[PRCo] Re: Incline abandonment dates

[Fred Schneider]

I had multiple first reactions Josh ...

One is that my fingers often spell a word that I don't know I am thinking but it is a word.   

I know the commune of Orly.  I've been there.   Before Charles de Gaulle Airport was opened, it was a major airport in Paris.   We had an Air Force Base there until 1967.   In 1960 I hitched a ride on a troop transport from Frankfurt / Main to Orly.   My brain very well could have been thinking Oliver and typing Orlyver ... it's let me do crazy things like that many times before.   

But thinking I could have typed orly, especially when you are having a bad day, you do go back and eye-ball it line for line, then let the computer scan it, then let your eyes do it one more time in case you typed orle or orli in the search block. 

I do not think that there is a man or woman on the planet who can proofread his own typing.   

Now, you want to know what misgivings are?   Even though I knew I could not do it without my leave papers stamped for USA and a return air ticket in my pocket, it hurt like hell to see that plane leaving Orly and heading for Andrews Air Force Base, 125 miles from home, with only a half dozen filled seats!   If I had the return fare, I could have had a free ride home in 1960.   But what the heck, I spent the next 17 or 18 days photographing trams and steam engines in Britain and in retrospect, I am very glad I did.  

The week before the army sent me overseas, I was assigned for several days to the payroll office at Fort Dix to type pay vouchers for the guys coming home for discharge.   I was totally astonished to discover that more than 90% of the guys coming home to be released from active duty were being paid in cash for every single day of annual leave (vacation) that they accrued while in Europe.   Fewer than 10% of our service men in 1957-1959 were taking advantage of that free opportunity to spend two months wandering around Europe.   I walked away from that temporary assignment muttering under my breath, "It's not going to be me.   I may come home broke but I am going to see ever thing I can.   I even had to get my dad to wire me money for one trip, but I did enjoy every free minute in Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy and England.

I have to think it made me grow up.   There was a guard on the London Underground who wanted to engage me in a conversation about the U. S. Civil War.   My God, that man knew more about the war between the North and South than I did.   It made me go back to base and sign up for two consecutive University of Maryland courses in U. S. History and taught me that I could do college work.  



On Mar 21, 2012, at 8:46 PM, Joshua Dunfield wrote:

> On 22 March 2012 00:50, Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net> wrote:
>> I have been having a terrible day ... fingers going every whefre but fwhere I fwant thenm to go.  See fwhat I mean?
>> 
>> So I thought I made another mistake until I could not find nor could the computer find four letters in succession "orly."
> 
> It's a commune near Paris, and an airport; I'm sure Derrick meant it that way,
> 
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORLY
> 
> notwithstanding.
> 
> -j.
> 
>