Quote Originally Posted by High_Plains_Drifter View Post
Wow... other Chanute stories, cool.

Yeah I volunteered to wax and buff the barracks floors each day after everyone else left to go MARCH to school, in the COLD, and SNOW. Meanwhile, I got a system down where I could buff the floors spit shined in nothing flat, so afterwards I could go over to the TDY barracks and have a nice breakfast, and then RIDE to school in a buddy's truck that I had met, a nice WARM truck. I had a lot of people ask me if I wanted to let them do the floor buffing each morning to which I always replied, NOT A CHANCE. I got a "STRAGGLE PASS" too that dismissed me from marching.

They tell you NEVER VOLUNTEER FOR ANYTHING, but, sometimes it works out to your advantage.

Chanute was just a short bus ride up to my home in WI, and the bus would pick you up and drop you off right on base. I got to go home for Christmas and New Years. I was glad to leave Chanute though when tech school was over. Went home for about a week then off to Nellis AFB, Las Vegas, NV. Ya, and I had orders for Shaw AFB right up until about 2 weeks before graduation, then they changed them to Nellis. We had a "base trading" day for people that have the same job... I didn't even go... and I still had people asking to trade me for Nellis. NOT A CHANCE again...
I was out of the house and ESPECIALLY my dad's house by the time he went to Chanute. I went back to Miami when he went to Keflavik. No F-ing way was I going there even if they'd let me. I think it was a unaccompanied post.

We were forever going to Monterey, CA and San Angelo, TX. My dad was a linguist so he kept getting orders back to DLI. Then he had a course in Crystal City, in Arlington, VA,Why we lived in DC beats the Hell out of me.

When I get unlazy and want to focus, there are pics of Iraklion Air Station on the net of how it looked when we were there, and the graffiti'd up ghost town it is now. That was kind of sad. The pics focus more on the AF there, naturally. Not Dependents so I recognized very little except the main gate and the NCO club. There were no pics of housing.

Speaking of, the housing we lived in on the Presidio of Monterey in 66 and 72 got bulldozed flat too. NOTHING on Lackland is what it was when I was a kid except the commissary and BX. Why that, who knows

Oddly, I only lived on base as a Marine when I was a boot living in the barracks. Once I got married I never did. The ex and I were both active duty and we made out better living off base. So we thought anyway. Closest I came was I had gotten assigned a house in Wire Mountain (SNCO housing) on Camp Pendleton but decided to retire the next month so had to turn it down and pull my name.