A School Time-Line
I have in my sweaty little digits a rather aged piece of parchment; a yellowed typewriter sheet with very dated typing, done by an IBM Selectric with a sans-serif type-ball, sometime in 1975, and lost for all the intervening years until this very morning as is, when my hand landed on it, stuffed in amongst a pile of long-forgotten papers…. The paper has just dates and a few words of notation on the side. I’ll elaborate that with commentary. I have photos of all these events, and they’re free to see on ihddb.com…
JUN 1964 — BACK FROM THE WAR — There never was ASA in Vietnam. I was a PFC Clerk-Typist Trainee 006, stationed permanently at Fort Devens, Mass. Ignore the sripes I wore at Fort Ord where I was a weapons instructor.
You’ll note my MOS designation: “006”. That’s only one number away from the infamous James Bond, “007”!!!
Double O Six meant “Licensed To Seriously Annoy”. I returned to a civilian job as a Remote Reader, which I quickly abandoned in favor of author — I landed a job as a writer at a fabulous .25 a word!