Poltrack Blog

How I spent my Thanksgiving in 1968 I was in Navy Avionics training in Tennessee after boot camp until being station at the Ream Field Naval Air Station at Imperial Beach California. During my four years of service I was able able to spend every Christmas at home. However that was not the case with Thanksgiving. I didn't have a car but some of the other sailors did . I used to bomb around with a guy who had a classic jaguar. It was great fun. He invited me to join him in New Orleans but unfortunately that exceeded the distance we were allowed to travel on leave (home was the exception). Tearing up the road in Memphis Tennessee on the weekends. I regret not going to New Orleans. I had another invite from a friend whose family lived in Pine Bluffs, Arkansas. It was within the distance requirements from Memphis and they were most hospitable. I had a great dinner with wine and conversation. My friend's dad worked as a cook at the Cummins Unit of the Arkansas Depa...

After Boot Camp  I received orders to report to the Naval Training Center in Millington, TN. I was going to study Avionics, communication and navigation. I had been no farther south than Washington, DC so Tennessee was quite an adventure for me.  I never got used to staying in a Barracks. At night it was inevitable that the first person to fall asleep was the loudest snorer and rest of us got to hear the symphony. Things were a lot better than Boot Camp, I was able to wear civilian clothes on Liberty and I finally could have a camera to capture these magic moments. I often lament that I did not write a journal. There wasn't much to do after a day of school and Millington didn't have much going on, so we would chat about stuff in the barracks. It would be nice to find out what happened to these folks. Do I look pained? I'm wearing a college jacket but the Navy was nothing like college. Many of my shipmates would spend their Saturday mornings ironin...

I had a school friend who was a competitive target shooter. He invited me to a NRA gun show in Boston in Spring of 1968.The hotel we stayed in was in lock down at night after the assassination of Martin Luther King for fear of rioting. Racial tensions were already high because of forced school busing. Boston was probably spared the rioting due to a memorial concert performed by James Brown which was televised on WGBH to calm the city.  Besides the civil rights movement, there were demonstrations against the Vietnam War. I grew tired of the gun show so I wandered around Boston Common, followed the music to an antiwar protest. 1968 was quite a year. A Lotus Europa on the streets of Boston My flower power moment. Hard to believe that I would soon be on my way to Boot Camp I never got to the point where I would wear "love beads". Boston folks are so elegant. Live music. One guy is wearing a beret One of the speakers who looks the part

Fifty years ago in July  I arrived at U.S. Naval Training Center in Great Lakes. ILL. The bus pulled up to gates in the middle of night and I remember being herded off and yelled at. It wasn't exactly the same as an orientation week at College. The training ran just under two months and there was a lot to do. The idea was to rework us into sailors and for the most part they were successful. They took away anything we might have brought with us with the exception of bibles and the clothes were wore. We couldn't wash those clothes  and after a while in the summer heat they became quite pungent. This was by design of course and I appreciated getting my brand new uniform. We had the option of shipping our clothing home but most of us just tossed it. There was lots of standing in line and the common chant was "nuts to butts" if you can picture that in your mind. There was some innovation as we were in line in our skivvies. We were ordered to raise our arms and they wou...

In late Spring of 1968 I received a letter to take a physical for military service. It was scheduled in New Haven, CT and was unlike a regular physical performed by a personal physician. The experience was surreal and is pretty much as described in Arlo Guthrie's classic song Alice's Restaurant. There was a lot of sitting around on benches with lots of other guys waiting to get inspected, injected and prodded. We weren't in the service but I remember being yelled at by people who were. According to the official Selective Service Website  we were being examined for mental, physical and moral fitness by the military. Some of the people on the bench had prepared for their physical by ingesting large quantities of drugs but in 1968 they were mostly interested in making the numbers so everyone was deemed moral enough for war as long as they had a pulse. The part that stuck in my mind was when we lined up and some army guy (with a bad facial wound) had us count off  and b...

I used to mow lawns when I lived in Connecticut. We lived in a neighborhood and I was able to push my lawnmower to each of my patrons. Most of the properties were about a quarter acre but I made the mistake of charging by the hour instead of the job. I kept finishing the job faster as I became more experienced. I only made about $2.50 per lawn not counting tips. I spent my money on records and at that time I was being drawn into the folk revival scene.I had no idea about the roots of the music so my first introduction was the Kingston Trio. It would be decades later till I learned where Tom Dooley came from. The Kingston Trio The Kingston Trio