Anniversary

On August 3, 1959, I joined the Army in Oakland, California. I was living in a makeshift tree house I had built in Strawberry Canyon in Berkeley. I had my one meal a day on a free meal ticket from the recruiting station in Oakland. I hitched from Berkeley and visited every recruiter, took every possible test, trying to stretch out my free meal a day for as long as I could. Finally it was time to put up or shut up. No more meal tickets. I joined the Army, even though I was a Navy brat, because it was 3 years, not 4. I went wherever my recruiter wanted to put me, which happened to be into the Army Security Agency because I had some college background. I became a Russian linguist. With another recruiter, I may have driven a tank. In fact, the Army was the most intense educational and intellectual experience of my life, primarily because I was in a small company in which I was one of 3 without a Masters degree in the Humanities. I had 98 Big Brothers who kept giving me books to read. It was incredible. I thank that Oakland recruiter often. He changed and shaped my life.

My mother almost had a heart attack when she learned I'd joined the Army, not the Navy. Dad got it, though.  And his three brothers, all Army guys, loved it.