Life at 60

My 18th birthday was celebrated with Dad and Joan at a Memphis bar called the Hot Air Balloon. (This was the 18 years of age drinking age era). I ordered a Singapore Sling, because it seemed appropriately exotic, and downed two more before they took me back. I got into a terrible fight with Dad in the car because I was making typical grandiose statements of a naive drunk and as usual he didn't have the equanimity to allow someone to grow into a new experience. Harsh words were said, and he left the next day for New York (he was selling muffler franchises at the time) without any resolution. This sets the tableau for his return two days later. I picked him up at the airport; we hardly spoke a word on the way back. I was first to walk up the steps to the door; the house was empty since Joan was working and Lori was spending the night elsewhere. I walked through the threshold of the trailer door, and an invisible force picked me up off my feet and slammed me to the ground. As with t...

Modern pic of Travis Hospital  - still looks exactly as I remember it Though I had lost my physical virginity the year prior, I consider this the year that I gave up my psychic and emotional innocence about the world and its machinations. Being a semi-permanent member of the lab staff meant that people older than me would engage with me at lunches and off-the-clock get-togethers. I assumed the position of sponge, soaking up the wisdom of experiences they communicated, and more specifically I let go of my fear about marijuana and allowed myself to fully experience it. There was an older guy also in my training class who kept mostly to himself but would occasionally invite me to eat dinner with him at the mess hall. Named Fred, he had earned a masters degree in psychology but had been unable to find a job so he had came into the Air Force as an enlisted person. It evolved over a few weeks of interaction with him that Fred was a connoisseur of Cannabis, taking it to the extreme of...

One of our few diversions that I could always muster company for in Turkey was some type of workout, be it weights, running, racquetball or my favorite pastime basketball. I had been too uncoordinated to ever play this sport in school, but as I had grown into my body and worked through the aftermath of the car wreck, I upped my game considerably and could at least hold my own in the endless full-court games at the gym. I emulated the moves and rhythms of my black cohorts, and by the time my stay was through there I had become at least a competent player. I started hanging with a newcomer Doug who was 6:3 and a very accomplished baller, and we became good friends. One night around my birthday, he blurted out "do you get high?" When I answered in the affirmative, he rolled out to me that people had been wary of me since I hadn't made those kind of overtures. It turned out that a large percentage of guys at the dorm did in fact partake of the sticky green, and once I broke t...