Skaggs was important to me in only two aspects: first, the birth of Nicholas
Lee and, second, I made chief.
I was trying to do extra things for my evaluation so I volunteered to become
the Navy Relief Drive Coordinator for 1985. It entailed many hours of
coordination and lots of time away from Sharon. The culminating event was the
Casino Night where the final fund raising took place. I had very little to do
except show my face and make sure that all the events were happening as
planned. I was at the club and decided that I would have a beer. I had not
had any for several weeks, just on the off chance that Sharon would want to go
into labor. As fate would have it, that night she came over to the club and
said that we had to go to Fairfield and the hospital. And early the next
morning, 4 May 1985, Nick was born.
Nick came out completely different than Becky. Where she was squirming and
looking around, Nick was mellow and appeared to want to be held. When the
corpsman lifted Nick, she said that he was pretty big and probably weighed nine
pounds. She was close to the nine pounds ten ounces of his actual weight.
Not too long after this, I found out that I was selected for chief. The
initiation process was going strong and I spent a lot of time involved with
that. Sharon took the kids to Wisconsin for a week so I felt a little less
guilty about the time I spent. The initiation went well and I asked the
Captain and Sharon to pin my anchors on me.
I started working at the Organizational Focal Point (OFP) when I first arrived.
After making chief, I was moved to another division for about a week. Captain
Ehret decided that he needed someone to help out the Reserve Proficiency
Achievement (RESPA) folks at Treasure Island so I was selected to help. I had
to leave for work at 0500 every morning to beat the traffic. My task was to
ensure that the active duty Sailors there were actually working. The CTT1 who
was in charge was asked to retire at the first possible date and the others
were told to square away. After commuting to Treasure Island for seven months,
I was returned to Skaggs and the OFP to finish my tour.
Becky started kindergarten while we were here. And here is where she decided
that she didn't like mushrooms. Becky would eat mushrooms like crazy and found
some in the playground behind our house. She didn't know any better and ate
some of the wild ones. We took her to the doctor who pumped her stomach and
Becky still doesn't like mushrooms.
Sharon, Becky, Nick and I liked to go to Vallejo and catch the ferry to San
Francisco. It was a lot easier than trying to drive in the city traffic and
gave us an opportunity to see the bay. We would go into town, shop for awhile,
and then catch the ferry back home.
In June of 1985, I was told that I was selected to be on the base's Crisis
Response Force (CRF). I had to attend a two-week school on Basic Law
Enforcement and a one-week school on Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT). I was
made a team leader and my squad consisted of the "Elephant Asses", so called
because they were all of the big guys. We had a final test in the SWAT course
that consisted of running a big obstacle course. My team had to get into a
canoe and, when we tried to paddle it, all of us fell into the slough. It was
horrible smelling and covered us all in mud and muck. We continued on and,
when climbing the rope to the top of a building, I slipped and dislocated my
shoulder. When I got home, all Sharon and Carolyn could do was say that I
wasn't coming in the house with those smelly clothes on. I had to clean off
using very cold water from the hose outside and put on other clothes before
they would even let me in. They did go out the next day and get me a plant,
Rambo, to celebrate my completion of the course and, of course, as a get-well
gift.
Later on in the year, the CRF was having an exercise with the SEAL team from
the east coast. We were made to hide in the fields and freeze our tails off
while the SEALs invaded our base, destroyed our power station, and went back to
the club. That was really cool. But in March of 1986, we were called out for
a possible bomb. We went to the north bridge leading onto Skaggs and found
what looked like a bomb placed near the gas pipes coming onto the base. We
called the bomb experts in and they found that it was a practice bomb used by
the SEALs and Rangers who were doing field exercises on our base.
One summer, we decided to take a vacation to Texas. Sharon and I looked at the
road maps and planned our journey through Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico. We
spent one night in Colorado and I saw that the restaurant had chicken fried
steak on the menu. Being one of my favorite meals, I ordered it and waited
with watering mouth. Well, we found out that people in Colorado provide thin
brown gravy with the meal and no mashed potatoes. That night, Nick took his
first steps in the hotel room. We were not prepared for that milestone to be
reached but we reckoned that the carpet on the floor convinced him that he
would not get hurt if he fell. The next day, we crossed the Continental Divide
so Becky, Nick and I got to check out the snow. Neither one of the kids had
ever seen snow before and Nick didn't like it. Becky grabbed a handful and,
with a big grin, was preparing to throw it. Sharon gave her the "look" and
Becky put it back down.
After our three years, we were under orders to Hawaii. Sharon and the kids
went to stay with Grandpa Bahr so that I could pack out and then go to school
before leaving California. The Friday before I packed out the house, Captain
Ehret told me to cancel the packout as my orders were changed to Washington.
Becky was already in school in Fountain Valley so we had to pull her out of
there (after only two weeks) but, since she was in the first grade at the time,
she didn't have a problem with it.
We decided to make a trip out of our transfer to Washington so we started with
a visit to Southern California. We spent a few great days there and moved on
to Texas. Along the way, we spent the night in El Paso and visited Mexico. We
walked across the bridge over the Rio Grande and stopped into a couple of
shops. Sharon looked in one while I visited another. She bought a sarape and
I a blanket. I haggled with the man until he lowered his price some but poor
Sharon didn't know the culture of the area and paid what the shop keeper first
asked. Not only did she pay a little more than she should have, Sharon was mad
at me for not telling her about, what was to me, this common sense mode of
buying in Mexico. We visited Luann and Jim at Mertzon then on to Nocona to
visit Mama. While in Texas, Becky found out what walking sticks were. She
loved having them climb all over her and she was not in the least bit afraid of
them. We arrived in Virginia to our new house in Dale City and spent the first
night there eating McDonalds hamburgers on the floor. Fortunately, our
furniture arrived the next day.
