CHAPTER 1
"Fresh out of High School and into the Workforces"
Back in the early seventies, instead of making me stay home with her my, grandma Duck (who babysat Aunt Julia and me for the family) allowed me to walk to the cotton field with three recent high school graduates: my aunts Rosina, Carrie, and Marry. It was Friday, payday everywhere. I watched my aunts pick cotton in the hot sun and got paid at the end of that day. Later on, we all picked vegetables all day for small amounts of money.
Uncles Ulysses and James, my two younger uncles, also were recent high school graduates. They picked cotton as well because everyone who graduated from high school picked cotton as a first job. As time went on, Ulysses and James found other employment and managed to retire years later; so did my aunts.
I had one other aunt; her name was Susie-May. Like Grandma Duck, she was a stay-at-home mother. Aunt Susie-May lived next door to Grandma Duck, and one of her routines was checking on Grandma to make sure she had help if she needed it.
There was also more family: Uncle Jacey and Uncle Robert each served in Vietnam. Surviving that war positioned them to become established home owners.
Long before my aunts and uncles worked in the cotton fields, my father the oldest brother, had to pick cotton. Years later he went on to managed to retire from a full-time job. I was about 16 years then. When he was working his full-time job, he also worked two part-time jobs. When he was finished for the day, he sometimes would drive his car to the cotton fields and offer us a ride home. Picking cotton was a family way to work and get paid enough money to purchase back-to-school clothing, food, and we always earned enough money to go to the Annual Fall Fair year after year.
After the invention of the combine, we had to stop working in the cotton fields as much.
I did not know it at the time, but my uncles and aunts had taught me something valuable: to work hard, have fun doing it, and get paid for working.
It was hard times and sad times for us all when Grandpa Sweet went on to be with the Lord on his birthday. Grandpa was a hardworking railroad man. He always came home from work for the weekends. It was the only time I saw him. He visited my dad, and sometimes they sat and watched a baseball game and took a short nap. Grandma Duck kept everyone together as best she could, and she went on to be with the Lord years later.
Like any farmer and business owner, Mr. Clarkson liked to improve his business and make more money without terminating his employees. He found it impossible to keep everyone, though, and they already had known the bad news was coming before the fall harvest time.
Agriculture's newest farm-equipment invention was called the combine vehicle. It would be the demise of all field handworkers, and every field worker knew it once he or she had seen the vehicle in action picking cotton at an alarming rate. No worker picking cotton could ever match its speed. Some of the field-handworkers would move up north to find jobs that did not require picking cotton. Everyone in the community knew it was time for a change in the cotton industry. The gin manufacturing machine was not operating enough, because people were not picking cotton fast enough; therefore, not enough cotton bales were being produced to take to the city market once a week.
The combine was purchased by Mr. Clarkson and right away it was buzzing up and down the cotton fields. By the end of each day, it delivered lots of cotton for ginning. My cousins and my brother and I were allowed to pull weeds from the many soybean fields for some coins; it was better than getting no money. My aunts and uncles had found career jobs by then.
Soon we were all going to graduate from high school. When I was old enough to secure my own job, I got one working after school during the summer. These jobs paid barely twenty-six dollars every two weeks; again, it was better than no money. Each day, I walked five miles to get to Grandma Betsy's house by dark to cut stacks of wood for her morning fire.
The economy seemed to start improving when I graduated from high school in 1977. Like my aunts and uncles working in Clarkson's cotton fields, I purchased my new back-to-school clothing, and I helped my mother purchase my graduation cap and gown. As the young man I had grown into, I wanted more money. I also wanted somewhere to go; living in a small town got old very fast.
My parents divorced before I completed high school, and my grades slipped often. With the help of one of my teachers, I did manage to lock in a low C grade and graduate from high school. I went straight into the United States Army.
I was seventeen at that time. My resume would have read like this: I knew lots about walking and standing around in the cotton field, picking vegetables, pulling weeds, picking up roadside trash, and being a part-time janitor. My technical skills would have read like this: very little experience with typing on the new IBM electric typewriter.
The Apple computer was new, and there was a strong possibility it could provide jobs, but I had not developed enough skills growing up to fit into any industries except for the labor workforce and the military. It was time for me to move on with my life like everyone before me.
I chose not to attend college because I felt I did not read well enough to maintain good grades. Although I had good art skills, the military was my choice to get employed, get paid, and travel.
My dad signed my enlistment contract papers while I was only seventeen and still in high school. My mother drove me and my older brother to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, through Gate Number One and on to the Personnel Processing and Examination Center. It was o dark 30. We said good-bye and proceeded to walk into the building. Later on that day, my brother and I both received our orders to travel to our respective combat trainings. My brother flew to Fort Knox, Kentucky, and I took a five-minute taxi ride across the post to sign in for training.
CHAPTER 2
Students in Training
Near the end of completing my eight weeks of combat training, I found out that I'd flunked several important tests prior to entering training. That failure set me back about three weeks from attending Advanced Individual Training (AIT), the important phase of training.
My travel status changed to redirect me to sign into the Special Training Camp (STC). STC helped develop failing students who did not apply themselves enough to raise their academic scores to gain a pass to attend AIT.
I thought STC was a Special Forces program. Others laughed at me and said "STC" was a special education program for dummies. Although I always knew I was a C-minus student, I was not a dummy. Their comment was not funny to me.
On my bus ride after graduating from BTC, I was visualizing going to a place where there was fresh-cut, manicured grass and a new building to live in. Boy, was I so wrong! Instead, what I saw was an old, wooden, World War II two-level, tin-roof sleeping quarters. After I had arrived and gotten settled in my room, I was selected to lead students. That sounded exciting and easy.
In a few days, my responsibilities changed more than I ever would have imagined. I had to take on mentoring students who were having a hard times adjusting to being away from their homes and adapting to this hurry-up-and-rush army way of life.
Every day was getting more stressful, marching (walking) twenty minutes to and from school every day. I made sure all the students cleaned and organized their rooms and kept them free of trash and that everyone got along. I often neglected my homework, ensuring that everyone else had completed their homework and routine living assignments.
Two weeks later, my motivation was down, and so was everyone else's. I asked myself how I was supposed to lead them and keep up with my homework.
My drill sergeant was my mentor. Drill Sergeant Page was his name. He always would say to me in a loud voice, "Son, take care of the student," and "Check on the students' behaviors every day, and strengthen the ones that are weak."
Together every morning, Drill Sergeant Page and I inspected the twenty-five men's living areas and outside around the buildings until I understood all my responsibilities. Then we would conduct the standing-in-ranks inspections, and I would walk (March) the soldiers to school singing likable songs (cadies) as the drill sergeants would do; that was a fun thing to do. By now, I had gotten all my routines and responsibilities right and become overconfident, cocky, and forgetful of taking care of my students. More importantly, I had forgotten that I was a student in training also. I loved my stay in this special training camp. The drill sergeants allowed me to act out like they did, so I felt the power, and it felt good. I liked it so much there. But then my group graduated without me and moved on to sign in at AIT.
I was now handling the new arrivals. I got the attention of one new arrival who did not like me. He was much older than I was, and he began to express his dislike for me. He called me a kiss-up. I felt he was right. And that hurt my feelings, but I did not let him know it.
I had a loud and revolting acting character that intimidated most new students into doing without thinking. I thought there was nothing wrong with being that way because the drill sergeants got paid to act that way.
By now I had racked up more time in the Special Training Camp than anybody else ever had. I was all caught up with power tripping. I visited Drill Sergeant Page to figure out where I stood as far as my graduation date. I was told to hit the books and speed it up and graduate. While I waited to graduate, I continued to speak out loud to soldiers, intimidating every soldier I could. I could not help it; I loved it.
One morning while the soldiers stood outside in formation waiting for me to inspect their uniforms and walk them to school. One of the newest students, eighteen year-old Private Bubba Dew, thought he needed to express just how he felt about me. He had had enough of my cockiness and know-everything attitude. As I was yelling directly into buck Private Bubba Dew's face, he leaned backward, and clenched his fist, and took a hard swing at my head, and missed me because I was alert enough to duck after I felt the wind from his arm swing. He was serious.
That morning, my cocky attitude ended. Bubba Dew was quickly pulled from the formation and yelled at by a drill sergeants. He was ordered to wait inside the main office for disciplinary actions. The charges were serious and pending just that fast. Private Bubba Dew was released and walked to class by himself. He wondered what trouble he had caused himself. All because of my desires to act like one of the drill sergeants.
I felt bad for Bubba Dew. He had just started his career, and now he stood a good chance of going back home, being jailed for some time, or being processed out of the army. Later that day I asked the drill sergeant to ask management to not file charges against Private First Class Bubba Dew. Management dropped all charges on him. See, I believed I'd abused my leadership position, and so did the drill sergeants; they allowed me to have too much power over the later groups. I changed my leadership ways because I was only acting out when I was a student in training with additional duties.
We call Drill Sergeant McQueen" the morning wake-up drill sergeant"; once he entered the building, you knew it right away. He always went straight to his office and played Vietnam music of weapons firing and bombing sounds over the speaker systems throughout the sleeping quarters (barracks) very early in the morning to wake us up.
I believed he was this kooky Vietnam infantryman still stuck on the battlefields of Vietnam, and he had a crazy way of letting us know it. He was all-ways inside the building early in the mornings, and that was our sign that it was time to get up, and get moving, and you knew it right away. We knew to makeup the beds and take a quick shower before Drill Sergeant Mc-Queen make it to our area. If your bed was not properly made and he saw it, when you returned, you would find your mattress, sheets, pillow, and blankets all thrown onto the floor. And if you were still sleeping in, Drill Sergeant Mc-Queen would be throwing you and your bed to the floor while on you were sleeping in it. The year was 1978, and leadership got even stranger.
Captain' Clark, our Commander and executive leader, was the comedian-type leader that kept you laughing: he made you feel like wanting to be on his team. Anytime he spoke to us, he'd entertain us, and we understood it to be serious business all at the same time. He said, "If I tell you something twice, remember it." Got that? What? Say what? Captain Clark would make us wait for his punch line, which was followed by the sound of a Billy-goat (bahaa). On Fridays at five o'clock, just after mail call, we would be waiting outside standing on the sidewalk waiting for Captain Clark to speak and release us for the weekend.
His speeches were a fun time, and mail call was a fun time also. Captain Clark liked giving out our mail to us. This way he could try out his jokes on us and use his Billy-goat sounds. This was Captain's Clark's way of checking his students' morale because everyone laughs at mail time. Captain's Clark would call your name out loud, and when you answered back, that was the way he wanted it. He then threw your mail upward toward you, up high into the air, and your mail would not fall directly to you ever. He got a big kick out of watching you not catch your mail. It was just another fun break time away from the real work. We had some simple fun together, and I can still smile about it. For every piece of mail he threw into the air, there was one of his stupid Billy-goat! Sounds again, and big laughter always followed.
Captain Clark authorized those who liked smoking cigarettes to do so when he was late coming to speak, and he would allow smokers to take a puff to relax themselves before releasing us for the weekend on Fridays. It was about the only time when we could light up a cigarette and chat and smoke together. If you got caught smoking any time earlier during the week, you were punished by any drill sergeants that caught you. They would not let you extinguish your cigarette; you had to keep it lit and inhale and exhale while doing x amount of exercises of their choice until the drill sergeant got tire or until you finished your cigarette.
On Fridays when the safety briefing was finished, Captain Clark would release everybody, and we would rush our way upstairs to grab our things for that weekend, then race back downstairs, moving quickly to get out of each other's way to get to gate number one to catch the city bus or the next cab moving.
Three weeks later, I fell short of class academics standards because I was getting very sick from the germs floating around in our sleeping area, where more than male and female lived on two different floors. Poor air ventilations was the cause of my illness.
I was hospitalized for about three weeks with strep throat. I returned from the hospital to find out I had fallen too far behind to graduate with my classmates. I was told I was being transferred to the Unit Supply School. Senior Instructor Sergeant Smith was my school instructor for the next three weeks. If I did not pass this school, it was the end of the road for me; I was surely going back home to find other employment.
Sergeant Smith, had a salt-and-pepper small Afro. His uniform was always freshly starched, more than any other instructors. He wore cleaned, shiny black boots, and walked with much confidence, speaking loudly with his deep voice that carried outside the classroom. He wore more stripes than any other classroom instructor, I guess because he was the senior instructor.
Just three weeks later nearing the end of the course, when Sergeant Smith said to me, "You know, you're ready to fail this course", but not on my watch, you shit-head," he lost his balance and tried to keep himself from falling over my desk. "Your ass is failing this class! You remind me of my hardheaded son," he said for everyone to hear.
"I see your records shows that you have an appreciation letter from a Drill Sergeant Page down at that Dummies Camp, "he said, referring to the Special Training Camp., "What in the hell were you doing in that place"?"
Sergeant Smith was not aware he spit. One of his other problems was that he took drinks of alcohol on the job away from us when he was teaching us. We did not know at the time that he drank at work. Not until one morning, when we all witnessed someone of higher rank pull Sergeant Smith to the side and tell him to "take your drunk ass home now!" He left the classroom. That was the last time we saw Sergeant Smith teaching any supply classes.
