We left Jacksonville in our brand new 1959 Ford Custom 300 headed for points west! As we started on our trip to California, guess where our first stop would be? If you guessed Birmingham or Cullman, Ala., you were 100% correct. Let me digress from the trip to California and talk about our parents for a bit. We always had to make our obligatory side trip to Alabama and Ohio to see our parents and show off our children. I don't know if our parents realize all the problems we encountered in having to split up our visits. But it took a travel agent to plan the trips to the different grandmas and grandpas. It wasn't like that when I grew up. All my grandparents lived within a radius of a mile, and they never had a divorce amongst them, so there were only two sets of grandparents, not four, like we had to contend with. It has been a continuing problem to allocate the proper time spent at each in order not to slight one or the other.

We always looked forward to the trips, and enjoyed them immensely, but we all know that we could have enjoyed our families much more had both sets of parents been able to resolve all those difficulties that made them do the things they did. One thing I can say, I've never blamed my parents, neither has Ann, but we are sorry that their marriages didn't work out as good as ours did. I wonder what our lives would have been like had they not had those problems. Of course, we might not have been married either. That's what you get into when you start pondering the imponderables. Since Ann got to know her dad in 1987, she understands more of what happened during her childhood. But that's the background of another story. In fact, she has had it worse than I have, because her Daddy didn't so much as acknowledge his grand-children's presence during their growing up years, and to this day, Wayne is the only one of the four that has met him. As in all problems affecting people, neither of the sides is without blame. When you stop to think, parents are only humans just as we are, only older. We found that there were underlying factors, caused by events which occurred during the time her parents lived together, that prompted his attitude towards her. Why he held it against Ann, I will never know. Between her, her mother and her father, she's the only innocent one there. But then, there was something good about her Dad's not accepting us. We didn't have to visit four sets of grandparents.

My mother, God bless her, was most jealous when it came to visits. Any slight deviation might get a "you never spend long with me" or words to that effect. I always tried to overlook such outbursts, because she is my mother and also I didn't want to antagonize her. I have overlooked worse from Ann's family, who frankly, have never thought very highly of me. I don't know why, because I have always treated their daughter with love and respect, and 36 years of marriage should attest to that. I have never had to tie her down to keep her home. No other siblings in either of her parents families can attest to a record like ours, that's for sure.I was always glad that I married Ann instead of her family!!

We always taught our kids to love and respect their grandparents. We are saddened that they never really got to spend enough time with them, so as to be able to experience the love and affection only grandparents can give. I wanted them to know something of how I felt towards my "Granny". I felt like I owned my Grandma Sharpton's house. I loved her more than I did my parents, I think. Of course, living in the same vicinity was a big factor in that.

Back to the trip. We had received a letter from my brother Bill, who was a sailor stationed in San Diego, written the 19th of September 1959 giving us five pages of tips and hints on the routes and how to conquer the desert. I had my own ideas about the routes I wanted to take and what I wanted to see. I had worked up an itinerary so that my co-pilot would simply have to read it off the list to make sure I took the right turns at the right places.. Ann has always accused me of taking the back roads, and this trip was no exception. I had the love of exploration in my blood so after a week of visiting around and taking scads of photos, we departed, destined for San Francisco via San Diego and points in between. Texarkana, Texas was to be our first stop. Remember, this trip was made prior to the time the interstate road system was anywhere near being finished. Only a few miles had been constructed by that date. Our Original Itinerary is reproduced below for future generations.

The reason for an itinerary such as this was that in the days prior to Interstate highways, there was no one main road that took you on a straight course from one point to another, especially from a coast to coast trip. So, we used many different highways to make our trip as quickly as possible in order to save money. Even though gas was about 25¢ a gallon and motel rooms about $20 bucks a night, that was lots of money to a sailor with a family. It was estimated to cost about $50-$75 dollars daily on a trip like that, and we ate lots of bread and balogna on the roadside. So I needed my co-pilot. Since Ann couldn't read maps, I had to put in writing what to watch for as we progressed down the line. To illustrate, I recall one instance while we were driving east just west of Amarillo I had the misfortune? to ask Ann how far it was to Amarillo from where we were. I told her the town we had just passed through, and asked her to look up the distance on the map. She came back to me with, "It's about an inch". You can imagine the HEE-HAW that got out of me. The bad part of it was, she was serious!!

I am happy to report that as years passed, Ann's map reading abilities have greatly improved and she is now a great co-pilot. She has always been fun to travel with, and always made the best of what we had without any major gripes. She put her foot down on going potty behind the bushes though! Sometimes out west, it was almost a necessity. I couldn't have made it without her.

We left Alabama on time and on schedule. That was one thing that I was a stickler for, that everyone should be ready to leave at the appointed time (and I appointed the time). So we left Cullman on Route 69 to Tuscaloosa and west. This portion of the trip proved to be uneventful, in that we were traveling as quick as we could cross country in order to conserve money. We followed that itinerary pretty close, traveling 10-12 hours per day trying to keep expenses under $50 per day.

Our second night was spent in Brownfield, Texas, about 40 miles southwest of Lubbock. We left out and headed down through Hobbs, NM, Carlsbad, El Paso, Tuscon, and on to Yuma, Arizona for the third night. We made it into San Diego after 4 hard days of driving. It was December, and Christmas was fast approaching. We arrived with all our Christmas presents ready to put under the tree. We were to spend the holidays with Bill and Faye and then between Christmas and New Years, Bill and I would go to San Francisco to find housing. We caught up on all the gossip that had accumulated since we had last visited them five years ago while on our honeymoon. They had been in Hawaii for a tour of sea duty, and were back in San Diego for shore duty. One of the first things we did was go picnicking at Camarillo State Park. Next we went picnicking at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park where the kids played on the huge rocks. The terrain around Southern California is different from what we were accustomed to down south. Most of it is barren hills and deep canyons. It is beautiful in a different way. We fell in love with California. In fact we were to fall in love with all the west.

Unfortunately, that was the most miserable Christmas day we ever spent, and the only one ever spent outside our home. I think that Christmas is mainly a bust if you're not in your own home with your own traditions. We put our children's presents under their tree but on Christmas morning, Bill's kids got up with the mistaken impression that all the toys under the tree belonged to them. You can imagine what that did to peace and quiet. It certainly messed up Christmas for our children. Ann was terribly upset, and I didn't blame her.

The day after Christmas, Bill and I arose early, and with a couple of thermoses of coffee, headed for San Francisco. We left around 0400 in order to negotiate the traffic of Los Angeles before morning rush hour. By 7 am, we were on the freeways of Los Angeles, going right through downtown LA, hitting about 70 mph trying to keep up with traffic and keep in the proper lanes. In California traffic, if there is clear sailing ahead, it's full speed ahead. It was our first experience with 8 lanes going in ONE directions. It's like driving on a race track, only scarier because there are more cars side by side. We cleared Los Angeles, and headed up California 1, better known as the Coast Hiway. We intended to sightsee on both legs of the trip, Coast Highway up and San Joaquin Valley back.

We headed north through Malibu, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo. The sea coast towns were just like the movies and TV had depicted them. We continued on to Big Sur. We had to take pictures of the most beautiful coastline in America. We walked to the tip of Point Lobos and took photos that rival any for sheer beauty. The area surrounding and adjacent to Big Sur is probably the most photographed area in the country. We shortly resumed our trip to Monterey, taking a short drive around Carmel and the fabled area, and then on to San Francisco. We crossed the Santa Cruz Mtns and descended into the Santa Clara Valley at Gilroy and then drove up through San Jose to the outskirts of San Francisco, where we spent the night.

We were pleasantly surprised to learn that we could get Navy Housing immediately, though it was in Livermore Valley near Pleasanton. We didn't care where it was as long as it was close enough to commute to class. We were assured that most married students lived there. With housing taken care of, we headed back to San Diego, heading east on US 50, toward Livermore and Tracy, then south on US 99 towards Modesto and Fresno. Once we reached the San Joaquin Valley, we could see the Sierras and we kept marveling about them until we got as far south as Fresno. On the map, it looked like a short detour would take us up to King's Canyon National Park and the giant sequoias. We headed up, not fully realizing how much time it would take us to reach the park, and do any sightseeing. but when you are struck with a case of dumb, nothing detracts you. So up we went. By the time we got there and visited the General Grant and the other big trees, it was getting on toward late afternoon, and we were supposed to be in San Diego that night. So back down the mountain and onto Highway 99 for the mad dash to San Diego

Chapter 18

"University" of Navy Electronics

Vital Statistics: Al (31), Ann (24), Laura (3), Charles (2)
January 1959

After the holidays, we departed for northern California, heading for US Naval Training Center San Francisco and our home in Pleasanton for the next 9 months. We spent the first night in a motel in Tracy, a small town in the San Joaquin Valley at the junction of US 99 and US 50, which would take us west to SF. It was late when we arrived so the kids and mamma were tired.

THE HOME....... The next morning found us eagerly looking forward getting to Treasure Island and the Housing Office in order to be assigned our new home. Once it was assigned, we found out we had to go back east on US 50 for 30 or so miles to Pleasanton and the prospect of exploring our new home. We found Building 23 Apt 8 in Komandorski Village to be located on the second floor of a converted Army barracks similar to the quarters we had at 1804-V Camp Robert Smalls at Electronics "A" school in Great Lakes. As Yogi Berra said, "Deja vu all over again", so we weren't too thrilled at that, but then it was only for 9 or 10 months and we could make it. Who can gripe when you are getting a fabulous education. We had always had good experiences in Navy housing, and our had the same conditions that we did, so why gripe? You always look for the silver lining in any given situation, and we did. We all had the same goals, problems and aspirations, so we managed. In all our travels, we never had any problems with neighbors, yet we lived in very dense neighborhood.

One building had been converted into a Community Bldg. which housed the Post Office, a small exchange about the size of a 7-11, and a common area which was available for residents. They had a meeting room where Navy Wives Club of America Chapter 205 held their meetings We had daily milk and bread delivery, so we were set for our classes to begin.

We made one purchase there has become a mainstay in our family. We bought a couch/sleeper direct from the Riviera Factory for $360 one Sunday afternoon while sightseeing in Oakland. It is still with us, and probably will remain with us till we die.

On the 4th of May, Navy Wives Club of America #205 held their annual installation of officers, with Bettylou Graves being installed as President of the Chapter by National President, Mrs Jean Lyles. Ann was initiated into the chapter at the same meeting along with Ann Furguson.

THE SCHOOL..... I commuted to school the 50 or so miles to US Naval Station, Treasure Island, California. The Station had been the site of the a World's Fair, which was held simultaneous with the New York's World Fair in 1939. It was converted to a Naval Training Station after WWII started and many of the buildings were left-overs from the fair. It was a good base, but being surrounded by water, the summers were always cool. Wearing whites during classes caused me many a shiver. I can recall it vividly. Sitting in a class room in cotton clothing over a period of time when the temperatures are in the low 70's can certainly have a chilling effect on you. You never needed air conditioning, and you seldom needed heat in San Francisco. It's temperature is one of the most moderate of any city in the world. You could shiver on Treasure Island and then head east to San Ramon Valley where we lived and find it in the 100's. Of course, the humidity was usually nonexistent, so it really wasn't all that bad.

The advanced electronics course was the toughest course I had ever attended. It covered in 27 weeks, about what is covered a two year Electronics Technology course at a Community College. Out of 35 sailors who started the course with me, less than 15 graduated. That's a high attrition rate, but then it was a tough, tough course. During the first two weeks, which was the toughest part, we completed Cook's Math, which was a complete education in trigonometry. We lost about 1/3 of our class during that first two weeks. I couldn't even remember algebra, much less trig.

During that time, besides completing my daily homework, I had to completely relearn high school algebra. Luckily, Ann still had her HIGH SCHOOL algebra book, and remembered some of the rules. She helped me with homework, asked questions and prompted me in many ways and more or less, studied with me. I also had to learn how to use a slide rule during the first two weeks. I had never held a slide rule in my hand prior to being issued one there, and I was expected to quickly learn to do trig equations on one. I didn't even know what a trig equation was!! I came to school with a lot of raw potential, but not much else. Oh, it would have been wonderful had HP calculators already been invented! I have never been so intensively focused on any one thing in my whole life as I was that first two weeks in "B" school. About half the class flunked out during that period, because if you couldn't master Cook's Math, you could not complete the course.

Ann got to know Ohms Law better than I did. I know at first, I didn't even know how to transpose a formula, and certainly didn't know how to derive one. Ohm's law was simple...E=IR but you could twist it around to solve for different things, and at first, I didn't even know that you could do that. I didn't know that I=E/R or R=E/I could be derived from E=IR. That is how dumb I was. I learned fast in those first two weeks.

Ann did all the above, kept Daddy happy and fed, and kept two active youngsters quiet so Daddy could study. That was a very hectic period in both our lives. I was under terrific pressure because I knew that I had to graduate, for the sake of my family and my career, If I wanted to continue getting promoted increase our income, it was necessary to graduate. Ann was pregnant with Janet, so she was also under stress. We both did our share of sacrificing for the common *good. Many nights found me still studying until 2 or 3 o'clock the following morning, knowing I had to rise at 5 to prepare for that long commute through all the traffic of Nimitz Freeway and the Bay Bridge to school on Treasure Island.

School seemed to last forever. Actually, it was only 27 weeks of class work, but it seemed to last forever. You wouldn't believe the amount of material we covered. If we flunked a subject, we were allowed one repeat. I messed up on one subject and flunked. I finished the First Phase with a grade of 61.55, barely passing. But don't lose sight of the fact that I was still in school, about half the class had already flunked out.

The Second Phase was even tougher, if that was possible. The third week, I made a 57.5 on a test and was set back to repeat the two weeks. It was GET IT OR GO time. I made 77 on it the second go around and from then on I started making better marks. I guess I just re-focused again, and burned more midnight oil. I pulled my average up to 67.72. You covered in two weeks the exact amount covered in a 3 semester hour course in college. It's about 4 college semesters rolled into one 24 week period. We had a 10 question test every Friday that lasted one hour. Your life depended on that test, and it took every bit of that hour to complete it. After that one repeat, even though I passed it the second time around, had I flunked even one (1) Friday examination, I would have been dismissed from school and transferred to sea. Everyone was so keyed up on Fridays, that when the test results came back with a passing mark, the feeling was one of pure euphoria. It was the most wonderful feeling in the world. I will never forget the elation experienced when you found that you had dodged the bullet one more time. I am sure that my career would never have been so good, had I flunked out. Eventually, I graduated from Advanced Electronics School two weeks behind the class I started out with, but that was ok. My final average was 68.25. I was thrilled and I had accomplished a major goal. Out of a class of over forty, seventeen of us graduated and I did graduate. I would never have graduated had it not been for the emotional security that Ann provided me.

ACTIVITIES..... We caught the camping fever while living in California. We wanted to see all the parks that we had read and heard of all our lives, and also, we had determined that camping was the least expensive way to travel. So we visited our friendly Sears store and purchased a complete set of camping accessories consisting of one 9 x 12 tent, four folding army type cots, four sleeping bags, a Coleman two-burner gas stove and a Coleman lantern, along with new camp cooking utensils, the whole works.

Since we had never camped together, and I hadn't camped since a teenager, I decided a tryout at a local site was needed prior to heading east on our own. So when the 4th of July long weekend rolled around, we and Kathy, Tom and kids, our neighbors from across the hall, headed out for a weekend of camping in the high Sierra Nevada mountain paradise of Yosemite National Park. The Park was only about 4 hours driving time from our home in Pleasanton, but it seemed a world away.

We entered the park at the Big Oak Flat entrance and ascended the park until we arrived at White Wolf campground, which is located down a dirt road a bit behind White Wolf Lodge. It is approximately 7,500 foot elevation above sea level. That was significant, although at the time, I didn't know it! We found a good place to pitch our tent and proceeded to set up and establish it. We didn't waste any time in immediately putting our new equipment to full use. I set up the tent, installed the cots and sleeping bags in the tent, and then the stove. We got the stove going immediately as coffee was the first order of business. Everything was running smoothly. We were enjoying our first campout and the kids were romping in the woods, which is why God made the forests.

Every thing was going great. We sat around the fire and told sea stories, and jokes and probably had a few marshmallows to roast. Eventually, we all went to bed, us in our tent with our new cots and sleeping bags. Since Tom and Kathy didn't have a tent, Tom and his three boys were going to sleep on the ground while Kathy and her two youngest were to sleep in the back of their station wagon. We were sitting around the campfire, talking and enjoying the peace and tranquillity, when all of a sudden, we were startled by a loud noise from over at the garbage dump. We leaped up and shone the flashlight in that direction. A marauding black bear had invaded the garbage dump area, and was banging the garbage cans around looking for a tasty morsel. It certainly alerted us. One thing for certain...we didn't bother it. We all got out of sight and waited for it to leave before we again went back out. We didn't know whether we were going to have to evacuate or not.

Later on, in the wee hours of morning, I started to get cold. Here it was in August, and we were dressed for August weather. But what I hadn't taken into consideration was, that at 7,500 feet elevation, it gets wintry during the nights. It got cold, not down to freezing, but it got damned cold. Let's face it, I finally gave up my sleeping bag and huddled around the fire, trying to keep it warm.

I shivered and shook for the rest of the night. It was just another one of the many times that I was proven to be so dumb and so SMART. Ann had recommended we bring some blankets, but NO, I had NEW sleeping bags, and by damn, they would be all we would need. I told her that we were not going to move all our HHE (household effects) to the campground, that we were just going for a couple of night, and that our sleeping bags would be sufficient. (Boy, was I wrong!). I was just being mean, I reckon. I should have known better. I should have listened, but there again, my smarts got in the way of common sense thinking. I just didn't contemplate what nights at 7000 feet altitude were like. Had I stopped to think, I would have known.

She had been right, she had wanted to bring extras and like so many times previous and hence, I accused her of wanting to move all our furnishings (I'm a slow learner)!!! How come I screwed up so often??

I had a pot of coffee going for everyone when they finally crawled out the next morning. Ann swears she has not thawed out yet. (Sometimes I agree with her).

Breakfasts in camp were always a treat. I can still taste Ann's hot cakes and eggs and bacon and feel the cold air of a morning camp. It is one of the most heady, exhilarating experiences in the world, especially if it is in one of the campgrounds in the high Sierras located beneath towering Douglas Firs or some such trees. Ann is absolutely the best campground cook that I know!! We discovered a beautiful mountain lake {Lake Harden} about a mile down a trail. It looked like the typical mountain lake that is brimming with trout. Ha! I fished that sucker for hours and never got a bite so after an hour or so, I gave up on eating trout for supper and just enjoyed the beautiful mountain scenery. Memory is hazy as to whether we spent more than one night camping, but I believe we did.

On the day we broke camp, we departed early in order to visit Yosemite Valley. The pictures you always see of the valley's face are so awesome and beautiful depicting the massive structure of the valley's parapet. We came into the valley from off the mountain, down Big Oak Flat Road, through the tunnel and down under the ramparts of El Capitan on the north side of the Valley. It is a spectacular drive, coming off the mountain into the valley. Yosemite certainly is a one of the beautiful spots in America, but it is becoming over run with people just like us, people wanting to touch a bit of beauty and live some of it in their lives. We spent several hours sightseeing in the valley, at a picnic lunch, and departed down the El Portal Road, alongside the Merced River and on down the mountain to Merced, Calif. There we joined US 99 and headed home.

Another activity we enjoyed was to unfold the couch and lounge on it while watching wrestling. Wrestling was BIG during the early years of TV and we watched it on weekend nights when there was no home work to do. We soon knew all the wrestlers and became quite knowledgeable about wrestlers of that era.

All good things, good and bad, sooner or later, come to an end. I graduated from another school. This finished my formal education in the Navy and signalled my introduction into the fast moving portion of the Navy. This is how I finally met up with the world's first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, USS ENTERPRISE CVA(N)-65. Our complete graduating class and my original class, were put on track for more technical education, and eventual duty aboard ENTERPRISE upon it's Commissioning. She was under construction in Newport News, Virginia and wouldn't be completed for yet another year. To continue our education, we were directed to pick up and move to Great Lakes, Illinois to attend Computer school (US Navy Class "C" School) in order that we might fulfill our destiny of being a wise old Al!!!