CHAPTER 1 - I WAS BLIND BUT NOW I SEE

 While I was at Erhac most Security Police were getting orders for Ellsworth South Dakota, Malmstrom Montana, Minot and Grand Forks North Dakota. These were all SAC (Strategic Air Command) bases. It was the Cold War and if you were an SP you were either going to hump B-52 bombers or guard ICBM missile silo's. Winters in the Dakota's and Montana are brutal. Temperatures can go as low as twenty below and the wind chill factor even lower. At Lackland, Kingsley, and Erhac I was always given a (dream sheet). You were allowed to make three choices of bases that you would like to be stationed at and I would usually choose bases where the weather was warm. Bases like Patrick in Coco Beach Florida, or Hickam in Honolulu Hawaii. I also picked Sewart in Smyrna Tennessee until I learned that the base was going to be closed in 1970. At Erhac my third choice was Peterson Field in Colorado Springs. This was because a friend had been stationed there and told me how much he enjoyed Colorado. I never expected to actually get any of my choices because I had never been that lucky in the past. To my surprise I received orders for N.O.R.A.D. or North American Air Defense Command in Colorado Springs. Although I didn't get the warm climate I wanted I was excited about going there. Most of the cops at Erhac were envious of my orders since they all ended up going to the aforementioned SAC bases.

In my last few weeks at Erhac Debbie was writing me about my brother Mark. I only had to live on McKennie Avenue for six years until I was out on my own but Mark was ten days short of his eighth birthday when our parents died and had no way out of the dysfunctional situation that he was living in. He was now sixteen years old and Aunt Tincy was a belligerent drunk living with Didi. She was terrorizing Didi and everyone else. One morning Tincy had Didi pinned to the floor and was beating her until Mark knocked her off. Because of Tincy he was spending a lot of time at Aunt Viola's farm out on Two Mile Pike in Goodlettsville. She had a way of prying information out of you and one thing led to another until Aunt Viola applied through the court for custody of Mark. Because of circumstances beyond his control he was caught in the middle and Aunt Viola was granted custody after he told the judge that he wanted to live with her. Didi was understandably hurt and devastated. She would hold a grudge against Aunt Viola for the rest of her life.

Feeling helpless after reading about all of this in Turkey I came to a big decision in my life. I decided to ask Mark if he would like to go with us to Colorado. Debbie was agreeable to the idea and so was Mark. Since I was now 21 years old I could become his legal guardian if I could talk Aunt Viola into relinquishing custody of Mark. I wrote Aunt Viola and she agreed to turn over custody to me. Our family had been devastated by our parents death and because of my own immaturity and focus on my own life I had not been the brother to Mark that I should have been through those turbulent years. I felt guilty about that and wanted to try to make it up to him. I only had a 30 day leave and we needed most of it to find a place to live in Colorado Springs so I could only spend a few days in Nashville. I immediately set about working out the details for gaining custody of Mark through the court. Aunt Viola, Mark and myself went to court one day and after the judge asked us a few pertinent questions he consented to grant me legal guardianship of Mark.

For the first time since I had been in the Air Force I was actually excited about going to my new duty station. I was making more money now and we had a decent car for a change. We still owned the 1964 white Impala that we had bought in Oregon. I rented a small U-Haul trailer and our car was packed to the gills. It was a two day trip by car and the weather was extremely hot. The interstate wasn't completed between Nashville and St. Louis so I took the Pennyrile Parkway up to Vincennes Indiana and then it was interstate for much of the way into Colorado Springs. We made it as far as Columbia Missouri on the first day. On the second day we were on the road very early and by noon the temperature was well into the high 90's and I started hearing a hissing noise coming from the rear of my car. After pulling over on to the shoulder I realized that the noise was coming from my gas cap. I pulled into a gas station that was next door to a motel in Marshall Missouri. This proved to be a live and learn moment for me and as Dave Ramsey might say I paid a "stupid tax" for my ignorance. The mechanic took full advantage of me and before I left there he had replaced about 4 or 5 things that I am pretty sure in retrospect that I didn't need. He also owned the motel and we stayed there until the car was ready the next morning. Between the motel bill and repairs I paid him about 500.00 dollars which is the equivalent of almost 3,500 dollars in todays money. Repairs that I am not sure were even made to the car. I feel certain today that because we were pulling a heavy load in the heat, the car simply overheated. If I had pulled over for a little while until the car cooled down, we would have been fine.

As we neared Colorado Springs Debbie and Mark began to complain. So far they had not been impressed by the scenery of Kansas and eastern Colorado. Kansas was very flat and eastern Colorado wasn't much to look at either. We were in some pretty sparsely populated regions. They asked repeatedly where I was taking them and what had I gotten them into. Soon we were entering the outskirts of Colorado Springs and rising up before us was the snow capped Pikes Peak and the Rocky Mountains. The mood in the car changed immediately from dread to excitement. From that moment until I was discharged nearly one year later we felt like we were on vacation. This was, without a doubt, the happiest year of our life. We found a motel near downtown and I immediately set about finding a place to live. At that time there were five military installations in Colorado Springs. The Air Force Academy, Ent AFB, which is where I processed into NORAD and where my records were kept. Peterson Field AFB, Fort. Carson, and N.O.R.A.D in Cheyenne Mountain. We rented a nice apartment that was part of a quadplex. Two apartments downstairs and two upstairs. Our apartment had two bedrooms, a kitchen, bath, and living room. The landlord was a very nice man named Mr. Embree. One feature that I loved about this apartment was that you could look straight out of our kitchen window and see Pikes Peak.

There was a ton of stuff to do and see in Colorado Springs. We went to Cave of the Winds, the Manitou Cliff Dwellings, Manitou Springs, which reminds me of Gatlinburg, Garden of the Gods, and Seven Falls. Unknown to us at the time, Debbie was pregnant with my daughter Misty. There was a very steep stairway that paralleled Seven Falls. She climbed to the top of the falls, which was very high, and difficult. In retrospect this was not a good idea for a pregnant woman. She had a very difficult pregnancy early on. The doctor put her to bed for several weeks and she was very sick. I thought that she might lose the baby. Mark and I did a poor job of taking care of the house and during this time I was not getting paid. I hand carried my pay records to Kingsley Field and to Turkey. Because of that I never had a pay problem until I reached NORAD. For some reason they didn't give me that option when I processed out at Incirlik and my pay records were lost and for six months. I didn't receive a paycheck that whole time and I don't know what we would have done without Debbie's allotment check and Mark's social security check.