Dear Reader,

This blog is all about seeking fresh meanings in our common past. It says so in the tagline.

I also seek fresh meanings in our common past by writing fiction. Two historical novels have resulted: The Price of Passage, set in the Civil War era, and Izzy Strikes Gold!, set in the 1950s. My current work-in-progress is a World War II novel. 

But there will also  be a memoir, I hope—a memoir of four years as an enlisted man in the United States Air Force. It was the Vietnam era. We were voice intercept operators, eavesdropping on Chinese air force and civil air transport radio communications.

A memoir is non-fiction, but these days the best memoirs employ writing styles like those of fiction. So the difference between this memoir and my historical novels is that nothing in the memoir is made up. The events are real, fixed in my memory like ancient insects preserved in amber. 

Long ago, in a galaxy far away, the local movie house would sometimes hold a “SNEAK PREVIEW!!” The caps and double-bang were essential parts of the phrase. Sneak previews were a marketing ploy, meant to boost attendance when the full movie came to town.

Here is a SNEAK PREVIEW!! of my sooner-or-later-forthcoming military memoir:

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1. WATER STREET INDUCTION CENTER, MILWAUKEE

09 DEC 65

Forty boys, age eighteen and up, stand in four lines in a small room. At twenty, I may be the oldest boy.

Bare fluorescent tubes shine down on yellow-green walls. A man in a blue uniform stands at the front of the room. He points to a sign where the words of the oath are printed in large block letters. “Raise your right hands and repeat after me,” he says.

“I . . . do solemnly swear, or affirm . . .”  

Swear or affirm, who cares? I wish I were somewhere else. 

“. . . defend the Constitution of the United States . . .”

Defend America, shoulder-to-shoulder with these other sweaty guys? I’ve got to do it. No other choice.

“. . . obey the orders of the President . . . and . . . the officers appointed over me . . .” 

That’s my new plan, the only one available.

“. . . according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, so help me God. . . . Lower your hands,” says the man in blue. “Take one step forward.”

We drop our hands. We step forward.

“Welcome to the United States Air Force.”

Plan B.

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They dispatched us in groups of six. One member in each group of motley adolescents was given the airline tickets for all six. 

We had time to kill at the airport, Billy Mitchell Field. We were to stay together, so we would all be at the gate when the one boy turned in the tickets. 

Of course, I was the one the government chose to hold the tickets. 

“Why don’t you just give us all our tickets?” said Truesdale, a big, assertive guy. “That’ll be simpler.” 

“We—uh, we’d better do it the way they said,” I stammered. 

I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of a dominant guy like Truesdale. Fear was native to my soul. I came into the Air Force pre-intimidated.

Minadeo, a round guy with a crewcut, solved my problem. “Look,” he said. “Pinballs!”

By luck or providence, we had plenty of dimes. We spent forty-five minutes playing the machines on the upper concourse of General Billy Mitchell’s airport. In the bliss of bouncing balls, flashing lights, and bumping bumpers, Truesdale forgot about the tickets. 

We all got on the plane together.

I had flown twice, both times in small planes, rigid with fear while dangled in a frail airframe a thousand feet above cornfields. Braniff Airlines was a whole different matter. Our DC-8 was sleek, well-upholstered, large, and fast. It flew high—miles above the corn, even above the clouds. 

Stewardesses in svelte designer outfits brought us supper, then coffee. 

Night had fallen. I looked down and watched the lights of Illinois and Missouri towns slide under our wings. Here is your new life, Mister Air Force Guy: Serene. Sophisticated. Not so bad after all.

At Abilene, we changed to a propeller-driven Lockheed Electra. The Texas plains were larded with storm clouds, which the Electra could not get above. We bounced and jounced.

I threw up in a paper bag.

More than once. Same bag. 

When we arrived in San Antonio, they lined us up under an awning. It was past midnight. The rain had stopped, but the air was heavy. We sat on the concrete and waited in the dark, all forty of us. 

My stomach started to settle, but I was out of sorts. I had been treated rudely by the airplane. I wondered who to report it to.

After forty minutes, a dark school bus pulled up. We all got on.

The bus trundled down the road. It stopped at a gate. Guards waved us through. We drove down empty streets on Lackland Air Force Base, past dark buildings, and lurched to a stop. 

The driver opened the door. A tall, straight-standing dark man stepped up into the bus. He stood on the lowest step yet still towered over us. He wore a light tan uniform and a white hat with a black visor. 

In this black night, he wore dark glasses. How could he see? 

He stared straight at me. I could not see his eyes, but it must have been me he was staring at. The other thirty-nine guys might have thought it was them.

A flash of insight told me this man would not be the officer to receive my complaint, apologize on behalf of the U.S. Government, and cheerfully rectify the error.

“Get off the bus,” he said.

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Your New Favorite Writer has posted another possible chapter, from later in the book, here . And if you have oodles of time, and a great thirst for knowledge of the era, you can find a 94-minute oral history interview here.

I hope that when at last my full memoir is published, you’ll rush out and buy it. You have my assurance it will be indispensable.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer