STARTING FROM SCRATCH CHAPTER 4

 

I was promoted to Airmen 1st Class and we were finally able to move to a better apartment. This was in the late Spring and early summer of 1969. Ceronie Robinson told me about the new apartment. He was a Security Policeman on my Flight from Atlanta and we became good friends. Ceronie, his wife Paulette, and their little girl lived a few doors down from us. He gave me rides to and from work when my car wasn't running, which was most of the time. When I first met Ceronie he was driving a Nash Rambler and we were driving near the Base one day when we were pulled over by two Oregon State Troopers. He wasn't doing anything wrong and he wasn't speeding. The troopers made him get out of the car and it was like they were looking for something to ticket him for. They told him to blow his horn but it wasn't working and they gave him a ticket for that. I can't say for sure that these cops pulled him over because he was black but I have never had anything like that happen to me. On another occasion we were out for a ride on one of our breaks when he spotted a car sitting in a yard with a for sale sign on it. I sat in the car while he walked up to get a closer look. A white man ran out to the car and angrily jerked the For Sale sign off saying that the car was not for sale. Being from the South I had seen segregation and systemic racism. This incident awakened me to the fact that racism wasn't just confined to the South. Malcolm X said that people need to stop picking on the South. When you cross the Canadian border you are in the South. Except for the Democrat party, I do not believe that systemic racism exists in American society today but in 1969 we were not where we needed to be as a society.

Besides Ceronie and his wife we met two other couples. They were Bill and Sharon Wilson and Sonny and Amy Henson. Both Bill and Sonny were aircraft mechanics. Bill was a nut and kept us laughing all the time. There was a string of apartments where we lived along with the Robinson's who were a couple of doors down and the Henson's who lived on the other side of them. Bill and Sharon lived in a trailer that they rented from our landlord across the yard from us. One day Ceronie and I walked over to their trailer to introduce ourselves. The door to their trailer was open and as we knocked we could hear Bill and Sharon laughing and giggling in the shower together. Embarrassed, we walked back to our apartments but later the embarrassment was theirs when we told them what had happened. Bill and Sharon were from a little town called Everts in Harlan County Kentucky and it was right in the middle of Appalachia. They had a thick Southern accent and Sharon reminded me of Loretta Lynn because she referred to her mother as mommy. The yard in front of our apartments was used for some pretty wild football games. Especially the day after a heavy downpour when we played in about six inches of standing water.

About this time we met two young men who were Mormon elders. They were Elder Brown and Elder Stevens who lived in the apartment next to ours. In the Mormon church young men would leave their homes and commit themselves to a two year ministry where they would ride around on bicycles trying to convert people into the Mormon church. They tried very hard to convert us but I just wasn't buying it. I wasn't a Christian then but the Holy Spirit was protecting me from this false theology I think. Nevertheless we became good friends. They would come over for dinner and we would play games. All of our friends that lived in the apartments would get together for board games like Monopoly and Aggravation or card games like Rook. I found that friendships formed in the military were some of the closest that I ever had. We were far away from home and all in the same boat. On July 20th 1969 we all gathered around our black and white TV set which was bigger and better than our old GE set and watched in amazement as Neil Armstrong stepped on the moons surface with the immortal words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". I was 11 when Kennedy set the goal of putting a man on the moon before the decade of the 1960's was over and 19 when it actually happened. This proved to me that America is capable of doing anything it sets it's mind to but too many young people have not learned that lesson today.

In August, Debbie's sister Sylvia, her husband Jimmy and their daughters Tammy, Connie, and Carol visited us from Nashville. To this point none our family had seen Robbie except in pictures. We visited Crater Lake for the second time but the snow was gone and it was much more accessible. After they left I was finally able to buy a black Volkswagen beetle and we were able to see some of the Oregon countryside for a change. On a 72 hour break I got a wild hair to drive over to the Oregon coast but we only made it to Grants Pass and Ashland Oregon before we decided to head back to Klamath Falls. The coast was further away than we thought. There was a beautiful park in Ashland and a Shakespearean theater where they held a yearly festival. That September I had a couple weeks of leave and we flew home. There was a layover in San Francisco and then we flew on to Dallas for another layover. From there we flew to Memphis. Robbie was six months old now and he was getting very cranky from the long flight. The stewardesses were great and took turns walking him up and down the aisle. From Memphis we were only in the air about twenty minutes before we landed in Nashville. We went home primarily because the family, with the exception of Sylvia, had never seen Robbie. As expected everybody was crazy about him and it was great to be home.

I don't remember much about that leave but the thing that stands out in my mind was the first prime time college football game at night between Alabama and Ole Miss on October 4th 1969. The Alabama quarterback was Scott Hunter and the Ole Miss quarterback was Archie Manning. It was one of the most exciting college football games I have ever seen in my life. Both quarterbacks were incredible but I have never seen anything like Archie Manning. He was all over the backfield that night running from pursuers who could never seem to catch him. Manning completed 33-of-52 passes for 436 yards and two touchdowns. He ran 15 times for 104 yards and three touchdowns. Hunter finished 22-of-29 passes for 300 yards and one touchdown. The final score was Alabama 33, Ole Miss 32. Archie Manning deserved a career every bit as successful as his sons Peyton and Eli but all during his prime years he was saddled with a horrible team, the New Orleans Saints. He was a classy guy, loyal to his team, and he raised three great boys.

All too soon our leave was over and we flew back to Oregon. Poor little Robbie was sicker than a dog from the change in climate. He was coughing his head off and running a fever. There was an overnight layover in San Francisco and Debbie called her Aunt Helen who lived there. She and her husband Frank came to the airport and picked us up. On the way to their house we got a quick night time tour of San Francisco and we can say that we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge but we couldn't tell much about it at night. When we arrived at their house the back part was heavily damaged by an earthquake that had occurred the day before. The next morning it was really foggy as we made our way to the airport.