Here's What Happens When too Much Time is Spent on Old Photos

I'm on the last day of Christmas/New Years holiday.  Tomorrow I have to remember to go back to work.  That's not too hard because it's in this same room.  It's trying to remember priorities and and where I was at with which job that's tough.

I've been spending a lot of time scanning slides and photos over the last few days.  When you get as old as I am you need visual aids to remember your youth.   Some of the stuff was so old (see, below,  I'm in my usual place with the short folks, lower left) that I don't really have any clear memory of it other than wanting to be somewhere else.  Our teacher was Mr. Crabtree, a very nice man.  I think Dad said that he had been a prisoner during WWII.

Harding Elementary School, Sciotoville, OH

Mr. Crabtree and Dad were friends and one summer we were invited to a party at the Crabtree's.  He lived out in the country west of Portsmouth Ohio and had a pool.  I have vivid memories of running to the pool and jumping in to impress the young ladies.  The pool was shallow and and I landed flat footed on the concrete bottom.  I stood there not moving and gritting my teeth in excruciating pain trying (unsuccessfully) not to look like an idiot.  I envy my grandson growing up with sisters.  Girls won't be quite the mystery to him as they were to me.  He'll figure out less showy ways of interacting with them.

I like this family picture from the 70's.  I'm on the left and looking a bit defensive.  It took me another few years to develop any self-confidence.

   

There were a lot of pictures from my stint in the Air Force.  However, most of them were landscape shots that seemed important to record but now get a little boring.

Here's a picture taken right after I got out of tech school and arrived at the 1833 Engineering & Installation Squadron at McClellan AFB in Sacramento, CA.  I really fell into roses with that assignment.  We traveled all over the West on temporary duty and lounged around at the beach at Folsom Lake when we weren't on assignment.

Me sitting on the tailgate of Dave Niccum's El Camino

R&R at Folsom Lake

Some of the assignments were just something that you hoped would make a good story sometime.

Hall Beach, NW Territories, Canada around noon in January

We spent 6 weeks on this strange part of the planet installing comm gear eating, drinking beer and playing snooker pool with a bunch of Canadian contractors.  I never did figure out snooker but the food was excellent.  They actually had a chef up there.  They served was steak and lobster every once in a while and every evening they'd set up a pastry/dessert table.  There was a Nunavit village nearby where the local maintenance and housekeeping staff lived.  They'd roar back and forth from the base to village on snowmobiles.

We spent six months working midnight shift soldering terminal boards in patch bays (prehistoric data centers) in an old bunker in Germany.  Germany was great.  We stayed in apartments above a bakery in Morbach.  The local folks were very very nice.  The local cafe was accommodating enough to fix us fried eggs & potatoes (mashed?!) with beer after we finished our shift in the morning.  Our days off were spent hiking the local trail system between villages (& pubs) and in the evening drinking more beer and playing cards with the locals.

Local Gathering Place

Back in the US,  we spent most of our off duty time camping in California.  I bought a Ford pickup truck (below) while in Tech School in Wichita Falls, TX.  It spent is last days delivering pizza in Columbus, OH with our son Eric.  It was finally laid to rest with a couple of hundred miles on its ticker.

A poorly thought out camping trip in Desolation Wilderness Area, Tahoe Natl Forest

Here's the ironic part.  Some of us are destined to grow up as nice-looking shy under achievers struggling with poor self images only to grow up into comfortable (overweight) old men with dangerous amounts of confidence.  

Every time I think life would have been better if the confidence thing had been reversed, I realize that I might have missed the good stuff.  I wouldn't want to give up the good stuff.

That's my chair on the Right

Adios