What are you gonna do?

Somehow ,thank you Miss. Ottoviano, I graduated. Once I loved school, but somewhere in the middle years, that changed. Now I am seventeen with nothing to look forward to but working in  an office, living alone among all of my siblings with absolutely no place to be away from it all. 

Solution,( at age seventeen you are full of answers), U.S.Navy! Yep, that will give me all the privacy I don't have now. Maybe not, but at least it delays the decision. So, having completed "boot camp" and having just admitted my hatred for school, just what do you think happens next? Electronics school naturally! Back in Great Lakes, the best ice box on the lake, living in a WW I (no error) barracks with lots of ventilation. Put the bottle of milk on the open window sill and the back side freezes. Now a much wiser 18 years old, my next stop...school, of course, in New Mexico. WTH is the Navy doing in the desert? Sandia introduces you to "the land of enchantment" one broom sweep at a time. The wind didn't stop blowing while I was there. and your room had to be clean. Keeping the sand below the bottom of the bed level and also trying to attend classes took some doing. But, like all good things, it ended.

I am now assigned to join the aircraft carrier Saratoga in Brooklyn Navy base after leave at home. There is a hitch in this process, the 1000 foot long ship isn't in Brooklyn and it takes a week for them to find it and get me there. "There" is sitting on big wooden blocks, drydocked in Norfolk, Va. It had been there for a while, it was half way through a major overhaul. If first impressions really count, this one stunk! That's a literal statement. for some reason the first thing you met as you went into the living spaces was the smell of fire retardant. It is both unforgettable and indescribable...it stinks! But it wasn't so bad in the work spaces...how do they do that?

Norfolk has a nick name, ask any sailor, he'll know it. At the time, there were more triple feature movie houses than anywhere else in the country. And , an equally large number of bars serving 3.2 beer to those under 21. Heat, humidity and hangovers...you can learn! 

This is where I was in November of '63. We all sat and watched the tragedy of JFK's death and the following pomp, ceremony and military ritual proceed to the end. We could only watch, bewildered as all the world changed. Some events command your attention, Pearl Harbor, if you are old enough. World Trade Center. JFK. You remember where you were, who you were with and what you were doing and they all share the utter bewilderment of shock.

There is no incentive to re-visiting Norfolk. Let this particular memory lay there without my attendance.