At 17, I joined the Navy and served overseas for 10 years on 5 different aircraft carriers.
I sat in the back of a carrier-launched spy jet and operated electronic spy gear.
We flew off the coasts of commie countries. It was peacetime. One time, the North Koreans sent up a fighter jet which shot a missile at us. We ducked. They missed. These things are not reported to the news.
Another time, the cockpit filled with smoke, and while another guy and I were trying to find the fire, the lower hatchway opened and the other guy suddenly disappeared in front of me, at 800 feet over the Pacific. I grabbed his collar as he was going down and pulled him back into the plane. He was scared terribly and started to cry. I don’t know why, but I began to laugh uncontrollably. We became really close friends.
In Japan, I learned to fly Cessnas and Pipers and ran the base photo hobby shop in the evening. Wrote for the base newspaper each week. Went to a lot of night school.
In 1982, I worked as an electrician, installing the wiring for a brand new thing called EPCOT.
Then I went to college, joined the Air Force, and went back overseas for 10 more years.
In the Philippines, I witnessed the Philippine People’s Revolution first hand. There were guns everywhere. Even the children carried guns. All US military was ordered to stay indoors. All flying was cancelled. But at midnight my housemates and I heard some helicopters flying low and fast over our house from an unusual direction. “That’s Marcos!” we all yelled. We got in my car and zoomed to the base, and we stood on the runway for awhile. Then a giant cargo jet and a medical evacuation jet flew dictator Ferdinand Marcos away to exile.
The next day at work, I needed a helicopter ride to another base, and like a miracle, a helicopter landed right behind me on the grass. The pilot was a college buddy of mine. He was the one who flew Marcos from the palace, over my house, to his evacuation.
One time, military police called me to a house where one of our drunk sergeants lived. His Filipino wife had thrown every one of his possessions out of the house. I saw a photo album laying in the grass. She had used a cigarette to burn out the face in every photo of his young son by a previous marriage. He now no longer had any photos of his boy. The cop said, “Wow, that’s mean.” Then I said, “Find him and arrest him. We need to prevent a murder tonight.” I committed him to an alcohol detox and got them both some really tough counselors. A month later, the couple brought cookies to my office and thanked me for saving his life and their marriage.
In Korea, I got lost walking one dark rainy night and accidentally found myself in a special bomb storage area. Two South Korean guards stuck their M-16s in my face, screaming in Korean. When I calmly turned around to leave, they cocked their guns and screamed even louder. I simply walked away and I guess they didn’t shoot me.
In the late 80s, I backpacked alone around communist China for 3 weeks with a camera and a change of underwear.
In Germany, at 5 in the morning, I was on the autobahn going to work, when I saw an Army convoy of trucks and tanks. I also saw a black Mercedes with blacked-out windows and the license plate said it was a Soviet diplomat. The headlights were turned off in the darkness. They were following the convoy to its base! So I jammed my car in front of theirs and cut them off from the convoy. They turned around and flash! They were gone like warp drive. When I reported it to intel, they told me that the Soviet “diplomat” was illegally trying to sneak onto the facility.
I visited communist East Berlin a lot (with orders, in uniform). One time I missed my train stop and found myself illegally in East Berlin, without orders and in civilian clothes. I quickly bought a map, found a train back to the West, and found myself sitting exactly across from 3 Soviet soldiers who were eyeing me. (Americans look different than Europeans.) But before they could engage me, I ran off the train and got back into the West. The next year, the Wall fell, and I used a hammer to get a piece.
I like history and natural history museums. In Germany, I went to the Neander Valley (Tal) to see the original cave man (the cave itself was destroyed and used for limestone). I visited Troy in Turkey. In Kenya, I saw Lucy, the first human.
I like scuba diving in and out of sunken shipwrecks once in a great while.
And as of 9/11, I switched sides. I'm now a godless liberal.