Bob - The Navy Years, Chapter 6

NATTC, Memphis, Tennessee

Actually, this base is located in Millington, TN, just outside of Memphis.
After 2 weeks Leave at home, getting to visit with friends and spending a little time with that cute Mary Lynn Wagner, I boarded a Greyhound Bus and headed for Memphis.  I arrived there on May 17, 1965.  Checking in and out of a Base is very similar in nature. Just one is in reverse of the other. You hit all the same spots. You report to the Personnel Office, where there you receive your check-in instructions.  This is a check in sheet, listing all the places you need to check in, along with a map of the base.  Usually, there are several new people checking in at the same time so you have company on your little jaunt around the base. You must check in at places like Disbursing (Payroll), Chow Hall, Library, Recreation Dept, Barracks, Maintenance Shop, whichever Company on the Base you are being assigned, and various other places depending on the base.  Each of these places have a little stamp they use to stamp your sheet and when you've finished you go back to the Personnel Office.  You are now checked in to the base.  From there you report to your Barracks where they assign you a bunk, give you your sheets and blankets, then you move in.  Here, I was in the School Barracks and in a cubicle with 3 other guys.  Our wing had about 8 cubicles.  Our Barracks had 2 wings, 2 floors, so math would say about 128 people in the Barracks. 
School Bases are a step up from Boot Camp, but still very restrictive in your movements. Most people there are very new Sailors, so they didn't give us a lot of freedom.
Each morning we had to 'Field Day' or cubicle. Each person made sure his rack was made up, clothes stowed properly, and the place looked good.  The last thing we did was swab the deck, wax it, and wait for it to dry.  Then, the newest person in the cube had to secure the buffer to buff the floor.  One buffer per wing. This meant going to the person that was currently using the buffer and asking if you could have it next. Usually, somebody else was next and you had to go to him to ask if you could get it next..  A person would have to go through several people before getting a turn.  Then you had to remember who you got it after and who was getting the buffer after you!  Then you buffed the deck, nice and shiny, then fell out to march to class.  People were going to different classes, but they were basically in the same area.  So we marched from the Barracks area to the classroom area then disbursed.
I was attending electronics class.  Much math involved.  I hated it.  I didn't work very hard at it.  I hated High School, and I hated this school.  I really never got along with school in my younger days. Being in Memphis, I was close enough to home that I tried to get home every weekend. That didn't help my classwork, either.
While in Memphis I did run into Billy Doyle and Charlie Pate, two of the guys with whom I planned on joining the Navy. They'd  joined not long after I did.
Most of the time I took the Greyhound Bus home and back to the base. One time Charlie Pate and I hitchhiked back to Louisville. That was an experience!  It took all night.  We left around 4-5 in the afternoon and I got to Louisville around 6:00 am. the next morning.  Our last ride was caught in E-town and this guy in his Cadilac drove 100 mph all the way to Louisville.  I shouldn't have come home so often.  I was dead tired when I was home and dead tired by the time I got back to the base.
Well, it took me about 6 weeks to flunk out.
So, waiting for orders, I, along with all the other flunkies, was assigned to work details.  We did a lot of painting, cleaning, and yard work.
New Orders finally came through.  I reported to the Personnel Office to see where I was going.  Now, I never really thought about it or envisioned it, but in the back of my mind I thought somewhere in Washington, D. C., some high ranking officer was making decisions on where to send people.  You know, "Let's put this Tabler kid on a Destroyer in the North Atlantic fighting the Ruskies until he gets his head on straight." type of thing. The bubble burst. As I stood in Personnel, about a half a dozen old ladies, each one looking like Aunt Bee or Clara from Mayberry, was back there typing up orders.  "Bee, I need 3 of them to go to Florida", "Clara, give me 6 of them for Norfolk".  Well, I received my orders.  I was headed to VA-125, Lemoore Naval Air Station, Lemoore, CA.
Great.  Damn Watts Riots are going on in California at that time. Where the hell is Lemoore, California?  Am I gonna get right in the middle of that mess?  So checking out of NATTC, Memphis, like I checked in, thinking wrongly that I'd never see that place again, I went home for 2 weeks Leave before reporting to my new home in California.
Now, in the military you get 30 days leave a year, and here I was using up 28 days of it in 8 months.  I was in the hole.  But home I went, knowing this time getting back home was not gonna happen nearly as often in the future.

To be continued........