by Chucky
I didn’t know it at the time, but when I started out on my own I should have realized that I was born thirty years too early to fully join the Information Age. I knew I wanted in but wasn’t sure how to go about it. I wised up a little too late academically in High School and by graduation I was scratching my ducktail wondering what to do with the rest of my life...so I joined the Navy, which promised me a great education and Boot Camp in San Diego. “A vacation spot”, my recruiter said. Well, it was a start I thought because at that time, college was out of the question. It was probably for the best because I was still not in the right frame of mind for neither college nor slinging hash, from which I could use a little vacation. Thankfully the Navy provided me with the opportunity to reject slinging hash as a career choice and offered scrubbing decks, cleaning ovens, standing guard-duty, and chipping paint and eventually a little electronic repair work.
Four years three months and 21 days after swearing to support the Constitution of the United States I decided to embark on an academic career and support myself with the training and experience provided by the U.S.N. While working in the electronic field during college it became apparent that I really enjoyed the challenges of the technical field of electronics. While still committed to finishing college with some sort of Bachelor Degree, it was hard to visualize actually earning a living through the study of history and European cultural heritage which fascinated me. I really was mesmerized by being a techie, a self description that I have enjoyed most of my life. To this day ,possibly to my vocational detriment, it still fits.
Around age 28 I started becoming politically aware. I remember at that time wanting to vote for JFK, but also remember having no political reason for doing so other than he was good at asking for “Eisenhower’s job”, as he put it. It was a moot point because at the time I was too young to vote for JFK. The first president that got my vote was Richard Nixon and he would get it again today. At about this time I became a bit unstable and restless and set off to see the world, without the framework of a port-hole, so to speak. During the next twenty-five or so years I supported myself with various occupations sometimes technical, sometimes hazardous in different parts of the world without any outside support. I was enjoying total freedom I told myself, and indeed the journey was a cultural and philosophically enlightening experience, the results of which cemented my political beliefs to the right of center. Mind you I wasn’t giving it a lot of thought while that 2 1/2 ‘ foot diameter, three ton log was thundering down the mountain behind me... toward the creek bed in front of me... while logging in Oregon that summer of ‘73 but I’m sure that it helped build confidence that Chuck Michael can take care of himself. And of course during those few magical, precipitous seconds, trying to get around that log, I actually knew which direction , and at what speed I was headed. In a way that was becoming a comfortable feeling. Well, the good Lord provided me with a propitious hole to fall into at just the right time, and after watching that log crash by inexorably on its way to the creek bed with my ghost impaled round and round on one of its broken branch stubs I dusted myself off and began the joy of facing the rest of my life without a scratch while the faint cant of the hook tender, who witnessed the entire affair from across the valley, echoed:” I wouldn’t blame you if you quit right now Son.”(which I didn’t) Must have been quite a show. Anyway, I left the Willamette Valley with a whole new attitude, and an inkling of religious awareness, or maybe it was a reawakening of strict Christian upbringing, which I had come to reject, because it interfered too much with all the fun I was having.
Logging was a great experience , a little too great, but it got me into fantastic shape so I divorced my wife and went commercial fishing in Florida-never did make any money at it, but took in fully the unencumbered nature of living in the Keys while learning how to tie fishing knots and build lobster traps, and fight. The guys in Florida seem to like to fight a lot. If you were worked till you dropped all or your life, were never taught to take a bath, slept a lot of the time on the side of the road drunk out of your mind, and could never remember to brush your teeth. Hey! Where do you get your recreation?. So they sought solace in knocking one another’s teeth down their throat.. Fun at first, but take my word for it: It doesn’t last. Skiing is cleaner, and the company much more rewarding. After another year or two working as a part-time this and that I decided that I needed a brand new Ford Van, and toward that end landed a job as a telephone central office installer in Central Florida. my first real job in nearly a century. They taught me how to install and tie cabling...day after day after day until the van became mercifully paid for a year and a century later.. Actually they fired me for insubordination before I could quit, but I needed the medical insurance for a mending ankle. Blue, Orange, Green, Brown, Slate. BlueOrangeGreenBrownSlateblueorangegreenbrownslate...... FORGODSAKE! SHADDAPP! like my Service Number, that color code scheme became indelibly imprinted on my hard drive. Showing up stoned and remaining so all day long helped.
During those days in WinterHaven I broke my ankle skydiving and having decided that that was not the correct relationship to develop with an airplane, began taking flying lessons, which made a lot more sense to me. Now here was something really interesting, with lots of technical stuff to know that no one else does. What romance! Then the money ran out as it always does. The cost of learning how to fly is the same now as it always has been and always will be. All you got.
My life was beginning to take shape. Flying money flowed during the next few years, albeit sporadically, and after a stint in Saudi Arabia working as a tech for Saudi Airlines and bootlegger I was back with enough to finish my flying education, or begin it depending on your point of view. Right! All I had. “There it is. Make me a pilot. HOTDANG!” I began accumulating hours through cropdusting and instructing. Working was getting to be lots of fun again, and continued to be so, gaining flying licenses in three countries and graduating to flying multi-engine charter throughout Europe and the U.K. during the next 7 years. ThenthebottomfelloutandIlostmymedical.Endofflyingcareer. SSSHHHHHOOOOMMMMMM! What was that? That was your flying career Matey. Your sole
raison d’ etere. Your entire existence...and about $80,000. Was it something I had done in the past where all of my sins were catching up? No. That's what marriage is for. Pondering philosophically for a few moments, I cheered myself up by getting another divorce and returning to the States.
Not one to cry in my beer. (I never dilute any alcohol but straight Scotch. Just a dash of water over the cubes to enhance the taste.) I applied for a position as a roving avionics troubleshooter for Beech Aerospace Services, and for the following two years until settling down traveled throughout the U.K., the Mid East, Far East and South America troubleshooting and repairing aircraft for BeechCraft. In 1989 I left for a while to become a jump pilot and later a mechanic for a flying club and then Alaska Airlines and then back to Desert Storm with Raytheon. A relapse into unstable bliss, no doubt, that only served to remind me of the rewards of stability. About that time I think that I started becoming broody so when I landed in the Ft. Hood Area I bought a house and began looking for someone to give it away to. My beautiful wife of four years and mother of our two children and I met as I was drooling in a tax course she was teaching I married my tax advisor. Hey! Not just a pretty face here!
In the past ten years I have grown in any number or ways, all of which are manifested in my beautiful wife and only children, two gorgeous daughters. During the past five I have been educating myself in both hardware and software. Commitment is, I think, a key ingredient in a solid relationship, to a stable life, and certainly the means to an end. Commitment to God. family, country, and to oneself...And certainly a sense of humor.
…and then there is Crossroads Systems . but this was written in 2001. since then there was Iraq with Raytheon for 2 years then my present gig with Killeen ISD.
Update: So much for comittment. I opened up the door in late 2008 and got served with divorce papers. She has proven quite vindictive since then. Come to find out after a year of being single again I was married to someone who hated me. I don't think I've ever been hated before. After twice being the dumper, I'm not programmed to be the dumpee. That's the tough part.
So after contemplation of this ultimate rejection my conclusion is that the reason I'm on the tail end of three bad marriages is the inescapable fact that I never wanted to marry any of them, even Judy, the only one of the lot worthy of being addressed as a lady. Maybe they sensed it. Even though, to my mind, I was less than obvious. To their mind maybe I wasn't.
