Tech School, Where Hubert Became Ted

A Personal Story by H.J. Ted Gresham

When I saw the posting on the bulletin board while I was in Basic Training, I didn’t really believe it. My recruiter assured me I’d be given a job in electronics. He promised. But there it was: “Air Conditioning and Refrigeration.” What the hell?

I discovered my recruiter was not quite honest with me. (Big surprise, right?) At that time, a recruiter could place a person in a “guaranteed job.” If he did and that particular job was not available, the recruit could just walk away, go home, and tell the service goodbye. Then there was the “guaranteed field,” which was not quite so guaranteed. I was placed in the second category. After extensive testing, the Air Force determined I fit in the Electrical/Mechanical field more than the Electronics field. I was thus placed in that field and assigned an A/C and refrigeration MOS. Lovely.

A group of us boarded a bus after Basic and traveled to Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, where I’d attend school. It was nice being out of Basic, but tech school still had some pretty strict rules.

The first couple of weeks, I got to settle in. School had not started yet, so I was given a few details here and there. I don’t really remember what I was doing. One thing I did was go to Midwestern State University and take the GED test. I passed with high scores and had my GED before the class I’d been in graduated that spring.

When school started, I got into the routine of rising early, cleaning up my dorm room and completing assigned chores, heading across the base to the chow hall, and then forming up for the march to the school. Every day was the same routine, Monday through Friday, all summer long.

I can’t remember the unit number I was assigned to, but our dorms were old. They had been constructed during the Korean War. All the fixtures were ancient. Keeping the place cleaned up was a chore.

We lived far across the base from our designated chow hall. It was always a rush to get there and have a bit of breakfast—not the best in the world, but it would eat. Afterward, we’d form up near the chow hall. We’d all march a few miles to where the schools were located.

My school occupied part of an aircraft hangar. It took up one side of the building. Aircraft mechanic school was on the other. Being near those trainer aircraft was as close as I ever got to an airplane while in the Air Force.

Tech school was not much of a challenge. We were taught the basics of A/C and refrigeration systems. There were trainer machines we’d practice on, installing gauges and observing the unit in operation. One day we spent the entire time making swage connections in copper tubing, soldering them, then cutting them apart to see if our joints were soldered correctly. I actually thought the school was pretty cool.

The one thing I do remember was one fellow student who wound up changing my life forever. It’s sad that I don’t remember his name after all these years, but I do remember what he looked like. He was average height, friendly and jovial, and had a freckled face and extremely red hair. Early on, he said I looked like a teddy bear. He started calling me that, and soon the whole unit started calling me that. I rather liked the name. Anything but “Hubert.”

I became Teddy Bear, then Teddy, and later Ted. The nickname made all the difference as time went on. What’s in a name? A personality. Ted became someone entirely different from Hubert over the years. I’ve managed to steer away from my first name. Only doctors’ offices and assorted legal documents use that name now.

School lasted six hours. When it was over, we’d form up and march back to the dorm. A drummer kept the beat for us both ways. Sometimes we’d be told to make sure our uniforms looked good and our hats were on correctly. We’d be marched by a podium where some big officials or officers were watching. We all hated that because inevitably the drummer changed the beat right before we got there, and we had to half-step to get back in rhythm.

After lunch, we were all free, for the most part. We did have some details, keeping the grounds, mowing, and stuff like that. By evening, we were on our own.

I got to know quite a few guys, and we all hung out together. We’d go to the recreation center and play pinball or something. The movie “Pinball Wizard” was a big thing at the time. I developed a lifelong passion for pinball.

The first weekend I could after arriving, I took a bus home and got my car, a green 1969 Chevrolet Impala. I was one of the few who had wheels, so I was often tagged to take someone somewhere. A group of guys would pile into my old Chevy and go downtown, to the movies, or hang out at the Sonic like we were still in high school.

I had a friend from Alabama I did quite a bit with. He had that Southern cotton-mouth drawl that I thought was hilarious. I’d poke at him for his accent, and we’d laugh. He was a pretty fun guy. He was married and had a kid, so he lived off base and didn’t have a car. I gave him rides often. One night, we went to the theater to see Jaws. It was a twin cinema, popular in those days. Jaws pretty much freaked me out. I got up and left halfway through the show, when the shark ate the kid. Ugh.

I often got into the doldrums. I’d been depressed off and on for years, and it hit at the base once in a while. There was a place on base called “The Great Pumpkin” that helped out a lot. The place was in an old dorm. Someone had painted a huge pumpkin over and around the entrance. It was a place where rank did not matter. People hung out and talked, had drinks and snacks, and let off steam. There was a room with black walls lit by black lights. People were encouraged to write their own graffiti with luminous paint, so the walls were covered with all kinds of art, comments, and whatever some Airman had on his mind.

I went to the Great Pumpkin quite often. I met a few new friends there. There was one guy who was trying to get out of the Air Force. He’d done all kinds of crazy things. He eventually got locked up, I think.

The Great Pumpkin was one of my favorite places to go. There were a few people there who played music and sang. I remember a guy who played the guitar extremely well and sang John Denver songs better, I thought, than John Denver himself.

One night at the Great Pumpkin, they showed the original “1984” movie. It was very scary to me. Actually, the premise of the movie was probably one of the factors that urged me toward the left side of politics.

After a few weeks, I had the chance to go to Student Leader School. I remember it took about three days, and I was given a green rope to wear over my right shoulder. It was pretty cool, but Airmen did not always give me the deference I thought I deserved.

I was assigned a bay in our dorm to lead. The first thing I did was write out a list of details for my guys and post it on the bulletin board. The next morning, I found that someone had set the list on fire and burned it up. Lovely. It took a couple of weeks to get into the rhythm, but eventually things worked out and my bay did well on inspections.

One funny story I remember: I had a guy who would just not wake up and get up on time. When I went down the hall waking people up, he just slept through it. He would not respond when I went back. After a while, it became ridiculous. I literally flipped him out of bed and onto the floor one morning. Nothing worked. I decided, fuck it, let him sleep. We went for breakfast. When we came out and it was time for us to form up, he came running across the base half-dressed, putting his uniform in place as he ran. The sergeant chewed his ass up one side and down the other. Interestingly enough, his feet hit the floor first thing every morning after that.

In the middle of the summer, about halfway through school, our squadron started growing smaller. They claimed I had committed some odd violation and took my rope, but it was just because the unit was getting smaller and did not need so many student leaders. We then found out what was going on. We were designated to move into brand-new dorms.

At first, it seemed like heaven. Our new dorms were modular. They’d been built in a factory somewhere, with each room built separately and then assembled into a dorm. Each room held two men. Each room had a full bath. There were two closets and more furniture than was feasible for the room size. We kept the chest of drawers in the closet. It was great. For a while.

The problem was that the new dorms were poorly constructed and hard to keep clean. They had thin sheetrock walls that would dent easily. The beds had bolts that stuck out behind them, and many guys poked holes while moving the beds against the wall. Before long, most of us longed for the old Korean War dorms, where the rules were not so strict and there were not as many inspections.

About that time, I’d gotten to know a guy—I wish I could remember his name—and he seemed like a pretty cool dude. We got a dorm room together. When we met, he said he was a Christian. That was not quite true. He was a bit older than I was and was a very bad influence. We wound up sniffing glue (yeah, insanely stupid, right?) and listening to Black Sabbath. “Generals gather in their masses…!” I changed into a bit of a different person.

After my rope—my student leader designation—was removed, my view of our leaders changed a bit. Then we got a new top sergeant, a woman who was a bit of an asshole and whom nobody liked. She would spring inspections on us all the time.

One day, my roommate and I decided to piss the sergeant off. We were not at attention when she came into our room, and I had the record player playing Black Sabbath. She told us rather quickly to turn the music off. Being a bit of a smart-ass, I reached over and hit a button that stopped the record from turning, but the amplifier was on, so as the record slowed down and stopped it made some screwy noise. She was not pleased. I don’t think she cared much for us after that.

One long weekend, I decided to go fishing at Possum Kingdom Lake, at an Air Force recreational area. All I had was a bit of fishing gear and my car, which I was planning on sleeping in. Then I ran into a sergeant from my squadron. It was weird meeting him there. He was one of the sergeants who had inspected my room a few days before.

The poor guy had gone to the lake on a whim. He was brand-new to the idea of fishing and started asking me all kinds of questions. I’d grown up fishing, so I could help him. We hit it off pretty well.

He asked where I was staying, and I told him my car. He invited me to stay in a spare room in the condo he and his wife had reserved. I took him up on the offer. I stayed there for a couple of days. His wife was very pretty and sweet. I taught him how to fish. He rented a boat, and we went out on the lake and caught a mess of catfish. Then I taught him how to clean them and taught his wife how to cook them. We all had a great time.

When I got back to the base, I had a much easier time. I had an ally in the leadership of the squadron. Things did not go so well in the dorm. My roommate eventually turned into an ass. For a couple of weeks, I actually moved off base and stayed in a ratty little motel.

When the time came for the training to end, I was back in the dorm. The night before I was supposed to take my last test and finish school, we all decided we’d have a few drinks. I had never drunk anything before except a few sips of booze snuck out of my brother’s truck when I was a kid.

We went to a local store, and I got a bottle of Mogen David wine. Back then, I was dumb and naive. I said it was “Mogen David grape wine,” as if not all wine was made out of grapes. I took it back to the dorm and drank all of it. I got pretty drunk. Unable to drive, I gave my roommate the keys to my car and some money and sent him back for another bottle. He got another bottle; I don’t remember what kind. I finished that one off and got totally smashed. I’d never done anything like that before.

Later in the night, my roommate went into the bathroom and removed the nice rug and a few other things. He knew what was coming. Around three or so in the morning, the wine decided it didn’t like me. I became terribly sick, ran to the bathroom, and threw up. That was no fun at all.

The next day, I was in a bit of a haze, but I made it. I finished things up at the school, told a lot of people goodbye, and loaded my gear into my car. I headed home for a full month of leave. That was probably not a good thing, but that’s a story for another time.