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40 years ago.....

AzPete

AzPete

Well-Known Member
The article about the military members being charged got me to thinking of the past.

As of the 16th of this Sept, it has been 40 years since I left home and signed on the dotted line for my future in the USAF. How time flies. All in all, I wouldn't trade a day of it. From basic training and tech school to 13 months in Korea and 12 months in Thailand to being stationed in Az. for most of my career. Thought I knew it all at 18..........found out real quick how that was but I picked up on the system quick and actually enjoyed most of basic. Going from San Antonio to Denver on the 26th of December, '69 was a real treat. The Air Force did everything at night for us. Got into Denver a 3am, just in time to freeze off certain parts of the body. From there, I ended up in Wichita, Ks. for 11 months. Then to Kunsan, Korea for 13 months. Learned a lot there for sure. Our baggage truck was in an accident and we were 5 days without clothes. Couldn't get them local because there just was not a good supply. Did a ton of washing to be in the Class A dress uniform. Went to Phoenix, Az. for 18 months (enough time to get divorced and remarried) and from there and then 12 months in Korat, Thailand. Best place in that part of the world. Spent 3 months in Laos then too. Back to Phoenix for a few years and then my big move in the AF, 129 miles south to Tucson. Stayed there (2 year break in service for personal reasons) until I retired in '91.

Been researching the overseas locations and connecting with some old friends. Sure does pass the time.

Well, now that I bored you, you can move on to more interesting things.........
 
Thanks for your service Pete. Thanks to everyone here who has served. I'd personally like to hear each one's story.
 
I agree, I'll sit and listen to anyone tell their service stories! I really do appreciate all that you and all others have done and continue to do that lets us enjoy everything about this Country.
 
Time sure did fly by... huh Pete? One of the perks of my current job is that I'm still connected to a lot of the guys I served with. It's great to walk into a meeting and see someone you haven't seen in years... and then spending the rest of the day dodging the meeting to catch up on each others lives.


I agree, I'll sit and listen to anyone tell their service stories!
Click to expand...

You asked for it.

Returning home from the NATO exodus of Mogadishu on board the USS Pelelieu we stopped into Pearl Harbor for some much needed R&R. Four of us went in on a Jeep Wrangler rental, stopped by the package store to load up on beer/liqour and then headed for Waimea Beach. I had lived on Oahu a few years earlier so I was made the DD for most of the 4 day adventure. We never returned to the ship once and I don't really remember eating... we stayed sloshed on that beach for 3 days and nights. On the last day, two of my buddies wanted us to all go meet up with a guy they'd used to work with. He was stationed about an hour away over at Kaneohe Bay. I had to be somewhat sober as I was getting ready to drive all of these drunks over to his house. I remember standing at the pay phone at Waimea Beach listening while the arrangements were made...

Okay, party at this guy named Jake's house..... bring food..... bring lots of beer..... Jake and his wife both had to work until approx. 1700.... get started without them if we got there early....

We stopped along the way and loaded up with food/beer. When you're sober, food shopping with guys so drunk that they're pushing each other around in shopping carts loses most of it's luster. I don't know how we got all of that food loaded up into that little Wrangler, but I'm sure we looked something like the Beverly Hillbillies driving the rest of the way to this guy Jake's house.... there were plastic food bags hanging from every possible spot on the Jeep.... the antenna, the door mirrors, the corners of the front bumper.... what a freakin' mess. Remember that I was by this point stone cold sober and these guys were all three sheets to the wind.... they didn't give a rats ass that every passing car was staring and laughing at us. It seemed perfectly logical for them to stand up on the back seat as if we were in a parade and wave to all of the passersby.

Safely aboard the Marine Corps Air Station I got directions to Jake's house from one of my drunk backseat buddies. Sure enough, no one was home, but as instructed we began the party alone. The BBQ grille was fired up and steaks were applied. Corn was being husked.... a very large salad was being prepared.... baked potatoes were thrown into the oven.... I forget exactly what, but the burners on the stove were all heating up other side dishes.

These guys were drunk off of their asses and making a complete mess of this guys kitchen! I felt somewhat responsible as although I'd started to drink again I was 100 times more sober than any of them. The blare of the music coming from the living room stereo was ear shattering. There was corn husk all over the place! Drunk buddy #2 was just staggering around the kitchen throwing all of the husk onto the floor..... Drunk buddy #3 had salad materials scattered everywhere and drunk buddy #1 was outside spraying Everclear from his mouth onto the lit grille and laughing his ass off! To say that I had my hands full would have been a gross understatement.

Since we had been out to sea for approx. 40 straight days, I was really craving my all time favorite food... Pizza! I decided sometime during this chaos that I wanted to order a large pizza from Domino's. I rummaged through the house to find a phone book and got Domino's on the line. Address? Heck, I didn't know.... and neither did any of my otherwise drunk food prep buddies. I remember that while one of them was calling out to me the house number from the side of the front door.... that obviously didn't provide me with the street name... and me yelling at him "yeah, but what's the name of the street dumbass?", I'd remembered seeing a pile of mail on the kitchen table. While the Domino's guy was patiently waiting I dug through all of the trash that had accumulated onto the table and found the mail..... "here you go buddy, 127 Kaliea Court, 30 minutes or less right?, and hung up.

This instant was the defining point of the adventure. It was at this instant that it occurred to me that something was terrribly wrong. How could none of my buddies know the address? If they didn't know the address, how did we get here? I grabbed one of the bills from the pile of mail again and looked at the name..... It wasn't "Jake". Calling out to my even more drunk buddies.... "Hey, what's Jake's last name?" None of them had a clue what was going through my mind, but my fears were exponentially increasing. The answer came back to me like a ton of bricks.... "Gilman".

THIS WAS NOT THE NAME ON ANY OF THE MAIL!!!!!!!!

Have you ever tried to explain something really important to someone who's really drunk?

Times that by three as I had to painstakingly convince each one of them of our massive FUBAR.

Something in my life that I will never forget is the looks on their faces as their "moment of realization" hit them.

It got easier with drunk buddies #2 and #3 as drunk buddy #1 had gone into the living room and removed the very large framed wedding picture from over the TV and brought it back into the kitchen to help convince them we were....

AT THE WRONG HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!


If the events leading up to this point seemed somewhat comical, what was to follow was of epic proportions....

Half cooked steaks were peeled off of the grille and dumped into an empty plastic bag..... the game "hot potatoe" was actually played
with..... hot potatoes.... and corn on the cob! All of the work that these drunks had done to prepare their feast was in "lightning speed", undone. Dirty dishes were being washed, counters were being wiped down, floor was being swept. During all of this the words "oh sh!t" must have been repeated 1000 times..... if someone was not swearing at our predicament, they were hit with fits of hysterical uncontrolled falling to the floor contagious laughter. A couple of times during the "realization" and "cleanup" evolutions I had to physically lift these three drunks up to their feet as they had collapsed from laughter. I couldn't be certain, but like a girl, I think one of them even pee'd himself a liitle bit.

All of the semi-cooked food (and trash) was brought back out to the Wrangler and before I jumped in I gave the areas of the house "the once over" to make sure we hadn't forgotten anything. We drove exactly one cul de sac further down the road and Jake met us in his driveway asking us what had taken so long? After we stopped laughing and explained, the party resumed.

Later on that evening while drinking beer in the backyard we noticed the tenants of the house that we had mistakenly invaded had come home and were themselves BBQ'ing. Rather than just leave it alone, drunk buddy #1 insisted on coming clean and apologizing to the strangers. We all walked over to explain and apologize. The guys wife was actually relieved as she had known that she had left dirty dishes in the sink and upon her return they were all clean. She knew something weird had happened and her husband was insisting she was imagining things. She was relieved to have been right all along.

We were relieved that they were good sports about it and no police were involved!
 
Holy crap, now that's a great story :rofl :rofl

I could actually see it happening!
 
Good story Dave, could you imagine doing that same thing now?, there would be jail time for someone and a lawsuit involved!
 
"Flysure1" said:
Good story Dave, could you imagine doing that same thing now?, there would be jail time for someone and a lawsuit involved!
Click to expand...

How do we really know it didn't just happen? From what I hear, one's memory suffers from alcohol abuse...
 
My grandfather was in the pacific during WWII. He pretty much never said anything about the war, probably wanted to forget it as much as possible. He had the disabled vet license plate on his car and walked with a limp / wore a leg brace all the years I knew him but I don't think he ever told me what happened.

He did tell me one time about his being at sea when they hit a storm with huge waves. He said the boat was going pretty much vertically up then vertically down like riding a roller coaster from hell for hours on end. He mentioned even the hardened sailors on board were green and hanging over the rails.

He passed away in '98 when he was close to 80 years old. Miss him a lot to this day. I have some great memories of staying with them in the summer and making projects in his wood shop out back all day long.
 
Good story Dave. I had a similar incident in an apt. complex. We could tell stories all day on here.

When in Thailand, a friend offered me a cigar on our return trip to the base after a night of serious drinking. We had about a 10 block walk and it seemed to take forever. After about half the cigar was gone, I lost track of the guys I was with so I stopped and asked if anyone had seen them. Never got an answer......

Made it to the base and the next day my buddies were laughing at me. When I finally found out what was going on, they told me that when I asked about them, they were all about 10 feet behind me and that I was talking to a telephone pole......and carrying on a conversation. I did not remember anything.

Well, I found the local source of those cigars (since I was the only one smoking one) and the seller asked how I liked them. I told him of my experiences and questioned him more. Found out they were laced with hash oil..... Man was that a trip I will never forget...if I could remember it all. That was the last smoking item I took from anyone plus my buddies got rid of the ones they had. Or I think they did.....

By the way, over there, serious drinking only took place after you had drank at least one fifth of good whiskey for the night and started on the local which was close to being embalming fluid........

Me touring downtown Korat Thailand, Jan. 74.
korat025.jpg
 
Here's a link to a good friend of mine's page.

http://1-22infantry.org/pics/talley.htm

I believe he joined the army in about '57 and got out in the late 60's after coming home from Nam with his head all mentally screwed up. If you go to the bottom of the page and clink the next page link you can see the pages of lots of other similar guys.
 
I end up hearing most of AZPete's stories every time he comes over. He's only repeated a couple of them though...

Wait until he tells you about his adventures with the rare Korean llama....
 
Viet Nam was winding down when I graduated high school and I never joined the service, my dad's family had someone in each branch from ww2 to vietnam, he had a brother that was in counter intelligence in both ww2 and Korea, he died on the 4th of july several years ago and had a very honerable service, he was a retired state policeman and a 2 term county sherrif, the Illinois state police sent its honer gaurd, the county sherrifs dept. sent quite a few deputys, the American Legion sent its color gaurd, it was quite impressive to see all the police cars taking him to his grave. I asked his son that if he ever said what he did in the service and he said my uncle never told anyone what he did, his son did say it must have been pretty important because he got a christmas card every year from the standing president regaurdless of party.
 
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