Blog 2998 – 01.14.2024

California In My Mind

James Taylor’s song Carolina In My Mind has long been a favorite of mine. It was released in nineteen sixty-eight. I graduated high school in June of that year and later that same year on my eighteenth birthday, November 22, I signed up to be a soldier in the U.S. Army. After eight weeks of Basic Training at Fort Campbell, Kentucky I was sent to Fort Gordon, Georgia (recently renamed Fort Eisenhower) for my AIT (Advanced Individual Training.) I had signed a contract in the Army recruiter’s office in Chattanooga on my birthday to attend the longest school available at the time, hoping to avoid combat, learn a markable skill, and use my veteran benefits to attend college after I got out. My MOS (Military Occupational Skill) was 31J20 which stood for teletype repair. Long before the Internet, teletype was how most fast long distance communication took place. People typed to one another. When texting on cell phones became popular some years ago, I marveled that it seemed to me like a step backward in time.

My six month teletype school was at the Southeast Army Signal School at Fort Eisenhower which is just outside Augusta, Georgia. North August is just across the river in South Carolina. On a weekend pass to Augusta I walked across a bridge and had my first taste of Carolina. When I returned from an eleven month tour in South Vietnam, after a thirty day leave I reported to Fort Bragg, North Carolina (now named Fort Liberty) to spend the last ten months of my three year enlistment. On the drive from my parents home in Chattanooga, Tennessee to Fort Liberty I saw a large swath of South Carolina and North Carolina. During my last ten months in the Army I saw a great deal more of North Carolina and came to appreciate James Taylor’s song even more and another Carolina song that says, “Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning.”

During the last ten or so years of my working career I would change the lyrics of Carolina In My Mind to the state to which I was hoping I would get a work assignment. Those assignments were to West Virginia, Virginia, Alabama, Michigan, Alaska, Wyoming, Colorado, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and finally Nebraska. From there I returned to Texas, retiring from my day job as a Contract Welding and Utility Inspector in December of 2021.

On my way to Vietnam and back I spent a few days in California, but I have always wanted to see more of that particular state having read so much about it and seeing so much of it in movies.

I had planned to spend my retirement with my wife in a travel trailer, taking a closer look at the forty nine states reachable by roads, especially California. But an illness just after our return from a brief road trip to visit family in South Carolina about this time two years ago left my wife with little desire to venture far from home. I am content to stay home with her and to make her life as comfortable as possible for as long as I can.

My travel plans are for the foreseeable on hold, but I still have California and several destinations in mind that I yet hope to see for myself someday.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-J5QnFoytWX6zLVJ5p8J1uPnCj6uuFov/view?usp=drivesdk

California In My Mind