7) One summer of the four years I spent in Biloxi, we had a hurricane. I think it was Dora, but I’m not sure. Even though I don’t remember the name, I remember the storm. It was one of the neatest things I have ever experienced. The days when the storm was at its worse, we were restricted to base, so they wouldn’t let us leave. But, as soon as I could I went out and drove around and looked at all the damage. It’s a lot like what you see on TV. Everybody puts big sheets of plywood on their windows. Trees get blown over. I went down to the beach and it was a mess. I loved walking on the beach and looking out at the Gulf of Mexico. Now, you could hardly walk for all the liter that was on the sand. It took them weeks to get it all cleaned up. Luckily, it wasn’t the worse hurricane of the century. It was nothing like Katrina in New Orleans. I suppose I shouldn’t like it since it did do a lot of damage. But even though we couldn’t leave the base, I was still able to go outside when the winds were blowing and I really loved it. I guess the raw power is what impressed me, I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to be somewhere and experience another one, but never have. I guess I’ll have to move south for that to happen or visit at the right time.
One of the fun things I used to do while at Keesler was to go down to New Orleans once in a while. I tried to go several times a year. I saw my first Mardi Gras. It was the first time in my life that I saw people walking down the street openly drinking liquor from bottles. In some places, having an “open bottle” in public is against the law. But, not in New Orleans. At least not during Mardi Gras. I really liked to visit New Orleans. Later, I would live there for two years. Unfortunately, living there was not as much fun as visiting.
9) At some point in my Air Force career, I decided that it would be cool to go back to college and take some classes. There was a small junior college about 45 miles north of Biloxi in Perkinston, Mississippi. There was this beautiful little campus and I was able to arrange my schedule at the base so I could go up there a couple times a week to attend classes. I didn’t complete my degree there, but I did take quite a few classes and got a good start toward what I would finish later at Brigham Young University. My most vivid memory of Perkinston was a Psychology class. I had been in the south for a couple years and I could talk the talk almost as good as any southerner. I said ‘Y’all’ with the best of them. I was sitting in class one day when the teacher decided to go around the class and ask where everyone was from. All of the kids were from somewhere close by in Mississippi. Then they got to me. Unfortunately I told the truth and said Battle Creek, Michigan. All of a sudden, it was deathly quiet in the classroom. You could have heard a pin drop. I was a “yankee”. Suddenly, I was the enemy. I was never treated the same after that.
I’m running out of material, so tomorrow will probably be the last about the Air Fource. At least until I remember some more.
Dad