WHERE I'VE BEEN

When I was very young, my parents and I went to  Atlantic City and Niagara Falls. I believe this whetted my appetite for travel. 

Between my junior and senior year of high school I went to Chicago on a New York Central train to go to boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Station. This trip heightened my desire to see the world. I knew that I didn't belong in Northern Ohio. 

After I graduated from high school I took a train to the Naval Recieving Station in Philadelphia on the Pennsylvania Railroad. I was booked in a roomette and had my own little stateroom to myself. This was when my fernweh really kicked in. 

After two weeks in Philly  I boarded a Greyhound bus for Guidedmissileman A School at Virginia Beach. I was now in the real navy and I really enjoyed my time there.

After A School I boarded a Continental Airlines DC-3 at Norfolk airport. The weather was too rough for a piddly DC-3 so we turned back to Norfolk. An hour later I boarded a Vickers Viscount a four engine turboprop to Washington National Airport. We jumped on a United Airlines DC-7 to Baltimore. At Baltimore, we boarded a DC-8 jet to LA. So in one day I went from never being on an airplane to piston powered to turboprop to jet. All on the same day. This in February of 1961 when I boarded the jet in Baltimore I was bundled up in woolen dress blues and a peacoat. When I deplaned, at ten in the evening in LA it was about 77 degrees outside, this was in the prehistoric era before jetways. I knew right there where I wanted to live, SoCal.

After Terrier C School at the General Dynamics plant in Pomona I was transferred to Naval Ammunition Depot Crane, Indiana. I drove back to Cleveland on Route 66. This was before interstate highways. Tom owned a Corvair and we drove through the deserts of California, Arizona and New Mexico. Over the plains of the Midwest and farm country east of the Mississippi.

After two and a half years in Southern Indiana and reenlisting, I sold my Auston Healy Sprite and bought a 59 Buick. I, and my new wife, then drove west across the USA to Vallejo, CA to attend Missile Technician B School. After B School, we drove down the coast of California to San Diego where I was stationed on finally my first ship, an aircraft carrier USS Constellation CVA-64. We made a MidPac cruise to Hawaii. That was fun but I wasn't fond of life on a birdfarm and after only seven months on board I got orders to go to new construction at Todd Shipyard Seattle, WA.

This started my life as a plankowner of a brand new Guided Missile Destroyer USS Waddell DDG-24. We made two WestPac cruises to Vietnam with ports of call in Yokosuka and Sasabo Japan and many calls at Subic Bay in the Philippines which was virtually  our second home port. Between the two WestPacs we drove back to Cleveland where I took a thirty day leave and then back again. We stopped at Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone on the way back.

I got out of the Navy after eight years and we, once again drove back to to Cleveland in 1968.

After two years, we realized returning to Cleveland was a huge mistake so in 1970 I got the company that I worked for, API Instruments, to move me back to SoCal. While with API, I made numerous trips to Mexico City, Austrailia, Japan and Korea. I suppose because I was gone so much my wife left me. After a while, I had a new girlfriend who was from Germany. I had to learn how to speak German because when Brigitta and her German girlfriends started talking in German, I wanted to know what mischief they were cooking up. 

I took a month off and we flew to Germany. Brigitta was from this cute medieval walled town, Bad Wimpfen, up on a hill next to the Neckar River.  I bought us Eurail passes while in the USA which was like a bus pass. All you needed to do, was flash the card on any train, or bus, in all of Europe and off you went. We would go to a train station in the evening and look at the board and select a destination that was about eight hours away. We would then sleep on the train and not blow money on a hotel room. We had no
predetermined itinerary and had a ball. We went to Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Monaco, France, Spain, Belgium, Holland and of course Germany. 

I didn't much like the new management at the company when they merged with LFE Corp, so I moved on.  

My second wife was from Rhode Island so we ended up diving cross country twice.

My third wife was a TWA flight attendant and I flew on many flights with her and for free on my own.

By 2010 I had been to every state except North Dakota and Alaska. I drove to South Dakota to do a job in Watertown and thought as long as I'm this close, I might as well drive up to North Dakota.

Three years ago, we took a cruise through the Inland Passage to Alaska and I made it a clean sweep, all fifty states plus Puerto Rico. We went to Loreto in Baja Sur, south, to pet the baby gray whales in Laguna San Ignacio and liked it so much we made a second trip to Loreto.

Last year we spent two weeks in London, I'd never been to the UK. Three weeks in Italy mainly in Tuscany, a week in Honolulu, two weeks in South Carolina, ten days in Kauai and Maui and another week in Italy.