The Night I Became A Stooge
It might be something that happened to them personally, something they witnessed, or one of those tales that grows slightly with each retelling until it becomes part of military folklore.
Whatever the case, basic training seems to produce memories that refuse to fade.
I am no exception.
My story begins on my very first night at Air Force basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, on June 9, 1976.
Looking back, I was practically begging for trouble before I ever set foot in Texas.
A week before leaving Illinois, I had reluctantly cut off most of my long red hair. In the mid-1970s, long hair was practically a badge of honor for many young men, but I figured there was no point arriving at basic training looking like a roadie for Lynyrd Skynyrd. I wanted to blend in. I didn’t want to attract attention.
Then, on the morning I checked out of Chicago’s Avenue Motel and headed for the induction center, I put on a bright orange Three Stooges T-shirt.
Why?
To this day I have absolutely no idea.
If my goal was to avoid attracting attention, a fluorescent orange shirt featuring Moe, Larry, and Curly was probably not the wisest wardrobe choice ever made by a future Air Force recruit.
There were eighteen of us leaving Chicago for San Antonio that evening, including six other young men from the Illinois Valley. In fact, we had become minor celebrities before we ever boarded the plane. Earlier that week, an F-104 Starfighter had been placed on display at a local shopping mall, and our Air Force recruiter, sensing a public relations opportunity, gathered us together beside the aircraft for a photograph that appeared on the front page of the local newspaper.
The headline read: ”Off They Go.”
At the time, we looked like a group of eager young adventurers preparing to conquer the world.
Three months later, only two of us would still be in the Air Force.
The night before our departure, we stayed at the Avenue Motel on Michigan Avenue. Back then, new recruits from all branches of the military were routinely put up there before spending a day being processed through the induction center on Van Buren Street.
After hours of paperwork, medical checks, forms, signatures, and waiting in lines, we were eventually loaded onto a bus bound for O’Hare Airport.
Before boarding, a couple of friends and I decided to make one last prank call. We called our recruiter collect and solemnly informed him that we only had one phone call. For a glorious minute or two, he thought we had somehow landed in jail.
By the time we admitted we were joking, he wasn’t nearly as amused as we were.
Like most eighteen-year-olds, we thought we were styling as we boarded our Braniff Airlines flight to Texas. For many of us it was our first airplane ride. The guy sitting next to me spent most of the flight gripping his armrests as though the aircraft were being held together by prayer and rivets. Every bump in the air seemed to shorten his life expectancy by another year.
Late that evening, we landed in San Antonio.
Waiting for us was a sergeant whose idea of hospitality differed considerably from what most people would consider welcoming. Within moments he informed us exactly where we stood in the military hierarchy.
Somewhere below slug slime.
That lesson was reinforced shortly afterward when we were herded onto buses and transported to Lackland’s processing center. There, several additional sergeants greeted us with equal enthusiasm.
“Get your lazy asses off the bus!”
“Move!”
The warm Texas welcome was apparently over.
During the orientation briefing, the guy who sat next to me on the plane down and hadn’t said a word the entire trip raised his hand and asked whether all of us who had enlisted together under the Air Force’s “Buddy System” would remain together.
The room became noticeably quieter.
The Buddy System had been one of the Air Force’s recruiting incentives. Enlist with a friend and, in theory, you might attend basic training together and perhaps even technical school afterward.
Right then, however, the last thing I wanted was for anyone to call attention to our group. We had only been at Lackland a short time, and I had already heard enough yelling to know that attracting attention was rarely a good idea.
Of course, that observation was coming from the guy wearing the orange Three Stooges T-shirt.
The sergeant stared at him. “The Buddy System, huh?”
The room became completely silent.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
The sergeant nodded slowly.
“Well, don’t you boys worry. We’ll make sure all you buddies stay together.”
Whether that had been the plan all along or whether the sergeant decided it right there remains one of life’s mysteries. Whatever the reason, all eighteen of us who had come down from Chicago ended up in the same training flight. Before long we were known as the “Chicago 18,” and for the next six weeks we would learn, march, sweat, and get yelled at together.
Next came the drug screening.
We were marched into a large latrine and ordered to provide urine samples.
What followed resembled the restroom at Wrigley Field during the seventh-inning stretch. Recruits surged toward urinals while trying to balance tiny test strips, instructions, and their rapidly vanishing dignity.
There was just one problem.
I couldn’t pee.
Not even a drop.
I had used the restroom on the plane, and now, standing there in front of the urinal with dozens of other nervous recruits, my body had apparently decided to go on strike. As the crowd gradually thinned, I remained. So did several other unfortunate souls. Some were probably too shy. And some, like me, simply had nothing left in the tank. Eventually a sergeant informed us that we had nothing to worry about and that we could return the following day with our training instructor.
That was reassuring.
At least until I met my training instructor.
After chow, we were loaded back onto buses and driven to our barracks. Fate intervened once again when our bus arrived and my name happened to be the first one called.
I stepped off into the warm Texas night. The barracks sat on the second floor above an open concrete area used for formations. The lighting was dim. Shadows pooled beneath the building. Then I heard it.
Click.
Click.
Click.
The metallic sound of cleats striking concrete.
Out of the darkness emerged several figures wearing campaign hats—the famous “Smokey the Bear” hats every recruit learns to fear. Before I could blink, one of them was standing directly in front of me. His eyes drifted downward. Toward my bright orange Three Stooges T-shirt. Then back up.
“What are you?” he barked. “A stooge?”
The realization hit me instantly.
Of all the people in the United States Air Force, I had just met the one man least likely to appreciate my sense of fashion.
“No, sir,” I replied.
“Don’t call me sir. I work for a living!”
His campaign hat nearly touched my forehead.
“I think you are a stooge.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“I can’t hear you!”
“YES, SERGEANT!”
“I THINK YOU ARE A STOOGE!”
By now another training instructor—and an Air Force Academy cadet who looked equally terrifying—had joined the festivities.
“Take off that shirt and turn it inside out, Stooge.”
I may have set a world speed record that night.
Off.
Inside out.
Back on.
Done.
“Where are you from, Stooge?”
“Illinois, Sergeant.”
“Illinois? You mean to tell me you came all the way from Illinois just to piss me off?”
“No, Sergeant.”
I had officially become known as Stooge.
For the remainder of the evening we stood in formation, picked up suitcases, put down suitcases, picked them up again, put them down again, marched a few feet, stopped, got yelled at, and repeated the process. Somewhere in the middle of all this, I was regularly reminded of my status as the flight’s resident Stooge.
Meanwhile, another unpleasant reality was beginning to dawn on me. I still hadn’t completed my urine test. Which meant that sometime the next morning I would have to explain to my new best friend—the training instructor who already believed I had traveled 1,200 miles specifically to annoy him—that he needed to escort me back to the processing center so I could finally provide a sample.
Somehow, I doubted he was going to be thrilled about that.
Then again, first impressions are important.
And thanks to a bright orange Three Stooges T-shirt, I had already made mine.
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