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98 pages

English

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Computers have now taken over our lives, with countries hacking one another all over the world. The older generation are unable to keep up with the new technology, and I consider myself an old dinosaur and have trouble operating a smartphone or logging onto the internet. In fact, when I arrived in Hawaii twenty years ago, I went into Comp USA and asked the young salesperson where the typewriters were, and he wouldn’t stop laughing.
Families are changing, with same-sex marriages, and while parents are both working, the children have no guidance, with drug use common and suicide rates high. Young people don’t respect their elders, and crime and murders are taking place all over our country. Maybe if and when this pandemic is ever under control, this world will return to the basics, but I don’t know.

Sujets

Personal Memoirs

Biography

Autobiography

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Publié par	AuthorHouse
Date de parution	20 février 2023
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9798823001076
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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OTIS’ ODYSSEY

HOW TO FLY AND STAY ALIVE

OTIS

AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: 833-262-8899

© 2023 Otis. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/14/2023

ISBN: 979-8-8230-0106-9 (sc)
ISBN: 979-8-8230-0107-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023903008

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Otis’s Odyssey
Chapter 2: The US Navy
Chapter 3: Vietnam
Chapter 4: Civilian Life
Chapter 5: The Accident
Chapter 6: Back To School
Chapter 7: Australia 1990
Chapter 8: Chile
Chapter 9: Caribbean
Chapter 10: Venezuela
Chapter 11: Lightning Ridge, Australia
Chapter 12: Back To Australia
Chapter 13: New Zealand
Chapter 14: Hawaii
Chapter 15: 9/11
Chapter 16: Germany
Chapter 17: My Move To Hawaii
Chapter 18: COVID-19

Summary

CHAPTER 1
OTIS’S ODYSSEY
I was born on May 3, 1941, at St. Mary’s Hospital in San Francisco, California; went to a Catholic school; and became an altar boy at our local church. I then transferred to Luther Burbank Junior High School in Visitation Valley but hung around a rowdy crowd and eventually belonged to a local gang. We were kind of harmless, being more talk than action, and the most dangerous weapon we carried was a pair of brass knuckles. Smoking cigarettes was cool, as was wearing matching jackets and suede shoes while walking down the streets of San Francisco and watching the other gangs.
Saturday night dances in the basement of someone’s house with the lights turned down low and a forty-five-revolutions-per-minute record playing “Earth Angel” by the Penguins was the closest we could get to the opposite sex.
When I was fourteen years old, I delivered the Chronicle newspaper in the morning on my bicycle, and every time I would ride by this one house, I noticed a 1955 Buick four-door hardtop parked outside with all the windows down and the keys in the ignition. One morning, Steve Lavezzo, who had another paper route, and I got into the car but couldn’t start it. We eventually discovered that the starter button for that model was located underneath the gas pedal that would automatically put fuel into the carburetor as the engine would turn over. We would drive around while delivering our papers, go out to Play Land at the beach for a joyride, and then return the car to the house before anyone woke up. This lasted for a week or so until we stopped. We later found out the owner would come home drunk every night and forget to lock his car. I bet he thought he was getting lousy gas mileage for those couple of weeks.
After a few years, I managed to save up $300 that I used to buy my first car, a 1951 Mercury four-door sedan with getaway doors (rear doors that opened forward). I was only fifteen and a half years old and had a permit that allowed me to drive with an adult, but that didn’t stop me. One day, I got caught by myself and told the police I was just going to the store to pick up a loaf of bread for my mother. The police didn’t buy it, and I was grounded until I got my license.
Well, I was the most popular kid in my neighborhood when I finally started driving, and every morning, I would pick up all my classmates for Balboa High School. One morning when I pulled up in front of school, eleven people got out of my car. And of course, I never had to buy any gas. On Friday nights, we would go to the drive-in theater, and I was the only one in the car. But after I parked, I would open the trunk, and three of my friends would get out. That Mercury was also a great place for heavy petting with some of my girlfriends, but that’s about as far as I would get.

CHAPTER 2
THE US NAVY
H igh school was not my best achievement. In fact, I barely graduated because I was busy chasing girls and getting into trouble. I attended San Francisco Community College for a couple of years but still couldn’t keep my mind on my studies and eventually transferred to Cogswell Poly Technical College, where I received an associate’s degree in electronics. Because of the Vietnam War and the draft, I tried to enlist in the aviation cadet program at Alameda Naval Air Station but was told Cogswell was not an accredited college. So, my drafting instructor, a retired rear admiral, went to Alameda with all the legal documents. And on October 12, 1963, I was accepted.
I was sent to Pensacola, Florida, as a cadet for a sixteen-week preflight program that consisted of academic, physical, and military training, sort of a crash course of the naval academy. On November 22, 1963, I was being fitted for my uniform when I heard on the radio that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. I’ll remember that day for the rest of my life.
One weekend, a few classmates and I went swimming off a pier. I dove into shallow water and hit my head, fracturing my jaw. That took two weeks to heal and sent me back to the next flight class. After graduation, we were sent to whatever training we or the navy desired, such as fighter, bomber, submarine patrol, or helicopter aircraft. It seemed like all the smart guys with bachelor’s degrees would wind up flying slower aircraft, while us dumb guys were assigned to fighters. The navy wanted fighter pilots to react to a situation and not spend too much time thinking about it, or they might get shot down.
After twelve months of advanced training, I received my commission as an ensign, along with my navy wings. Then I was sent to VF121 for two months at Miramar Naval Air Station near San Diego, California, flying in the F-4B Phantom II. We had a pilot in the training squadron who crashed three F-4s before the navy finally decided to take his wings away and assign him a ground billet. Well, after he was discharged, he went to medical school and became a surgeon. I guess he was too smart to fly.
In January 1964, I was assigned to the VF-161 Chargers at Miramar, flying in the Phantom. Because of my electronics background, I was in charge of the weapons department in the squadron. One night, my men invited me to Poway, a town north of Miramar, for a cookout. Well, I had too many beers; on the way home in my 1962 Pontiac Tempest Convertible, I lost control on a winding road and rolled the car over. As I was rolling, I managed to fasten my seat belt, and when the Tempest came to rest, I was hanging from the strap. I crawled out and walked back to a gas station I’d passed to call my roommate. When I returned to the scene of the accident, the police were hiking down an embankment looking for the driver. I tried to act as sober as I could. When I told the police officers I was the driver and that I flew fighters out of Miramar, they put me in the back of their squad car and drove me to the BOQ and said, “Good luck fighting the war in Vietnam.” The police were very tolerant in those days because of the war.
The senior officers in the squadron would invite the junior officers to the officers’ club and get us drunk and then take advantage of us the next day in dogfights because we would black out sooner pulling g’s and lose sight of the other planes.
We had a squadron commander who would always have a couple of martinis before dinner and then fly a night intercept flight. After he retired, he went to work flying charter flights from San Francisco to Reno. One night, he crashed into a mountain, killing everyone on board. If they could have done an autopsy, I’d bet there was alcohol in his blood.
Our squadron went to Yuma Marine Corps Air Station in Arizona for two weeks to practice our bombing techniques against the marines. Every evening after flying, we would go to the officers’ club for a few drinks and square off with those grunts. One night, we bet the marines they couldn’t drink flaming hookers, which consisted of lighting brandy in a shot glass and drinking it without burning your face; only we had their drinks put into champagne glasses. I guess those marines weren’t too bright because they would try to toss that brandy down, and their entire face and hair would catch on fire. The next day, their faces were so blistered they couldn’t even put on their oxygen masks when they went flying. I guess that’s why they’re called jarheads.
One weekend, some of us drove to San Luis, south of the border, to see some girls we’d met a few days before. Well, my date couldn’t make it. So she sent her fourteen-year-old sister, who allowed me to take her virginity. Only in Mexico!
The Phantom is a twin-engine, two-seat fighter producing 34,000 pounds of thrust and weighing 58,000 pounds. Max Allison and I always flew together so we could anticipate what the other person was going to do. Part of our training was high-altitude interception while wearing a pressure suit that was filled with oxygen in case of depressurization. We made a run on a drone coming out of Point Mugu NAS in Oxnard, California, at 78,000 feet and had to make a profile approach by climbing to 40,000 feet, pushing the nose over to gain Mach airspeed