79 years ago today






Also a very important date for me. I took my very first real airplane ride 55 years ago today, taking a shiny city bus across Houston, just as the sun was setting, then boarding at Houston's only airport back then Hobby international. Near midnight that night, got off the plane, boarded another bus, but a rather dingy looking, smoke belching haze gray thing, and stepped off a bit later, with a bunch of yelling and screaming onto these:




I don't remember much about the plane ride, but very much remember the bus ride across Houston, with the sunset barely still visible as we rode along the high bridge over the ship channel and the city skyline stretching out before us, wondering what was in store...

It was nearly midnight when I stepped onto those now famous footprints and would not sleep until late the next night. Haircuts, shots, uniforms, packing our civilian clothes in a cardboard box, 'marching(didybopping)' to another area in our skivvies, and getting assigned a quonset hut barracks and footlocker to quickly stow our new clothes in, then get dressed in uniform for the 1st time and going to our first classes, then back into a formation of sorts and beginning our PT and close order drill training. Sometime in that long long day, our 1st chow line for breakfast, lunch and an evening meal.

9 weeks later, including a week at rifle range at Camp Pendleton's Edson Range, I was a US Marine. I'm the tall one on the top row.


Lots of water under the bridge in the last 55 years but not enough to wash away that EGA.

[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 02-23-2024).]

And this recounting of it from maryjane earns bonus points for carefully eschewing that old, ever so shopworn cliche of "tarmac."

I had to look up "EGA" and "yellow footprints."

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 02-25-2024).]