Part II-U.S. Air Force, Chapter 13-Scott AFB

CHAPTER 13
Scott AFB
1957-1958

I moved into the Bachelor Officer Quarters (BOQs) at Scott. I had a single room that shared a bath with one other room. The school was fairly rigorous and there was some homework but not a whole lot so I had quite a bit of time on my hands. I have never been so lonesome in my life. Mom wasn’t feeling well after Allan was born and besides, she had her hands full with five other little ones so it seemed like such a long time between he letters. Nell and I wrote on a pretty regular basis. In those days long distant telephone calls were used almost exclusively for sickness or death notification. One night I was desperate for something to do so decided I was going to carve a chain and put Nell’s name on it. I couldn’t find a piece of wood until I turned an end table in the room upside down and chipped a piece off the block that held the top to the frame. I don’t think I weakened the table any but I guess I did steal wood from the government. Nell still has the chain I made and sometimes wears it as a pin.
Finally the boredom got to me. I got in my car and started knocking on doors of nearby farmers to see if any of them had a room to rent; at the third farm I went to, I found one. I moved in the upstairs bedroom with the Plobs just on the south side of the base. They had a boy, Terry, about my age that had recently got married and now lived in a trailer on the place. Mr. Plob worked for a car dealer in Belleville and I traded my 49 Oldsmobile in on a 54 Ford. Terry ran the farm. He grew corn and milked about 20 cows. I often helped him on the farm and in the barn and would put my wages towards the rent. Mr. Plob got sick and passed away soon after I moved in. That winter we had an ice storm and there were five or six cars in the ditch just in front of Plobs house. Terry told me I could use his tractor to pull them out and keep any money they gave me. I charged $5 each. One man said he didn’t have any money and would come back the next day and pay. He never did but a few days later I saw him on the base in an enlisted uniform. I had my uniform on too, and started to ask him for the money but decided to save him the embarrassment. I don’t know if he recognized me or not.
I found the base had a fairly good woodworking hobby shop so I built Nell a cedar chest. It’s now at the foot of our bed.
Several of the students in the school were pilots. Major Plumber was the ranking student in my class and he had been a World War II bomber pilot over Germany. In order to keep current, the Air Force required their pilots to get some minimum amount of flying hours in each month. To do this while in school they would fly on the weekends. San Antonio was one of their favorite destinations so this gave me a cheap way to go see Nell. We would leave Friday night after class and come back Sunday evening; I think I flew down about three times. On one trip the cedar chest and I flew in the bomb bay of a B-26 to San Antonio. Another time I couldn’t catch a ride over a three day weekend so I drove down. One time of that was enough for a weekend drive.
By May of 1958 we were getting pretty serious and Nell’s folks let her come up on the train for about a week. She stayed in another room at the Plobs. We went on a Mississippi steam boat ride and through the Merrimac Caverns. I gave her a ring. In August after several tries, I was able to get a three day pass (Friday, Saturday and Sunday), Nell came back up on the train and we were married on the 7th of August 1958. Abraham Neihu, another student in the school (but not in my class) was also renting from the Plobs at this time. He stood up for me and Terry’s wife, Diane stood up for Nell. I tried to get the preacher at the Belleville Church of Christ (where I had been going to church) to marry us but he was out of town that day so he gave me the name of a neighboring preacher that I didn’t know. The five of us were the only ones at the wedding. We went to the Illinois State Fair in Springfield for our honeymoon. We also saw Lincoln’s home and tomb in Springfield, and went to New Salem State Park where they had restored some of Lincoln’s stores and cabins. Monday I was back in class. Since Terry’s father had died, he and Diane moved into the big house with his mother; Nell and I rented their trailer until I finished school in September. On the 11th of August I got orders for a 13 month unaccompanied tour to Korea.
With 30 days leave and 9 days travel time my new bride and I left for Travis AFB, California (to catch the plane to Korea) by way of Moses Lake. We went by Mount Rushmore and then straight on to Washington. When we got to Moses Lake, Mom, Dad, and the kids were living in the end of the stables we first moved into in 1951. At least they had inside plumbing now. This was the seventh house Mom and Dad had lived in since moving to Washington. The previous year they had some poor crops and the bank wouldn’t finance another year so they had a farm sale and Dad went to work for a man clearing and leveling land for irrigation that was just getting to the Othello area. I think part of Dad’s financial problems were because Darwin and I were no longer there to help on the farm; part was due to the rocky and poor soil of some of the farms; but a big part of it was his problem with alcohol. No one would work harder than he would when it was for someone else but when he was on his own, at times, he would spend the day in town with his “friends” when he should have been working. Right after I left for Korea, Mom and Dad moved to Othello and worked for the Roylance’s on their farm and dairy. The Roylances were a good Mormon family; I don’t know if that helped, but Dad got his “problem” under control. Shortly after that he was farming on his own and doing well. He bought a beet digger and did a lot of custom work. Grandpa Cook would come up and help him during beet harvest.
I had to leave Travis AFB on the 18th of October, 1958. Nell and I left a few days before that and stopped in Corvallis, Oregon to see Uncle Earl and Aunt Gene. We spent the night there and about two AM Nell got very sick at her stomach. In California we saw Grandma and Grandpa Cook, Uncle Cecil and Aunt Jean, and some friends Nell had known from San Antonio. Nell’s mother came out on the bus to help Nell drive back to San Antonio where she would finish school and wait for me to come home from Korea.