I must have taken this picture of mom, Bill Campbell's wife, Linda Burgess, and another OT's wife at the OTSOM bar where many an officer trainee spent a Friday or Saturday evening in his cups.
It was here that the others in my flight found out that I did not drink and had me try one after another, to see if there was something alcoholic that I might enjoy drinking: Tom Collins, Tequila Sunrise, Tequila Sunset and, finally, a Slo Gin Fizz. That, I liked. I know, it's "sissy" drink. Your point?
With the festivities and the dinner over, I handed mom the keys to the Camaro (she later told me she was a bit drunk that night), and she headed off to find a motel near the base to sleep.
I have to relate that when we first arrived at OTS, we were warned of the hazing that occurred just before we became upperclassmen. In fact, we were hazed periodically when drunk upperclassmen would return to the dorms and demand a "Jody Call", which meant they wanted to hear how many hours and minutes they had left to their graduation. (We had to keep that information handy at all times.)
Then, if they were feeling particularly salty, and they usually were, they would make us then loudly call out the number of hours we had left until our graduation. They would loudly moan at those numbers, in mocking us and all the time we had left to go. And, of course, the night before we were to become upperclassmen, they gave us a huge hazing party. Nothing dangerous, really, just made us put blankets over our heads and they'd yell at us and make us do silly things. (I thought they had gone crazy.)
When we became upperclassmen with our new flight after FSP, we never once asked our lower class men to give us a Jody Call. But because we had not harassed them, they voluntarily gave us one the night before we were to graduate. Now, I was on Charge of Quarters (CQ) duty that final night with Paul Repak, I believe. After our guys did haze our lower class men, the lower class men were able to turn the tables and go after us.
Paul and I immediately hid out. We did not take part in the hazing until it was all over. And when the counter hazing commenced, we barricaded the door to the CQ/phone room and stayed in there quietly until the tumult died down.
I also have to relate one other story. There was this upperclassman who would come to my roommate's and my room on a Friday or Saturday night and tell us that we were letting our Cadet Flight Commander down, a good friend of his. We'd feel really bad because we were trying very hard to do well.
Later, one of our flight members was told by this same upperclassman to report to our Cadet Flight Commander and tell him that he (the lower class man) had been doing a particularly good job. When he did as he was told, our Cadet Flight Commander turned to his Cadet assistant and said, "Ramirez must be drunk again." When we heard this, my roommate and I had to finally laugh because we realized then that he had probably been drunk every time he came to our room and told us we were not measuring up. We had both worried unnecessarily that we might flunk out because he kept telling us how poorly we were doing.
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