Off They Go
Fifty years ago today, on June 8, 1976, I climbed aboard a bus and left home for the United States Air Force. I was eighteen years old. Like most eighteen-year-olds, I thought I knew a lot more than I actually did. Earlier that day, several of us gathered at a local mall beside an F-104 Starfighter that was on display there. It was great public relations for the Air Force and probably not bad for our recruiter, either. A photographer from the local newspaper snapped a picture. Looking at that photograph now, I can't help but smile. We were standing there in bell-bottoms, striped shirts, and long hair, products of the 1970s, trying our best to look confident and grown up. Fifty years later, that photograph remains a frozen moment in time—a glimpse of seven young men standing at the threshold of adulthood, with no idea where the years ahead would take them. What you can't see in the photograph is how hungover I was. The night before, I had gone out alone to a local bar and dra...
