The Army's policy for soldiers returning from Vietnam was that if you had six months or more left on your enlistment, you would be assigned somewhere in the States.  If you had less than six months left you would be discharged early and sent home.  Even shaving off the short-timers like that, Stateside posts soon became seriously over-populated.  My brother was sent to Fort Ord in September of 1966 and was assigned to a signal unit that had so many soldiers in it that he only worked one day in three and the rest of the time he worked for the Monterey city maintenance crews.  A lot of soldiers were sent home to await orders and some of those never got an assignment at all...a few showed up years later seeking their discharges.

Adding to the over-crowding misery was the fact that there was no money for units to train or even do the jobs they would normally do.  We went to our workplaces and tried to work on vehicles that we couldn't get any parts for.  There was limited fuel for operations, and that meant long days of absolutely nothing to do. 

And add to all that, the soldiers that came back from Vietnam had little patience for "make work" jobs; even training didn't interest them; they'd already been dealing with the real thing.

This was the atmosphere I fell into when I reported to Fort Hood, Texas in December 1971.  All the factors came together to create a volatile situtation.  Crime and drug abuse were rampant;  Housing was awful.  We found a two-room shack in Lampasas, thirty miles away from post.  Everything else we looked at was not family-friendly.

But weighing it all, I think the crowding was the worst.  There were lines everywhere for everything.  One soldier quipped it was like living in the Soviet Union.  Payday was the peak of it.  The Army was paying with checks then...and to cash or deposit your check on post on payday was quite an adventure.  The bank on Fort Hood had about six drive-through lanes and I have no idea how many teller positions inside.  Right about the time we showed up, some enterprising young soldier managed to rob the bank on payday.  There were literally milllions of dollars in that bank on the last day of the month.  The robber got away with a lot of it. 

The line of cars into the drive-through windows was long and slow;  it required a squad of MPs to direct traffic and keep the line and the rest of the cars separate.  If you chose to walk in, you were lucky to find a parking place within a mile and the line  yards or so, and they weren't there to direct traffic.

The Army used to have what they called, "payday activities" which meant, if they could be spared,  soldiers were allowed to take off the rest of the day after they got paid.  The idea was to allow them to pay their bills, re-supply their shaving kits and buy cigarettes, etc.  For most of the single young guys (and a number of married older guys) their activity was centered around the club and a bottle. 

What spurred this particular ramble was the memory creeping in of the commissary at Fort Hood.  It was in an industrial area away from the main part of the post.  It looked like a warehouse.  There was always a line to get in the store but on payday it was the worst:  it would reach out into the parking lot.  It was deceptive, too, because you would think you were making progress moving toward the door only to find that just outside the door was a series of rails that wound the line back and forth like an E-ticket at Disneyland.  There were at least as many people in line inside the rails as there were in the parking lot.  When you got to the head of the line you didn't automatically get to go in and shop; you had to wait for a basket to become available.   Then once you got your basket, you couldn't just go in and browse;  you pretty much had to stay in line and slowly move through the store, up one aisle and down the next.  The line of shoppers had nowhere to go, just lock-step  and shuffle.  It was not uncommon for shoppers to yell back and forth for a "little help!" tossing items they missed when they went by them. 

The one thing that worked well at the commissary was the method for checkout.  There were ten checkout stations but only one line...you could say the line actually started when you came in the door...and when a cash register came open the first person in line moved to it, instead of having ten checkout lines.  I know a lot of stores and especially banks do this now, but it was the first time I had ever seen it...1971.

A trip to the commissary could cost you the  better part of the day.  Forty-five minutes to an hour in the line outside, at least an hour moving through the store, and then packing up the car and for us, a half-hour to forty-five minute drive home.  As difficult as it was, the spirit in the store was usually pretty upbeat, fun even.  On one occasion I was distracted by a lovely lady going the other way in our aisle.  She was dressed in what was the uniform of the day for young ladies:  sandals, hip-hugger bell-bottoms, and a peasant-style blouse without benefit of "foundation garments".  She was gorgeous.  I watched as she pushed her cart past us.  I guess I must have followed her retreat a little too closely because I ran my cart into a pillar next to the frozen foods.  It was bad enough that I ran into it, but it had to be a hollow metal pillar and it rang like a church bell.  The girl glanced back over her shoulder with a little smile,  MamaCharlie glared at me with a little less than a smile, and I just stood there with my stupid hanging out.  And this little mini-drama was witnessed by dozens of shoppers who all expressed their appreciation with snickers and catcalls.  And of course the lines had to keep moving.  A nice-looking thirty-something lady going the other way patted my arm as she passed by.

We had a lot of problems and challenges while we lived in Texas; I always tell folks I spent a lifetime in Texas one year.  But we had some good times, too.  We made some good friends, had a baby, went swimmin' in the spillway, and enjoyed a lot of being a young and happy family.

But all-in-all, I really identified with Mac Davis' old song, "Happiness is Lubbock, Texas in my Rear View Mirror"...