I do not remember anything before our time at Eglin AFB. From some family papers I have read and some memories from a later time I know that we lived in Ft Walton Beach, FL. Dad and Mom bought the house; the later memories came as they were selling it some years later. The memories of that time are sparse and fragmentary, or at least most of them are. Playing with the neighborhood kids, including tying one slightly older kid to a tree and a bunch of us running around him whooping and hollering and pretending to be wild Indians. Riding around on my Dad's shoulders as he crawled around while planting rose bushes, with Mom helping but mostly taking care of Sis and sometimes me. Being told to stay away from those tall mounds in the back yard, then climbing up on one to look over the fence, then screaming as the large red ants swarmed over me and started stinging. Mom, always paying closer attention than I knew, was out there in a flash carrying me into the house, and either she or Dad got the tub started to wash the ants off. I have a sense that she applied some remedy to the bites as well, but definitely remember being told that I should have obeyed the original instruction to stay away from the mound in the first place. I also remember agreeing with that assessment and the wisdom of the added instruction to do what my parents told me to. Another cool memory is going to the airshow on base, a basic memory of a lot of people, airplanes on display. And the huge hanger that we visited where a loud "brrrrp brrrrrp" noise drew me in. The display was an aircraft machine gun, a big cylinder with a relatively short muzzle aimed at a wall of sandbags. People were allowed to fire off a few rounds, with a rope that ended a few feet away from the gun. I asked Dad, who I think was a Captain at the time, if I could make it make the noise too, and he said "Ask the Chief". So I did. The big man smiled, looked at Dad who must have nodded, and the next thing I knew I had the rope in hand and was being given instructions on what to do. I smile as I remember how it sounded a lot louder when I was closer like that, and I must have been surprised and perhaps jumped or called out because a lot of the people who had stopped to watch the little kid fire the gun smiled or laughed. I get the feeling that Dad and Mom were proud of what I had done to be allowed to fire the gun, and of how I handled myself when I fired it. We had a TV, one of the old black and white big deep ones with rabbit ears. I remember watching it with the family, but not what I saw. And I remember our old car, a green and white beast with fins, and evening rides where Dad would take us along a road that had several small hills, so when you drove the up and down variations were fast enough to produce some fun sensations. When we were getting ready to move, my parents asked about what color I wanted my room painted, and I said black. Discussion followed, and only the understanding that with black walls I would not be able to see the shadow puppets that Dad displayed once in a while convinced me to go for white. But the most vivid memory I have was almost being kidnapped.
It happened while Dad was TDY somewhere. I was outside playing (I do not remember any other kids being there) when a car pulled up and a man called me to come over. He had a gray suit, and a gray hat as was probably typical for the very late 50s or early 60s. Of course I had been warned about not going close to strangers, even if they offered me something I wanted. So I only took a very few steps toward the car and stopped even when he offered candy and toys. It took only a moment for my indecision to turn into total refusal. I feared my Mother's anger more than I wanted any toy or any amount of candy, which is as it should be, and perhaps by then my gut was telling me that this was wrong. He got out of the car, apparently deciding to take me even if I did not come close, and by then I knew something was very wrong with this, and backed up. The front door slammed open, and a fierce lion came forth to defend her cub, for my Mother had seen what was happening and came out yelling at me to come and for the man to go. I believe she threatened him; at the very least I knew she was not afraid to attack him if that was what it would take. He got back in the car, and the driver sped off. A little later a plain cloths policeman (not sure what agency) showed up, and I was questioned. I remember with a sense of great pride that my Mom answered a question about her ability to defend us by showing the officer the handgun that I had not even known we had until then, and hearing her state that she could put all six rounds in a target the size of a hand. I offered to show the policeman my cap pistol if he would let me see his gun, but being the professional he was he declined. He stayed over for a night or so, sleeping in the recliner, but as far as I know the kidnappers never returned.
So the question is, who were they? I may have heard my parents speculate that they could have been trying to take me so that Dad would compromise secrets, which today I do not think as plausible since it is unlikely that the Russians or other communist countries would try something which had a fairly high risk of resulting in unfavorable press even if they had agents in the area. We did not have much money, since in those days our military were greatly underpaid and we had no other income than Dad's pay. Which leaves the most likely solution that they were racists who were targeting us because Dad was a full blooded American Indian and Mom was as white as new fallen snow. We will never know, probably.
In any event, our next move was to Ramstein AB, Germany. Truly a life altering path was now taken.
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