The Ghosts of Christmas Past

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A modern day Air Force TI

I remember my first Christmas away from home.  I was 18 years old and the year was 1970.   I spent the Christmas holidays sequestered in an Air Force Basic Training barracks at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio shining my boots.

With me were 57 other airman.  We were no longer considered new troops, as we had been in training about a month.  At the time and it may be this way still, new recruits were called Rainbows.

“Rainbow, Rainbow, don’t be blue
Your TI was a Rainbow too!”

I made the terrible decision to join the Air Force at the end of November, which meant I would be in Basic Training over the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years’ holidays effectively extending my time there by two full weeks.  My “Flight” had been in training long enough that our TI’s (Chief Military Training Instructors) left us to enjoy Christmas with their families and we spent the four day holiday cleaning our equipment, the barracks, and shining our boots.  I thought it was a rough deal and a lonely time and like the other recruits there, we passed the holidays in near silence.

One year later and one short visit home, I was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base in the Strategic Air Command way up in icy cold central Montana.  It is a Minuteman Missile base and when Christmas rolled around, I drew the short straw and couldn’t fly home for the holidays.  Airfare, flying military stand-by, was a whopping $65 one way and who could afford that on Airman’s pay anyway?

Due to the holidays, the base was being manned by a skeleton crew, except for the missile launch crews and seeing that I worked at a Forward Supply Point in the Missile hanger, I was deemed essential.  I remember walking in the snow to the Chow Hall on Christmas day 1971.  It was so cold and dark that I felt like the world had abandoned me.  I was 19 years old and by the standards of those days, a man and my dad taught me to “suck it up”, but that didn’t stop me from feeling alone up in the Big Sky country that day.

Stepping into the Chow Hall, I was surprised to have a server place a pair of stuffed pork chops on my plate.  They were two inches thick and cooked to perfection.  I had never seen such and to this day, remember that meal; far from home that only a few of us special people were served.  A few months passed and I was told I had received orders and I reported to Base Operations to get them and seeing I had this specialty training in Supply, I was told I needed to process out immediately to go to APO 96337.  I had no idea what these numbers meant and was told to cross reference them on a chart, which I did.
 
Back at the barracks, I approached a veteran sergeant who I trusted.  “Where is Danang AFB?” He laughed knowingly and told me it was “Rocket City, Vietnam.”  I wanted to cry and finally did when I called home that night when talking to my mother.

It was early 1972 and the war was “deescalating” but almost 2400 of our military perished in Vietnam in 1971 and this was nothing to take lightly.  I listened to my peers as they talked about running truck convoys from depot to base armed to the teeth and rockets landing at random in the warehouses and if I said I felt brave, I would be lying.  My orders meant I was going into harm's way.

Providence stepped in and once again, my specialty prevailed.  Instead of going to package up the departing 366th Gunfighters squadron, I was sent ahead to Central Thailand to help set up the Forward Supply Point there.  I spent 21 and a half months there, working 12-hour shifts in the jungle heat.  I remember both Christmas’ and accepted the fact that being a G.I. meant you could not be with your family at special times like this.

Segue to the December 2013 holidays and here I am once again at work.  Since I left home to join the war effort in 1970, I’ve either been away from my family or worked 37 of the 43 Christmas holidays.  Am I whining, complaining, or lonely?  No.  I’ve accepted it.  Has it made a Scrooge out of me?  Maybe.  Do I still remember the true meaning and spirit of celebrating the coming of the Christ child?  Sure, of course, but the thrill of gift giving and festivities isn’t there.  It died a slow death a long time ago.

Sadly, for me it’s for the most part, nothing more than overtime or holiday pay.  It’s mammon to pay for the stuff we’ve bought and fodder for upcoming taxes and that is the real shame of it. 
I want my Christmas ghosts to give me back what I lost.  I want what they took from me.  I want to be a kid again, excitedly opening my eyes after a near sleepless night and rush down to a bright tree full of presents.  I want to eat until I'm sick and then eat more.

The reason I write this is I'm not the Lone Ranger on missing the Christmas holidays and certainly not for pity or sympathy.  Nope.  All around the world this holiday season are thousands of sons and daughters, mothers and fathers working in far away countries defending our way of life and they can’t come home.  Say a prayer for them.  Right here in Baytown, we have many men and women working in the chemical plants and refinery’s doing the same thing as I have all these years.

Our restaurant workers, fire fighters, medical professionals, and police officers are working overtime and swing shifts and will miss the Christmas holidays also.  The fellow at the convenience store told me that if I needed something on Christmas day, they would be open and he will spend the day behind the counter talking to strangers and away from his family.

My point in all of this is, if you can be with your family on these special days, take a moment to cherish it.  Enjoy how fortunate you are.  Hug those around you and tell them you love them.  Merry Christmas to my fellow Baytownians and Happy New Year to you too.  Something tells me I am going to spend Christmas 2014 with my Bride and family and it’s going to be a terrific year.  See you in 2014!
 
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The Silent Side of Christmas

This Christmas Eve, many thousands of workers will stay up all night manning police, hospitals, chemical plants, security, fire stations and EMS across the Texas Gulf Coast. They are supporting the American way of life. Unfortunately, this is every holiday season for them. My hat is off.

While we enjoy opening presents, or a football game and drinks with our friends and family, a single Mom with tired feet is working a checkout stand, as Wal-Mart accommodates last minute shoppers, wishing for once she could be home with her kids. A city utility employee is shutting off a leaking water or sewer line on a wet dark road. His family wishes this didn't happen every Christmas, but it does. I am grateful.

Somewhere a tow truck driver is changing a flat tire in the bitter cold and a taxi is carrying a passenger to a destination so they can be with their family. The tow-truck driver doesn't make it home before they are called to another emergency and the taxi rolls on to find another passenger. Let me shake your hand.

In this city of thousands, there will sit many who are alone and feel forgotten. They heat up their TV dinner and wish it were all over. Christmas to them is a reminder of lost loved ones. Let me say a prayer of comfort for you.

At Minot AFB in barren North Dakota a 19-year old Airman spends her first Christmas away from home as she works the lone-shift position in the weather station - short straw on the rank scale. In South Korea, the tallest man in the unit, a 6'-5" "Dirty Bay" hometown soldier hunkers down against the cold as he pulls night guard duty beside his launcher. In Afghanistan more American freedom-loving men and women look out across the frigid and desolate wasteland and silently offer up a prayer for peace on earth. They do not ask for pity.

Let's remember all our troops both home and abroad. I salute you.

All these people sacrifice time away from their families to earn a living or keep us safe while we eat delicious meals, open presents, mix with our families and finally drift off to sleep.

Security guards Carroll Messer and Eddie Thurmond stand vigilance at one of the many Chemical Plants on the Texas Gulf Coast, like they do every holiday season.

Peace Love and Dope?

I guess I became a folk music fan sometime around 1971, but I didn’t know it was folk music that was spinning my young American ears. I was a rock and roll guy - not country and to this day I eschew country music like it is something distasteful…I’m sorry, but that’s just the way I see it.

I was about 18, stationed in Great Falls, Montana, far from home and I remember Neil Young launched an album called "Harvest" and I would sit in my barracks room and listen to Ol' Neil wail out those lonely lyrics and feel his words tear through me like a dry wind out of the desert. One song in particular hit me hard. It was "Old Man", a song about something I didn't really understand. I do now, for I am rapidly realizing my own mortality.

Neil wrote it after meeting an older fellow up in Idaho who just couldn't understand how a young hippie musician could afford to buy so many things, especially real estate in Idaho, when he himself had toiled all those years trying to eke out a living.

Old man, look at my life, twenty four and there’s so much more
Live alone in a paradise that makes me think of two.

Neil, in his usual self-effacing manner told the man that he "was just lucky I guess" and left it at that. I wish I was more like Neil Young in that respect. Neil has weathered the storm of his occupation and is still in my top ten artist’s folder.

My life is a record with occasional poor decisions, but don’t feel sorry for me as I have taken steps to correct them. I learned the good old-fashioned hard way. And I’m not proud of some of it at all, but in order to qualify my current views of life, I will relate a portion, a dark time in my life. I hope for your sake that you can learn from my mistakes.

Like I said before, I was an Airman in the Strategic Air Command and the Vietnam War came for me. Orders came down sending me to Danang airbase, South Vietnam. Like so many young men in uniform, I was off to war. The 70's were a tough time to be a young person in the military and not because of the war, but because of the emerging dope scene and the way it was being projected as the answer. The news reports told stories about Willie Nelson bragging about smoking dope on the roof of the White House with secret service men and every Hollywood Star talking about how they get high on a regular basis and above all of that - cheap dope for G.I.'s in far away exotic places.

I finally gave into the temptation and yes, I bought into it. I embraced the lifestyle because it was the thing to do and above all – everyone else was doing it, a philosophy I learned to regret and to this day it is one of the main reasons I resist following the crowd.

I learned first hand about White Horse methamphetamine, Thai stick, mescaline, red rock heroin, Robilar RC cough medicine, mescaline, Window pane acid, PCP, Orange Sunshine, bongs, pipes and how to roll a one-handed joint with strawberry papers. I saw my buddies scratch themselves raw from heroin withdrawals and on occasion watched perfectly good American boys puke their guts out from an allergic reaction to the opium in the Thai stick they tried to ingest through a bong.

I caught you knockin' at my cellar door
I love you, baby, can I have some more
Ooh, ooh, the damage done.

I learned about delusional behavior and how a person can work 16 hour days, stay up all night and repeat it again and again only to "crash" and collapse when a day off finally was granted. Normal behavior was getting high 99% of the time and working 100% of the time. Lunch was a couple of joints and 3 cans of beer. Rock music was the thread that helped all of us cope with the many miles of smoke, alcohol and copious back-breaking long hours of work.

I was invited one time into the bungalow of a fellow G.I. to listen to music and the bare walls of his abode were lined with the empty bottles of high powered cough medicine - Robular RC out of England. 49% alcohol and 8% codeine if memory serves me right. This fellow weighed about 130 pounds sopping wet and him about 6 foot tall. I remember we listened to Texas musician Johnny Winter sing his early rendition of Rock and Roll Hootchie Koo, a song Rick Derringer later made famous.

I hit the city and I lost my band
I watched the needle take another man
Gone, gone, the damage done.

The keyboardist for the band “The Doors”, Ray Manzarek in a TV interview said something I will never forget, he said we were right about peace and love, but we missed it on the drugs. I agree with him 100 %. Music played a big part in my descent into the drug world, but in retrospect, it wasn’t the music, it was the culture, the times and my deliberate association. I still listen to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and appreciate the music and the talent more than ever; I just don’t include dope. I’ve been clean since 1975.

Long live American music, live as peacefully as possible, but leave the dope to the dopes.