I got started on Tom Swift because I had some hand-me-down books from Uncle Charlie. These were from the older Tom Swift series that were published throughout the 20's and 30's. I read those and then started on the new series that started in 1954 and went through the 60's. I probably had a little over a dozen of those books. I was reading the Tom Swift books from about fourth grade right up through early high school and they started me on my lifelong love of science fiction.
I got this as an e-book out of the library right when it was published and had it read by the end of February.
After reading this it's easy to see why the corrupt sleazy scumbag likes to pardon other corrupt sleazy scumbags. It was still shocking to see how so many lawyers and media tycoons enabled such a grifter to get elected to lead America and we all certainly suffered for it. This was a terrifying and weirdly comic book about the underbelly of capitalism at its worse examples of greed, lust, corruption and ambition. Reality TV, trash tabloids, pornography, high end real estate, creepy celebrities and sleazy lawyers all came together to get trump into office.
It's actually a spin off business from one of our favorite restaurants directly across the street... Ristorante Lombardo. The son decided to open this wine bar and restaurant that focus on farm to table food and indie winemaking.
I had a couple of cavities to get taken care of and the dentist was a young guy who told me he needed to get certified in California. He was going to fix my two teeth in the front with gold fillings. This was one of the procedures he needed to accomplish and here I was. This was his first time doing gold fillings and he was a little nervous. He ended up spilling some of the hot liquid gold on my paper bib which caught fire. He quickly threw some water on my chest and patted out the flames. I was OK but my shirt had a burn mark. Now having a damaged and dirty uniform in boot camp was a serious offense. I had to have a note from the doctor explaining why my uniform was not perfect.
In the picture of the barracks above you see the metal racks. That was where we hung our clothes. Just beyond those metal clothes racks were stone tables that were used for scrubbing our uniforms. We did our own laundry manually for the first three weeks of boot camp. Then we moved to a different area of the base into different barracks that included laundry service. Nice.
There was a time when watching a movie on the television was a big deal. During the 1950's and early 1960's there were only the three network stations available to watch in Philadelphia while I was growing up. A VHF station appeared in the mid 1960's. This was the landscape of watching television at the that time and movies were not a big part of that television era.
Movies were special. For example something like The Wizard of Oz was an annual ritual each year on a Sunday evening in the spring. We got our first color TV when I was in high school and it was exciting to watch the Wizard of Oz suddenly become in color just like it was planned when Dorothy lands in Oz.
Movies at prime time were very rare. The Wizard of Oz was an exception. Usually you need to wait until after the news and then after the talk shows like Johnny Carson before any movie would be shown. Then when the UHF station appeared they used movies to fill in some of their time slots later at night. People would switch to the UHF stations especially in the late 60's when more of them appeared in Philly like channel 17, 29 and 48. Suddenly movies were available. Of course these were old movies from the studio film archives and mostly black and white.
An early pioneer of color movies on TV was NBC Saturday Night at the Movies which showed relatively recent films from major studios. This show was a success. I remember being excited to watch movies on a Saturday night if I wasn't going anywhere. Soon the other networks started having movies nights throughout the week during prime time and more and more movies were available to watch on TV.
Of course then later came cable TV, video cassette movies and then streaming. It's hard to believe that at one time being able to watch a movie on TV was a treat.
It was a very long day of processing that included getting assigned to a company and meeting your new company commander, getting issued uniforms and gear, new hair cuts, medical exams, etc, etc. Plus lots of push ups and getting screamed out.
We learned how to march right away too. I had been in my high school marching band and also a Philly Mummers band so I knew how to march and keep in line but there were a lot of guys who were stumbling about and acting stupid. Of course everything was very disorienting all day long.
It was a long crazy day and by the end we all dropped exhausted into our bunks and there was certainly no more movies in the evenings.
Early on the morning of the 6th I took the train downtown and walked over to the Federal building. There was a group of about 30 guys are going to Great Lakes that day to start their Navy careers. We had another swearing in and did lots of paperwork and then a lot of hurry up and wait.
At one point they got everyone together and sent us downstairs to line up on the sidewalk outside the building. There was no rhyme or reason to how we lined up and the group was getting ready to walk down the street in line to the train station for the day long trip to Chicago and then Great Lakes.
Then for no apparent reason and seemingly random one of the officers picked six guys out of the group of thirty. I was one of the six and we were told to stand there while the rest of the group marched down the street to the train station. Then we were told that the few of us would be going to the Naval Training Center at San Diego instead of Great Lakes.
We were put into a van and driven to the airport. None of the six of us including me had ever been on an airplane. We then flew to Los Angeles and then transferred to another plane to San Diego. It was a very long trip for a first flight and quite the experience.
The difference in the weather was shocking. It was February and cold in Philadelphia. We were all dressed warmly for the trip to what was expected to be an even colder Chicago area. San Diego was warm and it felt like a summer evening.
Even with the time difference it was still very late in the day by the time we got to the base in San Diego. We had to have a very brief initial processing and given a place to sleep in a temporary barracks. We were very odd there on the base in our civilian clothes and long hair. They gave us something to eat and then they walked us over to a rec area to watch a movie on an outdoor screen. Wow, we thought boot camp was great.
