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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Survival / Success
- Subject: Life Experience
- Published: 06/02/2024
Characters, Alaskan Style
Born 1947, M, from Oceanside, United StatesCharacters, Alaskan Style
With 350 GIs making up the population of our site, a few of them turned out to be real characters. One such was the Master Sergeant in charge of the supply section. This guy loved Alaska so much, he didn’t want to go anywhere else. When it was his time to re-up or get out of the Air Force, he said he’d re-up under one condition — he’d be allowed to stay at our base for the entire next four years of his enlistment.
Can you imagine four years on a remote air base in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness? But you see, this guy had grown up in the upper-peninsula area of Michigan. Where he had come from was just like this part of Alaska, a lot of trees and lakes and bitterly cold snowy winters. Then again, if you were a hunting and fishing enthusiast like he was, this place could be considered a paradise.
Besides feeling like he was at home, the sergeant was basically his own boss. He had all kinds of connections with the guys down at Elmendorf in Anchorage. Anything he wanted, all he had to do was ask, and they’d send it up to him on the next plane. For instance, there was the time he asked for moose meat. That was how I got introduced to moose burgers. Those were hamburgers made with regular meat and Moose meat mixed together. Hey, don’t make a face; they were g-o-o-o-o-d! Some of the sweetest tasting hamburgers I’ve ever eaten.
Speaking of food, that reminds me of KP or “kitchen police” duty, which brings up the subject of the next character on my list.
The best way to describe this guy was he was our version of Donald Trump. That’s because when it came to money making endeavors (I won’t call them schemes; they were all legitimate), he had his hand in everything. Take, for instance, this deal with the KP or “kitchen police” duty.
Every new guy up there below a certain rank had to spend at least one week helping clean dishes after midnight chow. That’s a meal the chow hall served at night to the guys working on night shifts, or to anyone else who felt like eating breakfast at midnight.
Our friend would volunteer to take care of your KP duty for a price, which many of us gladly paid, having unpleasant memories of KP duty left over from basic training and later, at our job training schools.
A second money making endeavor of his was selling tapestries, which he imported from overseas (mainly Italy). I bought one. It showed an Eskimo riding on a dogsled through the Alaskan wilderness.
This guy also ran a laundry where we brought our fatigues (working uniforms) to be cleaned and starched, and also had the snow mobile concession in the winter. He may have had one or two other things going, which I don’t remember. Either way, he went out of there happy and rich.
For others, their time spent on our site was not so pleasant or profitable. One such person was our base commander. He used to get drunk and pull unannounced nighttime inspections. He’d go into a section and give the guys working there a hard time about their appearance, or the general cleanliness of their area. It was rumored that while he did this, he used the antenna on his two-way radio like a sword or a cattle prod, poking people in the chest or stomach to hammer home his point. He eventually left the site and we got a
different, much more stable base commander.
Then there was the guy who used to take steam baths all the time. He’d use the shower area in my barracks like his own private steam room. You see, our shower area was like the kind you had in high school—a large cubicle with a dozen or more shower heads. He’d go in there and turn them all to hot, then stand there with the steam rising around him like smoke from a forest fire. While he’d do this, he’d chomp on a lit cigar with a smile on his face that made him look like the Wily Coyote after finally catching the Roadrunner. I had never seen anyone take steam baths before, let alone, do it while smoking a cigar.
But at least, he used the showers. We had one guy who, for a while, seemed like he never took a shower. He worked for the section that fueled the military planes, both the fighter jets and the cargo planes. Combine the fuel odors with his body odor, and after a while, this guy really began to stink! It got so bad that eventually, several guys from the barracks gave him a G.I. party. That’s where a bunch of guys grab someone and pull them into the showers to scrub them down, sometimes with their clothes on; sometimes without.
Which leads me to the next person on my list. This person was sort of quiet, yet he made a definite impression on several people, especially the new guys. Who was this character? That was me!
One reason you could call me a character was because of the impression I made on a lot of the new guys, especially when they’d see me walking down the hall of the barracks carrying a tennis racket and sneakers . . . in the middle of winter!
One of the great things about our air base was none of the buildings were attached, not like some of the radar sites. Most of these sites had buildings that were attached by hallways. This may sound great, especially in the winter with all the cold weather, but think of it in this manner. You get up in the morning and walk down a hallway to go eat. Then you walk down a hallway to go to work. Then you walk down a hallway to eat lunch, and back down a hallway to work again. At night it’s the same routine.
After a while, it has got to get to you. I mean, you can’t help but start to feel as if you’re living inside a submarine, which means you find yourself craving to get outside even when the temperature is 50 below zero. But with our site, we got outside all the time. Being a larger site, it also gave us more opportunities for recreational activities. For instance, down in the main hanger, they taught a lot of craft classes. We had our own library and even a movie theater. In the summer, we had softball games with guys from different sections. Several areas had their own pool tables.
But our biggest attraction was our gymnasium. It was a huge building, which contained a four-lane bowling alley. But the other half was the part I made the most use of. Like all gyms, it had basketball nets (we had games with the guys from the nearby radar site). It also had a weight room, and a set-up for volleyball which could be lowered making it into a tennis net.
But I didn’t use the gym to play tennis. Instead, I hit a tennis ball against the wall, like you do when you play racket ball. It was my favorite form of exercise. I got to run around a lot and work up a real good sweat. But it was also the reason I used to freak out so many
of the new guys.
I mean, picture this. You’re a new guy on the site. You’ve just arrived that day. It’s the middle of the winter. It’s dark out. There’s a lot of snow on the ground. The temperature outside is anywhere from 30 to 50 below zero. You’ve just stepped out of your room, and what do you see? Me, diddly-bopp’n down the hallway, my parka on, my hood up, carrying sneakers and a tennis racket.
Talk about startled expressions! These guys would look like they had just seen a squadron of IRS auditors or something. I could almost read their minds as I’d watch them back up and cling to the wall like petrified rabbits. “Oh, my God! Where the hell does he think he’s going with those sneakers and that tennis racket? Has he totally freaked out? It’s the middle of the winter! We’re in the middle of nowhere! Is this going to happen to me? Maybe I should stay away from him. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll just back up here and let him walk by. In fact, maybe I’ll go back to my room and close the door where it’s safe.”
All the while I’d be laughing to myself, thinking they’ll calm down once they learn about the gym. Actually, by the time I left the site, there were several guys hitting tennis balls against the wall. I’ll have to admit, it was a first for me to have other people copy something I had initiated. But then again, being in Alaska was fraught with firsts.
Characters, Alaskan Style(Tom Di Roma)
Characters, Alaskan Style
With 350 GIs making up the population of our site, a few of them turned out to be real characters. One such was the Master Sergeant in charge of the supply section. This guy loved Alaska so much, he didn’t want to go anywhere else. When it was his time to re-up or get out of the Air Force, he said he’d re-up under one condition — he’d be allowed to stay at our base for the entire next four years of his enlistment.
Can you imagine four years on a remote air base in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness? But you see, this guy had grown up in the upper-peninsula area of Michigan. Where he had come from was just like this part of Alaska, a lot of trees and lakes and bitterly cold snowy winters. Then again, if you were a hunting and fishing enthusiast like he was, this place could be considered a paradise.
Besides feeling like he was at home, the sergeant was basically his own boss. He had all kinds of connections with the guys down at Elmendorf in Anchorage. Anything he wanted, all he had to do was ask, and they’d send it up to him on the next plane. For instance, there was the time he asked for moose meat. That was how I got introduced to moose burgers. Those were hamburgers made with regular meat and Moose meat mixed together. Hey, don’t make a face; they were g-o-o-o-o-d! Some of the sweetest tasting hamburgers I’ve ever eaten.
Speaking of food, that reminds me of KP or “kitchen police” duty, which brings up the subject of the next character on my list.
The best way to describe this guy was he was our version of Donald Trump. That’s because when it came to money making endeavors (I won’t call them schemes; they were all legitimate), he had his hand in everything. Take, for instance, this deal with the KP or “kitchen police” duty.
Every new guy up there below a certain rank had to spend at least one week helping clean dishes after midnight chow. That’s a meal the chow hall served at night to the guys working on night shifts, or to anyone else who felt like eating breakfast at midnight.
Our friend would volunteer to take care of your KP duty for a price, which many of us gladly paid, having unpleasant memories of KP duty left over from basic training and later, at our job training schools.
A second money making endeavor of his was selling tapestries, which he imported from overseas (mainly Italy). I bought one. It showed an Eskimo riding on a dogsled through the Alaskan wilderness.
This guy also ran a laundry where we brought our fatigues (working uniforms) to be cleaned and starched, and also had the snow mobile concession in the winter. He may have had one or two other things going, which I don’t remember. Either way, he went out of there happy and rich.
For others, their time spent on our site was not so pleasant or profitable. One such person was our base commander. He used to get drunk and pull unannounced nighttime inspections. He’d go into a section and give the guys working there a hard time about their appearance, or the general cleanliness of their area. It was rumored that while he did this, he used the antenna on his two-way radio like a sword or a cattle prod, poking people in the chest or stomach to hammer home his point. He eventually left the site and we got a
different, much more stable base commander.
Then there was the guy who used to take steam baths all the time. He’d use the shower area in my barracks like his own private steam room. You see, our shower area was like the kind you had in high school—a large cubicle with a dozen or more shower heads. He’d go in there and turn them all to hot, then stand there with the steam rising around him like smoke from a forest fire. While he’d do this, he’d chomp on a lit cigar with a smile on his face that made him look like the Wily Coyote after finally catching the Roadrunner. I had never seen anyone take steam baths before, let alone, do it while smoking a cigar.
But at least, he used the showers. We had one guy who, for a while, seemed like he never took a shower. He worked for the section that fueled the military planes, both the fighter jets and the cargo planes. Combine the fuel odors with his body odor, and after a while, this guy really began to stink! It got so bad that eventually, several guys from the barracks gave him a G.I. party. That’s where a bunch of guys grab someone and pull them into the showers to scrub them down, sometimes with their clothes on; sometimes without.
Which leads me to the next person on my list. This person was sort of quiet, yet he made a definite impression on several people, especially the new guys. Who was this character? That was me!
One reason you could call me a character was because of the impression I made on a lot of the new guys, especially when they’d see me walking down the hall of the barracks carrying a tennis racket and sneakers . . . in the middle of winter!
One of the great things about our air base was none of the buildings were attached, not like some of the radar sites. Most of these sites had buildings that were attached by hallways. This may sound great, especially in the winter with all the cold weather, but think of it in this manner. You get up in the morning and walk down a hallway to go eat. Then you walk down a hallway to go to work. Then you walk down a hallway to eat lunch, and back down a hallway to work again. At night it’s the same routine.
After a while, it has got to get to you. I mean, you can’t help but start to feel as if you’re living inside a submarine, which means you find yourself craving to get outside even when the temperature is 50 below zero. But with our site, we got outside all the time. Being a larger site, it also gave us more opportunities for recreational activities. For instance, down in the main hanger, they taught a lot of craft classes. We had our own library and even a movie theater. In the summer, we had softball games with guys from different sections. Several areas had their own pool tables.
But our biggest attraction was our gymnasium. It was a huge building, which contained a four-lane bowling alley. But the other half was the part I made the most use of. Like all gyms, it had basketball nets (we had games with the guys from the nearby radar site). It also had a weight room, and a set-up for volleyball which could be lowered making it into a tennis net.
But I didn’t use the gym to play tennis. Instead, I hit a tennis ball against the wall, like you do when you play racket ball. It was my favorite form of exercise. I got to run around a lot and work up a real good sweat. But it was also the reason I used to freak out so many
of the new guys.
I mean, picture this. You’re a new guy on the site. You’ve just arrived that day. It’s the middle of the winter. It’s dark out. There’s a lot of snow on the ground. The temperature outside is anywhere from 30 to 50 below zero. You’ve just stepped out of your room, and what do you see? Me, diddly-bopp’n down the hallway, my parka on, my hood up, carrying sneakers and a tennis racket.
Talk about startled expressions! These guys would look like they had just seen a squadron of IRS auditors or something. I could almost read their minds as I’d watch them back up and cling to the wall like petrified rabbits. “Oh, my God! Where the hell does he think he’s going with those sneakers and that tennis racket? Has he totally freaked out? It’s the middle of the winter! We’re in the middle of nowhere! Is this going to happen to me? Maybe I should stay away from him. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll just back up here and let him walk by. In fact, maybe I’ll go back to my room and close the door where it’s safe.”
All the while I’d be laughing to myself, thinking they’ll calm down once they learn about the gym. Actually, by the time I left the site, there were several guys hitting tennis balls against the wall. I’ll have to admit, it was a first for me to have other people copy something I had initiated. But then again, being in Alaska was fraught with firsts.
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