Traveling

Reading Al Bossence's post about their winter travel plans got me to thinking about my own travel choices.  After years of getting "hitch itch" at a certain time of year, I realize it never really hit me this year.  I still love going to other places, but I am not interested at all in driving anymore, nor do I like to fly.  I have no choice about the flying as it's either that or drive.  I used to love the cross country Amtrak trip until the last one, where I found that service had deteriorated to the point that I no longer want to be subjected to bad service in light of the high cost of 1st class train travel (and there is no other way to ride the train for 3 days, in my opinion).

I've done a complete run through of the thousands of photos we have, and yesterday Jeannie gave me a box she found of her dad's photos and papers.  I remember seeing his pictures of when he was in Korea and in Germany.

Bill graduated high school in 1959, and since all 18 year olds had to sign up for the draft and most had to serve 2 years (3 years if they enlisted), it was a given that he would go into the Army.  He served in the Medical Corps, and a couple of the photos from Korea show the tent in which the medics had to work.  Actually, they lived in tents, had restroom and shower facilities in tents, and just about everything else took place in tents.  Korea gets extremely cold in the winter and I can't imagine having to live like that, unless of course, you are backpacking for the fun of being deprived of all comforts!  He spent one year in Korea, came home for a  short visit, and then went to Germany to finish out his commitment.

I believe he told me he was assigned temporary duty (TDY) to a hospital in one of the nearby cities, so he was at least in a building some of the time.  In looking at the pictures several times previously, it never struck me that some of them showed bombed out buildings that still hadn't been rebuilt from the war.  He would have been in Korea in 1960-61 (I'm estimating here), so it would have been 1962 that he was in Germany, roughly 17 years after the war ended.  I'm stunned by the number of buildings that were still not rebuilt, and the extent of the damage on many of the adjoining and nearby buildings. 

Today is the start of a run of triple digit weather, and I'm hating it already.  I usually never have to turn on the swamp cooler until mid afternoon, but today I didn't make it until 12 noon!  I am so glad it is working well, but I have several places I wanted to go today and can't get myself to venture out in the heat!