, thank God.
But we
had to go scurrying about to chase our balls when they froze off.
Mouse
ears would have been preferable.
Further
incentive to enlist early was guaranteed schooling, gift coupons to the New
Haven “Army & Navy” store, and a nifty patch.
 |
| Go ahead, Google it. I'm not making it up. Really. |
But
the best part about signing on the dotted line with a promise to return in
August was that it gave us a chance to get back to school in time for gym. Where we were going to play Dodge Ball
against the guys who were going into the Air Force.
In any
case, I was looking forward to being Big Man on Campus.
I had
a patch, after all.
 |
| Which proved about as successful with the ladies as that Boy Scout get-up. |
To be
continued.....
