Chapter VII

It was never meant to be.
I needed the comfort of having a girl “back home”, and she needed someone to build her fantasies around. She claimed that she loved me, but I was skeptical after our last time around.
We got together when I got out, but my heart wasn’t in it. It turned out she had attempted suicide shortly after our breakup and ended up in the hospital for a couple of months while she got her head together. That was why she never returned my letters. When she finally got it back together, she went looking for me to patch things up. She had built up this entire fantast of how things were going to be when I got back. The only problem with it was that it didn’t really include me. It included someone with my name, but it wasn’t me.
Since we were engaged and of age, we decided we should live together for a while. It didn’t take long for the cracks to show in out relationship. She was constantly talking about everything that led up to her suicide attempt. I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do. It wasn’t until much later in life that I learned I didn’t have to DO anything, just listen. But guys are fixers, and when you present them with a situation, they want to fix it, even if it is unfixable.
I was not really in any shape to build a relationship. I was just coming off of a couple of years of some pretty stressful living, and I couldn’t give Star what she needed. I sure wasn’t getting what I needed. I wasn’t even sure what that was, but I wasn’t getting it. I started staying away, and finally broke it off.
So I ended up back in the States, discharged, disengaged, and unemployed. Federal law says that when you are drafted out of a job, if a comparable job is available when you get out of the service, the company has to hire you back.
Boeing had gone through some tough times while I was away. When I went to the employment office, they told me that I was laid off. I told them that Federal Law required that they hire me back. So they did, and immediately laid me off. I told them that if they had rehired me, they owed me at least one days pay. After a lot of confrontation they agreed. I got a check for one days pay. I still have that check, uncashed and in a frame, at home. It was just the principle of the thing.
I was discharged in Oakland, and elated to be out of my forced servitude. I really do believe that people should give a couple of years of service to their country as a payment for the rights we receive under the Constitution. No one should get a free ride.
I went back to my old stompin' grounds in The Haight, but in the three years I had been away things had changed completely. What was party town was now pretty hard core. Before the drugs of choice had been Pot and acid and maybe some hash. Now it was all speed freaks and heroine addicts. I didn't waste a lot of time there.
As a Vet I was eligible for some Government paid schooling, so I went back and upgraded my A & P License. I ended up getting rehired at Boeing. Because of my experience in the Army, repairing airframes in primitive conditions, I ended up working in AOG. That stands for Airplane On Ground.
When somebody does something they shouldn't with an aircraft, the results can be nasty. I'm not talking about when you lose a Bird, just when you damage one. A typical scenario is when you land in a thunderstorm in Brazil; don't make the end of the runway and end up out in the jungle. What usually happens is that you fold up the front landing gear. This takes out the aft wall of the nose landing gear box, the "doghouse" and then folds back to take out the main E/E bay and all the racks and shelves of electronics. I recall a 737 that did just that, only worse. They wiped out all three landing gears, the front and both the main gear, and ended up in a wide ditch just off of the runway. They drug it out of the perimeter ditch, brought in two semis with lowboys and a bunch of pallets. They used the jacking points to get it up in the air, then brought up the trucks, stacked up the pallets on the lowboys, put one under each wing, lowered the plane onto the (well padded) pallets, and drove it very gingerly down the runway to the repair hanger. It was quite a sight. The cost of the repair was still less that a whole new Bird, so the Insurance Company paid us to repair the thing on site. The cost was almost as much as a new aircraft, but a million bucks is still a million bucks, and we could get it back in the air in a couple of months, as opposed to waiting a year for a new one.
The first job I worked on was in Cairo. Two Air Egypt employees had been taxying a 757 out to the maintenance hanger and lost control of it. They stabbed the nose section in to the side of an Airbus A320 clear up to the front passenger door. We had to replace everything from the Captains & First Officers forward structure (the dashboard) to the nose. I can’t say much for their piloting skills, but I do approve of their aim.
It became a matter of pride for us to get our bird repaired and in the air before the Airbus crew did. It took us a couple of months, but our bird was done and back in the air before they had even started on the A320.
When you are out in the field like that, you work twelve hours a day, seven days a week It is a grueling schedule, and not a lot of people can stick with it for long. When you volunteer for AOG, you have to stick with it for at least a year, or your career is effectively over. They were very up front about it, because the money is very good if you can survive the schedule. The first eight hours are at regular pay, the second four time-and-a-half for four days, They fifth day the extra hours go to double time. The weekend or sixth and seventh days are double time. Sure, you work 86 hours a week, but you get paid for 124. Usually there are breaks in between jobs, where you go out to the factory for repairs and mods, but I know people who had in a thousand hours in overtime in a year. With the average 40 hour a year worker working 2,088 hours a year, that is one hour of overtime for every two of regular. AOG are kinda the pick of the litter, skills wise, so it isn’t all that unusual for they guys to make well over six figures. Not too bad for a knuckle dragging wrench monkey. Every once in a while when I am in the back end of nowhere, I wish I had used my Government money for College, so I could be sitting in a nice heated and air conditioned office in an ivory tower somewhere, but most of the time I have no regrets, and being behind a desk all day would drive me nuts.