Life at 19

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 actually keeping samples of each of his buys in test tubes stored in his locker. I was too paranoid to smoke with him in his room, which he seemed to do quite cavalierly, but I did agree to go for walks at night and tried to legitimately inhale.

The first time, nothing. He wasn't surprised, telling me that our brains have a sort of learning curve that requires time to adapt to this new chemical experience. A few nights later, I tried again. I am not exaggerating when I say that the difference between my experience before and after I got my first legitimate buzz was akin to being a Neanderthal in a cave before, and then suddenly being thrust into our modern world with a direct neural pipeline to 5G internet. "Oh wow!" I remember saying to him when the intoxication fully took effect. "So THIS is what it's all about?" He nodded silently like a wise Buddha who had enlightened a novice.

Not only did this new internal world open up for me, but a broader social world did as well, since Fred was able to spread the word that I was now "cool." There was a significant percentage of people in the Travis lab who partied but had to be careful about admitting such since the penalties for getting caught were so harsh and the ever-present threat of OSI (Office of Special Investigation) narcs was on everyone's mind. But now, I had been given a key to a secret club, and I relished the many parties held at various off-base residences I was now invited to, and living for the weekend became a mantra for me since there were no romantic attachments to keep me otherwise occupied. The ratio of men to women there was prohibitive, as all possible pursuits were either married or living with someone. But not having the possibility of getting laid actually took social pressure off me, and I enjoyed the conversations about philosophy and the works of Carlos Castaneda which were typical topics at these events.

I had been strapped for cash for several months since the note to pay off the Subaru was still in effect, but by October it was finished (I know, six month car payment payoffs. Now my current car is a 72 month imprisonment. Progress?) and I had a few spare hundred to buy an older Datsun pickup from a guy who rarely used it. Now I had transportation freedom and no longer having to rely upon others for rides my social connections broadened even further. My introverted shyness had finally loosened its grip upon me, and for the first time in my life I had social confidence.

Having wheels saved my bacon in early November. There was a guy who worked in the first Sargent's office at the dorm whom we partied with, and he received a call from another fellow stoner in the military police office who told him there was about to be a bust of the dorm, complete with dogs. He ran from door-to-door banging on them warning everyone to get out. I had worked the previous night so I was jolted awake by his knocking and quickly getting the implications I shoved all of my grass and paraphernalia into a bag and headed out to my truck. I stopped to offer Fred a ride as he didn't have a car. He answered the door, and I saw he was completely baked. He told me to go on that there wasn't enough time to pack all of his incriminating evidence.

As I made it to the lot it was as though there was a nuclear drill, with 15-20 of us running for our rides then beginning a caravan that raced out of the north gate to where the tentacles of the MP's couldn't reach. Many of us went to an arcade in Vallejo, laying low until nightfall then returning. I went to find Fred but he was gone. Others clued me in that he'd been busted. A few days later when he was returned to duty he filled me in.

The advance notice was so successful that the only people left at the dorm were him and people who had nothing to conceal. A dog had triggered at his door, he opened it and saw the dog with handler staring at him as he held a bowl of freshly burned herb in his hand. His response was to close the door. A few minutes later he opened it at their demands, but this had given him enough time to chuck his collection of samples into the bushes outside the window, and since they had him dead to rights on what he was personally holding their was no further search, which saved him from possibly being kicked out or going to prison. As it was he had to complete a drug education course and lost one stripe, small potatoes compared to the worse outcomes if they had found his significant stash.

After the drama died down, Fred went right back to smoking as if nothing had happened, and I was always happy to join him. I was to have my own close call as well. On Thanksgiving night, I had worked a 12 hour shift and the cafeteria was closed so I fired up a crock pot in my room to make chili
as a special treat for myself. It was nearing completion when I heard a knock at the door. It was my first sergeant with an MP and a dog. The canine had apparently triggered on my room. I hadn't smoked there in the days prior, but I did have several joints rolled which I had secreted in empty Dr. Pepper bottles, the returnable kind of that era. Sarge had that look of disappointment on his face like a son had gone bad. They came in and the dog went all over the room but didn't trigger immediately on the bottles which were in my locker. I began to get my bravado up and was complaining that the search was bogus. The MP began arguing with me that his dog didn't make mistakes. I went back at him but heard a sound which got all of our attention. The dog had knocked the lid of the crockpot and was slurping up my chili!

"AHA!" I yelled, "THAT'S what he's triggering on."Sarge was pissed and started chewing out the MP who was embarrassed and quickly yanked the dog out of the room. I got an apology from the first sarge as they left, him still cussing out the MP for ruining my meal. I finally could breathe, having had this close shave but being saved by my impulsive decision to cook up the dish.

Room where dog saved my bacon by licking my chili

I had opted to not do a histopathology rotation of six weeks, which entailed assisting at autopsies. But since my late start had messed up my training schedule, I was required to train in the area anyway to cover for absences so I had to confront the unsavory world of cutting up dead bodies. It was my first glimpse into this macabre world and though I became quickly desensitized to it it left an indelible impression on my psyche. The insides of a human being is no different than that of a pig or a cow. What makes us human is certainly our consciousness, I concluded. One night I was almost asleep when I received a call to go to the morgue to meet a funeral home employee who was picking up a body. I trudged up the hill, used the key I had been given, then rolled out the tray, checking the foot tag to make sure the identity was correct. I recognized the name - it was a woman in her 40's who I had drawn blood from several times while on morning rounds. The day before, I had spoken with her; now, she was gone. Something about this sent me into a funk; it seemed as though all of our efforts to fight to stay alive would ultimately be defeated. I was thrilled when my time in pathology ended and I could go back to the blood, plasma and urine.

Christmas break was coming up and I had two pieces of at-the-time unsavory news. One was my next assignment - instead of the Florida bases I had requested or staying at Travis as a second option, I was selected for the exotic destination of Ankara, Turkey. The other was that I would have to stay through the holidays to make up time lost due to the wreck. The first was non-negotiable; the second was manageable. Since I had resumed my excellent classroom work and was at the top of the group, the colonel in charge of that module signed off. My first Sargeant, still apologetic over the rape of my chili by the drug dog, bought my flimsy lie that my brother James Henry was going to have surgery without a question. So on December 23rd I said goodbye to northern California, driving my loaded-down Datsun pickup on a long journey wherein for some reason that I cannot now fathom I decided to first drive an extra 300 miles to LA, as if some life-altering event was waiting for me there. It wasn't and so three days from when I started the voyage I made it back to Fort Smith.

I have few memories of the interim time before I left for Turkey. I vaguely remember a nasty case of strep throat that had me down for a week. I do recall ballooning up 20 pounds during this time so I must have been living at McDonald's. Dad had picked me up and took me back to Memphis for a few days before my flight, and I have one poignant memory of saying goodbye to him and tearing up, with him predictably laughing at my sentimentality. Hey, I didn't say GOOD poignant!

There were no direct flights to Turkey in 1978, so my first leg was to NYC. With my usual penchant for adventure, I had planned an extra two days to have my first experience of the Big Apple. This decision backfired on me in a fairly bad way.  The first night, I stayed at a hotel near LaGuardia Airport which I had flown in to. It was night time by when I had checked in, and a wiser soul would have waited for light of day but I instead headed off to seek Manhattan without a clue as to how to get there. I eventually stumbled onto a train station and saw that Time Square was a destination, so my first effort was a success. That area in 1978 was nothing as tourists see it now post the 1990's purging of bad elements there by then Mayor Guiliani. The Times Square I saw that night was a dirty, scary, and not well-lit mecca of every vice known to man. There were prostitutes and their pimps, drug addicts and dealers, porn theaters and live sex shows butted up against the lights of Broadway.

This was a typical slice of 1978 Times Square

The scene was unnerving and overwhelming, even though I had the taste of the seamier side of life from San Francisco. After perhaps 45 minutes of bewilderment and not a little bit of fear, I returned to the subway and got on what I thought was a trip back to the area near my hotel.

It was not; instead, I had gotten on a train for the Bronx. The car was initially full of a mix of people, but at each stop this mix changed to where I was by far the lightest-complected person on it. That's when the fun began. A group of Puerto Rican guys with scowls and yours truly were the only ones left on the car after a stop. One pointed to me and said: "Hey, look at that dude with red hair. We should cut his balls off."

I didn't wait around to see if they were just fucking with me. I instinctively tore through the doors separating the train cars and went through several until I found enough people in one to make me feel less threatened. Not understanding the concept of the trains reaching a terminal end, I decided to get off at en elevated station. Within 30 seconds I was the only one on the dimly-lit platform. Now Plato would have figured out that one only had to climb down the stairs and cross the street, then ascend to the other side for the return train, but I was not possessed of Athenian wisdom, so instead I lowered myself onto the tracks four feet below, crossed over the steel lines, two of which I did not know were live-wired with immense current, and thankfully - else I wouldn't be here to write this - didn't make contact. After hoisting myself up on the other side of the platform, in a few minutes a train for Manhattan arrived, and after another hour of confusion with subway stops finally being sorted out, I made it back to my hotel. Almost. One last obstacle remained; there was a 10 foot fence that separated me from my motel which I could tantalizingly see just a few blocks away. As far as my eyes could see, the fence extended on both my left and right. By now physically and psychically exhausted, I put my fingers into the links above me, and I began to climb. After a few agonizing minutes I landed on my ass on the other side, sore but with nothing broken.

The next morning, I took a shuttle to Kennedy where I was going to deposit my bags in a locker (ah, the pre-terroristic days of locker storage at airports!) and then be free to explore in the day hours. I accomplished this, then I was heading out a revolving door when I felt someone bump into me. I began to hail a cab, but felt an impulse to check my wallet which was in my back pocket. It was gone - I had been pickpocketed! All of my money - over $200 - and my ID was gone. I was angry, frustrated and was without guidance on how to proceed. I sat in the terminal for a long time, then finally mustered calling Dad. Of course, no one answered the phone. I went to Traveler's Aid and explained my situation. They gave me one voucher for $5 for food and sent me off. I slept that night on a lounge chair watching the comings and goings of people as they filtered past. Finally the next day, I reached Dad and after several more hours of waiting and a further controversy since I didn't have my ID, $40 was delivered to me via Western Union only 4 hours before my flight departed.

Luckily I had kept my orders with my tickets in my luggage, and this sufficed not only for getting on the plane but also getting through customs when I finally arrived in Turkey almost 20 hours later after a stopover in Frankfurt. The processing-in the following week was a whirlwind of activity and information, including learning the basics of the Turkish language as well as getting a "Scared Straight" presentation by the OSI office on the dangers and outright stupidity of possessing drugs off-base. They showed a film of conditions inside a Turkish prison and just a few minutes of it (this was pre- "Midnight Express" movie) was enough to convince me to stay on the straight and narrow, which I did. For awhile.

Ankara in 1978

I had a few days of freedom before I had to begin my job at the clinic, which was located several miles from our tiny base in the downtown area. I took the opportunity to explore as I always did, marveling at the historic monuments and structures, including the battlements where the Muslims had fought off the Crusaders hundreds of years before. The merchant areas and the bazaars were of endless fascination to me as well. Many people have asked me over the ensuing years what my experience over the 15 month span there was like, and I always respond that it was one of the best experiences of my life. Conversely, I was no doubt in great danger, partly from the hostile climate of radical Muslims toward Westerners (8 US military members were assassinated across all the Turkish bases while I was there) and some of it due to my own risk-taking behavior, on which I will expand in "Life at 20." But the feeling of aliveness has rarely been matched by any other period of my life.

I was pretty much an anomaly as well among the Americans since most of them rarely retreated from our one square mile enclave (our base was a tiny fenced off portion of a larger Turkish military base) and even when they did they stuck to American facilities such as the small base exchange or bowling alley located in the city. I instead went full native, quickly becoming comfortable with enough of the language to navigate with cabbies (and to keep them from ripping me off) as well as with merchants who not only would haggle, they would demand the time honored back-and-forth bargaining which seemed to be a hallmark of respect among men in that culture.

I was to learn this lesson the hard way. My first buying experience, I looked at the tag on a small water pipe and it read "100 lira." I took that bill, equivalent to $5 American, out of my wallet and handed it to the wizened proprietor of the shop, who looked at me with an expression of disgust and then spat at my feet, yet still wrapped the purchase. I was to learn from later inquiry that not negotiating ANYTHING in Turkey was considered weakness and therefore contemptible. I didn't take me long after that to upgrade my haggling game, to which I added  black market cigarettes and booze that I always kept in a gym bag for bartering purposes. In fact, I don't remember ever exchanging currency for goods again because what I had to trade was seen as so much more valuable.

An amusing episode came a few weeks into my stay when I went to a Turkish cinema. I couldn't understand the dialogue of course but I went strictly for the ambience, and because the price of admission translated to 12 cents I believe. I heard some guys behind me snickering even though the movie was ostensibly a drama, and several times the word "ebene" was spat out, which I wasn't then familiar with. walking down the street later that afternoon, someone passing by me pointed a finger and said "ebene" again. I though this had to do with my complexion, but as soon as I could corner our unit translator, Omer, about it I was smartened up through his raucous laughter.

"Oh, I should have warned you" he said. "In Turkey, red hair isn't natural so people have to dye their hair to get that color, and the one's who do, do it for a specific reason, it's a signal that you are homosexual."

I was stunned but at least I understood the context. So for my remaining fourteen months I was there, I weathered the looks of disgust and laughter, as well as some propositions by some rather feminine men in Turkish nightclubs. This was the era of "Gay Bob" whether I liked it or not.

Working in the small two-man lab fit my personality, since I had to be responsible for all testing instead of just one section, and in that time especially at a remote outpost like Ankara, all of our testing was the same manual methods used since the origin of clinical testing, and these required skill and focus to perform adequately. To call it a two-man operation is a misnomer, since my boss Dave was a red-nosed alcoholic who took every chance to disappear for hours on end to go down to the clinic basement (it was located in a renovated 5 story residence building that even in 1978 was showing its age) with his partners-in-crime as they hit the bottle, or perhaps several. I didn't mind though; I stayed out of his way and he mine and we kept that separate peace for almost all of my stay there. Almost.

Being in an isolated situation like this tended to make you gravitate toward certain people whom you became fast friends with, while with others you felt hostility and repugnance. This wasn't across racial lines either, as I felt a kinship often with some of the black airmen in the dorm, but I soon learned that there was an efficient de facto segregation in place, not driven by racism or the institution itself, but by cultural preference. The black guys roomed together, ate together and partied together. Whatever interactions we had besides work and intramural sports were minimal and would terminate abruptly. It was perplexing to me as basic training and then tech school had driven this sort of random integration which I had grown to appreciate and enjoy. Fact was, I found black guys to be funnier and more relaxed than the typical cut of white airman, especially the older ones.

One other activity did cause the racial lines to blur - gambling. When there was a good poker or dice game going, everyone was represented and the shit-talking reached epic proportions. I found I had a talent for games of chance, and within a few months I had squirreled away over $700 in winnings. Even though I rarely had a run like that during the remainder of my stay, I still would participate now and then because I enjoyed the vibe of it so much. I've never been able to recreate the pure fun of going on a long run and emptying everyone's wallets, only to lose it all back as I got progressively sloshed on the cheap booze always liberally available.

In the late Spring, Ron the pharmacy tech went with me on a weekend bus trip to Izmir, a sort of resort town on the southwestern coast. We were there to party and get laid and both happened in spades. At a club, we met two girls that normally I would have thought would have been out of my league, but bolstered by liquid courage I made the tentative advances that led to them leaving the club with us. Their names were Inji and Ooznur, cousins from Bulgaria visiting with their families on vacation. I assumed they were of legal age since they were in a club to begin with, but ...? ANYWAY, I paired off with Inji and she immediately went for the kill.

"I love American man, I love you. Take me to America and buy me dream home."

This pre-programmed meme was to the greatest extent her command of the English language. I looked over at Ron who seemed to be immersed in the same situation. We both gave a "what the Hell" look at one another and proceeded to get down to business. It obviously wasn't their first rodeo, which on my part was most appreciated. After a certain period of kernoodling, they went on their way with a promise to meet us for dinner at the hotel restaurant. They showed up, but the strategy had shifted: Ooznur was now up in my wheelhouse and Inji was lavishing attention on Ron. After a great dinner and drinks, we went back to the room for round two.

"I love you, I want to marry you, take me to America and buy me dream house."

I gave no sign of agreement to Oozy, but she didn't reject further hijinks so relations were once again completed successfully. They left again, asking us to meet them at the pier the next morning. But, we felt tentacles closing in on us, and fearing their family showing up with weaponry demanding we make their precious flowers honest women, we woke early and caught the earliest bus possible back to Ankara. Assessing the escapade later, we decided that like realistic fisherpeople, the girls simply cast their bait across the water's surface hoping that fate would land a big one, and for that weekend, they were destined to go home empty-handed.

My 20th birthday was spent in the NCO club, drinking copious rum and cokes until my body began to rebel whereupon I spent a considerable part of the early hours of my 21st year worshiping the porcelain goddess in our community latrine, with the occasion yell of "shut the fuck up" being launched from people unfortunate enough to have nearby rooms. Definite top 10 hangover of my life!