I agree. These are wonderful stories. I dug ditches the summer between our
freshman and sophomore years for about a week, when I realized quickly that I
needed a better job. It was a miserable experience and a wonderful education.
When I was a lieutenant in Germany I wanted to make a trip home on the cheap
from Europe (can’t recall why, but it seemed important at the time). I took
hops from Frankfurt to San Antonio without a hitch, and I think it cost me
about $10. On one flight I think there were about 3 passengers and room for
about 60. When it was time to go back, I did the same, but with a few hitches.
There was an overnight at some airport, may have been Andrews, where we
arrived really late and the plan was to leave again as early as possible. A
very kind Airman let me sleep on the concrete floor of the hanger rather than
spend all night trying to find a taxi and a hotel.
Mary Ellen and I took a hop together to England and back. Getting to England
was pretty easy, and we landed in Lakenheath and took the train to London.
Getting back proved a bit more difficult. We finally got canvass rack seats on
a C-130 that landed at Hahn AFB in the middle of nowhere. There were no
trains, busses, or taxis. A lady and her retired husband who spent their lives
flying around the world on hops decided to call the base transportation
officer. He said they had a mail truck that could take a few of us to Ramstein
AFB. She said fine, you’ll have several more of us camping out on base in the
meantime. Somehow she convinced him to send a bus on the mail run, and we all
got out.
Jeff
On Mar 15, 2021, at 10:44 PM, Edward Retta
<eretta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Mark Kelley,
Thanks for all that! Sincerely, one of the best things about this group is
learning all the back stories about before TAMU, and how our lives became
interwoven. All this new information gives me much deeper appreciation for
all y’all. I especially enjoyed that part in your story about travel in the
Netherlands, where I used to work in 1989. That and the 'buxom lass in a tube
top'… great imagination trigger. I didn't know you were sans parents when we
first met you. Gee whiz, sorry about that. Like you, the Aggie Band
experience and y’all, made me. I would be an entirely different person if not
for TAMU and especially the Aggie Band. God, those were great years.
I once had a flight from Chicago to Paris, bumped off of American Airlines to
Air France due to a looming AA pilots’ strike. Air France bumped me up from
business class to first class. Air France actually sent a gofer to fetch me
from the departure lounge and escort me past all the lines. Nowadays they
pick you up at your hotel in a Lambourghini. The seats were so huge that I
could not reach the seat back in front of me, with my leg fully extended.
Literally in the nose of the 747, under the cockpit, the opposite row on the
starboard side was miles away. My seat mate was flying home to Spain, after
working in Chicago. A few hours into the flight after supper and too much
wine, I was ready to settle down and sleep. Seat mate, she says, I am warning
you that I snore. I replied, no problem, I also snore and I have ear plugs!
Sara Ais, her real name, says, "I guess you haven’t realized that we are
sleeping together tonight!” I laughed my ass off. Couldn’t wait to tell my
wife I had slept with a Spaniard on my last trip. A great line I have used
many times hence on those long haul flights. Alas, when we landed in Paris
she went on to Barcelona and I had to fly to Cameroun, Africa.
Many years later, I got stuck in Helsinki due to a Finnair strike. I thought
about booking on Iceland Air and connection in Reykjavik…but it would have
cost me a lot and I got lucky with Finnair via Frankfurt. They wouldn’t allow
caviar on the carry-ons! Maybe visit Iceland one day…after I take my kids to
Easter Island…that's next on our family vacation plans after this damn
pandemic.
Thanks again Mark. I have also been a ditch digger, between jobs. Was working
demolition once just south of Carswell AFB in FW. While there all I could
think about was bother Wright flying overhead in those 8 engined, lumbering
B-52s older than us!
Edward Retta
On Mar 15, 2021, at 7:52 PM, Mark Kelley <markrkelley77@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:markrkelley77@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Summer of ‘75 I was a reporter and photographer at the Temple Daily
Telegram. I was fill-in, but I wasn’t bored. I covered one plane crash,
participated in a hot air balloon race, covered the police beat, rode a Huey
with the CO around Fort Hood as the ACCB Blackhorse Cobras shot at old tank
hulls, and interviewed several pols and celebs such as Edgar Bergen,
Candice’s dad. I helped distribute screw worm flies from the back of a fast
moving pickup in middle-of-nowhere Milan County. 1975 had been a tough year
for me. My mother died in the spring of our sophomore year after a 2 year
fight with cancer. I wanted to go to A&M our freshman year, but I was my
mother’s caregiver that year. Near the end of the summer, after dumping a
bunch of Valium into the toilet to get off them, I drove to New York City
and then flew to Europe via Iceland to visit my sister in the Netherlands.
My family lost track of me until I showed up at the central train station in
The Hague about a week later. I had taken the train from Lux via Brussels
to get there. I had landed in Luxembourg City with no plan other than to
take the train to The Hague. Once I got there, I figured all I needed to do
was make a phone call and she would come pick up up. It was very late at
night when I got there. I visited with her and her family for a week
(Amsterdam, Arnhem, Waterloo, Bruges, etc), and then flew back to the US on
Iceland Air. I then drove back to central Texas and packed up for our
junior year.
On the flight from NY to Lux, I sat next to an Italian woman who spoke
Italian, German, and Spanish. On the other side of her was a buxom lass in
a tube top from Lancaster, PA, who obviously spoke English and some Spanish.
My German wasn’t too bad then. We would have some interesting
conversations. There was a brief stop in Reykjavik where we all
disembarked. When it came time to board the plane, the Italian woman was
missing. This gorgeous, tall, Icelandic stewardess asks me where my mother
was. I told her she wasn’t my mother and that she was probably in duty free
buying cigs. This stewardess orders me to go find her. I end up running
across the apron in a snow storm looking for this lady. I find her, tell
her in an excited voice that we had to get on the Flugzueg (sp) Yetz! I
grabbed her by the hand and hauled her to the jet as she worked not to drop
her Salems all over Iceland.
Dad had died several years earlier. At 19 I was in the Aggie Band, had a
fiancé, no parents, and I thought that I was about as adult as they came.
Ah, the ignorance of youth.
For better or worse, the Aggie Band was the biggest thing I ever did in my
life. I wish I had appreciated it more at the time. If Wilbert hadn’t
decided to take care of me and as a result getting me to graduate, I don’t
know what I would have amounted to. I am eternally grateful to God Almighty
for putting him in my life. I think of him quite often.
I’ve done some weird stuff in the years since 1977, too. Been a truck
driver, ditch digger, salesman, teacher, and packaging designer. I can’t
believe how quickly the past 50 years have gone by.