I had a great start to my tour at Pensacola. My daughter was born and I was
told that I was to be an instructor in a brand new maintenance course. The
only rough part was the fact that I had gone into debt to buy the car, house
and furnishings.
Our next-door neighbors, Otis and Dixie, were a great couple. Otis was a
retired corpsman from the Navy and grew grapes in his backyard. Becky and our
dog, Koko, would be in the yard and Otis would give them grapes to eat. He
also invited me to go fishing with him. One day, we were out in the bay with a
seine to catch fish. We pulled up more than 60 fish that we split. One of the
fish was a sheephead whose claim to fame was its teeth. It was an oyster eater
that would take the oyster in its teeth and crush the shell. I didn't want to
get my hands in there but it sure did taste good.
It was always hot in Pensacola and Becky would want to go outside to play.
Once she got in the backyard, she would take all of her clothes, including
diaper, off and play around completely naked. Our neighbors thought that she
was cute. I wondered why she didn't get sunburned all over.
Becky was particularly good at catching lizards. She was very quick and caught
a lot of them. Unfortunately, she usually got them by their tails and, as a
defensive measure, the tail would come off in her hands. She was also very
good at helping Mom and Dad collect the tomatoes from the plants. One day, she
decided that we needed more tomatoes in the house, so she proceeded to take all
of them off of the vine, both red and green.
When Becky was very young, Sharon would get up in the middle of the night to
breast feed her. Sharon would read Edgar Allen Poe while feeding Becky and
that must be the reason that our daughter is weird. Becky was always a
squirmer and would wriggle around on her bed. She fell off of her bed so many
times that we took the spare mattress and placed it on the floor near Becky's
bed. That way, when she fell off, she would have a soft place to land.
While here, I worked as an instructor, a curriculum writer, an instructor
evaluator, and as a lab instructor. I developed seven new courses and time
flew by. Sharon and I continued our traveling but on a much smaller scale.
One trip we took was at the last minute - New Orleans and the Jazz and Heritage
Festival. Sharon was watching the weather one day and saw a forecast for New
Orleans and the festival. I came home from work and she said let's go and we
did. We got to eat some boiled, spiced crawdad and had an enjoyable weekend.
Becky was about nine months old and her poor head got badly sunburned.
Sharon decided to take some college courses while here. She really needed to
get out and have some contact with adults as she had been stuck in the house
with no one but Becky to talk to. It was really a pleasure to see Sharon back
in school because she was a changed person. She was happier and more excited
and a much more pleasant person to be around when her mind was working. She
had something to do to keep her mind active. And, she had an instructor who
finally bought our house when we transferred.
Carolyn got to visit us for a while here. She was just a teenager and really
looked up to her big sister. Actually, Carolyn was Sharon's favorite sister
and Sharon couldn't believe how big Carolyn was getting.
Becky continued to grow, just like our jalapenos. When it was time to
transfer, she was three. And, the last day we were in Pensacola, Sharon found
out that she was pregnant again.
