On my flight from Memphis to Louisville, I sat next to Taylor (pictured above), a charming and exuberant young woman who was on her way – on essentially her first two plane flights ever – with her boyfriend’s Mom, 37 (?!) - to Louisville and Fort Knox. Tomorrow – eight days before our church friend Douglas graduates from a National Guard youth boot camp – her boyfriend Gary – formerly a drummer in a skinhead band and a high school dropout (pictured above bottom playing with his band) - graduates with honors from the actual Army boot camp at Fort Knox.
Several months ago Gary followed Taylor in taking the ASVAB military assessment test. When he scored well he decided to actually try military life. After a few days in Kentucky – instead of the California Central Valley where they live in Fresno (where she had little to say about the Hmong Americans there except for that Hmong Americans are her neighbors, she can’t understand them, and Hmong youth gangs surround them) – he was ready to quit. Although he could quit, he would have had to stay past boot camp to process all of the paperwork. Then his team scored well on an end of the boot camp challenge and he became a squadron leader. (One of his boot camp classmates got caught with cookies and cigarettes in his bed and has to do boot camp over again). (I have flown into Louisville with three drunk/hung over Army recruits headed to Fort Knox to start boot camp the next day – just as people were arriving tonight for boot camp.)
Taylor said she had been getting up at 6 a.m. every morning in the past week to get ready for the time change. She was partly excited because she had never really flown before, because she was going to get to see Gary, because the three of them were going to spend the day together (off base – partly in Elizabethtown), and because then she and her mother-in-law were going to spend a day or two in rental touristing in the area. She mentioned Kentucky Kingdom, I mentioned two places she and her boyfriend’s mother – her mother-in-law, she called her – had researched – Lincoln’s birthplace and the Louisville Slugger factory/museum, and I mentioned the West Main Street museum row in general and two things Stephanie did last week: Churchill Downs and Louisville Bats games. Later when I was giving them directions to Fort Knox, I mentioned the Waverly sanitarium on Dixie Highway between Louisville and Fort Knox, where tens of thousands of people died of tuberculosis between the 1930s and 1940s – supposedly one of the most haunted places in America (see “Ghost Hunters”).
It was interesting talking about someone going into the military at this point, to a high school kid who was willing to chat, and to someone who was so excited to be visiting Louisville, so excited to travel, and so excited in general.
Oh to be young and have the world before you (although I’d just as soon stay a civilian myself!)
Several months ago Gary followed Taylor in taking the ASVAB military assessment test. When he scored well he decided to actually try military life. After a few days in Kentucky – instead of the California Central Valley where they live in Fresno (where she had little to say about the Hmong Americans there except for that Hmong Americans are her neighbors, she can’t understand them, and Hmong youth gangs surround them) – he was ready to quit. Although he could quit, he would have had to stay past boot camp to process all of the paperwork. Then his team scored well on an end of the boot camp challenge and he became a squadron leader. (One of his boot camp classmates got caught with cookies and cigarettes in his bed and has to do boot camp over again). (I have flown into Louisville with three drunk/hung over Army recruits headed to Fort Knox to start boot camp the next day – just as people were arriving tonight for boot camp.)
Taylor said she had been getting up at 6 a.m. every morning in the past week to get ready for the time change. She was partly excited because she had never really flown before, because she was going to get to see Gary, because the three of them were going to spend the day together (off base – partly in Elizabethtown), and because then she and her mother-in-law were going to spend a day or two in rental touristing in the area. She mentioned Kentucky Kingdom, I mentioned two places she and her boyfriend’s mother – her mother-in-law, she called her – had researched – Lincoln’s birthplace and the Louisville Slugger factory/museum, and I mentioned the West Main Street museum row in general and two things Stephanie did last week: Churchill Downs and Louisville Bats games. Later when I was giving them directions to Fort Knox, I mentioned the Waverly sanitarium on Dixie Highway between Louisville and Fort Knox, where tens of thousands of people died of tuberculosis between the 1930s and 1940s – supposedly one of the most haunted places in America (see “Ghost Hunters”).
It was interesting talking about someone going into the military at this point, to a high school kid who was willing to chat, and to someone who was so excited to be visiting Louisville, so excited to travel, and so excited in general.
Oh to be young and have the world before you (although I’d just as soon stay a civilian myself!)
Click here to check out Gary's old band: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=107889765
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