WHEN YOU ARE YOUNG

 When you are young, in your mind, the world is your oyster (that was hard to spell). Of course if you don't like oysters, you  the world could be your lobster, or anything else that brings you peace of mind. Maybe a thick ribeye steak or a fifth of Scotch. (I prefer JB). Anyway, I had to start somewhere. Thanks for being patient. 

 Back to my story. When you are young, you don't think of getting older or if you do, there are other people older so you still think of yourself as young, You have heard the term 10 foot high and  bulletproof. You just don't think that you will ever be old. You know about death because as you travel through life, you see old people die. Once in a while you see a young person die and you think that is just an exception (won't happen to you).    It's probably a good thing that you have that idea that you will live forever as it seems to help you when you suffer from illnesses and hard times.

In my case as many of you know, I was born a young child. I was born at home so that I would not have to experience the trauma of being born in a hospital.  My youth was filled with things like hoeing corn, chopping wood, going to school, working in my Daddy's whiskey still and eating good food. 

We grew a garden and my Mother and Grandmother and my sisters canned everything that did not move. We had canned peaches,  beans, corn, beets, grape juice, jelly, jam and various and sundry other things like along with  a variety of berries. We always had a fall ham and pork chops, venison, and other slow creatures. We supplemented our diet with squirrels, rabbits, coons and ground hogs. We had a creek full of fish and the river was just down the road a piece. We did not know we were poor and nobody told us. We wore hand me downs and patched shirts and pants. I would not trade those days for any amount of money.

All of a sudden, while still young, I graduated from high school. I still felt young, just a little bit taller. When I got out of high school in 1964, my friend Henry McDevitt and I looked for a job. Viet Nam was just starting to heat up and it seems we heard the same story over and over. "You boys go and get your military service over with and then come back and we will give you a job." Well after hearing that advice several times, Henry and I decided to join the Navy. So we joined up under the buddy program where we would be stationed together. I was young and 17 and Henry was 18. Our first duty station was a Naval Air Facility just outside of Phoenix, Arizona. We had both chosen to be in Naval Aviation. 

In the evenings, we would ride a liberty bus into Phoenix about 40 miles from base. We would walk around the city and window shop. We were too young to drink. We found that the streets in Phoenix were named after Presidents. Our bus would park on Washington street and we would explore Van Buren, Jackson, and Jefferson streets. We sometimes wore our uniforms and sometimes civilian clothes. We were still young.

We went to a party out in Estrella park not far from the small towns of Avondale and Goodyear. I left the park  with one of the party goers in a pickup truck to make a beer run. He started driving extremely fast and I tried to get him to slow down but he would not. The road was a gravel road and we went around a curve too fast and slid off the road and flipped over and over. The driver was thrown from the truck and he abandoned me. I was badly injured and bruised and my foot was just hanging from my leg with some meat. I had broken my leg bones with a compound fracture and my head had several deep cuts. I was bleeding quite heavily. I crawled up from the wreck to the gravel road and passed out a few times. A man and his wife was driving by and saw me laying on the edge of the road. Once they found out I was military, they loaded me in there car and drove me to the base hospital at Luke Air Force Base about 20 miles away. I did not get their names and was never able to thank them. I left blood all over their back seat . 

At the hospital, the military doctors were talking about amputating my foot and ankle because it was almost off and dirty with gravel in the wound. I was drifting in and out of consciousness but I told them I wanted to keep my foot. They finally agreed but they told me that if I did not lose the foot, I would always have a limp. They put a cast with a window on my leg and as the bones healed, they took skin grafts from my thigh to cover the bones. There was no meat on the bones just a skin cover.  One bright spot was I had a cute nurse who brought me small bottles of booze and played poker with me. The skin grafts held and after a few weeks, I was released with a pair of uncomfortable crutches. I had a head full of stiches from the cuts. My whole body was bruised and I was lucky to have survived. Luckily I was young. 

When I joined the Navy, I qualified for a guaranteed school. I had chosen Aviation Electronic Technician school in Memphis, Tennessee. However, my school convened while I was recuperating and I was told I would have to wait another 10 months to get my school. Once I was off crutches, Henry and I saw advertisements on the base bulletin boards where volunteers were needed to go to Viet Nam. We both decided to volunteer and I ended up in an Attack Squadron and Henry ended up on the Navy's first nuclear aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise. We were still young. I trained as a plane captain. After training, my squadron , the Road Runners deployed on the USS Ticonderoga and went on a 9 month cruse off the coast of Viet Nam . Our ship pulled into Subic Bay, Philippines and there was the USS Enterprise. Henry and I were reunited for about a week and we enjoyed drinking San Miguel beer together and eating good Filipino food. There was a Marine enlisted club on the base and we enjoyed going there and listening to the various bands and eating great food. There was a short Filipino who sounded identical to Johnny Cash as long as you did not look at him. The time together was short and both our ships sailed once again for Viet Nam. We were both still young. I was muscular because once back off the coast of Viet Nam, I worked on several 4 hour bomb loading parties. The average bomb weighed 250 pounds. It took two of us to lift it up to the undercarriage of the plane as an ordinance man attached it and armed the bomb. Four hours of lifting 125 pounds of bombs made me tired but strong. Working on the Flight Deck was dangerous. We had exhausted sailors walk into propellers or behind a jet blast . We put their bodies in the refrigerated coolers where our vegetables were stored. During our long cruise, the USS Forrestal caught on fire and killed several sailors. We helicoptered several of the wounded to our Ship's sick bay until we pulled into Japan. The men that were killed were young. My Mom heard on TV news that an Aircraft Carrier was on fire and they would not release the name. She worried that it was my carrier until she got a letter from me.  As a plane captain, 3 of the pilots on my assigned planes were shot down over Viet Nam. One was a prisoner of war for years, the others were killed.  They were young. We did our jobs and we all mourned out sailors killed on the flight deck and the pilots we were so close to. The teamwork was the thing that stuck with me. A squadron sticks together and supports each team member through the hardships. 

I recently learned that my friend Henry McDevitt died. I will forever miss him. He was no longer young and I realized that my youth was also gone. Old age crept up on both Henry an me.