I was born in New London Ct and moved to Memphis Tennessee at the ripe old age of 3! Growing up during the unrest of the civil rights era,
I was exposed to the ugly side of life at a young age when Dr Martin Luther King was assassinated right here in Memphis. At the time I was a teen and had an early morning paper route (yep we actually can read here in the deep south). The morning after the assassination I was escorted on my route (as was every other paper carrier that day) by a member of our city police department. There was a dusk to dawn curfew and the city was under tremendous stress and threat of uncontrolled riots. While some rioting did occur there was nothing widespreat since the police and national guard had effectively clamped down on everyone.
When I turned 18 I joined the service, I did my basic training in Ft Bragg NC (home of the airborne) and met the one person who I actually admired in the service. His name was 1st Sgt Butts (never found out his actual first name) and he inspired me to go to jump school with his tales of his time in the first parachute test platoon. Following my advanced training as a mortar crewman at Ft Jackson SC, I proceeded to Ft Benning GA for my jump school.
Getting thru jump school was no easy task and at that time there were no females allowed so the instructors were particularly brutal in their training methods. They drew delight from riding the officers among us and paid particular attention to one Marine Corp Major who was advanced in years. The man never stood a chance and dropped out after the first week. They got increasingly harder on us until the beginning of the third week of training. Up to this time we had been running anywhere from 5 to 11 miles a day each morning and again right after our lunch break, but this third week we were all of a sudden getting smiles from the men who had the week before been screaming at the top of their lungs at us. I would soon find out the reason for their grins… Each class has to make a series of 5 jumps during their last week in school from whatever type of aircraft is available at the time. Usually the planes end up being the workhorse C130 Hercules propeller driven craft, A slow flying low altitude craft used primarily in the undeveloped areas of the world. We however were going to be jumping JETS !!!!! Our craft were to be the venerable C141 Starlifter. The fact that you could (and sometimes did) receive burns from the jet blast of the inboard engines seemed to delight the instructors to no end and they led us to believe there would be massive casualties among us. Upon getting into the aircraft we noticed then that the military had predicted this and installed a "baffle" that would, when moved into place, redirect the blast away from us thus saving our "useless hides" as our instructors put it. This baffle also had a side effect… if during flight, you got anywhere near the open door you would be instantly sucked out, thus making chickening out at the last minute mute. If you chickened out the instructors would simply move you close enough to the door to look out whereupon you were instantly pulled out and thus completed your training. If you were still chicken by the time you got to the ground then they would let you leave, but usually the thrill was so great that the chickens wanted to "do it again".
I spent time in Vietnam on fire bases, and in the woods as infantry (and other stuff). The country is absolutely stunning, the people are extremely nice and courteous, They were having a little civil war (just like ours one side wanted to split from the other and the fight was to maintain the status quo of one country) and like our own war the north won out in the end and today we are trading with them for raw goods from their country.
After the service I stumbled around from job to job for a few years until my mother opened a small company here making commercial draperies and stuff for hotels and the hospitality industry. I went to work for her and here some 36 years later I am still at it. I had purchased her share of the company from her and I ran it by myself for a few months after she retired until she passed away. I decided that this was not what I wanted and sold the company to another individual who's father had gotten him into the same business. I worked for him until 2012. I would like to retire someday and move out of Memphis. The city has gone sadly downhill from the glory days of the 60's and 70's. I prefer small town life to this big city hustle and am looking for my "place in the sun"