Grace Transcript

Interview with Bill Grace conducted by Tara Lokke

TL- So thank you for participating in Beat Your Gums. Please state that you understand the details about my project and knowing that, you give your consent in participating under the circumstances agreed upon and signed in the consent and release form.

BG-I do.

TL-Great. So I’m going to start off with just some basic information about your military past so things like the branch the company division units squad position which war you were in…

BG- Okay: Cold War I was in the Air Force and I went to basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas; which is where everybody goes. Then I went to school at Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul, Illinois for about a year and then was stationed at Ellsworth Air Force Base in Rapid City, South Dakota.
Chanute was a base that was a World War II base and we stayed in wooden barracks, open bay, which means the bottom floor had I think 80 guys in bunk beds the top floor 40 and single beds so you wanted to be on the top floor. When you been there a while, you move up to the top floor as those folks ship out to their permanent assignments. The latrine was all open there was a, is this, do you wanna hear this?

TL- Yeah!

BG- Okay so there was a trough urinal but you weren’t allowed to use it because it was too hard to keep clean. So there were like half a dozen toilets for all these people and there were no stalls there was just toilets and then there was a shower room that had I think four nozzles it was lined with tin and then there was a slop sink were some guys did her laundry most guys didn’t do that they sent it out but there were a few. And so when you got orders and shipped out you were allowed to use the trough (laughter). There were wooden posts there on the floors holding up the second floor and holding up the roof, big wooden posts and on each post was a butt can, a number 10 can half filled with water and so when you put out your cigarette you dropped it in the butt can and those had to be cleaned every day of course because you had to have fresh water because you had inspections every day and so that had to be done. and those butt cans were also used when you were ironing your fatigues which are, I don’t know what you’d call them utilities or, or, olive drab colored cotton blouses and pants,and because this was a school squadron it was a spit and polishing thing and so you had to iron your clothes every day otherwise you didn’t look the way they wanted you to look. You had a footlocker on which you would put your folded blanket, and then you had a sponge, and then you had a bottle of starch and so you’d pour some starch into the water and you’d put the sponge in there and then you’d paint your clothes with it and then you’d run your iron over it and it was stiff as boards and then the next day you look pretty sharp until you sat down and the wrinkles appeared. Then that water can also be used for, not with the starch in it of course, but you know to spit shine your shoes, because you had to spit shine your shoes and there were all kinds of, everybody had a gimmick for how to, how to find the best way to spit shine your shoes. So you got a little bit of water and a rag (usually maybe an old sock) and you’d wrap the rag around your finger and you’d push it into the polish then you’d get a drop of water to put on it and then you’d just (rubs finger on table) for hours you know it took a long time to build up what you’d call a base coat so that it was clear and then once you had it beautiful, you had to shine the whole shoe, in our squadron we were a spit and polish squad so well, and then to keep that shine for a couple days you buy a bottle Johnson’s Glow Coat, which is floor wax, and then you dip your cotton ball you just turn the bottle over and you take your cotton ball and so it’s saturated with floor wax and then you paint the shoe, you only go over it one time, and then you had a really hard finish on that shoe and that would get you two or three days before you had to spit shine your shoe again unless you scuffed them somehow. and then some guys thought it was best to use, there was a product called a Five Day Deodorant Pad and it was, women used them, and they were these little pads and then so so instead of rolling on Ban or whatever you just took this pad and you just did that and it, it must of had an alcohol something in there so some guys thought that was good some guys used lighter fluid I mean there was always somebody trying something new. Some guys’ll put the polish on and then they’d heat it with their lighter iso it would melt in and but there's just no other way to do it than the slow way. When we arrived we went by train from Lackland to Chanute and and it was a sleeper car because it was a long ride and it so you were just like in a, in a little thing that’s just about the size of a phone booth and it had a sink, you know, so you’d be looking out the window and at night the porter or some guy would come by and they would flip that into a bed so you could sleep. And we went up through the Ozark Mountains well what a thrill that was to see the charicature of the, of the tar paper shack with TV antenna you know and an out house and stuff because, because you’re seeing things by rail that you don’t see, you know, by car. So the guy across the corridor from me in this train was a guy named Harry L*** and turns out he was, he ended up being in my outfit at Chanute and in my outfit when we went to South Dakota, Tayoba and so we’re talking across this narrow corridor and he worked in the hardware store in somewhere, I forgot the name now, somewhere in Indiana this is 1962 so I'm a little fuzzy. And I work in a hardware store in Windsor, Connecticut so we had a lot in common so we’re comparing notes about hardware stores and stuff and, and, and he was a neat old guy so quite a bit older than I at the time, I think maybe by three or four years, and then when we get to Chanute they take us by bus in the barracks that I described and all that kinds of stuff so but our, we, our school hadn’t started yet so we had, I don’t know, I guess it was 4,5,6 weeks where we were just sitting around that was very demoralizing for me it’s like, “really? I’m wasting my time, what’s going on? Come on let’s do this! Let’s do something!” I'm impatient and and really, really fed up so I'm, you know, so, so they had us, you can’t have soldiers sitting around so they have, they find work for you to do. Like you pick dandelions because you can’t have any dandelions on the grass outside the barracks and you pick up cigarette butts. One of the details was shoveling rock salt out of a box car into a big pile for, for the winter. Well, the trouble with that is these beautifully spit shined shoes, the salt just really destroys them. One of the details was working in the base laundry because every week you change your, your bed linens and so so we were, you know, doing that so. But it was all experience building kinda, you know? Then there was the infamous kitchen police were, KP, were the best job I had in KP was was the garbage rack and, and what happens is it's like a, it’s like a garage so it’s maybe for- it’s like a loading dock, okay? but smaller and maybe the size of where we are right here and there were these heavy duty steel garbage cans and this was, this was at - the noncommissioned officers club, the NCO Club, and so we were their labor, right, so, so they come out with these, with this garbage on trays and they dump them in these cans. Well there were pig farmers that would come and pick up the garbage so they would dump it into trucks and so then you had the cans left so we had, we had steam hoses that we’d steam clean the cans and stuff. But the good part about all that was when the NCO’s were finished and the meal was over, so we had a, you know those big huge trays that you put your cakes on, so they’d bring out a cake, the cake was going to be thrown out and we’d say “WOAH, Hoh!” you know, so we had a lot of good, not so good for you but, you know, interesting food that came by there and anything that was good was probably taken home by the cooks, you know, left over. And so finally school started and it was a 3359th school squadron and and and it was so much, so you’d march, you get up, I think it was around, I don’t remember what time it was now but it was early, it was dark so probably around 5 or 5:30 and then you’d march in formation. Four men across and probably 20 deep you’d march to the Chow Hall which was maybe, I don’t know, half a mile or something like that and then you’d fall out now whoever, okay so you’re going to the Chow Hall and you’ve got a, you’ve got a steel tray with a couple compartments on it but and it was pretty much the same stuff, eggs, you know but the amazing thing was that you had these big grittels and the cooks you know and they’d so these guys could break you know take an egg in each hand, crack it and break it so that they’d run together and then they have this big spatula but the amazing thing was you have these eggs were cooked at the same time and they’d flip them over, over easy, right? One of them would be raw just and the other would be, you know, not done properly and then you’d stick your tray out and then they’d slap the thing on your tray. And of course every once in a while, I think they tried to do it so that it would break the yolk so it would splatter you once in a while. Then they had, you’ve heard of SOS?

TL- No.

BG- So we had it but the SOS (”Stuff” On a Shingle) that they served us was not that chipped beef, it was ground beef and gravy on toast, which was fine you know it was good the Navy gets the good food, you know. And so then, you know, they’d blow a whistle then you go out and you form up again and then you march to school which is just down the flight line what so while we’re marching, because there was an air strip and we were marching down, so while we’re marching to class there are other guys marchin toward us from class so what happens is when your marchin’ properly and you lean back and you hit your heels hard and so you don't bounce, okay, and if you ever see a good band or or a bunch of soldiers or police and fire their probably pretty bad about doing this stuff but properly done, heads don’t move, they don’t bob up and down, you’re just going along. And that’s the way you had to march. And the way that you made sure that you didn’t bounce up and down was to lean back and set in your heels so you’d march down there. Well what happens is so we have a heel beat of our 60 or 80 guys or however and this group has a heel beat and it’s never going to be the same and so which one is going to end up bobbin’ up and down. So it became kind of a little bit of a contest. You know what a goose step is?

TL- Mhm.

BG- Okay so we ended up almost doing a goose step so that we would be louder than they were (laughter). And so all you hear is rumph rumph. Now if you were a right guide, okay, the right guide is usually, okay when you form up, you’re just a bunch of people so they so they say if you're taller than the man in front of you then tap him on the shoulder and move ahead. So you do that then you do a right face and you do it again: if you’re taller than the man in front of you you can tap him and move up. So you keep doing that until you have the tallest down to the shortest. Then they go to the back and they take the shortest guy and they make him the right guide. The reason is because he is going to set the step the the length of step now it’s supposed to be 30 inches or something like that but whatever it is you don’t want these guys in the back trying to run to catch up so the right guard is there and he’s close by he can hear the heel beat. but if you are if you if you carry the guideon which is a little flag so if you're out front, that’s an honor to carry that thing, alright, but you're like maybe 15 to 20 feet ahead and when this other group comes by, you mostly hear their heel beat and you can hardly hear your squadron’s heel beat (laughs) so you just really hoping that you can stay with your guys and the approaching marching squadron heel beat doesn’t throw you off. So then, so then we’d be in school for I think six hours and then we leave school and then we’d march back to the chow hall for lunch. Afterh lunch, and then, and then we’d march back to barracks and then it was pretty much free time, you had homework to do, you’d write letters and shine shoes, and iron and you know you didn't go off there and then they had if you didn't want to go to chow at night, maybe we didn’t now, maybe we, oh at night no that's right, at night I think you’d run your own for chow for dinner. But anyway the NCO club, these guys sold pizzas, and so they’d come around in station wagons and come to the barracks and the guy would come in the front door and then he would yell, “Pizza, Pepsi, Coke, Orange, Rootbeer, badupbaduh” and so everybody runs down and he give him whatever the amount of money it was, it wasn’t a lot and so you had this pizza and it was maybe 12 inches diameter and it was in a, it was on a little piece of cardboard and it was in a, in a, kind of a bag that was white with writing on it and it was, it looked like a pie, you know, because it was tall at the top and that’s how you handle it, you’d pick this up by the top of the bag – it was like a tent over the pizza. The greasiest thing you've ever seen but of course to a 19-year-old so much the better. So a lot of times you would just do that because it was fun if you had the money to do it otherwise you could eat, and the food wasn’t, it wasn’t bad, you know. And some of us would take, if you went to the chow hall you know they have this, the ice cream that was like in a block wrapped in paper and if you, I swear if you let that, if you take the paper off and if you left that sitting in the sun and it would round the corners but it wouldn’t turn into a puddle like real ice cream but sometimes what we would do is take half of that and put a glass of milk and then beat it around with a fork and you got kind of a cheap milk shake you know if you weren’t going to get the… so they had, let’s see you had, you had milk and then they had some kind of bug juice and then and then coffee at all, at all the meals I guess. and so, weekends you could get a pass and go off base and I had a buddy, Tom K******, who lived in Kalamazoo Michigan, there’s an old song Glenn Miller, “Got a Gal in Kalamazoo”, I ended up dating a girl in Kalamazoo, and so we would go, he had a 56 Plymouth and we would go up once in a while, I would go on the weekend so the first time I did this I went with him and his father had a big job with will wood contact cement company and they had a beautiful big house and I’m like you know this is way over my head so we’re going to dinner at the club, “did you bring a jacket?” “yeah I got a jacket,” “no no that’s a sport coat,” “a sport coat?!” Well a lot of these you know really nice clubs have jackets for the unwashed so we go there and I get a jacket that’s three sizes too small you know but, you know basically you could go and you could put it on the chair but you had to have a jacket and a tie and they fixed me up with a tie and stuff like that. they were very and nice next time you know I was better prepared. And this guy used to, okay we were a couple hours from Chicago and so what he would do is he would try to fill up his car with guys going to Chicago and he would charge them 3,4,5 bucks I don’t remember what the amount was this guy was he was always up for a buck, he used to cut hair I wouldn’t go to him but he cut hair in the latrine and then he’d make a few, he was always after money to make a buck. And so he ended up being in our outfit in South Dakota as well and so then after- oh then! Okay so the first, let’s see the first half of the school was like four or five months was basic electricity so we learned radar tube type stuff you know old radios had tubes old radar had tubes and so we learned about that which we would never use again but you had to have a basic in that. And right next to us in this big humongous building was a parachute rigging school so they had tables, oh my gosh, they had, I don’t know how long they were, I bet they were a hundred feet long and maybe 3 feet wide they were made of wood very highly varnished. And so so when you had a break you’d go out into this hallway and the hallway was on the outside of the building and where they had Coke machines and stuff where we’d used to take a penny and you’d slide it back and forth to get it the size of a dime and then get a Coke, but we could and then it had windows so we’d watch these guys rig parachutes and that was fascinating. and what was even more fascinating was watching them test the parachutes because they take a, they take a C47 also known as a Goonie Bird and they’d load it up with these dummies that were I don't know, it was made of wood or something, and they would fly over this big field next to the air field and they’d drop these things so most of them, the parachutes would open some of them wouldn’t and these things would stick, they didn’t have real long legs, but they’d stick up to their waist in the soft soil because they were flying, I don’t know how, maybe a thousand feet away. And then, and there were, it was, it was a lot of fun, you’d hook up like, like for a practical joke you’d charge a capacitor put one wire to the work bench and one wire to the guy next to you to his stool and he’d come in and as soon as he sat down and touched it, WHACK he’d get a little shock. So the second half of the thing was in a different building and that was where we got into transistors this was again early stuff transistors and P injunctions PNP junctions and so we were learning these machines for so so what we were we were going to be ballistic missile checkout equipment specialist this was for the Minuteman Missile, which was brand spanking new it was only one base with people in it NCOs, right, sergeants and we were the first class of basic airmen, you know, grunts, through the school and so we were to learn the there was a, one computer was a BGS 72 one was a C 90 and one was a C 91 and I don’t remember who made them but the C 90 and the C 91 were made by one company the BGS 72 was made by another company and you had to have a interface because the C 91 you used 0, +12 and -12 Volts the BGS 72 used way minus voltage you know which was just typical government stuff. So we went through, oh gosh, a long time doing that and then, you know we’d see these films there were 12 of us in this class, of you know a missile being shot out of a silo and stuff and so and then one day they brought in a truck it’s called a transporter erector, it’s a trailer truck, big ol’ long thing and it’s how they would install a missile into a silo and so you have this big huge long truck, called a Transporter Erector, and then they set it on these, they look like two big anvils, but they were big next to the silo and then they tilt this thing up hydraulically and then this big huge dump truck thing stands vertically over the silo and then they slowly lower it into the silo, now I never saw them do it at the silo but, they had the truck there so we got to see a little bit more about this. and then we used to cut up a lot you know to the point where one day (small laugh) our curren- I mean, you’re looking at 12 guys who live together I mean, we were in different, well when we got there, Ellsworth, we got there on our own. At Ellsworth we were in proper brick barracks you still had a you know a bathroom but it had stalls the showers were stall showers there was two guys to a room sometimes three depending on if they wanted to be there if you wanted to have three guys, wall lockers you know it was, it was nice and and there was like three or four floors so I first got put in with these two guys on the first floor and the walls and the ceiling were all totally covered with playboy centerfolds so I went to a couple of my buddies, Harry Lund, the guy on the train and Byron Bailey strangely enough we had two Byron B*****'s B Y R O N B*****, Byron G and Byron E now that's pretty strange for a dozen guys and and so anyway Byron G was, and and Harry, I said, “I can't take this” “Ah move in with us!” “Okay!” so we got a bunk so there was three of us in there and we had a good time and so we use the the area between the window and a storm window was our refrigerator where you put your soda and well there may be a couple of us that drank beer, I didn’t drink it at the time I'm all over the place because I’m you know so so but when we were leaving when we got done with school at Chanute back thirty, we got a two week leave and that was when the Cuban missile crisis cropped up so they said that we’re probably not get leave we’re going to go right to Ellsworth well that kinda leaves you scratching your head because we’re going to an Intercontinental Ballistic missile base ICBM base that's not even operational yet it doesn’t even have all the warheads on it doesn't even have all the guidance packages on we’re not going to send ICBMs to Cuba and so as the day came as it got closer they said “nah, nah you guys go on” so we took weeks you know I came back Windsor, Connecticut. I had a 55 Chevy and so I said I'm driving to South Dakota after my leave, so I picked up Harry in, somewhere outside of Chicago and then we picked up the other guy in Kenosha Wisconsin which is where they used to build a Rambler automobile, American Motors and then we went up to you know somewhere up north, La Claire? Some place in Wisconsin. Across the Mississippi which wasn’t much more stream and then we went off to we went through sue city Iowa and Sue Falls South Dakota which were across from each other. and New Years Eve we spent in Mitchell South Dakota which is the home of the Corn Palace and it looked, the whole outside of the building looks like it’s made out of corn they had they used to have political conventions there it’s a bit party place this is a tiny little town we decided we are going to this restaurant named Steak so there’s this little, I mean this is not a big place so we get into this restaurants the three of us is sitting in a booth and we order these steaks so one of the guys says you know to the waiter, we’re not talking a white table cloth here now, so he says he asks for some I don’t know if it was salt or steak sauce or something and the guy, the guy said that would be an insult to the chef this steak is done just the way you need it and we’re all like WOAH okay so the next so we drove all the and the next day, I think it’s, I may be off on my geography of this so then we have you ever heard of wall drug? W.A.L.L Wall drug. Well Wall drug is famous it’s a drugstore in Wall South Dakota in the middle of nowhere and what they advertise is you come in and get a free glass of water. It’s a store it’s a drugstore now it's humongous so so we had to go see Wall Drugstore, it’s on the main drag so we go into wall drug and have a cup of coffee and sit around and, and you’ll see a sign about a mile down the road when you go by Wall Drug: “Wall Drug: 24,900 and some odd miles wouldn’t you rather turn around?” And so right near there was the Badlands of South Dakota so we went over to see the badlands and that was pretty interesting and then we get to so we pull in, New Years Day, to Ellsworth Air Force Base and stuff and that was New Years Day and like, and it was 60° above zero and I don’t remember now it was two or three days later the chill factor was 60 below zero it was like I don’t know about 20 or 30 below or 20 or 30 I don’t know what the numbers were now but that’s what it was and so so one of the things we did there because because we weren’t operational yet so you would spend your days doing classes like there’s certain qualifications you have to do and certain pieces of test equipment and so we would do that but then you had to you know mop floors and, and there was this busbar, it’s a copper bar maybe 3 inches wide and probably a quarter inche thick and it goes all the way around the electronic shop it’s bolted to the wall probably 7 feet off the ground so that, and it’s, it’s building ground, I mean, and so anything you're doing you clip onto that to make sure you have a proper ground. We had to shine that and it was copper and we had to oxidize and then we had training in something called, let’s see, broken arrow would be with nuclear accident, what you had to do if somebody messed up. And then there was seven high which was an infiltrator and if you saw somebody without a badge you tackle them and yell for the air police. This was a big huge hanger, the largest hanger is a B36 hanger it was only, it was a huge hanger, where all these shops were. So one day we were told to wash the floors. There was a wheel missing on this, it was a tub, the size of ah maybe from here to here maybe 3 feet long 2 feet wide 3 inches deep two tubs in it then you had clean water soapy water in one side and clean water in the other side and you’d mop and mop so you’d have to go and clean the, clean the shop floor, you know. “Hey Sarge, you know this is, This is not safe it’s missing a caster and a wheel you know it’s like maybe 8 or 10 inches in diameter” “Yeah yeah just shut up and do it” “Okay Sarge” so we would have a little fun with those so we had this thing where we would come around the corner, we’d work around the corner, of course it goes over because we’d make it go over and it’s just water all over the floor. “YOU IDIOTS!” “Sarge, we told yah!” Destructive compliance, you know, but you know you’ve got to have fun. So we were so bored we used to volunteer for things. we volunteered for corrosion control at the Titan Missile Sites. corrosion control was nothing, but the Titan Missile Sites were really cool because they were all underground, people lived there. There are I think only three missiles to a site and they were underground and when you went there this is really a Jules Vern thing when you enter there was a stairway they had a, there was a Butler building, a metal building up top which had supplies and paint and stuff like that which we learned you need a lot of paint. and then you had the stairway and there were cameras in there and then you get down to a blast door and you had to have you, you had to know somebody to get in, right? They just, so then you get in and you’re going through these tunnels, so you’d have these hemispheric areas like three or four of them where the missiles were and they were connected by underground tubes and there was, and then there was, so one of the things we had to do was there was this generator room with three or four huge diesel engines in case they lost outside power so there was a floor underneath that. And the concrete was potted so we had to go, bent over at the waist, to clean up all the concrete dust then they had us painting the walls in this domed building and so we though, “okay we can do this” so we’d throw the paint up on the wall and spin it around with the roller, guy comes in he says, “you know you guys are making a mess in here and I know you’re going to clean it all up and everything like that but, but you’re not going to run out of paint because we have a whole building upstairs full of paint, oh okay alright. And then, and then some of us volunteered for survival school. And that was neat we lived in teepees in the woods made out of parachute and you’d make a bed out of, you know, you know, pine boughs and stuff like that. But, and cooking and then reconoinment in other words if you don’t have a compass, how do you get from here to there? So an interesting thing, they send you off and they say, “alright, you want to pick a spot, you see where you are, now pick a landmark, a big tree, a huge boulder, whatever, mile away and a half as far as you can see and go for that. And then pick another one in the same direction and go for that.” And you do that. So we would go. If you’re right handed, you will make probably a, I don’t remember the size, a mile or a two mile diameter circle to the right. If you’re left handed, you will go to the left. So that’s why you pretty much have to have a compass if you’re in thick woods. And, let’s see, I don’t know too much more about that. They, oh and then they taught you about if you’re in a truck, in the winter and you break down in South Dakota, under no circumstances do you leave the truck, because when people leave the truck, they find them within a mile, dead, frozen. You don’t leave the truck. And before you leave the base in a truck, which we sometimes had to do to go to a missiles site, you had to have a sleeping bag for each person, because if it breaks down, you’re not going to be able to run the truck if there’s a whole lot of snow and stuff and all that. And they would have signs up, “Freezing”, let’s see, “Skin will freeze today in, like, 32 seconds.” So if you take your gloves off, whatever. Luckily, this was considered a “cold weather airbase”. Which means that we could draw cold weather clothing, which is leggin’s that were real thick and parkas with the wolverine fur around the hood and these, we called them bunny boots. They were white rubber boots and they even had a, an air bladder in them with the, with a valve that you could open up, because if you went up in an airplane, you had to equalize the pressure otherwise the boot might blow up or something, I don’t know. Anyway, that’s what it was for. And then the heavy gloves and stuff. And now Chanute Airbase was not considered a cold weather air base and it got so cold there in southern Illinois in the winter time you would wear long underwear and your fatigue pants and your brogans, (combat boots), and you would put golashes on over them and then you’d wear your field jacket with a liner, which is, you know, you know a short coat liner, and over top of that, you would wear your rain coat, which was a dress, well it was blue it wasn’t dress, but it was, so that would be your windbreaker. And then you had gloves, and the military gloves are really cool because they had wool gloves and then they had a leather over top and we had face masks, these things were leather and you’d strap them on and they had a snap for your nose and a snap for your mouth so if you wanted to have a cigarette, which everybody did back then, you had to pop one side and you could have a cigarette. And the nose thing, I don’t know what that, no I don’t think that had that thing, I think it was just open. So you really looked pretty scary, you know, dressed in this outfit. And it was hard. And you had a book bag that went over your shoulder and you put your hand on it so when you marched, you know that’s how you carry your books to school and stuff, but even so, it was wicked cold there but with this cold weather gear you didn’t even feel the cold. In the winter, when it got real cold like that, you’d take the battery out of your car and bring it into the barracks so that you could start your car the next morning. This guy Kennedy, (small laugh) he would give guys a ride to the shop where we were and he would charge them a buck-, I’ll walk. It got wicked hot in the summer there, the humidity would be down around 1 or 2%, they would even close the Black Hills National Park to automobiles because they were afraid of a spark and ironically we were in a computer room in one of these buildings and you know for a couple weeks at a time on second shift, and back then the computer rooms were cold, like 60 degrees, so here we were coming out of a hot afternoon it’s I don’t know 102, 105 with low humidity and then you go in this room that’s 60 degrees, it’s like “yo!” you want to be in there but then you don’t because you’re going to want to put a jacket on. We would go out, oh another, another thing we did, we had they had a problem with the survailence at the missile sites. Now the Minuteman Missile site, they had, I think they were like, let’s say in South Dakota I think there might have been 150 missiles spread all over the place. And so, so a flight might be, might be maybe ten missiles and there would be two officers at the site and it would be a ranch house, which was a bunk house, and a kitchen, a bunk house maybe I don’t know 15-20 guys and a couple of air policemen, and, and a, and then there was this elevator that went way down, when you get out of the elevator straight ahead there was a blast door and that’s where the, the, the pod, the room was, where these two officers were with the keys to the console to launch the missile. So, so like one table, one desk would be here and one would be over there so, so one person could not set off, could not turn both keys, and they were each armed with a side arm, you know, pistol, so one guy goes crazy they shoot him dead. Now what these guys mostly did was study for their whatever, their next degree or whatever or military or whatever it was you had to be bored, there was a cot there and stuff but it had to be very boring. So that was there. So then, well probably in some case, I don’t know how far they were, quite a ways would be the individual silo so we would, they, they, they had a couple of us go out there to change these, these electronic drawers to make it less sensitive, because what happened was there were sage brush or birds, large birds, that would fly through that would set off the survalance and that’s, so there’s somebody at a console saying, “oh man we have intruders at, at, at, you know, India 9” so they’d send a helicopter with an air policeman out there to see what’s going on. And they did that a few times and then “hey we got to change this” so the guys were civil service guys out of Omaha, Nebraska, and so but if a missile has either a, a war head or a guidance package on it, it has to have this Strategic Air Command- SAC- which is no longer. It had, so, so SAC, they had what they’d call two-man coverage so that means that you had to have “blue suit” coverage, Air Force, so two Air Force guys had to be with these guys if they went to a silo. So we’d ride with them after, you know, in their trucks and we were along with them, these guys were making huge money, you know, they were getting, ah let’s see, $100 a month was what my pay was then, as an E-3 so, so we go out there and they, so these missile sites have a big huge chain link fence with barbed wire around them and then there’s a, the main silo, which is, has a cement top to it, which if a missile was to, was launched, there’s an explosive charge that blows the top off and then the missile launches and then there was a personnel access hatch where you’d turn the key and this big huge cement cover came up and then there was this plug called a nitro plug, a nitroglycerin plug I think that’s what it meant and it was maybe 3 feet in diameter, probably four feet thick, and it was on a big screw so when you turned the key, this thing would, it took 15 minutes to get into the silo, get it down far enough where you could get into the silo, there were different levels in the silo where the equipment was and there was a ladder that was, it was an aluminum ladder that was attached to the edge of the silo and the bottom was attached to this plug so as this plug went down, the ladder extended so you could climb down, down the ladder. So each truck had a crane on the back of it, and you know, light duty things, because some of these drawers, these electronic drawers, they weighed 70 or 80 pounds and so you’d, you’d want to crank them up, even though that was slow and tedious. And so the floors were all shock mounted, so the floors, like, the first floor had all the electronic stuff and then they had humungous batteries, this probably 18 inches wide, 3 feet tall, and maybe 4 feet deep, and maybe, I don’t know how many there were, there were a lot of them. And then there was a, another building underground that had a big diesel generator. And then there was power that came in from the road somewhere so if the power from the road failed, and they would test these things every once in a while so if the power from the road failed, the diesel generator would start up and if the diesel generator didn’t start quickly enough or if it were out of fuel, then the batteries would take over and the lights would dim for a minute and you’d hear this, these all the generators start to turn up and so we had that happen one time. One of the guys who was a little nervous anyway, you know these floors are around the missile, the missile sits in the middle of the silo and then there were these metal floors that are shock mounted. So, so we get down there and the diesel generator, there was a test and the diesel generator didn’t start, and the lights dimmed down and then you hear this rrrrrrrrrruuuuu so we knew we could scare this guys. So we start jumping up and down on the floor and so the floor starts to shake and then so everything worked out fine anyway. So one day we take this drawer out and these guys set it on the nitro plug and they said rather than just carry it up with the crane just set it on the plug, we’ll go up there, have a cigarette and once it gets back up again, we’ll put it in the truck. So we’re sitting there, then all of a sudden, maybe five minutes into this thing, we see the ladder rungs start flying out of the hole. What they did was they put the drawer up next to the ladder and now the ladder couldn’t telescope because the drawer was in the way. And so it was destroyed, so it was breaking the ladder and the rungs were flying up, put a hole in this drawer. It was, they were not happy. I’m glad I didn’t do it, we were just there laughing.
And so I, so we were supposed to be at the Launch Control Center for one day, and ended up being five days. And they’re not supposed to do that so, I mean, we didn’t take a change of clothes or anything or shaving gear or nothing so, so I was in the truck in the back seat so I jumped out of the truck, and I had my wallet in the back of my pocket and I hit, in my, I don’t know, whatever pocket it was in, I caught it on the door handle on my way out and it caught underneath the wallet and now these pants that I’ve been wearing for, for a couple days, and starched for I don’t know how many, I don’t know, months and months, didn’t have a lot of integrity left, right? So now I’m at the time 180 pounds. So anyway, it rips my pants so almost off, I mean I’m just, you know. So that was a big laugh, but I don’t have anything to change into so I had jeans that I brought along so I could sit around and watch TV in and shoot the bull so the next morning I can’t wear these pants so I put on the jeans and my fatigue shirt so we go out and come back in and the air police sergeant was there, “ what are you doing with jeans?” I said, “ I ripped my pants.” “You’re out of uniform.” I said, “yeah but I don’t have anything-“, “ I’m writing you up,” so he writes me up for a Court Marshall, for like an Article 32. Now Article 32 is basically you just say, “alright you got me” so they slap your hand, but it’s in your record that you got and Article 32. And so when we got back this major, I had to go report to a major, clean fatigues, shiny shoes, you know. So he says, “you got an Article 32, what are you going to do?” I said, “I want a full Court Marshall, I’m not taking this Article 32, this is an outrage, I mean they were supposed to deliver mail, we didn’t get any mail,” not that I was a big bad ass guy, you know, but, but I wasn’t but even, so this guy was being a jerk, this air policeman so the major says, “how many sets of fatigues you got?” I said, “ I don’t know, three?” He says, “go buy another say and just forget this whole thing.” “Yes sir!” (chuckle). A guy with some sense, you know. So we used to go on trips, one of the guys got married in Cheyenne, Wyoming so, so we, we took off in our little train of cars and, and, and went to his wedding in Cheyenne, Wyoming, we got to see Devil’s Tower, which is, you know, a tourist thing, I mean. And we went to Spearish and Deadwood and, and of course Mount Rushmore and, and saw sights while we were out there, you know the, the, the woods that they always, oh Black Hills! Black Hills State Park. And oh, and then the time, oh the time I went up to do the, the missile sites, that was in Montana, that was a TDY- temporary duty- so they load us on to a Gooney Bird, a C-47, which is a D3, a passenger plane as well, back in the day, and they, they give us all parachutes. So we were in these seats, they were like benches, they were all along the fuselage. So they’re telling us, you know, if there’s trouble, you know, there’s a red light up there, if it turns green you bail out. You jump up, you open the door and you pull this D-ring and then you’re kind of on your own, and “okay, but Sarge, you didn’t say anything about a landing”, “Oh we’re going to land, we’re going to land, don’t worry about it.” So, so we’re staying in the nice barracks up there, so we brought these, you know a different place, so we walk into town, it was in Great Falls, Montana, walked into town one night- a long, long walk- and our, what Great Falls is known for then is if you gave somebody a $5 bill for a pack of gum, which I did, they don’t do paper dollars there, they do silver dollars. So we’re walking back, lopsided because we’ve got all these silver dollars and all this change in the pocket. At Ellsworth AFB, we had the Minuteman Missile, Titan Missile, B-52s, and KC-135s. KC135 was a Bowing 707, but it’s a tanker for refueling airplanes. So you see these big lumbering B-52s and if you get up next to a B-52, the skin is wrinkled, it looks like it’s corrugated, but when you get up to altitude, they straighten out. And so we went to Malstrum Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana was a combined SAC-TAC base. TAC is Tactical Air Command and they got fighters, and the only reason it was SAC is because they had Minuteman Missiles and they had KC-97s, propeller driven tankers. But it was such a thrill to go down to the runway when you had free time and watch these fighters take off instead of a big lumbering bomber because they were F-104s and F-102s. 102’s were a Delta wing and the 104s a short stubby wing. And these planes had drag parachutes, I mean they were just hot, they were rockets with wings, and they get down the runway, they’d get halfway down the runway and wheels would come off the ground and then they would, then they would turn up to about a 70 degree angle and just go for the stars. They were just absolutely mind boggling to watch that stuff. So… I don’t know, I think I ran out of steam. (laughter)

TL-That’s okay!

BG- I do, I have a couple of, this is, this is myself and a guy, Cruz F*****, and, and he was in our outfit and, and so the name translated is Crucifix F*******, and we used to call him Wetback, course that’s not politically correct today but ah. He was part Yaki Indian and part Mexican and so he was from Los Angeles. So one day we’re driving into Rapid City (laugh) and he’s driving and it’s snowing, and a couple of us in the back seat and someone in the front, and Cruz is, and he’s talking over his shoulder, “Will you watch where you’re going?! You’ve never driven in snow before! You idiot! It’s snowing like crazy!” “Ah shut up!” he says, “all I hear about is the accidents you guys have had, I’ve never had an accident.” (laughter) “You were going to have one!” He was a funny guy.

TL-Do you mind if I take pictures of these?

BG- Do what?

TL- Do you mind if I take pictures of these?

BG- Oh you can take that!

TL- Thank you!

BG- So, oh! So here’s what I brought. I opened up this old locker. This is an inspection razor. And- you ever seen a razor like this? Okay, well, you put the razor blade in here. Back in the day it was a Gillette Blue Blade, so you put the razor in there and you put this on here. Now in basic training, you had a footlocker. And so every, at least week, maybe more often, you had an open footlocker inspection. So, you know what a foot locker is? Okay so it has a top tray, so you’re, you’re underwear has to be rolled. It, it, it, no matter whether you’re wearing, you, you know, whitey tighties or boxers. T-shirts have to be rolled, and they can’t be any loose ends. Socks have to be rolled. And everything else is folded. You had a wall locker but it wasn’t closed, it was a shelf with a closet pole and the hangers had to be one or two fingers apart and your hat had to be on it and so, and everything had to be in it’s place. And so the top of it, you had half of it, it was two halves. I guess the socks when in the top, I don’t remember. So the things they would go for are, number one is the razor. So if you’re using a razor, if you’re shaving every day with a razor there’s going to be some scum on it. So these guys will take that razor apart like this, and they’re looking for, if they see anything, you know, the threads are dirty, anything like that, you get written up. So everybody had an inspection razor, you never used it, but it was there for inspections and you hid the other one. So then your, your shaving cream. They looked down the nozzle and they better not see any unused foam in the shaving cream so you would clean it out with a Q-tip, either that or you had your inspection, the same with the tooth paste, you take the top off, you better not see any tooth paste in there and you can blow into it and blow it back into the tube partially, but if there’s any in there or any that residing in the cap, you get written up. So this is silly stuff. So, so that’s why you had these things. One day, we had this inspection, and I had a can of, it was Rise- R I S E, Rise shaving cream, and, and it had a lockable cap, like, you would turn it. And, and so I thought, “this is really cool,” and so what I’d do is, when you go to shave, you have a sink, there’s no stopper in the sink, so I would put the shaving cream can and I would block the drain and fill the sink with hot water and it would kind of heat up the shaving cream and all that so anyway, so I got this thing, and I got it sitting in my footlocker and I, I, so we’re all done, and I closed the footlocker top and I sat down on it, and I sat in the wrong spot, it forced thetop down on the cap of that shaving cream and the thing went WOOSH (laughter). It filled up half of my footlocker! And the inspection’s coming and I’m full of shaving cream and I’m like, “Aw man!”. So this is a, a name tag you would wear on your button hole, and my stripes. This would be sewed onto your fatigues, I don’t remember which side it was on, one or the other, but a pocket. This is my outfit. This is the 44th Strategic Missile Wing, but it has a long history. It was also, that’s a Nuclear Warhead. So what that morphed from was the 44th Bombardment Wing Heavy that was based in Africa and also one or two bases in England in WWII and they flew B24s, which was, you don’t hear too much about B24s, they built more B24s than they did B17s but they were ugly, but they carried more bombs, and they were an awesome airplane so. So the 44th Bomb Wing patch had three bombs, so when it became the missile wing, they put nuclear warhead. And so all these things are just, you know. This is a, when you were in a secret unit, you had to fill out a security form, right? So this is the security form, I don’t know why I have this. This is the form you had to fill out, both sides, and, and they didn’t give you carbon paper, you had to have six of them. So you had to do it six times. So then there, I’m not sure what that is, it looks like a test. And then just little- oh here’s a, a newspaper article from 1963, the Daily Journal, Rapid City. So this shows, like, the officers in the, where they sit, so he’s got a side arm and, and another one. And these were the trucks that we’d drive and this is a truck, like, you’d be sitting in the back, and I don’t know if it was the inside or not but this was, no this is not. Well look at this! You can buy a ’62 O’dsmobile car for $2995. (laughter). The good ol’ days. “Instructions to office workers in case of an atomic bombing,” have you ever seen that? “Number 1: stay clear of all windows. Number 2: Seat yourself in a hard chair at lease four feet from a desk. Remove a necktie, belt, or other restrictive clothing. Remove glasses or any other sharp instruments, pens or pencils, that might be in your pockets. Bend over with your head between your legs, and finally, kiss your ass goodbye.” (laughter).

TL- That’s good (laugh).

BG- Now, I mean, I mean even in school, you know, you would do, you know, bend over and cover, you’d get under a desk, I mean really this is silliness. But, so I don’t know if any of this is of any interest to you or not, it doesn’t have, you can use it if it is. I don’t know what that is… travel voucher. Well I got money for something. I got all old stuff in here. My driver’s license for a, for, for, for a truck, and this card is security, security cards, and- oh, oh here’s my, these, this, he and I joined together. He lived in- he’s still in Windsor, I still see him every now in a great while, we joined together on the buddy system so they put us in the barracks together, but he was on the second floor and I was on the first floor so we weren’t much buddies because you never saw him. And I see, he has a, he has a smile that’s always there. He got such a ration in basic training because they would, our guys were called TI’s, technical instructors, rather than drill instructors, or tactical, I don’t know what it was but TI’s. So this guy would come up to him, “Marras, you smiling at me? You in love with me boy? Wipe that smile off your face!” But he’s like, “what? What? This is just the way I am!” (laughter). But anything to harass, you know, they just like to harass. So.

TL- So is there any advise you would give future generations? Whether of soldiers or of civilians?

BG- Yeah I, I think that the most important thing, as far as I’m concerned about the military, and you remember the things that you hate about it, you remember the stuff you love about it, which is, which is a great human trait I think, but, there were times that I was miserable like everybody else. But you, the first thing is, it, there’s not question it’s a brotherhood. And, and I could be at Geisslers food market wearing, wearing a hat that I wear, a baseball hat that’s got a small one of these on it and it says, “We’re the Air Force”, and some old guy walked up to me to just say, shake hands and say, “thanks for your service,” and he may be wearing a Vietnam hat or some hat. It doesn’t matter where you are, I mean part of it has to do with the age, but somebody will walk up to you and say, “thanks for your service.” I don’t wear the stuff all the time but sometimes I do. And, and, and I think the most important thing is that, that, that military service teaches you ways that at some point in your life, you are going to have to work for a complete and total idiot and you have to do what that person tells you, because, he or she has rank. Didn’t used to be she, but, and you will do it or you will be in deep doo doo. So that will help you when you work for a company, because there’s going to be a boss that’s going to be a total idiot, so just suck it up, because you’ll be there after that boss has either been fired or promoted and you can move on your merry way. So just suck it up. And, and, and the things you’ll learn: cleanliness, personal hygiene, if you don’t, you get what’s called a GI Shower- have you ever heard of a GI Shower? We had a guy, this was in Chanute, and he didn’t shower. The guy just reeked. And he’s been told, you know, so a GI Shower is where you take him into the shower and you get the scrub brushes and you scrub him with a scrub brush. And he is a rosy pink when he’s done. He went AWOL after that, we never saw him. He was, I don’t know, he probably had something, I don’t know. At any rate, so that was a GI, and then, then, ah. But you learn how to sew because you want to sew your stripes on. Now you can send it out, if you have lots of money, but you didn’t have a lot of money. Some people sewed their own, some didn’t. Some guys tried gluing them on, and, but the sargeant, the TI, would say, “if I can get my finger on that and pull it and it comes off, you’re busted!” So people didn’t take a chance on that, you know, it’s like anything, you don’t want a shortcut, “I’ll just glue it on,” ah okay. And, and I think that everybody needs to give something back to the country. If I were king, I would put the draft back in. So you would either go into the military service or peace corps or something for a couple years. I think the Mormons have a neat thing, I’m not a Mormon, they have a couple of years of service somewhere. Do service for somebody, you know, do something positive and give of yourself. And I think that’s a wonderful thing about the military. It’s not all about, you know, rah rah gung ho, it’s about a brotherhood. It’s about being responsible to the guy next to you, the gal next to you, it’s just (shrug), you know, something bigger than yourself that you need to do, so.

TL- Absolutely.

BG- Oh then I had, I brought, I, I just had, this is a bunch of old, I had two or three left, they fall out. So I think, okay, so this is, in the barracks, this is at Chanute. That’s the day room. So, you know, guy’s got a guitar, so we’re, you know, just hanging out. This was that guy Kennedy. That’s his house up in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

TL- So when you guys were hanging out, what kind of music would you play? Was it just everything?

BG- Yeah it was just rock stuff, I mean it didn’t happen very often, but mostly rock and roll. This was the barracks. This was the upper bay on a weekend, so it was pandemonium. So you’d take the mattresses off the bed and you’d lay down there and you had a TV and you couldn’t have it out, it would be in the day room, and, and just hang out, if you had no where to go. Like I would go to Chicago, but I didn’t do much of that I was kind of an introvert, hard to believe. And that’s all, and I did this, oh this is one, this is later on when I went to the New York Auto Show and, and I like cars so I took a bunch of pictures there. And I met, I ran into Stirling Moss, you ever heard of him?

TL- No.

BG- He’s one of the greatest race drivers of all times. He’s still alive, too!. Oh that was US Grand Prix the races up a Watkins Gle,NY. Back then, and whenever that was, another one. Yeah.

TL- So what got you into the Air Force? Like, what was the…

BG- Oh! A good question! I, I, when I got out of, graduated from high school, it was nightmarish for me, like, going to the right job, I don’t know what I’m going to do, I don’t know where I’m going with my life, and so my father was aeronautical engineer of course he wants me to go to college, and so, so I did, I went to college. University of Connecticut had a branch in Hartford so I lasted, maybe a month. I hated it. So my father worked at Kaman Aircraft and I like airplanes and helicopters and stuff. So I went around to a whole bunch of places, applying for a job. Machine shops and stuff. I worked in a hardware store in Windsor but I needed a real job, I wanted a real job. So I went to Kaman, unbenonced to him, and I got a job at Kaman. I was the lowest paid employee at Kaman Aircraft. I could have gone, I could have, I could have been a grounds person, mowing lawns and stuff, and that paid, I think it was $72 a week. And I became the Engineering Records Expeditor for like, I think it was $64 a week or something. And I could drive my own car so I would deliver blue prints and drawings and from Kaman Aircraft in Bloomfield, they used to have a tool crib, well they used to build things, (inaudibly) down at the Fuller Brush Building in Hartford, and Bradley Field had a place, so I would drive in between. I worked in a group, there were 19 women, and I’m like, 18 years old, and their goal in life was to make me blush. And it wasn’t tough. And they had a great, and they were wonderful people but they just really liked to get me going. And I just, you know. And um, and so then, and I thought I wanted to be, and then my father was, he was ticked off when he found out that I got a job up here. “Yeah, you know, you’re working for that jerk?” So, he had me sit down with this guy, a guy named, no I forgot his name, he was a, he was a crash rescue expert so I thought maybe that’s what I wanted to go do. He chewed tobacco. He had a cubby up there and, and he’d sit there and he’d (spit noise) into his big ol’ trash can, you know. And he, he gave me a talking to. He said, “you don’t want to be here, go do something.” So, I was talking to my boss, so I took tests for the Navy, and, and Air Force. And I scored great, and so I thought ah I think the Navy, I mean the Air Force, like, ah I mean they had this thing called a Bombideir Navigator Program, and I though I’ll go in on that. So that’s what I did, so I signed up. And then after that they said, “oh no you can’t do that, you have to wear glasses.” So I said, “whatever”. So, so that was it. To learn something. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, electronics, the coming thing, you know, so like, plastics, so I, with Dustin Hoffman, that was the new thing. So I learned electronics and, and that was it. And then when I got out, I went looking around for jobs. I went to the phone company, I went to Borroughs, I went to IBM and a bunch of other places and they said well, and I had touched there, and they said, “you know, the electronics test is, it’s okay, but you’re really better at mechanics and stuff like that.” So I got a job at Borroughs because they said, “Well how, we can take you on board in,” I think, “one to two months.” Then IBM called and said, “we can start you Monday.” And I said, and it was, and it was $10 a week more, so I said, “I’m there.” And it was, I think it was, I think it was $75 a week that I started at. But you can go a long way at IBM so I stayed there 30 years so. I was a typewriter repairman so I was a mechanic, you know, electric typewriters, you know, electric typewriters have a motor under the covers , but are all mechanical. So now young people don’t know what a typewriter is but anyway, and it was the best job, it was the most awesome job, it truly was. But the electronics that I got in the service and the worth ethic, because if you don’t, that’s one of the things you develop in the service, if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna, there’s plenty of slackers but they knew who they are and if you’re going to get ahead and there are rewards for that so. So there’s another long answer to a very short question. So, that’s where it was coming from, just do something with you’re life and, and there are a lot of kids that don’t, it’s like many of the schools now don’t do industrial arts and so, so how does a kid who doesn’t want to go to college or hates school or whatever, who has skills but doesn’t know what skills he or she has? So are you a plumber? Are you, are you good with sheet metal? Are you, are you good, we had print shop, wood shop, and metal shop, and so I knew very quickly in high school I didn’t want to be a tin-knocker because I was clutsy and I cut myself every time I picked up a piece of sheet metal. And so, so I think the military can start you off somewhere because for every person that’s on the front lines doing something, a pilot or an infantryman, there are like, ten people behind him in support services and so there’s a lot to do for someone somewhere who has tech, you know, so.

TL- Do you have any other stories you’d like to tell?

BG- Well I, I did meet that gal in Kalamazoo and I dated her for a while. (Laughter). (singing) “I got a gal in Kalamazoo”. I think I’ve already worn your machine out, you’re going to run out of battery or, um.

TL- If you’d like, we can meet another time and-

BG- No, no I think, I, I, I don’t know, you know, what more, I, I, I wouldn’t, I’m happy to have been there and done that and, and, you know, every once in a while I talk to some of these guys. It’s funny, one of these guys, I stayed in contact with a few of them, after when I got the job at IBM, and one of the other guys who was kind of the head, he was kind of our leader, Leo D*****. Early from Johnson City, Texas. That’s the home of President Lyndon Johnson and, and Leo joined IBM. And leader that he was, he became a manager probably 3 years before I did and he started with them at least 2 years after I did, so. And the other guys, I don’t hear from them much, and one guy moved to Australia, Tom G*****, who, he was really short so he was, he was midget and um, you know, we, we had a, in Chanute, we referred to ourselves as a Mickey Mouse Squadron because it was so much more politically correct to call him chicken poop, so we had a marching song, (singing) “we are 59ers as sharp as we can be, M I C K E Y, M-” and on and on it went. And so we sang it when we marched. It was fun. It was a poke in the eye but no that’s it, that’s all. Gosh.

TL- This is the last question I have for you.

BG- Yeah!

TL- is if you could choose one thing that people would remember about you, what would it be?

BG- Not withstanding military?

TL- Yeah just in general if you had one thing that you wanted everybody you meet to remember about you, what would you want it to be?

BG- Gosh. Um, I am helpful? Ah, and I’m also Santa Clause!

TL- (laughter) There you go! Alright, well, I’d like to say, while it’s recording, thank you so much.

BG- You’re welcome.

TL- Honestly, it’s been an incredible pleasure and very fun.

BG- (laughter) Well, good, and um, that’s good.