Its funny how, as I get further into my Navy career, my musings get longer – its not like I didn’t form memories of boot camp or Corps school, it’s just that those days were so busy, I rarely had time for memorable experiences during these years.

I arrived in Oakland, California in April 1978, ready to teach only to find out that the role really wasn’t teaching, but acting as a clinical preceptor to students doing their four-month rotation. At first, I was not too thrilled, but working in PT has always been enjoyable to me and I soon got back into it.

At first, I lived in the barracks. In an earlier post, I mentioned my association with the evil weed during this period of my life. Security at Oak Knoll would not even bring the dogs into the barracks, as they would not have had sufficient staff to operate the hospital the next day. Crews who were doing disciplinary time would be given the assignment to walk around the outside of the barracks and pull the cannabis sativa plants that grew up from all the seeds being thrown out the windows.

The barracks at Oak Knoll were crowded and the command encouraged sailors to move off base. I hooked up with one of our psych techs and we took an apartment located approximately one mile from the base – I could walk to work if I wanted to.

Now, if you have ever been exposed to people who work in psychiatry, you know that many of them are drawn to the field because they have need of the services offered. Such was the case with my roommate. My parents came to visit in the fall of 1978 and stayed with us for a couple of days, before moving on to visit my other Navy brother in Hawaii. We came home from visiting somewhere in San Francisco and were not making much noise, but my roommate came storming out of his room using some rather blue word about his trying to sleep. In his defense, he was on the night shift, but, IMO, there is no defense for his behavior.

Soon thereafter, another friend was looking for a roommate and I moved up the hill – it cost a little more, but this roommate was much nicer. The reason he was looking for a new roommate was that his former roommate had made a journey into the seedier part of Oakland to purchase some sexual gratification. He struck a deal with a woman employed in “the world’s oldest profession” and revealed to her where his money was in his vehicle. He was not smart enough to realize why she excused herself moments after completing the act, but when he got back to the vehicle, his rent money was gone.

Now, during the summer of 1978, the future Mrs. Missingthesmokefreeparadise arrived at Oak Knoll. The first time I saw her, I was in awe of her beauty. We were introduced by two different parties – first, there was a First Class Petty Officer who was kind of the base social officer. He was standing duty in the barracks one night and the future Mrs. came down to the desk. I made some pithy comment like “If I told you you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?” to which she responded with an equally pithy “your place or mine”.

The second party that was involved in our introduction was a patient that we were both treating – I in the PT Clinic and the future Mrs. on the Orthopedics ward. This patient was forever telling each of us “I have got someone you need to meet” – can you say Matchmaker?

Our first date was a Janis Ian concert in the Masonic Temple in San Francisco. I had been stood up by my original date and stopped by the barracks to see if the future Mrs. wanted to go. Her roommates talked her into going – apparently, I was a step up from usual neanderthals that populated the barracks. We both enjoyed the concert, each other’s company and soon became an item. In fact, the future Mrs. moved into my second apartment almost as soon as I did and, shortly thereafter, moved out of the barracks. We were official.

Several nice things happened to me in Oakland, besides meeting the future mother of my daughter. I had a patient who was a retired Navy Captain. He then held a VP position with World Airways, which had box seats at Oakland – Alameda County Coliseum. He knew I was a Yankee and baseball fan, so whenever the Yankees were in town, I would get a call that two tickets were being held in my name. The box itself was right next to the owner’s box, so the seats were great.
Another great benefit of the duty station was the proximity of great sports car racing – Sears Point and Laguna Seca were both within a couple of hours. I would go see NASCAR West, IMSA and SCCA races. These were great times – it is a shame that I don’t travel to the races any longer. Maybe we will resurrect that part of our lives again in the future.

I am going to stop this blog here and tomorrow I will tell the tale of the Courtship of Stacy’s Mother.

Stay tuned.

Just Jon