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Memorable Vietnam Experiences and Friendships |
Under this subject I just want to say a little about the group of guys I hung around with during our free time. After getting off work and hitting the shower to get the dust and dirt off us we usually sit and had a few beers or drank some wine and spent the evening smoking the good stuff Nam had to offer. We usually ended up sitting on the steps of the barricks or sitting on top of the bunker. Many evenings we saw some of the most beautiful sun sets you would ever want to see. Some evenings we all would just sit out there and not say too much, it would seem that everybody had things on their minds that they was thinking about. Other evenings we would get into discussions about our lives back home or just about any other topic we wanted to talk about. Then there was evenings where everyone was in a real funny mood and no matter what we talked about it was funny and we would sit there for a couple hours laughing and having a great time together. A little later in the evening we would move back into the barricks and someone would turn on their stereo and we would listen to The Animals, The Doors, The Cream and I could list a lot more because we had great music to listen to while we was in The Nam. This was kind of our quiet time listening to music or maybe playing cards untill we all crashed for the night. These were my memorable experiences and I would like to say to the group of guys I hung around with, and you know who you are, "Thanks for some great memories"
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2001:
What am I doing now, unfortunately I am unemployed right now. The automation industry slowed way down about a year and a half ago, hopefully things will start picking back up real soon. I have been working some odd jobs for friends and making enough to pay the bills so I'm doing alright. When I was a kid I rode motorcycles, about 7 years ago I got back into riding. Since I am not working I have spent a lot of time riding my Kawasaki 1500 Vulcan. Any of you guys out there ride motorcycles?
Life after Vietnam:
Since leaving Nam I went back to work at RCA where I had a job waiting for me. After a couple of years I left RCA and spent the next 15 years working for 3 or 4 companies where I designed automated assembly machines. As an example I designed a machine that took 8 parts that made up a mechanical pencil and fed the parts into the machine and assembled all 8 parts together. When finished the completed pencil came out of the machine ready for someone to write with it. I then got into being a Project Manager for companies who build assembly machines. I quoted prices to the customers and then managed the jobs from start to finish.
Future Plans:
Our future plans is we want to stay here in Indianaplois and work another 3 or 4 years. Then we are planning on moving to Florida near Ft. Myers and semi-retire. We will maybe work part time just to keep ourselves busy when we aren't playing golf.
Editor's Note:
Elvin Downey and James Celovsky were instrumental in inspiring me to finally go through what slides I could find, get them scanned and put together this little 569th website so we can share memories and photos from the past.
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