Serving in the Air National Guard:Part Two

Serving in the Air National Guard: Part Two

I can see from today, that during my time in the guard I was forming two sides of a Buffer, a double picture of myself. On the one side was the Klutz, Dip Shit Daley. On the other side was a Hemingway–like guy who can climb mountains and ford streams. And neither picture is real, neither has anything to do with the way I really am now, except in my moving center which accepts theses snapshots as the real and reacts to eternal events accordingly. It is only when I am conscious that I can see myself as I appear in actuality.

The Klutz side of the picture began some time after I entered public school, and found myself way behind the other kids in skills that required working with my hands and doing sports. It wasn’t so bad in the city. I was use to finding my way around and by the age of ten I was riding the subway and trolley cars, hopping trucks, and hitching from one end of North Philly to the other. Still, I wasn’t good at marbles, or stickball, though I was getting better at pinball.

When we moved to foster homes and went into the country things got way worse. I skipped the first half of seventh grade so I was in effect a half year behind my fellow seventh graders when we moved to foster homes just after my tenth birthday in 1948. At the country school every one was into sports. The very first question I was asked as I stood alone at recess on my first day was “You going out for baseball?” I didn’t even know what he meant. There was no organized school sports, or P.E. instructions in the schools that I attended during my first six years of public education. I had never learned to play any team sports.

By my second week at the country school, the captains were picking girls over me for P.E. I immediately dropped to the rank of loser among the jocks and cheer lead girls, and learned to lean to the other losers.

Shop was the worse experience of my whole two years in junior high. I had never held a hammer or a saw in my hand before. I couldn’t measure a straight line, couldn’t hammer a nail straight, and couldn’t make a square cut with a saw. I can still remember the smell of burning plastic that came off the letter opener that I spent weeks trying to cut out on the shop lathe.

In high school my image of myself as a Klutz continued especially after I signed up for the agriculture course and became a Future Farmer of America. Here I had opted for three more years of shop classes with the best wood and metal workers in the school. No way I could ever compete with them and by my second year in shop I began copying the Thompson boys filing the teeth off of hacksaws and welding wrenches to the vises.

P. E. was so bad, that after roll call I would sneak off to the little store across the street where the other losers and I would pitch pennies and smoke cigarettes.

Not accepted by the jocks, or smarter kids, I began to drift more and more to the guys who were on the edge. Though I found that my fellow future farmers quit accepting. I joined the rifle club with them, and got into attending country fairs, and other farmer stuff.

On the other side of the buffer I had a picture of myself as a shorter guy than I really was. I had a picture of a muscular kind of boxer in really good shape. I am sure now that I got this picture from my father who was a professional who bought my brother and I gloves and taught us the “Manly art of self defense,” until he went broke at a poker game one weekend and had to hock the gloves. I also pictured myself as a gambler, a Maverick type guy who could move from coast to coast living off his wits.

Living on my foster parent’s family farm during my later formative years must have reinforced both sides of the buffer. One the one side I was the klutz who wasn’t allowed to drive the tractor, or do any repair work on his own. On the other, I was learning to cut firewood, bale hay, and drive the old truck to pick up the bales. Here, I kind of picture myself as a slow moving country boy with lots of patience.

By the time I graduated from basic training and began my once a month weekend stints, I had taken in many of the values of fifties. I believed in my country right or wrong. I had followed the newspaper accounts of the Korean War and looked at the American troops over there as heroes. Of course, I had grown up playing war games, fighting against the Germans and the Japs. I had watched all the war movies and picture myself as an F-84 pilot blasting the Gooks out of the air, or strafing a line of enemy trucks.

To me war was a game. I never saw anyone killed or hurt in the war games that we played. My tour in the Guard was a part of the game to me. When I returned from basic I discovered that in the battery of tests I had scored lowest in mechanical ability. Naturally, I was assigned the duty of aviation flight line attendant where I would serve as an assistant crew chief with an aircraft assigned to my care. Lucky there was an excellent real crew chief that supervised my work and did all the crucial pre and post flight checks.

But, there I was working with my hands on the aircraft and reinforcing the picture of myself as a Klutz. As an assistant crew chief, I would go right out to the flight line after row call. The crew chiefs and aircraft mechanics that kept the planes flying were all full time employees, civilians who worked eight hours a day for the guard, but who were free own their non-working hours. My immediate superior, Sergeant Wilson would assign me various tasks to get the aircraft ready for flight. We were flying F-84 fighter interceptors during my first couple of years. First of all I would fuel the aircraft making sure that each of the four tanks were filled to the very top. Then I would open the various panels where the pilot had to inspect for his pre-flight check. Mostly the pilot looked for hydraulic leaks and loose connections. When the pilot finished his inspection, I would close up the panels.

Next, I would climb up the cockpit ladder and help the pilot put on his harness reminding him to make sure he pulled out the safety pin in his seat ejector handle. Then, I would remove the cockpit ladder, and hook up the battery wagon. Giving the pilot the all-clear signal, I would put in my earplugs and wait for the engine to start. When the engine was running, I would unplug the battery cable and pull it away from the aircraft. Then, I would pull the wooden chocks from the wheels, and direct the pilot off the apron and on to the taxi strip.

It was really exciting to watch the aircraft take off realizing that you were a part of the whole process. In a couple of years that’s gonna be me taking off, I often told myself as I watched the F-84’s climb into the wild blue yonder.

When our aircraft were airborne, we usually went inside the large hangers where inspections and repairs were done. I would shadow Sergeant Wilson watching his every move and helping wherever I could. I remember once he referred to me as “Daddy’s little helper,” when I had put a wrench on the other side of a bolt that he was turning.

When our aircraft returned, we would direct them into the parking space and chock the wheels. After helping the pilot out of the cockpit, we would begin the refueling process. Then there was a post flight check, looking for hydraulic leaks and loose connections.

Once our aircraft were put to bed, it was time to eat at the base mess hall. Then, I would meet my buddies at our barracks. We would take a quick nap until eight P.M or so and head out for the Atlantic City bars. Many a night around midnight we would click our glasses together saying, “Sleep well America, your National Guard is awake.”