Monday, October 13, 2008
HOM: Unwinding
Yeah, its another electrical pun. Deal with it.
I just remembered John Duchak. He was in my EM class, TAD (Temporary Assigned Duty) from a ship to the school. A fellow Montanan, he was from Great Falls, and was a super great guy.
He was prematurely bald & I used to tease him about it. I remember seeing him right after he got a haircut and asking him to save me the clippings next time he got one. When he asked why, I told him I was a fisherman and wanted to tie some bald-headed flies. I thought it was funnier than he did.
(Digression: Reminds me of two other "bald" episodes - the guy that walked into the Stillwater Bar and planted a kiss on his pal's dome. Wasn't his pal ... was a very painful "oops" for him." In the other episode, a guy rubbed his pal's bald head and said "Feels just like my wife's butt." The buddy reached up, rubbed his own bald spot and said "You know - You're right!")
Another of the good-natured guys in my class was "Dink" Mendez. We were pretty good friends, but he did peeve me once. I was on fire watch in the barracks when he came wobbling in at three in the morning, drunk & singing.I kept trying to get him to be quiet and hit the rack without waking everybody up but it was like trying to stop the rain - couldn't be done. We both took a little guff over that.
I experienced my first California earthquake in one of the old classroom buildings. It was short, mild, and kinda spooky. Actually, this is the only earthquake I remember - I slept through the massive Yellowstone Quake of 1959, which rattled windows in Kalispell and woke up mom & Dad and the neighbors.
Speaking of rattled windows. did I mention that both RTC and the school were under the flight path of planes taking off from the San Diego airport? Noisy neighbors, and you never really got over expecting one to fall out of the sky on top of you. Landing, they would seem to skim the roofs of the cars on I-5. MCRD was next to the runways, so I am sure they had it worse than we did, as was true of most things with the Navy & the marines..
I had a lot of fun in EM school. PG school was going to be a whole different kettle of fish. It was only a couple of miles away, but in a different universe with a totally different atmosphere.
TBC
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1 comments:
Yes, M.C.R.D. San Diego is right next to the airport, and it was always a trial, waking up, or going through any given day without thinking about riding one of those planes off to see loved ones, or to some place you probably did not want to be. I did leanr though, as one day I was in line for chow next to a fellow recruit who always looked at one area across form the depot. I asked him why, as I had noted it several times. He looked at me, and told me he could see his house from where we were standing. It kind of made me feel a bit better, knowing I was not able to see my home from there. About 2 months in, he showed me the photos of his newborn son. I never knew, and still to this day cannot imagine how he lived that close to home as to be able to see his house, but so far away he could not see his family.
Vic
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