Places I've Lived

I read a blog the other day on which the writer mentioned places he's lived throughout his life. Sounded like a good idea, so here I go.

Crawfordsville, Indiana...this is where I spent my very early childhood.

Willard, Ohio...this is where I grew up. I graduated from Willard High School and move away not long after.

Englewood & Venice, Florida...my oldest sister lived here and so it provided me with somewhere to go after leaving Willard. Funny story about the trip down there. I drove a 1970 Pontiac LeMans muscle car. I was driving south on I-75 through southern Georgia and got into a little drag race with a young couple in a Ford Torino (Starsky and Hutch car). We both got pulled over and had to follow the trooper to the local Sheriff's office to pay our fines...or go to jail. I opted to pay my fine with my last little bit of cash on hand (200 dollars I think). After leaving the Sheriff's office and hitting the road, my right front wheel bearing went out on the car. I didn't have enough money to fix it, so I sold the car to the service station owner and a friend of his flew me the rest of the way to Florida in a small plane. Aah, the dumb decisions we made as kids!

San Antonio, Texas...After living in Florida for almost 2 years, I joined the Air Force because I didn't know what else to do with my life. Lackland Air Force Base, where USAF basic training occurs, is in San Antonio. Oh what a fun time I had in boot camp! Really...it was a cake walk in comparison to the boot camps of the other services.

Rantoul, Illinois...Chanute AFB is located here. This is where I attended air force tech school and learned to be an Avionics Guidance and Control Technician (instrumentation, auto-pilot, Nav systems) Oh what memories I made here. Me and my buddies refered to ourselves as "The Dirty Half-Dozen." This is also where I met my wife, Joan. She looked mighty fine in the her olive drab green uniform, blond hair and cute smile! It was love at first site.

Jacksonville, Arkansas...Little Rock AFB. This was my first real duty station. I worked on C-130 aircraft. Joan and I were married here and our children were born here. We lived here for 6 years.

Mehlingen, West Germany (pronounced may-ling-gen)...Sembach Air Base (near Ramstein Air Base). We lived in this old house built from materials salvaged after World War II. Our landlords lived in a 300 year old home, right next to us. A couple of interesting factoids about our time in Germany.
Ramstein Air Base was located about 20 minutes drive south of Sembach Air Base. At Ramstein, they had an annual open house/air show called Flugtag, with the purpose of hosting and entertaining our German neighbors. This year, at Flugtag 88, my squadron was hosting a food both at which my wife and I were working. The Italian Air Force aerobatic team was performing that day and tragically 3 of the planes crashed into each other. All burst into flames and one of the burning jets hurtled into the crowd of spectators. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_mutYDteWU) I don't recall the exact number, but I think it was somewhere around 64 or 65 people killed and about 300 injured. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramstein_airshow_disaster). Fortunately, neither me or my family were injured, nor were any of my friends and co-workers. August 1988 was a memorable time to be in Germany, albeit not very good memories.
However, fast forward a year later. In August of 1989 events began to unfold that brought about the end of the Cold War, culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall in November of 89. It was an amazing time to live in Germany. Many of my friends were able to visit Berlin during this time, but I did not (although I don't remember why).
Near the end of my time in Germany, I was deployed to Incirlik Air Base, Turkey in support of Operation Desert Storm.

Blackfoot, Idaho...we ended up here after I separated from the Air Force. This is near where my wife grew up and all her family lived there, so it was the logical place for my wife and kids to go while I was deployed.

Kennewick, Washington...my wife followed a job here, and this is where we currently reside.

During my eleven years in the Air Force (yeah, I know, I was stupid to get out after 11 years), I was deployed to many locations in the United States, Canada, Europe and Southwest Asia for temporary duties, or what we called TDY's. Here's a list of the places I could recall.
In the USA: Nellis Air Force Base (Las Vegas), Nevada; Savanah, Georgia; Pope AFB, North Carolina; Richenbacker Air National Guard Base (Columbus), Ohio; St. Joseph, Missouri; Davis-Monthan AFB (Tuscon), Arizona
Canada: Goose Bay, Labrador, Canada
Europe: RAF (Royal Air Force) Mildenhall, England (more than one trip here, and did allot of site seeing). Aviano Air Base, Italy; Torrejon Air Base, Madrid, Spain; Athens, Greece (don't remember the name of the air base there); Incirlik Air Base, Turkey;
Southwest Asia: Daharan, Saudi Arabia. I think it was called King Fahd Air Base or something like that. I was there for several weeks in 1985-86.

I've visited or driven through many of the United States and sadly I would say that I (we) didn't site-see near as much as we would have liked while living in Europe. Nonetheless, we are well travelled.