I think it was Thomas Wolfe who said that you can't go home again. I think the sentiment he was expressing was that you grow up and change and so does everything at home. So when you revisit your past, it isn't there anymore. At least that's how I have experienced it. MamaCharlie accuses me of being overly nostalgic and maybe I am. I prefer to regard it as a respect for my history but I can see her point. I am kinda stuck in the sixties. I used to tell folks I didn't have a one-track mind; I had an eight-track mind but nobody makes the tapes anymore. But when I say that nowdays, the younger folk look at me like I came from Mars. "What's eight-track?" I have a lot of history and it took place in a lot of places. Every now and then I have a chance to see some of those places and invariably they are not the same as I remembered...and neither am I. A few years ago HBW moved into the same housing area we lived in when he was five years old. He called us and said, "I remember these houses as being a lot bigger." But all this being true, I still keep trying to find vestiges of my bygone days.
This last week or so MamaCharlie have been traveling to some places that are historic in our lives. We went to Phoenix first for a few days; I'll write more about that later. Then we went to San Diego, and that, too, will be covered in another article later. On Wednesday we came to Fort Huachuca, AZ, a key location in the history of us: it is where I was stationed when I met MC on a blind date in Tucson, April 1967. I passed through here in 1984 on Army business but had no opportunity to look around at all. This is the first time I have spent any time here since I left in July 1967.
HBW and I went into the Fort Huachuca museum yesterday. I was looking for maps so I could figure out what they did to my old post. It was different in 1967. We drove around and I looked for things that I recognized. The struggle is two-fold: a) it has been forty-four years and 
they have almost totally obliterated the things I remember. One of the displays in the museum was a bunk and locker from the WWII era. HBW noticed that the shaving soap in the footlocker display was slightly out of line and went off on a rant imitating an inspector railing at some young private who couldn't line up his soap. We were silly for a minute then moved on.
HBW had asked me if I had had a footlocker display like that when I was a young troop. I did. We all did. And we all wondered why we had to have tooth powder when everyone used toothpaste by that time. Ditto with the shaving soap and brush. Our socks were rolled up to a uniform size, a dollar bill length. A stack of hankies, shoe polish and brush, a can of brasso, comb, toothbrush, and razor were all displayed in accordance with the unit's Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). Everything was in its designated place, properly aligned, spaced exactly per the diagram, and clean. That was the removable top tray; in the bottom of the locker were your tee-shirts, underwear, long-johns, towels, gloves, and a few other things, again, according to the unit's SOP. All the clothing items were rolled to the same length and smoothed out, no wrinkles. The footlocker was to be kept in that condition at all times...that is how we lived. We also had a wall-locker and it also had a display diagram and was to be kept in that condition at all times according to unit SOP. Clothing items on hangers was evenly-spaced on the hanging bar and all the shoulders were aligned. There was a small space in the wall locker designated for "personal items"...about the size of a standard shoe box, it was where we kept our cigarettes, loose change, pictures of home, or whatever constituted "personal" to the individual. I had a Japanese transistor radio that would fit in my "personal items" space, along with my other treasures. Hard to believe now, looking at the dormitory-style living our young soldiers enjoy today. Sigh. Back to yesterday...
We didn't find too much about the post in the sixties but in the gift shop we did find a lady who was also here in 1967 and has lived here continuously since 1979. She told me that she couldn't find any familiar landmarks, either.
After a couple hours of riding around and walking a bit in the old main post area, I recognized the following: an old fieldstone house (in my memory it was red brick) that was once part of a row of such houses where the brass lived, the airfield, the main gate, the east gate, and the north gate, an empty field that is covered with grass and weeds and concrete blocks that used to support the WWII wooden barracks I lived in. Not much else. Every now and again I would see some road or field or building that I thought might possibly have been around back then...but I am still not sure. I think HBW got a little tired of hearing me speculating. What stands out most of all is how the place has grown with all the new and modern facilities that are here. And the town of Sierra Vista is huge now. Walmart, Target, Panda Express...all the comforts of home. In '67 we could choose from three drive-in burger joints, one honky-tonk, and a laundromat.
As the hippies all used to say, "The Beat Goes On"...I have returned to the birthplace of MC and me and found...it isn't there anymore. Good thing I still have her to verify that it all actually happened. I will continue the quest because I don't know how to not. It does pain me some to find that so little of my history here remains. When I think of those times and how monumental an era it is to me, I feel like there should be a stone monument or a rock foundation on the mountain to comemorate it instead of a field of concrete pilings.
Well, the "Southwest Nostalgia Tour" wraps up on Monday, and once I'm back in the Swirling Epicenter of Hate I will post some more of the events and sights and impressions. Can't wait.
