Back then hitch hiking wasn't too dangerous or difficult so I hitched east to Cocoa Beach, then north. I had enough money for food and motels, but didn't really know where I was going. The only plan I had was to get out of Florida, which meant going north. My strongest memory was a late night meal in a dinner near Jacksonville. The song "Brandy" played on the jukebox. I'm not sure why that song touched me so deeply, but it did. To this day when I hear the song I'm back in that dinner, back to the night I struck out on my own. A child, not yet ready to be a man.

Karl Waagner, the man whose last name I carry and who I had believed my biological father until I was twelve, lived in Savannah. I'd grown up in Savannah until about that age so I'd always considered it home. When asked where I grew up I still say "Savannah". Savannah is more memory of home than my actual home, but that's how I've always seen it. So that's where I ended up. Don't remember how, but I ended up at another step-dad's home. Karl Waagner has always been a fine man. Solid. At the time he was still a bachelor so I stayed with him for a few days. My plan was to keep going north, but Karl did all that he could to prevent me from striking out on my own shy of trying to tell me I couldn't. I don't believe he wanted me to live with him or even to stay in Savannah, but he was concerned about my direction and worked hard to redirect me. He had two bowling lanes and knew everyone worth knowing in Savannah, so he had ample options to offer me, but I couldn't accept. I couldn't leave one parental home for another.

The war in Vietnam and the draft was the 800 pound guerilla in the room. As a high-school drop out and the oldest of three sons I'd be drafted when I turned eighteen, no doubt about it with those stats. Whether I wanted it or not my future would be the Army and Vietnam. Understanding this, Karl talked me into joining the Coast Guard.
Because Vietnam was such a horrible place, Coast Guard enlistment was at historical highs. Which allowed them to be selective. The Army and Marine Corps would take anyone. They needed warm bodies to hump a rifle through the jungle. It didn't matter if you had an education or a criminal record. The Coast Guard required a clean record, a High School Diploma, and a high score on the entry exam. But Karl knew people and got around the requirements. All I had to do was pass their entry exam, which I did with no difficulty. Before I knew what was going on I'd taken the test, a physical, sworn in and on a Delta flight to Philadelphia. From there a bus ride to Cape May New Jersey. Boot Camp.

It was October 1973. I wore diapers the only other time I'd been north of the Mason/Dixon Line. Odd as it may sound, being in Yankee Territory woke me up to the fact that my life had changed. Being in Philadelphia, even briefly sharpened my senses. Bob Schrader became a warrior here out of necessity. It was a place that could eat me alive. On the bus ride to Cape May I reviewed all Bob had taught me and committed to keeping my guard up at all times. This was a rather pivotal moment for me. I was too young and stupid to be scared of anything, but my experience in South Carolina had taught me there are people who would hurt me for reason I couldn't understand or anticipate. To survive I had to attack first. I'd yet to hear the term "proactive", but that's what Bob taught me. To be proactive in every facet of life. Florida was so soft that I'd dropped my guard. I had stopped being proactive. It's what put me on a bus in Yankee Territory.

At that point I made a conscious decision not to repeat my mistake. I would begin right then by taking control of my life. My decision was to get off the bus at the first stop, hitch a ride back to Philadelphia, then buy a bus ticket to Canada. Canada had taken a position against forced military service and were protecting guys avoiding the draft and those who went AWOL, which is what I'd be doing. Canada was my solution, I just hadn't seen it before now. Content with my decision I relaxed and took a nap.

When the bus stopped next it was in Cape May, where my new choice was taken from me. Coast Guard sailors waited at the bottom of the buses steps. I tried to slip away by saying I had to use the restroom, but they were hard-ass drill instructors. I would get to pee when ordered to do so and not before.
I hated boot camp and I hated the military. I couldn't do someone else's discipline and order. It took two days to find a way to get off the base without being caught. Since it was winter and the base was surrounded by water on three sides, it was more difficult than you'd think. I wasn't ready to leave yet, but could do so when the time was right.

I was in Hotel Company, my drill instructor was Boson's Mate First Class Drosdouski. Ask anyone and they will remember their DI's name. It's hammered into you. You never forget it. Like all drill instructors, BM1 Drosdouski was a prick. And though everyone believes their DI singled them out for the worst treatment, I am positive that it was the case with me. He hated all southerners, but me most of all. About half way through boot camp, when I was sure I was ready to go for the fence, BM1 Drosdouski woke me up in the middle of the night by dragging me out of the bunk. In his office he explained all the reason he didn't like me, which took ten minutes. Said he had decided to fail me, which would result in an immediate discharge. He asked what I thought about that and to my surprise I said I wouldn't like it at all. I'd planned to go AWOL in the next few days, but when threatened with being kicked out I was ready to fight.

Drosdouski was as surprised by my answer as I, so he repeated all the reasons I was worthless and not worthy of wearing the stupid Donald Duck hat, then asked me what I had to offer his precious United States Coast Guard. I said the only thing that came to mind. I said I could acquire five gallons of wax before breakfast. We had "The Big Inspection" in two days and wax for the barracks floor was impossible to find. All week he shouted about the need for wax and that if we didn't find it we'd fail inspection.

"How," he asked. "I'll steal it," I said. He asked me where and how, but I suggested he didn't want to know. He thought about it and agreed. He didn't want to know. He did say that if I "found" five gallons of wax I'd have no more trouble from him, but if I got caught he'd piss on me in the brig. Nice guy. I went to back into the barracks, got dressed in my darkest gear and snuck out onto the base. I wasn't positive the administration building would have wax, but it's floor was always well waxed, so I assumed they had to have some hidden somewhere. The building was locked up tight, which only slowed me down. Using a crude set of picks I had made my first week in Cape May, it took two minutes to pick the lock on the loading dock door. Once inside I had to pick two more locks to get to the supply locker. There I found the mother load. Six five gallon jugs of wax, plus all the other cleaning supplies we needed but could never get through proper channels. The hardest part was hauling the heavy jug of wax across the base while staying in the shadows and avoiding the constant roving patrols. Once I got the prize back to the barracks I decided to push my luck. I emptied my sea bag then returned to the admin building and filled it with much needed cleaning supplies. At three in the morning I had everything in place. I felt in control of my life for the first time since I left home, so I pushed my luck and snuck into the DI's quarters and woke BM1 Drosdouski. He was ready to kill me until I told him I had succeeded. When he saw what I had managed to "acquire" he woke the entire Company and put everyone to work. We won the inspection and true to his word, Drosdouski left me alone. The only time he called on me was when he needed my "special talents", which he required more often than I would have thought. I became Hotel Company's unofficial quartermaster. I stole my way through boot camp.

An interesting thing about boot camp is that it is where I really learned how to drive. The Coast Guard had learned that they lost more sailors to traffic accidents than to the sea. To correct this someone came up with the rather novel idea of teaching the kids to drive properly through a week long defensive driving course. The course was crude and set up on a back lot of the base, but it was taught by professional drivers with the best muscle cars I have ever driven. It is difficult to imagine just how much these instructors crammed into a one week course. Like all the others, I was excited to get a break from push ups and five mile runs, but especially so to get behind the wheel of a hyped-up Dodge Charger. Since I had been racing my Pinto and out running cops for more than a year, I didn't expect to learn much from the class. I knew I could drive well. In fact, though I was the youngest in my class (all the others had at least completed high school) I was the best driver at the beginning of the week. Yet by the end of the week I had improved so much that it was hard to believe I thought myself a hot driver before. That course was the reason I was so hard to catch in later years.

The other interesting thing is that at the end of boot camp we were told that there were two openings for patrol boats in Vietnam. All of us had entered the Coast Guard to avoid Vietnam, yet everyone of us volunteered for these two spots. Brain washing is an amazing thing.

Boot camp ended December 20th. I was invited home for Christmas so I took a flight to Orlando. Ken returned my car keys as if he'd been holding them until I returned. We never discussed what happened. Ten days later I drove to Morehead City North Carolina for my first duty station. It was a medium size ship used for buoy tending and a search and rescue. I was there two months and it never left the dock. All I did was scrape paint and put fresh paint back on. One night I was on duty when a teletype came across the network (that's an ancient form of email for you youngsters). The duty officer read the message then asked me if I knew sailors who might want to go to Antarctica. There was an icebreaker in need of deckhands for an Antarctic expatiation. He had to find one "volunteer" off our boat. I didn't hesitate. Orders were cut that night. I was gone before the sun rose with just enough time to drive my car back to Orlando and catch a flight to Norfolk Virginia.

I met the Icebreaker at the Yorktown Naval Yard where they had loaded explosive ordinance. It left minutes after I walked on board. I didn't have an assignment yet so I stood on the bow and watched land and water of the Chesapeake Bay fall behind. As we approached open water I saw a strange sight. Open ocean in front/east, land to the right/south and land to the left/north. A road ran out into the Chesapeake Bay from both the north and south, then ended in water. In the middle of the gap was another road about a mile long that wasn't connected any where. It looked like there had once been two long bridges between the roads, but was just open water now. It would be a while before I understood I was seeing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. The two gaps were long tunnels deep enough to allow aircraft carriers and fuel tankers to pass over. Seen from the water it was a strange sight.

After we passed from Chesapeake Bay to Atlantic Ocean a sailor joined me on the bow. We nodded but didn't speak, both enjoying the sea. After the ship cleared the shallows and was in open ocean it began to make a slow turn to the left. A north turn. I looked around to see if we were avoiding traffic, but there was nothing. At first I thought we might be making a northern course around shallow water or something, but we kept turning until it was clear we were turning north. I didn't know much about the world, but I was pretty sure that Antarctica was a right turn. The first words I spoke the the petty officer who would be my immediate supervisor was, "We're going the wrong way." They lied on the teletype message. We weren't going to Antarctica with stops in the Caribbean, South America, Australia, and the Orient. No, we were going to the Arctic, Iceland our only port-of-call.