WHAT DID YOU DO FOR A LIVING DADDY?

For the longest time my life took on an eight year cycle.

I was in the US Navy for eight years.

I was an application engineer for eight years.

I sold apartment buildings for eight years and then

I sold industrial controls for eight years.

I then hit my stride and went into business designing 

and building plastics forming machines. I must have liked building machines,  i did that for the next twenty five years. I would probably still be building and selling machines if I didn't have those damned stokes. The first was a real shocker. The second one five years later was very mild by comparison.   

The Navy was my second birth. I took a train to Philadelphia and stayed at the receiving station there for three weeks.

Then it was off to Guided Missileman A School at Dam Neck VA. Dam Neck is a lovely spot  outside of Virginia Beach situated next to The Dismal Swamp and Dismal it is. Eight months later, I flew to Los Angeles to attend Terrier C School at the General Dynamics plant in Pomona. I took to California like a duck to water. I knew that I would eventually settle in California. After 12 weeks in Pomona I got orders to my very first real Navy duty station at Crane Indiana. I joined the Navy to see the world and I was stuck in Southern Indiana. Armed  with all of this knowledge of guided missilery, I made the best of it and after three years in the Navy, I reenlisted for six years. This wasn't as dumb as it sounds. I reenlisted to go to Missile Technician B School. Around 1962, the Navy changed the rate's name from Guided Missileman to Missile Technician. MT B School was, at the time, the most comprehensive school in the Navy. Nuclear Power School was next door to our school at Mare Island in Vallejo and we were detailed to help those guys with their home work. MT B School was essentially a forty hour a week electrical engineering course without the humanities. After nine months of B School, I took the examination foe NESEP. The Navy's Enlisted Scientific Educational Program. This was one hell of an opportunity. When accepted, one had to reenlist for six years and off you went to UCLA or MIT or Northwestern to study engineering. If, after two years, you were still in school, you had to extend for two years. This meant, if you do the math, that in order to get a four year education at a first rate university, you were obliged to serve for four years. A one year to one year trade off. Not bad at all to my way of thinking. 

Being all prepped up at B School, I passed the exam with flying colors. I sat before a board of four Navy Captains for a thorough interview, which I also passed. All I had to do now was go to my first ship and await my orders to to university. Off I went to USS Constellation the biggest aircraft carrier in the fleet at the time. By now, I was a slick arm second, which means that I was a Second Class Petty Officer and didn't even have a hashmark on my arm meaning less than four years of service. After waiting four months to get my results, they came in and I was informed that I wasn't selected. No reason or explanation and I still had five years remaining on my enlistment. I figured, what the hell, I will consider that I am on a lengthy pleasure and just enjoy myself. I made a MidPac cruise, a trip to Hawaii, on the birdfarm, aircraft carrier and when we got back to North Island in Coronado across the bay from San Diego  I received orders to go to Seattle for new construction of USS Waddell. I hated life on the carrier and now I was going to be on a destroyer, a tin can, things were looking up.

I had taken the first class exam on Constellation and a few weeks after arriving in Seattle I was informed that I was now a first class petty officer. A first class Missile Technician on a missile destroyer meant that I was now indeed a big fish in a small pond. This pleasure cruise was turning out to be fun. 

Long story short, we made two WestPac cruises to Vietnam with many stops in Hong Kong, Sasabo and Yokosuka Japan and Subic Bay in the Philippines. We shot over five thousand rounds of five inch gun ammunition and fired a dozen, or so, missiles. 

Late in 1967, after returning from or second WestPac and due to turn around again for a third tour, I thought it out and decided that I would go to college on the GI Bill. While talking to the XO, the Executive Officer, the second in command after the captain I mentioned something about after I get out. Being I was a First Class Petty Officer, it was a given that I was a lifer and was well on my way to my twenty year retirement. The XO almost swallowed his tongue and sputtered "What do you mean getting out? You can't do that." I told him that the Navy had it's chance when, as you can see by looking in my service record, when I applied for NESEP and turned down. I told him I was going to further my education and that is that. 

On 14 March 1968 Waddell shot a Tartar missile at the Pacific Missile Range which I and my guys telemetered and steamed into NAND Seal Beach the next day. I picked up my discharge papers at the personnel office and was piped over the side "Plank owner departing" and I never looked back

Next, adapting to life as a civilian.