Not much happened during this time since I spent all of my time studying the
wideband system. I moved out of the barracks and in with Dave Wheaton and
Barbara.
Sharon decided to get out of the Navy. The detailer told me that I was going
to stay in Pensacola while her detailer told Sharon that she was going to
Iceland. Since she was pregnant, we decided that she should separate from the
Navy instead of us being separated.
I decided that we needed a place to live and some furniture so I started
looking for a house. Ken Murphy had just gone through a messy divorce so he
offered me his house for almost nothing. I went to some second hand furniture
shops and bought an entire house full of stuff. Another friend was selling his
waterbed, so, for $200, I got our bed. Being a weird person, I decided to
gift-wrap the house and all of the things in it to give to Sharon when she
arrived. She got off of the airplane on a very hot, humid day and I could
hardly contain my excitement. I showed her our new car and gave her a ride
home. After traveling so far, she was pretty tired but she looked simply
wonderful. She got home and started finding all the gift-wrapping and the
notes I placed all around the house for her. She appeared to like the house,
car, and furnishings.
One evening, Sharon and I joined some friends to go crabbing at the piers on
NAS Pensacola. We had a great time doing this and it reminded me a lot of
crawdad fishing. We tied a chicken wing or leg onto a piece of twine and
tossed it into the water. We would then pull it slowly inshore until the crab
was on top of our net. Then, we would lift the net up and put the crab in our
bucket. These were blue crabs and weren't all that big so we caught enough for
a couple of meals. Sharon and I brought home 75 crabs from that one evening.
After I finished school, Sharon and I made a trip to Texas. We had borrowed a
Datsun pickup from Dave Blake so we could haul some stuff back. We were
traveling along I-10 when the engine conked out just outside of Denham Springs,
Louisiana, the home of the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. We spent a few
days waiting for the truck to get fixed in a very miserable town. After the
repairs were completed, we started driving and I was determined to get to
Barnhart before I stopped again. We got to San Antonio just about dusk. At
2300, Sharon insisted that we stop and spend the night but I told her we were
nearly there. We finally pulled up at Mama's house at 0500. The first thing
we did was open the door and walk in. Mama was at the door and placed her hand
on Sharon's belly (welcome to my family). When she turned the lights on, we
saw Luann and her kids, Leiellen and her kids, Butch and Dutch all there
waiting for us. While here, Sharon got a great introduction to life in the
country. She fought with a cow over a bag of feed, shot a black widow spider
with a BB gun, and saw jumbo grasshoppers.
We then traveled on a commuter flight out of San Angelo to Dallas to catch our
plane to Las Vegas. We were late arriving and had to run across the parking
lot in 105? weather. We caught our flight and it pulled out just as we were
getting onboard. When we got to Orange County, Sharon's entire family was
there waiting for us. We had no luggage so Grandpa brought us back to his
house and loaned us some swim suits. Sharon and I had a great time relaxing in
his pool.
After a few days of visiting all of the tourist attractions in that part of
California, Sharon and I went back to Texas. Mama picked us up at the Midland
airport and drove us back to Barnhart. On the way, she stopped in the middle
of the highway to show Sharon a tarantula. Eventually, we started back to
Pensacola but, after traveling for less than 100 miles, the pickup blew up
again. We had to rent a U-Haul truck, stuff the pickup in it, and continue our
drive. It was a most memorable trip even though the transportation part of it
was most undesirable.
