Even before I left Marine OCS, I noticed that the record albums were so cheap at the Base Exchange that I started to buy a few on the weekends. Eventually, I bought so many I was forced to buy a new suitcase to carry them. I kept that suitcase and used it for many years after whenever I travelled anywhere, even to the UK in the 1990's. At some point while I was living in the condo on Franklin St. in Denver, I have a memory of giving it away to someone who needed a suitcase. (I never had enough storage space in the condo.) I am almost certain it was a large, medium-brown, sturdy, rubbery-plastic Samsonite. I could always pick it out on the crowded carousels at airports. I even had a baggage handler at the Honolulu airport compliment me on choosing a suitcase that would never get damaged, no matter how much punishment it endured in all those years of travel. It did sustain an extensive internal stain once that lasted until I parted with it. I had always loved Delaware Punch, a distinctive non-carbonated beverage that was made from a Delaware grape grown in Ohio. The bottling plant was in Texas. But I could only ever find Delaware Punch in California supermarkets when I visited my mom and my best friend Mike there. They used to buy six packs for me, some to drink while I was visiting and others to take back to Colorado. I used to pack them tightly into the suitcase, but one can got damaged in a cargo hold and leaked all over the insides of the suitcase and into some of my clothes, mostly underwear and socks. I was able to clean the clothes, though I did not bother to remove the stains within the lining of the suitcase.
After spending a week at the out-processing building for Marine OCS, I was off to National Airport (the Reagan plague on the nation and its national airport was a few years off). For several weeks I had been corresponding with an old high school buddy, Bill Vogt, who now lived with his brother, sister-in-law and family in Waterville, Maine, especially when I knew I was not going to make a career in the Marines. I'd never been to Maine before, never actually been to the East Coast before arriving at Dulles airport on that extended taxi ride to Marine OCS. Bill invited me to stay with them for awhile, to unwind from OCS and get my bearings on what I wanted to do after determining that the Marine Corps was not for me. I really had no idea what I was going to do. But I didn't want to fly directly back to California, in a way admitting that I didn't have the foggiest notion of where to go next and what to do with my life. Maybe Maine would provide some answers. If not answers, at least a pleasant diversion for a couple of weeks. (Looking back, I ought to have followed the advice of Sir Thomas More in A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, "Be a teacher." I could have gone back to Cal State Dominguez Hills, gotten a Master's Degree in History or Humanities or English, and gotten a cushy job as a Community College instructor in one of the burgeoning number of new Community Colleges the State of California would build in the next 20 years or so. But then I would not have written the Rainbow Arc of Fire series, and I would not be here writing this, nor you here reading this, so there's that.)
Frankly, in those days, I did not have a credit card, though I think they were rare, regardless. I don't even think there were debit cards. And, besides, I did not have a bank account. Possibly the Marines gave us an account with the Credit Union in order to deposit our pay checks for being at Marine OCS. It might have only been a few hundred dollars a month but we had even fewer expenses; and if all I bought were record albums and a suitcase for 10 weeks, I probably had a tidy little sum stashed away. (Maybe I was carrying it around as cash after I left. I just do not recall.) Regardless, I had somehow purchased a one-way ticket on Northeast Airlines, non-stop from National Airport to Boston. From there, I would be taking Air New England to Augusta, Maine, and then on to Waterford. In those days, Northeast featured what they would call "Yellowbirds", distinctively painted white and yellow aircraft, in my case a 727-100.
When we had arrived in Northern Virginia in March of '72, the landscape was that cold, gray and brown winter somberness I had never seen or felt before, not in perpetually sunny California. As our Yellowbird winged its way north from Washington DC, the now lush green of Virginia was slowly giving way to a chilling Winter scape. Spring had not yet exploded, especially below our jet soaring gracefully over lower New England. I might have had a glass of milk at Boston's Logan Airport before boarding the Air New England twin-engine Beech 99, more like a large private plane than an airliner. Maybe even a piece of cheesecake. Both a big mistake.
(A brief sidelight: On the Northeast flight to Boston, a couple of rows in front of mine, a young and handsome Air Force 1st Lieutenant got on the plane and sat down. Shades of my Air Force future though I had no inkling. I had always remembered that Paul Simon lyric from his BOOKENDS album, "Punky's Dilemma":
If I become a first lieutenant
Would you put my photo on your piano?)
The flight from Boston to Portland, Maine, was a nightmare for me. The air was rough and the skies cloudy. The plane was constantly buffeted, although I seemed to be the only one extremely bothered and bewildered. (Perhaps one or two other passengers in this rather full flight expressed their discomfort aloud at the more adventurous bumps and shifts.) But whether it was the milk or the cheesecake, or my tendency to produce too much stomach acid, I got ragingly sick to my stomach. Thank god they had airsick bags. This "airliner" was doing shimmies and shakes I never thought an airplane was capable of. At least not in 1972. I vomited profusely, but thankfully into the bag and not onto my fellow passengers.
When we landed at Portland and just about everyone else got off, the pilot came through the narrow cabin and routinely took my sealed airsick bag--I was dreadfully sick but always thoughtful. Had there been a cemetery by the Portland airport, I might have crawled off the aircraft and into a shallow grave. I felt very much at death's door.
Unfortunately, we still had at least a 20-30 minute flight to Waterville. I cannot image much was left in my distressed stomach, but I somehow recall that the heaves began again once we were airborne. And while they may have been dry heaves, they were heaves nonetheless. By the time the plane crawled to a stop in front of the modest terminal in Waterville, I remember stumbling down the steps of the Beech 99 and into the waiting arms of Bill and his brother. I think they instantly noticed how sick I was, and I believe the pilot briefly explained that I had not handled the flight very well.
Bill and his brother directed me into the back seat of Bill's car and I readily collapsed. When we got to the house, I was instantly introduced to the family but was taken directly to bed upstairs. In my lingering distress I fell asleep and did not wake up until the following morning--about 12 solid hours unconscious. So much for being toughened up by the Marines. Twenty-four hours away and I was a basket case.
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