From The North Pole To The Moon And Back
How far back can you go and still get a good beginning?
I was out of the U.S. Air Force, back home again in indiana making less than $6 an hour that Summer. I was working for an international aviation and wiring conglomerate. The year was 1966. My Army brat girl friend had just moved to the D.C. area after her father was reassigned from Vietnam. The sky was still my limit. I'd been into and all over most of the financial markets for over a year and was getting good at speculating in commodities futures. Naturally, when sugar called me, I called Skip. He always had money.
The next I thing I knew, I was living with Skip in the ethnocentric city of Buffalo, N.Y. Ethnocentricity was completely and totally out of my experience - so you might say that must have been a good experience for me. History shows it is not so much out of most people's experience. I don't think of it as a good experience and most certainly not as a good thing.
Living in Buffalo lasted only a year or so. Then we both went to the North Pole. There was a war and it just kept getting colder for everyone. We weren't really, actually or exactly, at the North Pole - we were only at Thule, Greenland - which is, believe me, close enough. We walked horizontally to get across the road sometimes and the entire time that I, personally, was up there - the Sun always shined. Even during the Storm Phases. I have a lot of memories of that place; but the best was being able to walk around in a short-sleeved shirt and feel very warm and comfortable when the ambient air temperature was 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
After six months of that, I either had a nervous breakdown or achieved sanity - depending on who is doing the talking. I simply split for the Bahamas. I didn't have a plan. I took the first once-a-week jet ride South Back To The World and when I landed at McGuire AFB, New Jersey, two other guys from my plane gave me a ride to NYC in their rent-a-car and unceremoniously dumped me right out onto the West Side Highway. I don't remember how in the hell I ever got off that highway with all my overloaded baggage; but, I do remember winding up at the Americana Hotel and waiting and waiting for somebody to just please clean my room so I could just please go to sleep. It was a terrible wait and I'll never go back.
Next thing I remember, I was sitting around the Pan Am Terminal at JFK talking to this very nice young girl who was waiting for a flight to Rome. Nice and sexy. Then, this Australian old dude horned in while he was waiting for his flight back to Sydney. He left first, but by that time it was too late. Two or three minutes less of that p.o.s. guy and we all live different lives. This corporate child Delaware chick quite summarily invited me to go to Rome with her - just exactly as my flight was being called for boarding to the Bahamas. She had an apartment and a car there too, she said! But, I could not make all of the hassle with my baggage already onboard going to Freeport - no toothbrush - no ticket - and, I already had some really high heat on the sandy beach in my head.
So, there was a true lifetime decision for you. Right there. Everything that happens after this does not ever happen. My brother told me later that I was a fool. I can't argue.
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