Reflections on a changing world (started WAY too long ago)

Reflections on a changing world??? Egad, that IS pretentious. But what the heck, it's my blog, and I'll bloviate if I want to (cue the Leslie Gore intro; fade out). I'll try and keep it in line henceforth (within this entry, at least). Or possibly not. We shall observe.

In this series of occasional items, I am trying to hold on to the memory of events before they slip into that interesting cloud of names, dates, and impressions that lives just out of reach. I was informed all this is normal: something to do with chronological enhancement.

 The other day, I had a note on Facebook from my friend, Steve Login. We just recently reconnected, but I go back farther with him than with any non-relative. We're talking grade school. That may not be a big deal for some of you. In my case, it's monster. I was in something like eight schools between Kindergarten and Grade Four. Add in the detail that I was born in New Hampshire, and these schools were in California, and you get the picture. You don't pick up a lot of social skills when you spend the first quarter of your school years being the new kid a couple times per year. It also doesn't help when you get told you talk funny. Anyway, Steve and I go a long way back, and he is a fascinating person who has done all kinds of neat stuff.

So the other day, I had a letter from Steve asking an interesting question. I'll reprint it here, rather than trust my memory (which is, after all, part of the purpose here):

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mike -

I haven't been on FB for awhile, so I've taken some time catching up on past posts from people.

I wonder, given your views, how did you survive social/politically in the Air Force? Views like yours are rare among the military, closer to the typical artistic type that I worked with (which, you really are). You must have had some heated, but well-argued, conversations; or kept your views completely off the base.

Take care, Steve

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've spent the last few weks going over what I remember of my military days, and comparing those times to what I have observed as a quasi-outsider since my retirement.  I come to the conclusion that I would have had far more difficulty in being successful (to a given value, the which I shall rise to explain later) had my service started in 1992 instead of having ended there.

For those whose memories are no better than mine, I enlisted in 1966, was commissioned in 1978, and retired in 1992.

Actually, I think the Air Force and I came out of our relationship at about level pegging. I had the opportunity to live in a number of interesting places, meet a lot of good people, have a family, and advance my academic credentials from a handful of Community College Credits and a High School Diploma I truly believe they gave me so I wouldn't come back to an Undergrad degree in Administration, a Grad degree in Management, and a wall-full of specialist certs. In return, I did the best job I could, ensured my replacement could do more with less than my predecessor, mentored a number of subordinates (several of whom went on to accomplish far more than I did -- I'm particularly proud of that), volunteered for a number of programs, got shot at a couple of times, wrote a number of articles for various professional journals, and taught a whole bunch of people.

I didn't get promoted beyond Major, which bothered other people more than it did me. I didn't think I'd make it beyond Captain. Heck, getting selected as Master Sergeant just about floored me.

The military reflected the surrounding society when I enlisted. Nothing new, it usually does (to a variable extent). This was during a period of Selective Service, where military service was (albeit to a lesser extent than during WWII and Korea) a universally-shared experience among males. To be sure, there were people who had deferments from the Draft for any number of good reasons, and there were people who, as a matter of principle, did not participate, and there were even some who lied like rugs (and got their parents and friendly doctors to swear to it) to keep from having to go to the Draft Physicals they knew they would pass, then bragged about being too smart to get caught, then finished up as Tea Party stalwarts. The first two groups, I have respect for; the third, not so much.

When I got to Basic Training (and Technical Training right after that) at Amarillo AFB, TX, I was among a relatively diverse group. Roughly 95% of us arrived by way of the Draft, and the Army's "join with a buddy" thing was not part of the Air Force system. A preponderance of trainees, as now, came from the Southeastern and Midwestern regions. In my training flight (52 trainees), there were five of us who had enlisted in California, six or seven guys from the Northeast, and the rest from everywhere else. Eight, maybe ten African Americans, possibly four or five Hispanics. The trainers had a vast repertoire of racist "jokes" and ethnicity-based "wit" they were happy to share. Most of them had enlisted in the Korean War era, and had the "manly insensitivity" of the time. Within the trainees, there was a small but vocal anti-Semitic group, and a slightly larger (equally vocal) bunch of self-described Rednecks from Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, etc. who described anyone who wasn't in their group  as "sleeps with snakes, barks at the moon, and don't love Jesus."

Those two groups did manage to convince several people to depart in the first couple weeks of training, but then they decided to target the African-Americans, and that didn't work out so well. This was right after the Coromantee Brothers Council had held a demonstration over in the tech school protesting institutionalized racism, and the people who ran Basic were already sensitized to the problem when a multiracial group of trainees approached the training staff with complaints. Never quite shut the idiots up, but the trainers did work to keep it down as much as possible. People still sat in ethnically and regionally defined groups at the how hall and the Airmen's Club, but the edges got less sharp, and there was a growing area that was just people.

When I was in Tech School, some guys in one of the barracks got permission to converted the Day Room/Lounge into a Saturday Night Coffee House, and there was a very diverse crown. Open mike (just without the mike) nights and jam nights (jazz, pop, rock, folk, it all depended) alternated, and it seems to me that every night ended with a sort of song circle. My folks shipped me my 6-string banjo, and I was able to sit in most Saturday nights.

After Basic and Tech School, I went to Wiesbaden, Germany for four years. Other than one trip back home in 1967 (so that my fiancee could tell me she was marrying a guy who bragged about lying his way out of service, and he and his dad could spend the next week or so telling me what a chump I was not to take his dad 's offer of a "friendly doctor" signature in the first place), I spent my off time traveling Europe, and hanging out with a mixed group of Yanks (civilian and G.I.), Irish, Aussies, Kiwis, and Germans. Mostly my age, give or take a year or two, with the sense that we were part of a world that was growing closer together. I played guitar and 6-string banjo with a couple of amazingly talented guys, worked with a bunch of other people who took a sort of traveling folk music review to a number of the U.S. bases and posts, did several gigs with Pat Murphy and his All-Star Jug Band, and gained a lot of insight into different ways off seeing the world.

It was fascinating how the German young people had a striking effect on their American counterparts. This was a generation in Germany that fiercely rejected the racism of their  past, and any Americans who weren't able to deal with that could jolly well stay on the base. A lot of G.I.s took the latter course, living on the installation, staying there for recreation and socialization, going off base very seldom, and burning their annual leave time to spend maximum time "back in the World." Others, not particularly wanting to hang out with the same people they worked with, pretty much learned to interact. The rest of us, regardless origin, who never did have a problem with externals, got along just fine.

For some reason, the Air Force tended to have fewer intercultural or interracial problems than the Army (at least in those times; certainly hope things have changed). Even so, there was a lot of class time spent on what was variously called "Intercultural Relations," "Intercultural Sensitivity," and similar titles. By the time the name became "Affirmative Action," I was teaching the courses as part of a team.

Backing up slightly: a couple of years after my former fiancee dumped me, I did, indeed, get married. She was an Irish girl I met as part of the various musical activities. We were married in Ireland, and, while we were stationed in Europe, we spent most of our leave time with her parents, cousins, and friends. That would take us up to 1995, a good enough place to stop. More at a later date.