Most of my time in Thailand was split between the Finance Office, the barracks, and the library. Occasionally, I would have to make a run from the Finance Office to the Operations building to sort the IBM punchcard military paychecks. Since the Operations building was the heart of the installation and chock-full of esoteric electronic eavesdropping gizmos, I had to get a Top Secret - Crypto clearance. It made my parents' neighbors uneasy when FBI agents were questioning them about me as part of the background check for my clearance.

     In fact, because of that clearance and what I'd been exposed to at the Operations building, I had restrictions placed on my passport: I couldn't go to any Communist-held country for five years. You never know what the commies would do with my skills at running a punch-card sorter.

     I don't remember exactly which barracks were mine. I do remember that after I was promoted to Spec-5, I qualified for NCO quarters. Instead of an open-bay barracks with thin curtains between two-bunk areas, I got my own room. Even better, I shared it with a guy who lived on the economy, so I had it to myself.

     As is apparent from the building labels, we had it soft: movie theater, small PX [that's the building that spans between the theater and library], a bowling alley, and a pool. Every building was air-conditioned. After the picture was taken, a USO building was erected with a small assortment of second-hand books – most likely donated by people in the States, a game room, and a small cafeteria. The station even had tennis courts and a baseball diamond. All-in-all, it was much like a minimum security prision for white-collar offenders.

     Laundry and cleaning was taken care of by housegirls and houseboys. Our uniforms were washed and ironed with enough starch each day so they'd almost stand on their own. They even polished our boots. All for about five bucks a month.

     Except for the obvious benefit of having a live-in girlfriend, I saw no advantage of living off of the station on the economy. Another reason I stayed on the station was because on our first day, the station's doctor showed us a slide of a bar girl who had a blood-red eye in which she was blind because she'd gotten gonorrhea in it.

     What? Ewww.

     He also showed us a slide of a metal rod that he'd have to send up your urethra to clear away scar tissue from a clap infection. Those kept me away from the local gals for a number of months.

     The photo above is from August, 1974, and is about the best quality I can get from the source material. One of the guys in the office had a cheap Polaroid camera and the PX was having a sale on slightly out-of-date film. I bought a couple of packs and took some pictures. As you can see, they weren't of the highest quality.

     No, I didn't have a goatee or a Fu Manchu moustache, that's just scan-artifacts in the photo. I did have a moustache that I grew during Basic Training and still have today. Then, as now, it conformed to army regs.

     The photos are further degraded because I wrote on the back of the photos with a red Flair pen. When I stacked the photos up and sent them home, the varnish on the front of each photo – you actually had to paint each photo with a varnish-coated swab provided with the film pack – caused the ink to bleed on the pictures.

     Above and behind me is the causeway canopy that covered the path from the Finance Office to the back of the HQ building. The open casement windows are the windows to the can. See the other page for a discussion of that.