CHAPTER 19
Wright-Patterson AFB
1969-1971
I was a full time student again and would spend two years working on a master’s degree in electrical engineering. We sold our house in Tampa and bought one at 7631 Harshmanville Road in Dayton. (See figure 22.) I don’t know if I was getting too old, or if the competition was stiffer, or if it was something else, but it seemed harder to motivate myself to concentrate on studies this time. My grades were sufficient but they were not barn burners.
We bought Randy and Ronda a puppy. When Nell went over to buy him, the owner was asking $20 for each pup. She picked one out and the owner said the pup was so ugly he would only charge $5. His mother was a poodle and they said his father was from a good neighborhood. The kids named him Snoopy and I made him a nice insulated dog house complete with an electric heating pad, a picture on the wall, bullet holes painted on the side and a swinging door. There were two small problems with the house; when Snoopy went out, the door would swing and catch his tail. It didn’t take him long to learn to exit with gusto and clear the door before it swung shut. When the weather got real cold, the moisture from the dog’s breath would cause the door to freeze shut and we would have to break the ice to let him out. Snoopy loved to push a ball around the yard with his nose. He would push the ball all over the place just as fast as he could go. I always thought it would be fun to take him to a soccer game and turn him loose on the field. I made a little wooden sled and Snoopy would pull the kids around on a frozen lake near the house. Just after we got orders for Alaska the local TV station came out and took pictures of Snoopy pulling Randy and said he was preparing for the move.
Dayton is the only place I’ve gone fishing with one rod and came back with another. Nell, the kids, and I had gone fishing. It was pretty slow and I had laid my rod on the ground with the hook still in the water. All at once a fish jerked the whole thing in and it disappeared under the water. I took one of the kid’s rods, put a treble hook and big weight on it and cast out to see if I could drag my rod in. After several tries I hooked a fishing line and on the end of the line was a rod. It wasn’t mine but if anything it was better. At least we caught a fish that day, but I don’t remember if we landed any or not.
When I should have been studying I got to working on a block puzzle. It was made of eight cubes with each of the six sides of each cube painted a different color. The object of the puzzle was to form a larger cube where each side was a solid color and different than the other five. I tried to make it where there was only one solution but the best I could do was limit it to two. After I made a model I tried to sell it but found no buyers.
I made the kids laugh at the supper table one night. We sat down to eat and the catsup bottle was almost empty. I was going to sling the bottle and make the catsup that was still left go down into the neck so it would come out easy. The lid wasn’t on well and I left a red trail down one wall, across the floor and up the cabinets on the other wall. It looked like a murder scene. I don’t sling catsup bottles any more unless the lid has been checked; I would advise everyone else to follow that procedure too.
We lived about two blocks from the kid’s school. One morning it was snowing and we had not bought Ronda any snow boots. Randy had an old pair; they were too small for Ronda to put on over her shoes but she could carry her shoes and wear the boots over her socks. It snowed all day and by the time school was out, there was probably close to two feet of snow on the ground. We were watching out the window when we saw Ronda coming down the street crying. The boots were so loose on her feet and every time she took a step, the deep snow pulled her boots off. She would take a step, reach back and get her boot, put it on and repeat the process. She finally gave up; she said later she had decided to just lay there and die. I went out, picked her up and carried her the rest of the way to the house.
We went to church at the Huber Heights Church of Christ. It was a very friendly congregation and we made many good friends. We still get Christmas cards from several of them. Randy was baptized there during a meeting.
It took two years to complete the school. As we neared graduation I felt sure I would be sent to Viet Nam because it was really getting hot there and it had been almost twelve years since I returned from the remote tour in Korea; it was really my turn to go. It was a relief when I got my orders in late January 1971 for Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. My school was out in March so we brought the kids to Texas and enrolled them in Slidell to finish the school year. Since I had to leave Seattle for Alaska in late April, we left Randy and Ronda with Mom and Dad. We made plans for all four of them to come to Alaska in July; Mom and Dad would stay for a visit and the kids would stay with us. After visiting every one in Texas, we left for Seattle. We spent a night with Ron and Mary Ann Holton in Albuquerque, New Mexico and a night in Las Vegas (we saw a couple of musical shows there). We drove by our old place in Alpine, Oregon and they were in the process of logging the trees again, just 23 years after Dad had cut them. The house was gone but the barn was still standing and the outhouse had been overgrown with wild black berries; the outhouse door was cracked open and you could see the Sears Catalog we had placed there years before to use as entertainment and sanitary purposes. I have some advice for anyone that might find themselves forced to use a catalog for things other than ordering merchandise: if you crumple it and roll it around in your hands good before applying it to sensitive areas, it will be much softer.
We shipped our car and stayed a night in Kent, a suburb of Seattle, with Uncle John and Aunt Ola. Uncle John told us he wanted to come see us when we got to Alaska and build some houses. We decided we would go into a partnership and do just that if my Air Force schedule could be worked out. We flew to Anchorage on April 28th, 1971.
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