The Windmill Posts

Spent the day wandering about thinking of things and remembering things. Ate a few things. Bought a Big Sur Bixby Bridge fridge magnet. I joined the Marine Corps at the last minute of 1988, went to boot camp in the first minute of 1989. When I signed up they really liked me, so they let me choose an MOS (job) that they would guarantee. I think it was called “Data Processing” but I just heard “computers” which was fine with me. A friend of mine looked at the details and said the systems I would be working with were ancient, maybe not worth learning for my civilian future.

In order to figure out if you’re smart or not smart, the military has the ASVAB. It’s not too tough to get a good score, and I did. In order to see if you might have a thing for languages, they have the DLAB. Depending on how well you do, you might be rated for a fairly familiar language like Spanish, or a more complex language like Arabic or Korean. I did well on the DLAB – I did well on form tests in general. My brother said I had a great score, that he hadn’t see many higher in his years administering the test in the Army.

When you go to boot camp they give you all of the tests again, just for fun. For me, that meant I had a familiarity with the DLAB, and as a result, score crazy high. So the boot camp folks pulled me aside and said “Hey maybe you want to learn Korean instead of computers.” I can’t remember what the incentive was beyond the fact that language school was in Monterey. The other recruit who was in the same situation said his family used to vacation in Monterey, so I should do it! More background – I sucked at languages. I took German in high school and barely passed, and that was with an amazing ability to make microminiature cheat sheets. So the obvious choice was to throw away the computer thing and choose the hard thing that I had proven my failures in already. Because the school was in a nice town.

For as much as joining the Marines is a real “become a real man” type situation, they kinda lean on your parents a bit. When you leave for boot camp, you get a phone call home. When you get to boot camp, you get a (scripted) phone call home. When you change a guaranteed MOS to something else, you get a call home. Mom reminded me about German and said I was crazy to think Korean would be easier. She wasn’t wrong.

So boot camp, yadda yadda. And then I got some time home on leave before shipping out to my MOS school. In this case, Monterey. It wasn’t until I got out of the van from the airport in front of the barracks that I realized I had no idea what was happening. As I got out, three Marines jumped to my seabag and other luggage, and welcomed me to DLI, the Defense Language Institute. Really Marine Barracks, inspections and all. A nod to doing physical training, and you had to keep the uniform perfect. Beyond that though it was much like college. classes in the morning and early afternoon, and then you’re cut loose. You might do PT if you had a squad leader who cared to, but you were really supposed to be doing your language homework. Often we would take the afternoon off and homework late at night. Like college. And since we were there to learn something difficult, the command didn’t mess with us much. We were still Marines, but the focus was learning so we can do our job.

School lasts a whole year for the Korean course. There is time spent before classes begin for you while you wait for a “class” to be formed. I was held waiting for maybe two weeks. Some Marines were waiting for months. After you’re done with school, if you graduated, you could be held there for however long was needed before you were shipped off to your first duty station.

For most Marines in the Korean program, the Marine base in Hawaii was the first duty station. My squad leader had a world of advice for us, and the first was that we should request Korea for our first duty station. So I did. But between boot camp, leave, the waiting before, the class you’re in, the waiting after, and leave (often a month) before your duty station – it can be almost two years from signing up to be a Marine and getting to the first place you’re not just learning. So I had a good amount of time in Monterey, and it’s where I matured as a Marine, matured as a man, and immatured as a man. Because I may have learned a lot about Korean, the Marines, and myself, but I was still 21 years old and mouthy as ever.

I made some incredibly good friends here. I owned a motorcycle and would ride up and down the California coast. I went to San Francisco in the north and San Luis Obispo in the south. I spent a lot of time wandering the roads of the Carmel valley. And I spent an awful lot of time with my bike down at Asilomar.

There was an Italian deli called Compagno’s that had meatball subs the size of your head. And when we needed a Marine break some of us would dress in decent civilian clothing and go downtown to Rosine’s, a restaurant known for their signature Caesar Salad, and pancakes in great variety. Today I had that meatball sandwich for lunch, and had that Caesar salad for dinner. Both were just as good, 35 years later.

A million and one more stories about Monterey. Buying cowboy boots at K-Mart, because that’s what you did. Sitting in the woods up the hill with a few others, drinking Ancient Age whiskey – in the nonbreakable value size bottle. And then running down the steep hill for half a mile or more (in our cowboy boots) to the NCO club. Good decisions there. Going on a date that would turn into a chapter of my novel decades later. Renting cars and going to LA or San Diego for long weekends.

Coming so close to failing out so many times, and I think I got a pity pass in the end – not looking that gift horse in the mouth! Because I was so bad at school I had zero fucks to give when I got to Korea. I would babble along to anyone who would hear me — and they would correct my bad Korean. And I learned. The smart kids who were concentrating on properly conjugating their verbs made the Koreans nervous. They didn’t want to disrespect anyone like that by correcting them. So for being the worst student but the time I left country I was the one who would be tasked with being the linguist on the street – buying train tickets, talking to wait staff in bars, etc.

So in the end it worked out. Monterey was my launching point, and I will always love this little village, no matter how big it gets.

Tomorrow: Off across California to Yosemite. From there it’s up to the weather and mountain passes. Can I got over the Sierra Nevada’s, or do I have to go around?

Deets

• Zero Day, no miles
• License Plates: FL!

Observations

• Somewhere before or after mountains I got in the car and the check seatbelt alarm was going off. As were the associated dashboard warnings. Unplugged and replugged the seat belt. Didn’t help. Turned car off, turned it back on, didn’t help. All manner of combinations of logic trying to figure out what the problem was yielded nothing. Until it did. And for a state or two I winced every time the alarm went off, worried I was going to have to hear that noise for weeks.. All good since then.
• Passed the school track where we ran wind sprints when I was on the Marine Running Team. Wind sprints are a lap running all out as fast as you can, followed by a lap just running really fast, rinse and repeat. I hated those things.
• After so many hundreds of miles, a new license plate!
• Big Sur really is just a widening of the road.
• Bixby Bridge is a famous bridge, you’ve seen it on Mac desktops, and I’ve seen it on a couple puzzles. It’s pretty iconic. It’s where Jack Kerouac scrambled down to the beach to follow the creek up to his friends cabin. And today it was fogged in. When I was on it, I couldn’t see either end or anything off the sides.
• Got a meatball sandwich and drove to Asilomar beach and ate while I watched the waves. I have to say goodbye the the Pacific tomorrow and that’s going to be sad.
• I also got a muffuletta for eating lunch on the road tomorrow, not sure if it’ll be as good 24 hours later..
• I finally looked up the Waymo cars I was seeing in San Francisco. They’re like uber but with autonomous cars – no driver at all!

Pictures