In the spring of 1987 I had just graduated (for the second time) from technical training at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, and I had to go up to Spokane, Washington to attend Aircrew Survival School at Fairchild Air Force Base. I decided to drive my brown 1982 Chevy Cavalier from Texas to Washington State, and on the way up I stopped in to see my friends Joe and Dianne Filip near (what was) George Air Force Base. Joe and Dianne had met when they were both serving in the US Air Force, and by this time in 1987 they had gotten out of the service and were living in Victorville, California. Joe was hanging drywall and Dianne was very pregnant with their (soon to be born) son Tom. We loaded camping gear into Joe's car and drove up to the Kern River Vally and spend a few days camping. I spent a lot of time skiing after returning from Korea in 1984, and this was "Temp The Gods, Ski The Trees" t-shirt was one of my favorites.

Another gem from the collection of my good friend Joe Filip, who apparently has boxes and boxes of old photos taken while we were in high school. I don't think I've ever seen this photo before he posted it to his Facebook page. The obvious star is my canary yellow 1972 Chevy Vega station wagon. My mother bought that car from somebody she worked with at Pollack's Fruital Works in Middletown, New York, some years earlier. She drove it as her car, a second car for our family, for a couple of years. As I got closer to graduating from high school my parents gave me the car to drive in my senior year - and I took it literally everywhere under the sun. Interestingly enough, I have no idea where this picture was taken - I don't really recognize the area in the background of the photo, although it might be somewhere out near Joe's house (Circleville, NY). Judging by my shorts, it's summertime, and chances are that the shirt I'm wearing came from some rock concert somewhere (don't remember which one.) And, right now I've got this photo pegged for summer of 1979, but it could also have been from the summer of 1980, right before I went into the Air Force. Thanks again, Joe. These are great...

Again, another photo taken by Joe Filip. These pictures are absolute gems, and I had no idea they even existed until Joe started posting them on Facebook. This one comes from our Senior Class Trip to the Grossinger's Catskill Resort Hotel, apparently in about December of 1979. In this photo Debbie Curabba and I are making our way across the ice. I met Debbie when we both were attending our very first day of Kindergarten at the Liberty Street School in Middletown New York in about 1969 or so, so she and I go "way back." In this photo I recognize the Bauer "Black Cat" hockey stakes that were my pride and joy - we played hockey all year long. During the summer it was street hockey and during the winter on the ice. But man, Grossingers? Some people get to go Cancun or someplace warm...

This picture was taken by a good friend in Korea, Jim "Flanny" Flanagan. And, it was taken sometime in the spring of 1984. We were assigned to "Skivvy Nine" as cryptologic linguists. There were three rotating flights, and we were all assigned to "Charlie Flight." That's me on the left, with Red Lloyd, Ray Scott, and Steve Wentzell. We worked a "6/3" schedule, meaning we had to work three day shifts, three either swing or mid shifts, and then had three consecutive days off. It was a great working schedule, very good for doing what we did best - drink beer and chase women. But, sometimes your days off were like Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday or something like that. We would head off to the "Ville" of Songtan that was right outside of the gate and ramble around, mostly looking for something to do. I remember on this day we somehow got up on the roof of a club in Arragon Alley, and when we found these stacks of empty beer bottles, then we struck a pose as if to say we had polished off all of that beer by ourselves (urp...) You can tell by our light jackets that the worst of the winter of 1983 is over, but it's also not quite summer yet, so maybe this was about March or April or so, 1984. In a few months I would be leaving Korea for Maryland.

We graduated from Middletown High School in June of 1980. There were just a few short months after graduation and before I would head off to Air Force basic training in September 1980. My good friend Joe Filip took this photo, apparently on one of our many backpacking trips to the mountains of the Shawangunk Ridge and the VerKeederkill Falls. The bright yellow line you can see in this picture is undoubtedly the roof of my 1972 bright-yellow Chevy Vega station wagon which hauled us all over kingdom come. My mother had purchased this car from her boss at PFW some years earlier, and my parents gave it to me as a graduation present in my senior year of high school. You can also see the ever-present 35 mm camera - we never went anywhere without the cameras. The difference is - Joe managed to somehow save or salvage most of his shots, and mine are all pretty much lost. Anyway, at this time life was all about hanging out with friends, partying our asses off, having a great time, and working when we had to.

I spent all of 1981 studying the Korean language at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) on the Presidio of Monterrey in California. The course lasted an entire year (47 weeks of instruction). We started in January and graduated in early December. It was a very tough course with high levels of attrition which we called "wash-outs." Anyway, amazingly enough when it was over I had graduated and was now off to Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas for another six months of technical training. My parents, Merritt and Daphne, flew out to Monterrey for the graduation ceremony. Once that was done, we packed up my belongings into my 1967 green Chevy Impala (affectionately known as "Bertha") and drove to Texas. My good friend Joe Filip was also in the Air Force, stationed at that time at George Air Force Base located in the "high desert" of Southern California. So, the four of us (me, Joe, mom, and dad) did a road trip from Northern California down South to Los Angeles, then through the desert, past the Grand Canyon, and eventually to San Angelo in Texas. This picture was taken on the rim of the Grand Canyon in December of 1981. Once we got to Texas we flew to New York for Christmas.

I arrived in Osan Air Force Base in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) in June 1982. Originally sent there on a one year remote tour as a Korean linguist. The training cycle to become a fully qualified operational linguist was very long. It started with six weeks of English language training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio Texas (end of 1980). The Air Force found they needed to teach trainees some of the basics of grammar and language structure before they could begin to teach them a foreign language. This class ended just before Christmas in 1980, and I was able to go back to New York on leave before reporting in to my next class. The next big hurdle was a full year of Korean language training at the Presidio of Monterrey, California, where I spent all of 1981. This was followed by another six months of technical training at Goodfellow AFB in San Angelo Texas which ended in about June of 1982. When I finally got to Korea I had to go through about eight months of on-the-job training to become certified first as a Category II (semi-qualified) and then Category III (fully-qualified) operator. So, finally, by about February of 1983, more or less when this photo was taken, and about two and a half years after the process was started, I was dubbed "qualified" to work alone - and my first tour in Korea was almost up. I decided to extend for another year until the summer of 1984 in order to rack up some real experience, because up until then it had all been training, training, training. This photo was taken by my good friend Bob Flyzik - we were both on "Charlie Flight" together in Korea, and we hung out together all the time. Bob Flyzik is easily one of the smartest people I've ever met. Remind me to write an article about the games of "assassin" we played in downtown Songtan.

One of our favorite things to do during the spring and summer months was to head up to the Shawangunk Ridge with a group of guys and go backpacking. I recently got back into touch via Facebook with a good friend from high school, Joe Filip. His nickname was "foto" because he almost always had a camera with him, and now some 30 years later he's sitting on boxes packed full of old pictures of us in the prime of our adolescence, many of these taken on backpacking trips like this one. We would take whiskey because it was lighter and easier to carry up the mountain, and mostly we just camped, hiked, and partied our asses off. I remember several times especially during our senior year, as the winter melted into spring on a Friday morning we would simply say "screw this" to school, grab our backpacks and head for the hills. Most often we would hike up and camp out at the top of the VerKeerderkill Falls.

In 1967 I was five years old, and we were still living in the upstairs in an apartment on Grant Street in Middletown, New York. The house was located on the corner of Grant Street and Sprague Avenue. It was the last house on the corner, as close as you could possibly get to PFW. If you were looking at PFW it was the last house on the right hand side of the street. Living in this house had it's advantages for my mom and dad; both were working at Pollack's Fruital Works or "PFW" as it was known, which was right across the street. It was a small two-bedroom house, wooden frame, and to be truthful I really don't remember all that much about living there. I remember the swing set that was in the back yard. I remember there was a neighbor who was an amateur magician who would pull coins out of my ear (and I was totally and completely dumbfounded as to how he did that.) The best part was that often he would let me keep whatever coin he came up with. My grandmother, Pauline Melvin, would come down every day to watch after us kids. My sister, who was two years older than me, would go to school and I would stay at home with my grandmother. (more)