It was Sunday night after a long and exhausting weekend.  We agreed to meet back at Randolph Park after we dropped the girls back at the dorm;  they had to make bedcheck by 11 pm.  There were some guys at the Park who may have needed a lift back to Huachuca.  Vern picked up our traditional six-pack on the way.  When we got to the park, all the rides had been settled and a few of the guys were just hangin' in the midnight heat, smokin' and jokin', swapping stories about the weekend and telling war stories.  Our six-pack disappeared quickly so a couple more were scrounged up...and they disappeared, too.

There was no signal to break it up and head south;  we just sort of drifted apart and took off in bits and pieces.  I didn't feel too tipsy, but I was very tired.  I got through the rougher-looking parts of South Tucson and hit the freeway  without any difficulties.  The route was not at all complicated:  I-10 east (well, south by southeast)  to just west of Benson.  Take the Highway 90 exit and wiggle around through a few hills and curves, then it is a straight run south to Huachuca City and Sierra Vista (where Fort Huachuca lives).  Simple really.

Driving away from Tucson's night glow, the freeway got darker and darker.  There were reflectors every now and then and lines on the road, but they were not always very pronounced.   There were trucks out there, of course, but not nearly as many as there are today.  When you are tired and your eyes are a little bleary, strange things happen.  Sometimes I would run up on the back of a huge tactor-trailer and scare myself to death because in my sleepy brain, the reflectors and lights on the back of the truck had been the reflectors on the side of the road.  Surprise, surprise!  Other times I would have just the opposite thing happen,  the reflectors on the roadside would suddenly line up in such a way that I thought I was suddenly running up the back of a truck...slammed on the brakes...and nothing there!   

There were other things that would cause some excitement...jack rabbits the size of greyhounds, millions of little white toads covering the road after a thunderstorm (driving over them is like hitting a patch of ice!) antelope, tortoises, javelinas, and spiders the size of Shaq's hand. 

Well, back to that Sunday night.  I had a couple of episodes with tractor-trailers - both real and imagined - and a couple of wildlife scares.  The next thing I knew, I was driving down the centerline of Highway 90 at about 20 mph, the sky was pinking up, and someone was behind me blowing a very loud horn.  It was Gordy and Dave in Gordy's '60 Pontiac.  They were both laughing too hard to even talk.  After they were sure I was awake enough to take care of myself, they passed me with honking, waving, and loud laughing.  I had no memory of getting off the freeway, getting onto hwy 90,  or negotiating the curves and hills. 

I got up to speed and made it back on post.  But I had no time to to clean up or change clothes before I had to be at work.  Fortunately, we wore nylon jumpsuits as dustcovers over our uniforms.   Also fortunate was the fact that I could get away with not shaving for a day or two...just not a fast beard guy.  So I worked all day in civilian clothes under my dustcover (I did change into my boots), feeling like a dirty ashtray.

Gordy and Dave had slept in the parking lot at Randolph Park and got an early start back to Huachuca.  I was just dumb lucky that they found me and not some cop.  Of course they had to tell the world what happened and I can't count the number of times they asked me what I had on under my dustcover...always in front of one of the bosses.  That evening, I got off work,  stumbled into my room, sat on my bunk, laid over on my side and the next thing I was aware of was my roomie, Gordy, waking me up and telling me it was time to go to work.  So a second day in the same clothes under my dustcover.  The things we do for love.