I had been out of high school for probably less than a year and was barely eighteen. At the time, I was working at the Athens Table Company operating a tenon saw.
Simply put, it was a large, dangerous, double-bladed saw designed to shape the edges of boards so they could be built into things like...desks and tables. I got the job because the guy who was working the saw got his hand caught in it and, though he kept his hand, I'm not so sure that it ever was the same. (I do remember him actually returning to work there some time thereafter.) So, I was offered a raise and a transfer from a press that I was then operating.
After some months of doing this job and realizing that it, like my life, was dead end and that there was no real hope for a future there for me, I got the notion to talk to an Army recruiter and see what he had to offer. He had some wonderful words to say about college money and travel in Europe. I would be attending Basic Training at Ft. Dix, New Jersey, (coincidentally where dad had had his basic before being shipped to Africa to fight Nazis,) and showed me on a map where I would be stationed in Deutschland to listen in on Communist radio broadcasts. (Yes, the U.S.S.R. was still alive and kicking back then.) It all sounded very fascinating and terrifying.
In fact, the more I thought about it, the more terrifying it became. I was eighteen, legally an adult, but awfully, awfully immature. I mean, ridiculously so! That's when things got worse.
One early morning on the job, as was occasionally the case, there was no work for me on my machine, so they sent me to work on another. Sometimes, it was a table saw and sometimes a band saw and, as was the case this morning, a double-bladed router.
I had used them before and had a very good idea of how to use them, but, for some reason, I wasn't exactly on my game this day. It was cold and I was thinking that my fingers were numb when a really, really stupid idea popped into my head. A pipe was set up on the table just so that it would blow shavings away from the blades and I noticed that the air coming out was actually warm. Before I thought, I put the fingers near the tube, which was, of course, too near the blades and, before I knew, I had clipped the ends off of my fingers. I remember vividly the piles of sawdust around my machine being splattered with my very own blood!
I called my boss over, he said some choice words and someone took me to the hospital. They bandaged my hands and sent me back to the job for paperwork. After that, I went home, in less pain than you might've imagined. (The real pain was, a couple of days later, when the nurse at the factory removed the bandages that were stuck with dried blood to my fingers.)
So, the next thing I had to do was contact my recruiter, who set up a very brief appointment with a recruiter doctor who said, "Well, you can't do pushups with that hand." I was given a postponement, but was hoping for a little more.
This entire episode resulted in me spending several weeks at home with mom and dad, but no paycheck. Yes, maybe I should've been paid somehow, but was too ignorant to know how those things worked.
As it was, I was, frankly, more and more afraid of leaving hearth and home and momma's apron strings, to go off on the adventure of a lifetime with Uncle Sam's Army. To make it worse, things were tough around the house financially and physically. Dad had not been sick for very long, and I was stuck with too much time to worry, be afraid and wallow in my own, dare I say it, cowardice.
After some time, I contacted my recruiting sergeant and attempted to explain my predicament. I can't say he was exactly happy with my new found reluctance, but, looking back, he was more helpful than I deserved. He set up an appointment with his boss, a captain who I was to meet me in Knoxville, for a discussion concerning my desire to get out of my commitment through, what was called, a "hardship."
I talked to the captain, attempting to retain some modicum of dignity, never realizing I was actually failing miserably. He did, ultimately, recommended me for a discharge from the Delayed Entry Program (D.E.P.) He told me that, as a caveat, I could not join any branch of the military for three years. I had no problem with that. Then he said some words to me that I've never forgotten and that I was too young, naïve and downright stupid to appreciate. He said that he hated for me to not go because I "would've made a hell of a soldier!"
I came home, greatly relieved, but none the wiser. I didn't even go back to the Table Company to tell them of my non-military situation. I only knew that I didn't want to go back there and sought new employment.
I found a job waiting tables at Western Sizzlin' Steak House. As far as I know, I'm the first waiter they ever had there.
Three plus years passed and my life was still going nowhere. So I decided to, once again, give some serious thought to the military. I was a little older, if only slightly more mature, and had still not gotten it out of my blood. I suppose being reared on John Wayne and apple pie, not to mention being a baby-boomer son of a WW II veteran as well as a brother to a Vietnam veteran, it was fairly natural for me to want to give at least of couple of years of my life to serving our country in uniform.
So, I told dad I was going to Cleveland to the recruiter’s off to talk to the Air Force. I thought that they would provide the best opportunity for some technical training that might prove useful after my hitch was up. I came home telling him I was, for a number of reasons, joining the Army instead. Dad was amazingly agreeable about the entire episode.
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