It's now February, 2005. I'm coming up on 40 years since my tour of duty in Europe at the Army base near Landau, Germany.
I started off my military "career" as an MP... a most unlikely duty for me if you had asked anyone who knew me before that time.
I was and still am an electronics repair technician. After a battery of tests during Basic Training, the Army saw fit to ignore my
previous knowledge and training as a tech and slap a rifle on my shoulder. So, for almost my stay in Europe, my main job
was to guard the missle base at Bravo Battery, 2nd Missle Battalion, 56th Artillery. I did my best under unpleasent conditions to
serve my country when it was my turn and I don't regret doing it, but I'm glad it's over. Most of the guys I knew in AIT got sent to
VietNam when that war was just getting "warmed up". A handful of us got Europe and elsewhere. I was "lucky".
     Those guard towers in the wintertime were (to me) the worst duty one could get. Four hours on and four hours off for twenty
four hours made everyone a little crazy. After four hours of standing guard, my feet were numb. I would crawl into the bunker for
my four hours shuteye, but by the time I warmed up and got to sleep, it was time to go back on duty. In the summertime, sheep
were corraled just outside the perimeter fence at night. The stench was unbeliveable. Nightmares of those days and nights have
finally gone away, but for the longest time, I dreamed they changed the laws and I got sent back."Couldn't I just be flogged
instead?" Brrrrr. They'll be drafting 90 year old pregnant women before they get to me again. But, I did my duty. As I write this,
I think of our Soldiers in Uniform in the Middle East, and how easy I -really- had it at Bravo... hardly life and death.
     Towards the end of my stay at Bravo, I fabricated a signaling device (made out of a discarded transistor radio) and wired it
up to the main gate. The idea was, if the guard at the gate was under duress of any kind, all he had to do was push a button on the
gate and the signal buzzer would sound in the nearby guard house. I wasn't thinking about praise or anything else... just something
to break the boredom. I was hungry to get back to useful work in any kind of electronics. I didn't realize what effect my "creation"
would have, but that primitive effort seemed to impress the base Commander, Captain Holder. He sent me to radio school for two
months! Talk about "get-away" duty... I nearly slept through their classes and still made honor graduate, got a gold cigarette lighter,
and received several citations for my "efforts". The school was at Lenngries in the Bavarian mountains... nice while it lasted.
     Bact at Bravo, I was transferred to the Commo section. My duties included manning the base switchboard and doing minor
maintenance on their two-way radios... a far cry from freezing my buns off in those cold (and later, windowless) guard towers.
With all that new knowledge under my belt, my superiors thought I would reinlist. Fat chance. I'd rather have hot needles stuck in
my eyes. So nineteen months after getting stuck in that wasteland of boredom, I waltzed out the door and back to "the world".
     I presently work at the University of Washington in Seattle as a bench and field tech. All the fancy gadgets in their electronic
classrooms need a technicians touch to keep them running. The instructor comes into the room and pushes a few buttons... the
lights come down and the data projector turns on, and presto: his Powerpoint presentation is on the screen, or videotape, or
whatever. It's a far cry from chalkboards and overhead projectors. High tech still needs repairmen but electronic gadgets are
becoming less and less serviceable. Pretty soon, nothing will be repairable. Look at Consumer Electronics. Lots of new stuff goes
in the dumper because we can't get parts and service data. The initial low cost makes consumers buy new rather than try to
get the old device fixed. I recently turned 60, but I'll likely stay put until full retirement kicks in at 66. I'm going extinct along with
the stuff I repair and all that I've learned over the years. No matter. I'm tired of it anyway. Time to have some fun. Now, to
mentally shift gears after a lifetime of work.... there's the real challenge.

Ray Carlsen... a leader in trailing-edge technology.