I Remember LA in Background Noise

In 1985 I was a SSgt in the Air Force. Our wing, the 363rd at Nellis AFB, Nevada was the redheaded stepchild of the base. What with the rapidly growing Red Flag and the growing test and evaluation aspect of the base, a regular vanilla block 15 F-16 wing wasn’t much appreciated occupying valuable real estate.

Our hours were unpredictable. No set schedule. I can’t count the number of times I signed up for classes only to have to withdraw because of our wacky hours. I eventually figured out a battle rhythm.

My war bride from South Korea was getting a hang of being in the ‘States. She had a job as a Keno runner at Sam’s Town. Basically the pretty little things who run the Keno cards from the restaurants and bars back to the writers and then back to the customers. Keno for the uninitiated is like Bingo but with much longer odds.
By ‘89 I was in Pensacola, AOCS back when there was such a thing. My first wife hated the decision I had made to switch services to the Navy. But even with my shiny new BS (paid for mostly by the Air Force), the Air Force wasn’t interested in me going on to a flying career. The Navy on the other hand were veddy veddy interested. She decided she would stay in Las vegas and we would split. She liked her job, she had an extensive expat Korea support system. She thought the cushy life we had with two incomes would be forever. Nothing in the military is forever.

And I was going to fly one way or the other.

When I was in flight school she decided that being a single mother was too hard. So she begged me to fly her and my son out to Florida. I missed my son. So I did.

By ‘92 I was on my first shipboard deployment to the Med. X1 and I were fighting via snail mail. A fun process. No internet available. No phone calls. Just every two weeks the possibility of another angry letter. Money issues. What else do thirty year olds fight about?

I heard this song in the bowling alley on base in Naples. It broke my heart because it is so much about what was, what could have been, and the loss.

It took another seven years, another child. before I finally had the guts to completely call it quits. Then it took years to completely extricate myself from a marriage I entered into when I was 22.