REMEMBERING THE CAST OF CHARACTERS

There were a host of characters at Keesler AFB, but here are a few that I remember most, besides Frank Boyce and Frank Gordon. Each are in my memory for unique reasons only their personalities could create. All of us were from different lifestyles and parts of the country, and all volunteers randomly placed in some specific circumstance for their country. Pure fate put us in the same place at the same time.

This first photo of Boyce and I was taken sometime in the spring of 1965, I know that from the 1505 short-sleeved uniform. By this time, we were comfortable with our lives in the Air Force. Our job was like any other civilian job. We had to be at work at a particular time and we got off 8 hours later. What we did between shifts was up to us and we roamed the area of Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi, and even Mobile, Alabama and New Orleans, Louisiana frequently.

Often we spent quiet evenings out at dinner clubs watching club performers and comedians like Brother Dave Gardner, doing shtick about RC Colas and Moon Pies! We would order Old Fashions before dinner and Tom Collins for dessert! It was a grand time and I loved the Mississippi Coast during this year and a half. I owe Boyce much for teaching me how to be a civilized man and how to give the appearance, at least, of having some culture in public.

On the other hand, there were other characters that I knew and watched who had less desirable characteristics.

One was “Funky McNasty”, whose real name it is best I do not remember. I think it was Boyce, who first coined this moniker, having been too close to him on occasion!

There was occasional reshuffling in the barracks and one time it meant that I was rooming with Funky McNasty – the horror! Poor ol’ Funky could not help that his body odor was offensive. We watched, just to make sure, and he took showers, and he used deodorant, but he still stunk! It was a sweet sickening kind of smell with touch of acridness to it! Just really unpleasant to be around.

In this second shot, I am considering knocking the hell out of “Funky” and throwing his stinking body out the window! Seriously, he had just taken a shower and put on fresh clothes as some guys dropped by to visit. He still smelled, albeit a little better at that particular moment.

He and I grew close enough; over the couple of months I could stand it, to discuss the subject. He knew his body had this unique smell and had tried for years to cover it up. Poor guy had never had a girlfriend or any real close friends. I confessed to him that I had only stayed in his room because I did not want to hurt his feelings. He completely understood, and that week, he became the only guy on the floor with a private room!

I have no picture of Airman Currier. Airman Currier was from California, and, like Boyce, washed out of OCS and into the Air Police! It makes you feel good to learn, just after building up pride in being an Air Policeman, that the Air Force puts guys in that position as punishment! Shows you how much respect Sky Cops have with the upper brass!

Currier was a plump, waddling, sort of guy, that always looked like he needed a shave after having shaved. His uniform was just a little less fresh, a little less pressed, and everything was slightly off kilter!

Currier wore glasses almost as thick as the bottoms of Coke bottles, and had a loud voice that grated on you. To Sgt. Webb, who prided himself in how his “Air Cops” looked, Currier was a total embarrassment and disappointment. Webb actually hated Currier – it was evident. “Airman Currier” (that’s the only way I ever remember him being addressed) would be assigned standing or walking post for months before ever being given a riding patrol, but he never complained. He did his job and took whatever came his way.

One evening the Desk Sergeant (a person who operates the AP HQ base radio and dispatched assignments and coordinated operations) asked Unit 8 (Currier), just before shift change, how much gas he had in his vehicle. Currier in his jovial, yet irritating way screeched out over the airways, like nails on a blackboard, “It’s either half full or half empty!” The Desk Sergeant, through gritted teeth, came back with a simple, “10-4.” Currier stood gate duty for months after that!

Finally, there was Airman Rick, a rather small black fellow from New York, with an effeminate voice and mannerisms. However, I do not think Rick was gay by any stretch of the imagination. Rick used to tell me stories about his conquests and about how he made love to his girlfriends.

I must say that his expertise was highly refined and in later years, I put a couple moves to the test. They worked great, I was told, so to me this gives even more credence to him being heterosexual.

However, his tendency to sound effeminate left him venerable to practical jokes. One of the worst ever played on him was when Boyce sprayed lighter fluid under the width of his door, lit it, and yelled fire!

Now, if you have not been asleep, and have not been startled awake, you would immediately think that you are living in a concrete building with steel doors, and that a fire is most likely not really burning in the hallway, and that you are in no immediate danger.

On the other hand, if you just sprang up from a deep sleep, in a dark room, and you see fire under your door, you do what anyone would do in a burning building. You would open the nearest window, squeeze your way through it, and drop twelve feet to safety on the ground below!

At this point, you will be fully awake and realize you have been punked - not that the laughter from the window above would give anything away!

It is truly a miracle that Airman Rick did not break his leg or neck!

I would love to see them all today.

PERMANENT PARTY AT KEESLER

It is often said, probably too much, that you can never go home again. I probably did not know that cliché then, but I knew the truth of it almost immediately.

Coming home was a big disappointment. There was no Woody, Barry, Tom, or anyone with whom to celebrate. There was no girl then, and I began to feel very alone after the first few days.

Further, I could tell my brother, who was ten years younger, had already begun moving into my room. Displaced from my own familiar surroundings, I knew the only direction I could turn was toward Keesler, to my friends Boyce and Gordon, who I met in tech school, and the other people I had yet to meet in my new grownup world. I began to count the days until I left home for good – at least mentally.

As fate would have it, Frank Boyce and I arrived at Keesler AFB, in Biloxi, Mississippi, within the same hour and renewed our friendship by discussing how boring it had been at home. We did not have to report to Air Police Headquarters until Monday morning, so we had what was left of Saturday and all day Sunday to settle into our rooms and explore the base and the surrounding city.

As “permanent party” personnel at Keesler, we lived in two story concrete buildings, part of a large complex, painted bright white, with large roll out windows to help during the hot summer months. Even though there was no air conditioning, these buildings provided a rather cool place to live.

There were normally two Airmen per room, and it was up to the occupants to agree on either a bunk bed arrangement or single beds on opposite walls. Frank and I chose the bunk arrangement so we would have more room for visitors and the partying we planned to do!

The floors were dark green square tiles and the cinder-block walls were light green. On the wall, opposite the windows, were wooden closets and sets of drawers painted to match the block walls. It was very easy to keep clean, but still required the usual buffing for monthly inspections. However, we did have an electric buffer that the floor took turns using.

The main gate faced south and was only two blocks from the Gulf of Mexico. This was the first street of exploration and we soon found ourselves sitting on a dock looking out toward a beautiful sitting sun. This was my first visit to the ocean, which Frank found puzzling, but his family was obviously a little higher on the economic ladder than mine was. Our family’s idea of a vacation was a trip “home” to visit the grandparents and the extended family, several times during the year.

I sat there, sucking in the wonderful salty air, feeling my sinuses clear, for a long time while the red-orange sun slowly sank below the waterline. “What a grand thing God has made,” I thought. It was such a feast for my innocent eyes, and I could hardly believe that I would be privileged enough to get to watch this event on regular basis.

On the way back to the Main Gate, we noticed a beautifully detailed grand old hotel called the White House Hotel that was everything you would expect in an early 1900 southern hotel. It was what you would expect, a white two-story building, with a large porch wrapping all the way around, and covered by huge roof that extended from the upper level and held up by six large columns. There were hanging baskets, Tiki lanterns blazing out on the ends of angled poles beside each three-tiered stair entrance to the porch, and all surrounded by a beautifully manicured lawn, exquisitely tended flowers and shrubs, and at least seven huge oaks draped in that wonderfully mysterious Spanish moss.

As we passed on the west side, we could see the red and blue glow of a lounge sign and we ventured inside for a better look. Inside it first appeared to be a large bar with tall stools, and several booths, but on closer inspection, it was rather tiny, with mirrored walls giving it a roomier appearance.

We loved it immediately, and we sat in the corner booth and Frank ordered us each a Tom Collins. I remember these drinks were quite different tasting from those back in Texas, and Frank smiled as he realized I had noticed the pleasurable Mississippi difference. This little hide-away bar became our favorite hangout for the next year and a half.

The next morning, after checking out the “chow hall” for breakfast, and hooking up with Frank Gordon, who arrived sometime the night before, we ventured out the “back gate.” The town began once you left the base heading east, first through a strip of bars and cafés, a laundry mat and dry cleaners, a drug store, a quick-check market, and a tattoo parlor or two, then into a “seedier” part of Biloxi housing, and finally into the business center of the city.

We worked our way back toward the base and just before entering the gate; we noticed a little café that would become our “quick food” base of operations. I wish I could remember its name, or the name of the young, rather plump, plain-Jane waitress that became our friend. She would holler our name out across the room whenever we entered, and all we had to do was say “The special,” which was normally gumbo, or “Put it on my tab,” and we were soon eating the best toasted bun hamburger, chili, grilled cheese, or bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich anywhere in the world!

I once sat down and ordered two buttery-grilled cheese, and two juicy BLT sandwiches just because I had always wanted to eat my fill of these mouth-watering sandwiches and having a “running tab” made it too easy! I sat there, alternating with different halves and sucking on a milk shake so thick the straw would stand straight up in the middle! What I wouldn’t give right now!

There would be a hundred mornings to come that Frank Boyce and I alternated running to the little café, pick up two Styrofoam boxed eggs, bacon, grits, and toast breakfast, while the other showered and got ready for bed after our midnight shift! We each looked forward to midnight shift just for this tradition. The last thing either of us would do before leaving Keesler would be to pay our bill at the café and give everyone a farewell hug.

It seemed we were home and into a routine, one we had created on our own, and we looked forward to our tour of duty. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could spend our whole four years here,” Frank Boyce asked?

It was the fall of 1964, and that would have been nice.

AIR POLICE TRAINING – BECOMING A SKY COP

On the appointed day of transition, a bus picked me up and took me to the opposite side of Lackland, to older barracks and Flights of marching troops in more fitted fatigues and highly polished boots. “This must be the “real” Air Force,” I thought as I peered out at my future.

Woody and Tom had been gone for over two days now and an even more lonely feeling crept through my stomach as I stood and walked off the bus. I cannot remember how I knew where to go or how I got signed into the Air Police Tech School, but I ended up in a room with two sets of bunk beds on opposite walls, four wall closets and drawers on another, and a row of large paned windows on another.

This is where I met Frank Boyce, a tall slender young man about twenty-three, from “up state Mississippi”, as he was known to say, especially to those that bragged about being from “up state New York!” He was pure southern breed, with a deep sense of tradition and he did not attempt to hide his dislike of the black or “Yankee” troops around him.

Frank was college educated and had washed out of Officer Training School (OCS) and, as a reward, assigned to spend his four-year enlistment as a lowly “sky cop.” Frank, as would be expected, hated the “stupidity” of the military mentality, but had long since resigned himself to ride it out and then get on with his life.

Frank, for some reason, out of pity I suppose, took me under his wing and over the next two and a half years, I learned a lot about how to function in an adult world – how to order food, fancy drinks, and even to assert myself in the world around me. Frank learned all this from being away from home since age eighteen attending college, and was more than willing to share his experiences with a “country bumpkin” like me.

I only remember one other of my new bunk mates; he was Frank Gordon (too many Franks, but worlds apart) from Marietta, Georgia. I remember the Franks from photos and experiences we had in “tech school”, later at Keesler, and finally in Vietnam. I once tracked Boyce down by phone, living in Nashville, but apparently, he had some live threatening disease at the time and did not want to talk to me. I was a little hurt, having always thought so much of him, but life goes on. He was a true friend then and I miss him to this day.

Life in “tech school” was not much different from basic. There was still the necessity of cleaning the barracks for inspections, pulling KP duty, marching, firing range visits, physical exercising, and classroom instruction. However, everything had a more focused purpose in training you to be a military “cop!”

Some of the duties included cleaning the K-9 kennels, the study of military and civil law, the tactics of crowd control, law enforcement techniques, aircraft security guard responsibilities, and the terrifying judo training.

We all hated judo training with a “purple passion,” but did not dare voice any complaints. The two hours a day we spent were the longest hours of the day, spent in pure fear, often terror, of the instructors, who seemed to be there not to teach, but to inflict pain for their own amusement.

There was a least one broken arm while I was there, and a rumor of a leg being broken in the previous training Flight. You had to stay alert and watch the instructors without being seen looking!

Usually there is a ring formed around an area cushioned by blue exercise pads, with the center used for demonstrations. Circling the ring are three to four other instructors, wearing their professional looking gees, who watched your every move – get caught looking away from the demonstration, or at one of them, and your legs were immediately knocked out from under you! It must be the kind of anxiety animals on the plains feel as lions or wolves circle looking for the weakest. Pure fear enveloped each of us until that class ended.

You just lay there helpless, hurting, and embarrassed as the instructor, with his foot on your chest screamed, “You bett'a keep yo' eyes focused Airman! Do you understand?” Everyone looked straight ahead in empathy!

Once the demo is completed, you choose a partner and the two of you begin practicing the demonstrated move, repeatedly, until the instructors feel, you both are performing it properly. Do it wrong, do not apply enough torque, or pressure to a hold or throw, you then become the hapless dummy of demonstration – tossed about like a killer whale toying with a helpless seal.

Suffice it to say, I hated judo training, but I became pretty accomplished at it nonetheless.

The best part of Air Police Technical Training came along about the beginning of the third week, the instilment of pride in yourself, your appearance, the Air Force, and the pride of being a military policeman. Everyone begins to walk, talk, and look like a military person. The laundry shops in the area cater to troops wanting form-fitting uniforms. Everything in your wardrobe is tapered, press pelted, and starched. Your dress shoes and combat boots are highly “spit-shined.”

You spend hours melting your shoe polish, adding a little alcohol, and applying it hot with a cotton ball dipped in water (or spit) to your shoes, hat brim, belt, baton (billy club) holder, and .45 holster. You rub for hours in tight little clock-wise circles until layer upon layer of polish builds into a high-gloss shine – good enough to see your reflection!

When you wear the uniform of an Air Policeman, you strut, showing the world your confidence and pride. Even today, people tell me that I walk proudly, shoulders back (at least until my recent shoulder operations), and this could only come from my military police training.

I learned to enjoy the military during this time, often going to the Airmen’s Club with friends for 3.2 beer (4% or less alcohol), cigarettes, and often a “Tom Collins” a drink made of gin that Frank Boyce introduced me to as being “sophisticated.” “Something a southern gentleman would have,” he would say. We would have many more “Tom Collins” after our assignment to Keesler AFB, Mississippi!

However, I must first go back to dreamland, back to Harriman for a mandatory thirty-day leave!