Travels Chapter 1

When I went into the Air Force in 1961, my travels had been limited to a family journey one summer from New Hampshire to Maryland, occasional drives to upstate New York to stay with some cousins of my Dad, and a number of trips to the coast including Maine's Old Orchard beach, Hampton and Rye beaches in New Hampshire,  Cape Cod, a really special fishing trip with Dad, my uncle Roy and cousin Fred, and one trip to Long Island with college buddies.

In the ensuing years between October 3, 1961 and whenever I choose to end this yarn, I've managed a number of cross-country journeys and even a couple in other countries that I'll touch upon.  The first trip I took was unremarkable for the most part, beginning at my recruiter's office in Claremont, NH and ending as I stepped off a blue USAF bus on Lackland AFB outside San Antonio, TX with an Airman First Class Starr hollering at us as if we'd done something wrong. In between, I'd taken a bus from Claremont to Manchester and then Boston,a train to New York City, a subway out to Newark, then my first-ever plane ride to Baltimore, Kansas City, and finally San Antonio where we got on the blue bus.

November 1961 - The next trip is still vivid in my memory.  Following Air Force Basic Training, I was driven with a bunch of other fellows in blue uniforms with no stripes and little hair to a train station on yet another blue bus.  We were given tickets for sleeper cars and more tickets for meals. Our first stop was in San Angelo, TX where we got off the train and stretched our legs.

Rolling out of San Angelo, the track ran along grassy hills, occasional dry wash cuts with stunted, twisted trees, and a farm or two every once in a while.   I watched those rolling hills expecting to see a cowboy or two herding cattle, wondering if the passing train would startle a herd into a stampede, (remember, I was raised in New Hampshire and played lots of cowboy scenarios on heavily forested hills, but dreaming we were in the wild west) but the cows I saw all were just grazing, ignoring the train going by.  I even fantasized that I might see a mounted posse chasing bank robbers.  Nope, just miles and miles of miles and miles.

We would go to a dining car for our meals and pay for them with the tickets we'd been given in San Antonio.  After going through basic training with the our often tasteless meals plopped on stainless steel compartmented trays as we shuffled through the chow line at attention, eating in a dining car was luxurious.  The waiters were dressed to the nines, tableware was laid out in specific order, the plates were fancy, and we could have anything on the menu.

We arrived in Denver in the early evening.  It was mid November and cold, and we were herded into more blue USAF buses for the trip out to Lowry AFB.  I remember my amazement at seeing how clean Denver appeared to be, but my big city experiences had so far been limited to Boston, New York, Baltimore and San Antonio, non of which were particularly careful in maintaining clean streets,  Denver was.  It seems odd today, because subsequent trips to Denver have not shown it to be remarkably clean.

At Lowry, we were herded off the blue buses and into a wooden two-story World War II-era barracks.   An odd memory of that first night was the aroma of coal smoke that seemed omnipresent.  Each of those old barracks was heated by a coal furnace with which I was to become familiar that winter as one of my duties would be feed them, stoke the fire and remove the ashes.

February, 1962 - Partway though my first technical school, we were given a two week break and told we could take leave, or, if we stayed on base, be assigned to details.  Three of us, Brian Walker, Jim Osier and I decided to take a train home to the northeast, Brian and Jim to western New York, and me to Albany where my father would meet the train.  A friend, whose name is long forgotten, but who was known to be of age to purchase adult beverages, took us to the train station.  Along the way, he stopped at a liquor store and, using funds we'd provided, purchased a bottle that we would need on our journey.  To this day, I do not understand why he bought a bottle of Beefeaters gin, but that's what we got.

Denverites have a majestic view to the west of the city, that, despite its nickname of the Mile High City, is really in a long low valley.  Once you are out of that valley on the east, the tallest things between Colorado and Chicago are grain elevators, and we saw lots of them.

We could go out on the platform between cars for some fresh air, but in February, the midwest air is a bit cool, so it was just for a change that we did it.  We kept the gin hidden (none of us was of age), decanting it into a thermos jug, then spiking whatever soft drinks we could buy from the cart that a porter would push through the car from time to time.  By evening, he was out of colas, so I got an orange soda.  Think Fanta and Beefeaters and realize that I was but 19 years of age and hadn't yet become the refined imbiber that I've become in old age.  We weren't terribly boisterous, but caught the attention of an older woman (mid twenties, perhaps) who was traveling with two small children and at some point asked me what we had in the Thermos.  I identified the contents and offered her some, but she demurred.  She was probably far too sophisticated for that sort of drinking.

Now, when I'd traveled from San Antonio to Denver, we traveled in Pullman cars fitted with little rooms with seats for four that a porter transformed into bunks at bedtime, but the taxpayers were funding that trip.  When it came time for us to buy our own tickets, our personal funds only were enough to get a seat, so we sat up from Colorado to New York.   Lest that sounds like a gripe on my part, I remember my grandfather talking about his travels in France during WWI - he liked to tell of traveling in side-door Pullmans, known as freight cars in other parts of society.  My other grandfather had served in the Vermont National Guard that deployed to Eagle Pass, Texas as part of the Punitive Expedition under General Pershing.  He kept a small diary that listed every stop the train made on his way home.

We bought sandwiches from the porter's cart and surreptitiously spiked our drinks from the Thermos.  The trip continued with the three of us catnapping through the night.  At Chicago, we were told that there was some sort of incident on the tracks ahead, so the train was being routed up into Michigan and our arrival times would be extended by a couple of hours.  I called my folks from a pay phone (remember those?) in Union Station and told them.   They both worked, so I told them if they couldn't get down to Albany, I'd hitchhike home through Vermont.

Brian and Jim got off in western New York and then, around four in the morning, the trained pulled into Albany.  It was snowing, hardly conducive to carrying my bag out to the highway, so I settled down in a corner of the station, figuring I'd better wait until daylight.  Frankly, I had no idea how to get from where I was to where I wanted to be.   I knew that the route up into southern Vermont went east out of Troy, but I didn't know how to get to Troy.

I kept going to the door and checking on the snow and saw that it had dwindled to a light flurry, and it was almost daylight, so I found a couple of fellows who were cleaning the station and asked them how to get up to Troy and the highway I wanted.  They gave me pretty good directions but both of them found it necessary to tell me what I was planning wasn't terrible smart.

I pulled my Air Force wool winter overcoat out of my duffel bag and pulled it on over my dress blue uniform and headed for the door, but just as I did, my Mom and Dad came through the other door.  They'd been delayed by snow on the mountain roads through Vermont.  I'd never before been so happy to see them.

It seems strange, but aside from meeting up with Jim and Brian in western New York, I have absolutely no memory of the return trip.