Today we kick off Episode 5 of the 7-part Guest Post series: Military Life: Two Perspectives
In case you missed the introduction to the series: Military Life: Two Perspectives with Leto and Avalune
The topic today is Moving in the Military, from Avalune’s perspective. Next Saturday, we’ll hear Leto’s perspective on military life and family.
*****
Fearless together
You said “we’ll go through this together”
When you fly won’t you
Won’t you take me too?
~Birds, Coldplay
The Boy and I pile into a U-Haul with Leto’s dad. His mom is in the house pretending we do not exist. The cold shoulder is lost on The Boy because he’s too young to understand the nuances. The Boy and I weren’t supposed to move for months yet, according to the recruiter, but it turns out that once the newly minted military member has settled into technical training, they are allowed to move out of their dorms and into a house with their dependents. So, despite objections and a campaign to get military friends to talk me out of moving, his dad backs the truck out of the driveway and his mom declines to stand in the street to wave us off.
Our first home is a tiny house, in an area since destroyed by a hurricane. Leto spends much of the morning sleeping and all evening and late into the night at school, so The Boy and I are left to our own devices. The neighbors have a pair of Yorkies and talk about how much they loved Germany and want to get back. Mississippi is hot. Stand still long and you’re likely to be covered in fire ants. The coasts are lined with gnarled oak trees and shiny casinos. Lady Luck boasts an animatronic dragon over the water but the buffet is better at the Beau. Ghosts of the confederacy haunt the landscape.
? ? ?
Leto’s parents are entertaining The Boy, while I stuff our things into commissary fruit boxes. Our only transportation is in the shop and then in the shop again because it wasn’t fixed correctly the first time. I refer to a list of things the military housing inspector will check before we can vacate and work through each item. Leto is finishing his training, so he’s not much use and the stress makes us both edgy. We’re moving to our first official duty station in South Carolina.
This house is a little bigger but the yard is smaller. The Boy attends school across the street from the military base. We hear rumors about drug and gun sales in the military housing outside the fence, but the only thing anyone tries to sell me are absurdly expensive Longaberger baskets, scrapbooking supplies and Pampered Chef. Our van is still acting up and our bicycles are stolen within the first week. The neighbors are vexing.
It is here I attend my first Hearts Apart meeting but like many things in this area, I find it lacking. Instead I turn to the other military wives met through our husband’s love of soccer and people I’ve met in the community. I frequent a quilt shop and spend much of my time sewing and working on my first degree. Leto’s parents are not talking to me again, presumably because we can’t agree on parenting practices, but I start to suspect it is easier to deal with Leto’s sand-filled holidays if they feel aggrieved.
It is here, I wake up to a frantic phone call from a military wife. “A” is supposed to be on a plane. I’m confused because this is usually a good occasion – Leto is scheduled to be on a plane home soon too. I obey her directive to flip on the television and see the first of what will be on rotation for years to come – the fall of the twin towers. We do not know if A’s plane is in the air, is in danger. Our men make it home safely though delayed and the War on Terror begins. Leto takes a job as a technical school instructor and we prepare to move again.
? ? ?
Mississippi is still hot. We live on the third floor of an apartment in a neighboring city to give ourselves some space from the base and vexing neighbor situations. The neighbors here are mostly ok, though we get a little too rambunctious for the downstairs tenants. I finish my degree and move on to the next one. Leto tells me stories about his coworkers, some of whom taught him when he came through here as an airman. He tells me one still has the snarky poem I helped him write about respecting his elders. He tells me about airman antics and instructor generated creative punishments. I graduate and prepare to enter the job market.
Hurricane Katrina hits just west of us. Strong winds and surge rattle the shore but the story is mostly center on Louisiana which is under water. I am in South Carolina, having evacuated with The Boy and Leto’s parents the day before. I watch the swath of destruction on TV. Boats are where boats are not supposed to be. Casinos are relocated. Miles of glorious old oak trees vanish. Leto shelters with his troops while I pace the living room. I flip the channels to take a break from the news and find my cousin telling Maury Povich about his wife’s affair with the bus driver.
Leto is ok but he is not permitted to leave the base and check on the apartment yet. People outside the fence see the military playing basketball to blow off steam. They interpret it as blithe and a suitable focus for their ire. Looters empty out what they can.
Our apartment is far enough up an embankment to be spared the worst damage. Whole floors of buildings just scooped out from underneath like Jenga tiles. Power restored to a nearby hospital saves our apartment from the excessive mold growth which damages whatever the hurricane left behind. I leave The Boy with his grandparents in South Carolina, where he started attending school during our long displacement, and return home.
It is hard to find work unrelated to construction or food service. I sign up with a temp service and test drive an assortment of jobs before landing on a job as a receptionist at a state run mental health facility. They let me adjust my hours to be home for the school bus, when Leto is shipped back to the desert.
? ? ?
My back no longer wishes to function but we must be out of the apartment and in South Carolina before Leto returns. I drive back and forth between states, packing the one and trying to find a home in the other. A realtor finally shows me a house that ticks most of the boxes and doesn’t look like the set of a 60s sitcom, or like a group of 10 year-old boys built a fort on the side of the house and we’re calling that an addition. Leto scrambles to submit all the documentation while still out of country and we buy our first house before he’s even seen it.
The Boy is in middle school now and he has good friends. Do not give “Ant” Cheetos unless prepared for him to completely lose it in an orange dusted ADHD spasm. They somehow manage to not break multiple bones in their hands and fingers hacking at each other with wooden swords. He’s in a knight phase. He carries a sword and shield. He still likes the real helmet Leto leaves him and sometimes switches to more modern warfare. The younger dog likes to sneak up on the boys when they are distracted but they eventually get used to her trolling. I tell them I’m going to feed them to my pet spider if they misbehave and when they are skeptical I show them the rather large banana spider living outside the bathroom window, so they behave.
It is here that The Boy creates some of his most cherished memories. It is also here where he has some of his most difficult. We attend a funeral for a 14 year-old boy, The Boy’s Best Friend, after he loses his battle with Diamond Black Fan Anemia. It is here where I can’t stand to look at the avatar with “CW’s” orange hair and black t-shirt hanging motionless forever more in my friends list – but I also can’t remove him.
The Boy starts high school and I continue my search for work. Unemployment is high. I adjunct for a while before getting a job with a moving company. I’m sitting at my desk looking at a newly created file of grievances for which my employer has tasked his manager to fire me. The business is tanking and he needs to put people on the chopping block, I’m up first. His manager refuses to fire me with cause as instructed, so we are staring at each other wondering how to proceed when my phone rings. After a surreal phone call, I ask the manager to fire me, without cause. She does.
We avoid Leto’s parents in an attempt to avoid the “pre-move fight.” We are finishing up our last show, where we have starring roles in the local theater production. They fight with The Boy instead. The housing market tanks and we can’t sell the house, so we turn it over to a property manager to rent. The Boy and I are unable to get our visas quickly enough for the short notice orders, so I am sitting in a friend’s living room watching a houseful of dogs chase each other around the furniture. The Boy is self-medicating his stress with video games and pounds of the kind of sugary snacks we never buy. Leto is already on the plane to Italy.
? ? ?
Italy.
We are going to live in Italy. I often dreamed of traveling Europe but never expected it would be financially viable. The military is offering to pay for us to live there.
I catch a good case of stomach flu just in time for the first leg of our 10+ hour flight. An airplane bathroom is not a great place to spend an entire international flight – in case you contemplating trying it. I’m excited, scared, stressed, uncertain, and full of virus. What I’m not full of are liquids because I cannot hold any down. By the time I reach the plane change in France, I am almost too weak to move.
I lean heavily on a giant suitcase and the pile of winter clothes I’ve shucked and watch a bunch of French ladies in powdery blue dresses and hats, that remind me of Jackie-O, put their heads together and murmur words I can’t understand. There is an unfortunate amount of scowling, so I assume it is not good.
They tell me we can’t transfer to the plane as planned because the luggage area isn’t pressurized and my dogs will explode – ok they didn’t saying it like that, but that was the general idea. They move me to another plane but tell me there is another problem – they say I haven’t paid for the dogs to go all the way to Italy. I show them my receipt but they insist. I send the boy to find some kind of liquid and tell them I’ll pay more, whatever you want, just get me on a not-dog-exploding plane. It seems they cannot take my money but they also cannot put me and the dogs on a plane. We’re at an impasse. After a long time and many more phone calls, words I can’t understand, and scowling faces, they send me to a far away gate.
I have to get the dogs but I cannot let them out of their kennels. The senior Lab frets and causes her kennel to tip over repeatedly while I struggle with a trolley too small to be useful. My fellow passengers hiss at me through clenched teeth. We manage to get through security and get into a boarding line only to be told again, about paying for the dogs.
I sink into a waiting area. I’ve already called Leto and asked him to turn around because I will not be landing in Venice but Milan. I don’t know where I’ll be landing now, or if I will land at all. I am imagining walking along a French dirt road, dragging luggage and dog kennels along behind me until I hit the border, when a woman tells me her colleague will be able to help me and to follow her. I sigh. I’ve heard this before, I tell her petulantly. I no longer want to have this adventure – I just want to go home.
Her colleague asks to see my receipt. He tells me I’ve paid for the dogs. Yes, I know, I keep telling the Jackie O ladies. He puts me on a plane just about to leave. I worry the dogs will not be on board but I’m herded on to the plane. I will hold a grudge against France forever.
We finally arrive in Italy. Here are the dogs but not the luggage. I am here and Leto is here and The Boy is here and the dogs are here. The luggage is just a box of things and I am too exhausted to care. Our car still hasn’t arrived in country so one of Leto’s new co-workers loads two kennels of dogs, stinking in their own filth, and two sweaty and dehydrated travelers into his truck and buses us to a hotel. We bathe the dogs and ourselves, chug water and sleep.
The next morning is magical.
I completely (okay, obviously not completely, because I will rant about it with little prompting, every chance I get) forget about the endless obstacles getting here. Gelato is descendent from heaven. I am Dorothy, dropped out of the tornado into a strange technicolor wonderland.
I still cannot quite process the wonder that was my European adventure. I didn’t just visit for a few weeks, or a month like a tourist. I lived it every day. I cannot adequately express just how lucky I feel to have had such an experience or how much being so immersed in other cultures expanded my being.
We learned to appreciate the food and cooking. We were surrounded by art and passion and deep history. They tried our language, we tried theirs. We learned to speak with our bodies. We learned what did not translate. We learned they have strange ideas about American bread.
We grew. We tried things. We were brave. We were no longer stagnant – forced so far out of our boxes. We would live in Europe for seven years and continue traveling and learning about others and about ourselves. I would not trade one moment of it for anything (except, of course, when I was stuck in Charles de Gaulle).
? ? ?
Not all of us adjust. Some are fish out of water, gulping air they cannot breathe. They hide on their little patches of America, rarely leaving the base, driving 90 minutes to buy American processed food, frozen and refrozen, and shipped in from Germany. They may or may not be able to find work depending on the specifics of the SOFA agreement, their credentials, or limited opportunities on base, so they just fester in their homes. Instead of opening up to experience, they close down and focus on the things they lack (the familiar mostly – Target, Wal-Mart, normal sized hamburger buns). Some of us cannot “bloom where planted,” as they often say in the military.
? ? ?
Outsiders sometimes look upon us with pity – thinking of us as refugees forced to uproot and flee from one place to another. It isn’t easy, the moves. Logistics. Leaving newly made friends. Difficult and sometimes impossible job transitions. The interruption to the flow of education for our children. Missed family. Abandoned pets. The memorabilia lost or broken or sold to accommodate freight weight limits. The houses we can’t sell. The general lack of stability.
But do not pity me. I am not a refugee. I am a migratory bird. Even now I am restless. I feel it in my body. I have learned all I can here. It is time to fly.
WaterGirl
Avalune, I love your present tense writing; I always feel like I’m right there with you. You conjure up a mood just like I recall from To Kill A Mockingbird. I will read your book in a heartbeat, once you guys publish it!
matryoshka
Beautiful writing, Avalune, as always. I don’t know if you are under “house arrest” as many of us are these days, but how are you dealing with your restlessness? I feel like the virus is forcing all of us to reconsider our general restlessness, forcing us into stillness.
Avalune
@WaterGirl: It’s kind of an awkward style to write in but I like the immediacy and I like to break the fourth wall sometimes within it.
Thank you kindly!
Avalune
@matryoshka: Thank you!
We are into our third year in a single location, so I think both of us were already starting to feel antsy. We’re no longer required to move by the military, so we don’t have to move but we’ve been talking about our options and whether we would like to.
As far as virus quarantine – yep, we’re under stay-at-home orders and have been in some degree since March 13. In some ways we are both kind of equipped for this kind of thing. Leto’s movements were limited while in somewhat hostile countries during his deployments. I’m a bit more stir crazy but I’m used to having to adapt to circumstances beyond my control.
WaterGirl
I would love to know how old each of you was when your family joined the military. You, Leto, even the boy. I imagine whole experience would be different if you guys are 21 and the boy is three, or if you guys are 25 and the boy is five, etc.
Avalune
@matryoshka: We are not a society that is used to dealing with stillness! We have to be moving and shaking and constant go go go and productivity and noise and fury. It will be interesting to see if we lean into stillness and present and gratitude or if we act like children who’s parents are out of town when we are finally released.
Avalune
@WaterGirl: I was 22 when he joined the military. He was 21. The Boy turned 1 while Leto was in Basic Training.
WaterGirl
@Avalune: So you were all young pups, and the boy never knew any other life. Knowing that is helpful as I read.
Phylllis
Ok, you were either in Charleston or Sumter. Or maybe both. If Charleston, I possibly tried to sell you a Rainbow Vacuum Cleaner. AF and Navy base housing were the two most sought-after territories.
Leto
@WaterGirl: It was def different for me. Coming into basic, I was with a lot of 18/19 year olds and was already considered “an old man” by the other guys there. I was like… just for that, I’m not buying you any beer :P
Leto
@Phylllis: I’m originally from Charleston (Summerville), but we were stationed in Sumter for a bit over 7 1/2 years. We met in college (Hartsville, SC), so we’ve been all over the place.
Edit: One of the things that helped sell me on the AF was the quality of their base housing, versus the Navy housing. Before I joined, I worked for a few months as a laborer for one of the contract crews refurbing base housing. Little did I know that was the officer housing… /shakesfist
Avalune
@Phylllis: Ha! We were in Sumter. I did have someone try to sell me a vacuum once and it was pretty nice but we were too poor at that time.
Neldob
You make life seem like a poem. How lovely, even the rough spots shine! Thanks.
Phylllis
@Leto: Coker! What a lovely campus.
@Avalune: I lived in Sumter for about a year, but alas, was no longer the Rainbow Vacuum rep, so no connection there.
Avalune
@Neldob: Thank you! It was hard to figure out what to use and what to leave out on this one. Distilling 22 years of moving is tough!
matryoshka
@Avalune: Exactly right. I think one of the gifts of the virus will be that some people will enjoy their own company for the first time. I hope people do not panic at the prospect of solitude, but some of my friends are already taking risks with their health and others’ rather than enduring that. I have moved 33 times in my 58 years, and I have learned that home is wherever I am.
Leto
@matryoshka: That’s something that’s intrinsic to military families that have been in for 10+ years: not only are they used to moving, but after about 4 years they start to feel restless. That’s something I’m dealing with now. We’ve been here for 3 years and I’m starting to feel “it”. That feeling of, we’re going to get orders soon and we’ll be off someplace new. Of course that’s not going to happen now, but it’s a second sense/feeling at this point that will be hard to shake for some time.
AliceBlue
My dad was in the air force and I spent a good portion of my “growing up” years moving from base to base. I never really thought about what my mom went through–she just rolled with it. We always lived in base housing and I remember her doing top-to-bottom house cleaning before every move, getting ready for the inspection. I rolled with it too. Having dad come home and telling us that we had been transferred to whatever place was just a part of life. I never really got used to being the “new girl” in class though.
Avalune your writing is so gorgeous. Thanks for this.
WaterGirl
@Leto: Don’t get mad, get even.
WaterGirl
@Leto:
One of life’s cruel jokes.
raven
@Leto: I went in on my 17th birthday, Nov 10, 1966. If we got and em in our unit who had ANY college it was astounding.
WaterGirl
@Leto:
I imagine the trick is to know whether you really do LIKE moving around and starting over, or whether this is something similar to muscle memory and it’s not something to trust as an inner desire.
raven
@AliceBlue: Ever live in Rantoul?
Avalune
@AliceBlue: Awe thank you! Yes, those inspections could be a real pain in the butt. The Boy wasn’t crazy about being new kid either but usually there were other new kids and they just grouped together.
AliceBlue
@raven: No. Where is it?
Avalune
@WaterGirl: I didn’t really get to it but there are definitely some benefits of moving. It forces you to see things with a fresh eye. Job sucks? You can start over somewhere else. No complacency! No rut!
Also really forces you to assess the shit you accumulate over your lifetime. WHY DO WE HAVE SO MANY X?
AliceBlue
@Leto: The housing at Amarillo AFB in the early 60’s was truly beautiful. They won some kind of architectural award! And our house at Langley looked like something out of a storybook. Two story Tudor style, built in the 30’s. with a huge screened in porch on the side.
Leto
@AliceBlue: We still do the top-to-bottom cleaning as we’re clearing out. We were lucky that our moves were spaced out far enough, barring Italy, that it gave all of us time to settle. Especially the boy. While he was the “new kid”, he was always in a military town so all the rest of the kids accepted it as a part of life. One of the small benefits.
@WaterGirl: I think do because it gave us a chance to explore new places. As much as I chafe at having my routine disrupted, I also have a bit of wanderlust. This gave me a chance to have both. Also as we told the kid, the government is paying us to live in places that most people only dream about. As much as a pain in the ass as moving was, we also considered ourselves very fortunate. (Barring Mississippi and SC, because… well, yeah)
raven
@AliceBlue: Chanute AFB in Illinois, it was quite a large facility and housed the fire school for the Airfare. It’s been closed for quite a while but lots of AF people passed through there. Right up the road from Water Girl.
Avalune
I didn’t really talk about England much but I really really enjoyed living there too. Food was suboptimal after living in Italy but it was still a really good tour and we didn’t want to come back. I’ll probably talk more about England next post because I worked for the military with a bunch of British nationals for co-workers and it was an interesting dichotomy.
J R in WV
When I was in the military, I was assigned to the same duty station (AS-16 sub-tender ship) my whole hitch, but the ship moved and I went with it. Married wife just after her graduation at the WVU, honeymoon was a few days at my grandma’s farm house — she filled up the fridge with the best most fav foods and went to my parents. Then there was the long drive south. First time wife saw the ocean!
Then the ship left home port for the yards, first in Mobile Bay for drydock welding work, then to Pascagoula MS, still the worst place we have ever lived. I flew to Miami to meet wife, then drove all the way through FL and left to Mississippi. In the panhandle the car, a 62 Plymouth Fury II died of distributer failure, filled with metal shavings from some widget coming apart. Chrysler dealer towed us to their garage, just a few blocks from the far west end of town back to the garage. Fixed it for the price of the distributer rebuild kit — no charge for the tow, for labor. Good because we didn’t have much money, towing a UHaul trailer behind our old car.
Then after my discharge in Key West I flew back to MS, where we packed up a UHaul truck, and did convoy back to WV. On the way, I was driving that truck in Kentucky when the right front wheel came off, I saw it fly into the air and off into the woods through the fence, then the whole truck tipped slowly onto the front right corner — when it hit the concrete, there was a huge shower of sparks. I was motionless, and as it slowed down, I very gingerly moved the steering wheel a tiny bit, and we angled off onto the shoulder, after cutting a slot in the Interstate pavement a couple of hundred yards long.
Wife drove the car into the next town and called UHaul for help. Their driver brought us different (NOT new!) truck and helped us move our stuff from the damaged truck into the diff truck, and we found a motel for that night. Home the next day.
A couple of years after I got out, I got a really hostile letter from the DoJ about how I stole $900 fromf the Navy in my separation pay check. My congressman at that time helped me appeal for forgiveness…, which was granted. I told the E-5 clerk at the time it was too much money, and he asked “Do you want out today or not?” YES, I do want out today!!! Here’s your check, goodby!
That’s my moving story from 1970-73.
SFBayAreaGal
Army vet here, 1975-1978.
I wanted to go overseas so badly. Started putting in for transfers to Germany a year after I arrived at Ft Lewis.
I finally received my transfer to go to Germany. I was to be transferred a month after my official discharge was to occur. By that time I had decided the Army was not the career for me.
I love your writing.
Dave S
I very much enjoyed reading your story. Thank you for sharing.
I imagine it was culture shock from growing up in SC and then living seven years in Italy.
Your wings to fly must be an eagle’s.
raven
Haunting Photos Of An Abandoned Air Force Base
WaterGirl
@Avalune: Ha! When the tree hit my house 7 years ago it required about 100k of repairs, pretty much everything from top to bottom. Literally. Roof to floors to walls to crawlspace to complete bathroom redo.
I moved everything to the back of the house because they said they would start in the front. Every closet even had to be emptied, because the hardwood floors had to be redone and they extended into the closets.
Well, something came up, I don’t recall the details, but it turned out they needed to start in the back of the house. So I moved EVERYTHING to the front of the house.
Then came the point where everything had to come out of the house, so I had a pod delivered and moved every single thing out of the house except my single mattress on the floor, one ottoman, the TV and the TV stand. And I kept a tiny little wire basket thing with 4 baskets that held a few items of clothing, two towels, and toiletries.
More than half of the contractors were female, they were female-owned by someone I had known for years. Indelibly etched into my brain is one of the contractors saying to me “you really have to love your stuff to move it four times”. No kidding!
When the house was finally finished 6 months later, even my furniture looked too big (after the house had been all but empty for 6 months) and I gave away a ton of my stuff. Some friends were kind enough to come over with their pickup and take it all to the Habitat Store so I didn’t have to deal with it.
Too much stuff! Changed me forever.
raven
@J R in WV: The Gilmore is and interesting looking craft.
AliceBlue
@raven: Chanute! My dad was stationed there for a few months after WWII, but that was before I came along.
raven
@WaterGirl: My old boss’s daughter is the Habitat Director there. Kimmy.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Great piece, Avalune.
raven
@AliceBlue:
Avalune
@J R in WV: That drive through Florida to Mississippi is a BEAST. You feel like you are never going to get out of Florida. Thanks for your moving story! We had a lot of issues with unreliable transportation too. Ugg.
Laura Too
Thank you for the beautiful writing. Reading it made me feel like we were sitting in a warm kitchen drinking coffee and swapping stories. I appreciate your opening your life like this, it is such a welcome change from 24/7 worry.
Avalune
@SFBayAreaGal: Awe – that’s too bad you didn’t make it overseas! But you did what was best for you, so that’s good too.
WaterGirl
@raven: Well, they got a lot of nice stuff from me! :-)
Avalune
@Dave S: Thank you! It was a lot of culture shock of course. What was less expected was the amount of culture shock we had when we finally came back stateside after being overseas so long.
Avalune
@WaterGirl: It’s kind of refreshing to go through it and donate, sell, get rid of some stuff. It just accumulates and accumulates and you don’t even realize it!
Avalune
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Thank you ma’am!
@Laura Too: When I was writing it, I was thinking about that, and was hoping it would be a bit of a “respite” so to speak. I’m glad it reads as intended. Thank you.
Leto
@AliceBlue: Our officers had some really fancy stuff, nothing quite like that, but on the whole the housing was nice. I can’t say the same now with contracted housing .
Leto
@J R in WV:
Very similar to what happened to me after Katrina: when I was allowed to leave, about 2 weeks after the storm, I headed to SC in our Dodge Intrepid. About six hours in, the headgasket blew. My parents rented a truck to come get it, haul it back to their place where their mechanic looked at it, said it would more money than we had to fix, and I promptly swore off Dodge’s for the rest of my natural life. I’ll walk, via handstands, before I ever buy another Dodge.
That still happens today. DFAS (Defense Finance Agency) will occasionally screw up and pay someone too much. 99% of the time we tell our people, DON’T SPEND IT!, because inevitably DFAS catches the screw up, and instead of reclaiming the money they don’t pay the person in the same amount as the overpay.
Before, roughly, 2008 you could still go to your local Finance office and sort of get that rectified. Or at least looked at. But in another brilliant Republican move, they’ve cut most of the Fiance troops and centralized all operations at one location. The few troops that we have manning the counters don’t have as much training, so don’t know as much, and get cussed at more often. Vicious cycle that I would routinely have to explain to my troops.
AliceBlue
@Leto: Talking about housing reminded me of our situation at my dad’s last posting at Loring AFB in Maine. We arrived in the summer of 1967 and were told that there were no quarters available for us yet. So we ended up in this ghastly motel on the highway a few miles from the base. We had ridden around the housing area at the base and had seen empty units but dad was told that they couldn’t be occupied because they were “out for maintenance.” One day the base commander was talking to my dad and asked how we were settling in. Dad told him we were still at the motel because no housing was available. The base commander looked at him and said “I’ll get you a damn house.” We moved into a house the next day. The reason it was “out for maintenance”? A tile in the kitchen floor had to be replaced!
Leto
@AliceBlue: Ha! In England, we were given a strict two week time frame to find a house. Either on base or off. We eventually settled on a house on base, but as soon as we went to move in they tried to swap it on us. The reason: they just put in new carpet in the house, we had dogs, so they wanted to give us a house with older carpet. I basically told them to pound sand. If they didn’t want us moving into that house, they shouldn’t have shown us.
I never really had an issue with any of our housing offices until I got to England. The Brits were just weird about things (civilians who ran the office) and I had to assert myself more than I liked. It was in service of my troops, so I did it, but I also would’ve like a bit more cooperation with them.
raven
@Avalune: We’re ya’ll at Homestead?
Leto
@raven: My second deployment, I was assigned to the 332d Air Expeditionary Wing, which is the same wing the Tuskegee airmen formed. I had a 1st Sgt* who took the time to explain to me what that meant, as well as give me a patch to keep. I kept that patch and it subsequently went into my retirement shadow box.
*An AF 1st Sgt is a senior enlisted person who’s responsible for the morale/welfare of the airmen. They work with the commander to ensure everyone is taken care of. They also usually the first person called whenever a knucklehead screws up. Highly rewarding/frustrating job.
Leto
@raven: Nope. That was wiped out in ’91 and never really rebuilt to any substantial capacity. The active duty side never went back and it’s an Air Reserve base now.
raven
@Leto: I remember our first shirt standing and crying as we headed out for a convoy to the delta. He was distraught that his boys were going out there without him. I’ve tried to find him, or a record of him, because he was a Dillard from Murphy, NC and there’s tons of them folks in the Ga-NC mountains. No luck.
raven
@Leto: Yea, I wasn’t sure of your timeline but Avalune mentioned Florida so I thought maybe. I had a buddy who took a job down there right before it got blown away and he didn’t go. My fishing grounds are on 30a and there is lots of traffic from Eglin and Tyndall although Tyndall is pretty flattened,
Leto
@raven: I was a sophomore in HS at the time. In ’89 Hugo struck Charleston and between that and us “winning” the Cold War, that helped close Charleston Naval Base.
Avalune
@raven: I mentioned Florida because the two times at Keesler meant a lot of driving through the panhandle to SC to visit his parents.
Yutsano
@Avalune: @Leto: We moved every two years. Almost like clockwork. I was hatched in Hawai’i then five months later was Newport News, Virginia. Two years later. Charleston, (Incidentally this is why I’m the only one of my brothers who has an accent: older brother born in Idaho and two younger came later.) Then San Diego, California (still my fave city there) Groton, Connecticut, then Bangor Washington. Mom found a house here and said, “THAT’S IT! I’M NOT MOVING ANYMORE!!!” and we stayed there until I graduated high school seven years later. But my dad did get a transfer to Treasure Island, San Francisco the start of my junior year of high school. I was actually eager to go, but Mom quashed that idea. Then I went to college for my first year in Idaho and my dad retired. Incidentally they have moved three times since camping out here. And yes my move itch is starting to tingle…
SFBayAreaGal
SFBayAreaGal
@Avalune: I have been to Italy once and England three times. I am looking forward to traveling again.
Leto
Avalune and I were talking about this, moving and how we viewed it/how it affected us, and for me it was simply: I was being told to go someplace, so I saluted smartly and did that. I never really gave it a whole lot of thought beyond that. At least for the first ten years? I started to pay attention about how it was affecting us when we were assigned to Shaw AFB the second time. Specifically because the Great Recession was kicking off and I was wondering how that was going to affect her ability to get a job. Especially when I saw that the Sumter area had a 22% unemployment rate. While I sort of liked being back “home”, at the same time it really worried me that she was basically going to be unemployed and just stuck at home.
Also our son’s personality was starting to show and he’s very much like us: book nerd, quiet, bit reserved, smart kid… traits that don’t typically translate well in Southern schools. He did have a really good group of kids in our neighborhood, so I was happy about that. Bit spastic, but that’s kids. In Italy the closest school was 90 mins away. That was the Defense Dept school (the DoD runs one of the largest school systems in the US). That was both good and bad: he was surrounded by kids just like him (good!), but considering he was basically the only high school age kid at our base it meant that most of his “hanging out time” was done via XBox Live (bad!).
CaseyL
Avalune, your writing is wonderful! What a dynamic and interesting life! The military life is so full of all kinds of potential, from the horrifying to the sublime, and it looks like you and Leto and The Boy ticked *all* the boxes.
I do envy you being able to live overseas for many years. I think the world would be a much better place if everyone could do that: live in a foreign land long enough to adapt to it, and to viewpoints not their own.
Are you writing a book about all this? Oh, yes, definitely want to have that!
raven
@Avalune: Roger
Leto
@Yutsano: I wonder how my son will feel when he eventually gets out. Will that itch be there? He extended his tour in Hawai’i (initial 3 years there, extended another 3) because of his military friends, then his friends all got orders like 6 months later. We’ve asked him about that, if we were to move is there any place he’d like us to move to? He doesn’t care, to a degree. If he does come to live near us, I wonder if our “cycles” will sync? Like we’ll look at each other and say… is it time? How does X look to you?
Of course I’m also wondering how this virus will affect job prospects a year from now. That’s when he’s, potentially, looking to separate. My advice is probably going to be, re-enlist. Re-enlist, get orders to someplace you’d like to go (he’d like to go to Germany or South Korea; ha!) and just ride another 4 years. Re-evaluate at that point.
Avalune
@CaseyL: I agree 10000% that experiencing other cultures directly would do a lot of good to society in general. Particularly Americans because we get rather set in our exceptionalism and become rather difficult to move. Unfortunately, it’s not fiscally possible for most.
Speaking of Americans overseas – we tended to avoid the tourist hotspots because so frequently it was cringeworthy when we ran into American tourists. They were usually loud, rude, exuded privilege, were demanding and complained about every.freaking.thing. You wanted to cuff them in the head and tell them, YOU.ARE.IN.EUROPE.QUIT.BEING.A.DICK.AND.ENJOY.IT.YOU.TWAT.
Leto
@CaseyL: @Avalune: like she said, being in Italy and watching the American tourists there… hell, just watching them anywhere in Europe… I can’t remember who said it (famous author and all), but nothing helps you see your country with a more critical eye than living extended periods outside of it. I think it would help our country, immensely, if we had more people living overseas for a few months. And not missionaries (ugh). That and national service. It would help, a lot.
CaseyL
@Avalune:
That’s why I would really like to see a hugely expanded 1- or 2-year program of mandatory service for young people, military or civilian, where they get to pick what they’re most interested in, but are required to do *something.* They might not go overseas, but even within this country are regions so unlike each other it’s almost like being in another country!
We sort of had the latter with the Peace Corps and Volunteers of America, but I think both are pretty near dead now.
FelonyGovt
What a wonderful piece, Avalune. Strange to me as I’ve lived in this house since 1990 when we bought it, and as far as I’m concerned I’ll move when they carry me out feet first.
I do agree about exposure to other cultures. If more Americans were more openminded about travel, and didn’t confine themselves to American things (and act like ugly Americans when they’re abroad) I think this country would be much better.
Avalune
@CaseyL: Yep, I started to mention that in my previous comment – and then Leto said it. I think it’s a good idea for sure.
J R in WV
We spent a long two weeks in NE Spain and SW France, mostly in and around the Pyranees in Spain and the Dordogne in France, loved it. Used Google Translate with a Spanish shopkeeper with no English, worked well, he was overjoyed to see that state of the art tech. The shop was all tiny drawers, like the screws and fasteners dept of a big hardware store, so you could’t shop by looking for what you needed. Once he saw the translation, it was 20 seconds til he handed me the plug gadget we needed to plug in our European power converter.
The “tour” ended in Toulouse, but we took a (regular not bullet) train to Paris, it was quite deluxe to us compared to Amtrak, and I told the conductor as much. He raised his eyebrows, said “Ziss!?!” and moved his right hand in a dismissive way I can only imagine how to do. But he was interested that we felt that way. Lunch came with French red wine, was wonderful for a train lunch. The countryside was fabulous too. Paris was everything we had expected, wonderful food. First night we ate in a nearby restaurant that had a huge pile of fish on ice out front. Great seafood in France and Spain AND Italy.
Second night we splurged, I found a Michelin starred place, seafood specialty, across the river from the Eiffel tower, dinner and 2 bottles of bubbly, killing off the Euros we had left at the end of the trip.
Italy we spent a week in Tuscany, mostly in rural farming country SE of Firenza / Florence. All the old buildings were on ridge tops with walls, to keep bandits from stealing the food and women. I would move to Italy in a heartbeat, or Spain or France. The food is so good, even roadside bars had food to equal most good sit-down restaurants in the us. In town bars were much better than that, and the actual sit down restaurants are amazing.
I hate what we’re seeing in Italy now.
Mary G
I am in awe of your writing skills, Avalune, and hope you do choose to pursue publishing these so more people can enjoy them. I would never say that I am glad Leto had his horrific accident, but I am glad you came to Balloon Juice for electronic support and stayed in our little virtual community. You both are special people.
Avalune
@J R in WV: We lived in the hardest hit area of Italy – and worry for our friends and neighbors there. We get reports from people stationed there and it sounds absolutely dire and horrible.
We spent a good week in Tuscany and it was superb. Food was amazing – outside Florence of course. The owner of the place we rented out for a week was a delight. We toured a really good organic vineyard. Even The Boy liked the Rose. They did agraturismo style food with a nice wine selection. Gorgeous area too.
As mentioned – poop on France – but otherwise, we’d go back in a heartbeat too.
Avalune
@Mary G: Oh goodness – you can’t see me but I’m blushing and humbled. Thank you.
J R in WV
@raven:
Imagine me showing up there in the fall of ’70, had never seen a Navy ship live in person. Built in 1942-44, worked to support subs in the S Pacific war, seemed mostly original equipment to me, although there was A/C it had to fight tropical weather in the keys, Charleston, Pascagoula.
My most interesting work was operating the smaller cranes that handled most freight including torpedoes, and as part of the crew that operated the really big booms, which lifted our small boats (90 footers) up onto the boat deck when we put to sea. First time I handled torps I was terrified. Just shows you can get used to anything, no big deal by the time I got out….
Here are some pics if anyone is interested.
More at the bottom of that page. ETA: that right hand photo from 1971 at the bottom, I’m in that photo, remember that time at sea well.
Leto
@J R in WV: Where the outbreak occurred in Italy is where we were stationed. Just miles from it. It’s killing me seeing this. It’s killing me seeing it happen here, and seeing it there just continues to break me. One of the things about military people who are stationed overseas is that we become very attached to our locals. For those of us who fully partake of all that’s offered (they gone native!), these places essentially become our second homes.
Leto
@J R in WV:
“You came here in that? You’re braver than I thought…”
:P
CaseyL
@J R in WV:
@Avalune:
In 2010 my aunt and I spent a couple of weeks in Australia and another couple in New Zealand. We adored our time in Christchurch – where there was still scaffolding up all over town for a recent earthquake they had come through with relatively little damage. About two months after our return to the States, New Zealand was hit by another, massive earthquake that absolutely devastated Christchurch. My aunt and I were heartbroken for the people there. We cried over newsphotos of the places we had walked, and shopped, and admired, now reduced to rubble. (We tried to contact some of the folks we met there to see if they were OK or needed anything. Many were living in tents at that point and had no idea what their long term plans would or could be.)
sgrAstar
Thanks, Avalune! I am really enjoying your tales of military life.
?
waratah
My sister and sister in law, my daughter and two of her friends had a nine day cruise of the Greek islands and coast of Italy. We boarded and finished in Italy and could not pass up seeing more of Italy so planned five more days. I think you could not have had a better place to start for your overseas duties.
Avalune
@sgrAstar: Thank you!
@waratah: I like to joke that I should have started in England – then I wouldn’t have been so disappointed in the food! There were some pretty fab places to eat in England too though – they were just a lot harder to find.
Of course, we were stationed with a lot of people who didn’t like the food in Italy. They were very reluctant to try anything and complained that it was bland. Our region, northern Italy was not interested in drowning everything in spices and sauces. Southern Italy had more outside influence and tended to be a bit more judicious with the spice. Very different flavor cultures. Both delicious.
texasdoc
@Avalune: The best part of being an Air Force brat were the moves overseas–not the actual packing up and then unpacking, but getting to actually live in a place long enough to know it well. Even now, the “if this is Tuesday it must be Belgium” kind of travel leaves me cold. We were lucky enough to spend three years in Cuba b.C. (before Castro). My dad was part of a military mission to Batista’s air force, so we lived in a suburb of Havana. We kids went to a local school. As it turns out, everyone middle class and above sent their kids to private schools, and since they all wanted them to be fluent in English, half of the day was in English and half was in Spanish. They would place you in your correct grade in English (in my case, 4th grade when I arrived) and just drop you into 1st grade in Spanish. Since the vocabulary was very simple in 1st grade and everyone around you spoke Spanish, it was easy to pick up. The school was actually ahead of US schools with respect to subject matter, since they were studying for their “bachillerato” (eqivalent to the french baccalaureate). I’d already had a year of algebra when I came back after 7th grade, and was bored for two years in US schools. I remember how strange it was as we drove up through Florida on our return, hearing everyone around us speaking English in restaurants. In a strange way, I have more of an attachment to that place (Marianao) than any of the other places we lived while I was growing up. We were there for 3 1/2 years, during a very impressionable period of my life.
I wish more Americans had a chance to experience life in another country, learn another language. Too many people here in Texas say they’ve never left the state, and are proud of it!
J R in WV
@Leto:
And when there was a hurricane that had any chance of coming to visit Key West, we put to sea, to have room to run. Did that twice, people who were never seasick were going off. I went off once, then it was over for me, more from the other people around me puking that from the motion.
But it was the military, so you did what was expected. It was quite a ship, had a big machine shop, foundry, pattern makers in case a part never made before needed to be cast and machined, very industrial age world, and the boats were all ’50s and early ’60s diesel boats, the last diesel squadron in the US Navy… they were all for sale.
The yard overhaul was to prep the ship to maintain nukes, primarily fast attack boats in and around the Med. Was stationed in Sardinia, sailed around the Med to stay mobile. I was discharged before they crossed the Atlantic. I bet that was something, let alone from Subic Bay to Pearl at the end of WW II.
We did replenishment at sea drills, too, that was scary, ship-handling by both ships mattered a whole lot.
Ruckus
I saw the same in the navy, every time we landed in a foreign port. For some it was always crap. And they always came from places that most of us wouldn’t want to live, if we hadn’t grown up there. I didn’t enjoy all the ports the same, they weren’t the same. Some were better, some not so much. But every one had it’s charms and quirks. The sidewalk cafe in Athens, a block away from ruins far older than the country of my birth, where I could sit and watch a different world. Rubens house in Antwerp, led there by an elderly gentleman who came to the ship one Sunday morning and gave the few of us who ventured, a walking tour of the city. Copenhagen, where while shopping with a buddy for a present for his girlfriend, I met one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met, who spoke with a proper Oxford English accent, even though she was Danish born and raised and was amazed that I recognized her accent. All good days, which most days are, if you let them be. I have many more stories of places with people being people, often in a language which I neither understood or spoke and the ones that stand out the most involved people that didn’t judge you and that didn’t get judged.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
I had the opposite of you, as far as ship life goes. Modern missile destroyer, crossed the Atlantic 3 times, sailed above the Arctic Circle, in winter, Caribbean in the summer, even made to Gitmo, refueled at sea, a lot. Mostly interesting ports, except Gitmo, that felt like being an employee of a prison, which it sort of was.
Ruckus
@Leto:
Wasn’t the oldest in boot camp but close. It seemed far older than a lot of the guys and they were just 2 yrs younger.
topclimber
I started reading this post partly out of liberal guilt. Always ready to talk the “support our troops, just not dumb wars” talk, but not much walking the walk when it comes to personal support of vets and their families.
My expectation was to thank you for the less-than-glorious mundane sacrifices your family made during Leto’s tours. My surprise was to find that no, you are not just a sad story. Rather, you are people who show how grit, humor and openness to the people and cultures you encounter can enrich you like life in South Carolina never would.
In other words, shorn of patronizing concern, thank you on multiple counts!
Avalune
@texasdoc: The Boy had a chance to go to an international school – which would have been as you described – but we made the difficult decision to go to the Army school. He was in the middle of his freshman year of high school and it was a two year assignment. The school was five years – we wouldn’t be there long enough to complete and it seemed likely to interfere with completion pace. Many of the parents with children who did go to the international school ended up having to hire tutors when they moved because the children were behind.
The biggest loss I think was that despite taking Italian at the army school, he learned nothing in class but learned a lot at home and in the community. We had a piadineria we loved to visit and the ladies there would hush Leto if he got involved when The Boy was ordering food. They would talk to him and make him comfortable. He liked them so much he’d go get food there without us (he wouldn’t even do that in the states!)
He went to a British private school with an American Studies Program when we hit England. Graduated from there with an American diploma.
Ruckus: If they let it! That is pretty much the heart of the matter.
@topclimber: Why thank you. High praise indeed.
Avalune
@texasdoc: My mother (very estranged relationship) said she could never live in another country – in the same manner as if addressing the suggestion she eat dog turds on toast. As soon as she went on about how she’s never left podunk middle Ohio and never wanted to I thought and that is exactly what’s wrong with you. This was before she yelled at me about being a democrap and telling me she’s a proud gun toting redneck (I’m still utterly confused about when that happened). The built in fear of outsiders (immigrants) probably does come from never leaving the nest and never experiencing outsiders.
Ang
Personality wise, some folks are not meant to leave their home towns, some others are ok as long as they don’t leave the US. I met an Army wife in Germany who hate hate hated it. Thinking that maybe she just hadn’t given it a chance, I asked if they had tried traveling and she replied oh, yes and listed 8 or 9 places they had gone. I recognized the towns not as tourist sites but post locations. It turned out that her and her husband spent their weekends visiting other posts – to visit the PX and eat on post!
(The PX is the Post Exchange, the Army version of a department store. What they did was like driving an hour or two every weekend just to go to a different Walmart and McDonalds than the one in your own town. Some people I will never understand.)
It was no surprise when he left the service ASAP.
Villago Delenda Est
One of the little things that always rather left me amazed was my troops who, stationed in Germany, could not wait to get back to “the world” in the middle of their three year tour. I got a Eurail Pass and traveled all over western Europe. Two wonderful weeks. I took off weeks to ski the Alps, too.
Avalune
@Villago Delenda Est: Yeah, there are no Targets or Chick-Fil-As and I can’t wait to get back to those places were the most common things I heard and I would just look at them like… are you for real? Like, I avoid Target like the plague unless I know that’s the only place I can get a thing (like Fentiman’s Ginger Beer from the UK) and even then sparingly. Wal-Marts send my anxiety through the roof, so I sure as shit don’t miss those…I went in one out of desperation trying to get Leto a thing he needed while in the hospital, and I wanted to run out of there like it was on fire. Of all the damned things to miss desperately…Target and Wal-Mart. Barf.
Avalune
@Ang: Yeah, it seems that way. That PX to PX trip is kind of like the 90 minute drive people would make to the commissary when a bunch of excellent grocery stores were within walking distance with fresh, delicious, unprocessed food! I WOULD go to the commissary very occasionally for hamburger buns (because seriously Italians…) and salad dressing/bbq sauce because you couldn’t find those local and a couple other specifics but 98% of my groceries I just bought at the Coop or the Rosetto. I’m not driving 90 minutes for a damned box of Fruit Loops and a pack of processed lunch meat – get out of town!
As I was saying to Villago, it’s just not a mentality I understand. It frustrates me. I always felt like it was a little bit of a waste to bring people like that overseas when there were so many who would have loved to come and thrived.
That was part of the benefit too of the very small base where we were stationed – no base housing, no commissary, there was a gym, a library, and a shoppette and that was pretty much it. So if you wanted to hide on your patch of America good luck to you. And because there were so few Americans up there, many people spoke English but not a lot of it. Outside the larger bases it was basically Americanized for some distance and you could basically just sulk on base the whole tour.
Goes back to the Hearts Apart meeting I talked about in the previous post. I COULD sit here and spend the next two hours bitching about everything there is to bitch about – or I could do something more productive like play rock band or sew a quilt or my grad school homework – so that’s what I did.
Avalune
@Villago Delenda Est: Oh yeah, and we never went home in the middle of our tour either. We went on vacation in Tuscany instead. We did go home after a few years in the UK very briefly but that was just so The Boy could do placement testing and college prep stuff when he was thinking about going straight to college. If not for that – would not have flown back then either. If not for Trump’s hiring freeze, we’d still be in the UK actually because we both had jobs lined up.