Once Upon a Time

There were years before I met your Mom. Once in a while, there was even adventure, and at least in one case, a lesson in taking risk and an opportunity lost.

I was in an organization called the Civil Air Patrol. I liked the 'almost' Air Force feel of the group, ate up the aerospace training, leadership and the search and rescue skills and activities. Each month the cadets and a handful of senior members went down to a satellite airfield built during the WWII years to stage all of those planes coming out of Boeing during the war. Lots of taxiways, and those 1 and 2 story government design barrack buildings that sprang up all over.

During the day we'd train and do exercises on airplane handling, radio skills ground search and survival. All good stuff, with a weekend away from home as a bonus. During the Saturday evening, we'd have a party that included dancing, and socializing. Did I ever mention that the CAP was a co-ed organization?

While I have many stories of those weekend encampments, I just want to mention one event that ties into my topic paragraph above. Seems one of my buddies, had a girlfriend who had a girlfriend that took the pretty long drive down to Shelton and found our encampment. My bud and I were walking back to our barrack when these two ladies surprised us. They wanted us to go with them in the car and find a nice quiet place to 'visit'. Of course this was strictly forbidden. Who do you think chickened out? Yep, that'd be me. I occasionally wonder how the evening would have went, had I been just a bit less straight arrow that night,

And so it goes. . . .

Dad