Reposted Blog  408 – 09.18.2016

Originally Blog 17 – 4.29.15

I think we are all on an adventure traveling through space and time. Some of us choose shorter or longer trips and some of us choose to occupy more or less of the space available to us. I have opted for the longest ride possible and I want to see as much of this beautiful blue ball as I can and if the ride lasts long enough maybe a point of light or two beyond it.

I sign off each of my blogs – Your Friend and Fellow Travel, because I am a man of letters and am so enjoying the journey. I grew up before the Internet, before emails, texts, and tweets. Folks back in the olden days wrote letters. Well, some of us did. The eleven months I spent in the Republic of South Vietnam I wrote everyone I knew. The postage was free to servicemen and women. Not many wrote back. My mom did faithfully and my first little wife for the first seven months anyway and then not even a Dear John letter. I had to come home to get that sad news confirmed. In the words of a song on the old Hee Haw show, she met another and poof she was gone.

The slogan for the U. S. Army back then was Fun, Travel, and Adventure FTA but most of the guys had a different three words for that acronym. I’ll leave it at that. The first trip I ever took by myself was the bus ride from Chattanooga to Knoxville for my physical, testing, and induction into the Army. Then on to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. After that were a lot of bus rides back an forth to Fort Campbell and then after Basic Training to Fort Gordon, Georgia. The first time I ever flew was from Fort Gordon (Augusta, GA) to Atlanta then Atlanta to Chattanooga for two weeks of leave before I flew to San Francisco. There I took a tour van around that beautiful city and then to Oakland Army Depot where I processed for Vietnam.

The longest airplane trip I every took was the twenty one hour flight from Travis Air Force Base in California to Long Bien, South Vietnam. We stopped for two hours in Honolulu, Hawaii to refuel. We had another fuel stop in Guam then one in Okinawa. The flight back eleven months later was only seventeen hours and had but one two hour fuel stop in Japan. A good thing too or I would have gotten back before I left. Time travel indeed. Most of my time in the Army I was so “homesick” for family, friends, and familiar places that I did not allow myself to freely enjoy the fun, travel, and adventure that the Army promised and delivered.

I have since come to think of home as where I hang my hat or where the heart is. And my heart is in my chest and it is always packed and ready for the next destination. So many cities and pretties yet to see. Enjoy your journey, fellow pilgrims.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White