So many things take form in a round about way. This one began at a stop light.  I was living on a military base at the edge of the mountains in Montana where I got a string of traffic citations, having not been cited before. It was odd.

There was concern about community relations for the top brass, so they devised a humiliation campaign to reign in trouble makers. Any of the airmen who were issued a citation spent Saturday morning in uniform explaining themselves before a tribunal of officers who were likely irked at having to be there. This insured that justice would be served.

So I showed up at the inauguaral episode of this strategy and stood at attention before the inquisitors.

“Airman Fenimore. It says you drove straight through a red light. Did you?”

Yes sir.

“It says that you sped through the intersection. What about that?”

I went through at 25 miles per hour. That is the speed limit. That’s faster than a dead stop, so that’s probably why they wrote that.

“Why didn’t you stop?”

They installed the light that day, sir. There was no warning, no signage, and there had never been a light at that intersection and as I drove through I turned to say something to my passenger so I wasn’t looking up and I never saw the light that I didn’t know was there.

All true. They sent me out side so they could deliberate and then let me go without punishment.

Weeks later, I attended a farewell. On the way home I and another airman were pulled over together by a cop just outside the base and charged with speeding.

That Saturday I appeared before  the gauntlet to explain.

“Airman Fenimore, it says  you were speeding.”

That is what the officer claimed, sir.

“Why were you speeding?”

That morning I bought an MG1100 sedan, sir. Turns out it had a broken speedometer cable. Because I was concerned about the speed limit and not familiar with the car, I arranged with airman (name forgotten) to follow him and he would set the speed.

They sent me out and called in that airman.

I don’t know what he told them. He came out pretty upset. He said he explained to them that he was driving his date’s truck because she was drunk and it had oversized tires so the speedometer was inaccurate.

They busted him one stripe (a cut in pay and a reduction in rank from unimportant to insignificant) and put him on probation. I was left unpunished. This, because I was an innocent victim of circumstance and he probably was suspected of something more than speeding.

Montana was unique in that they still had sawdust floor saloons and laws against things such as “conspicuous buffoonery”. In one of those saloons my wallet dissappeared with all my identification. I’d ordered a pizza and a pitcher of yellow froth capped liquid. Never did find the wallet.

Soon after, I had the misfortune of crossing paths with a bigot. On the way to work one cold morning I realized I needed to go back to the barracks to retrieve something. Without another soul anywhere on the desolate road, I did a u-turn. Out of hiding came a military police car and they pulled me over. I wasn’t able to provide any identification so they hauled me to their version of ‘down town’ and charged me with reckless driving. One interesting part of the take down was the part where they led me into a room with a long mirror and a short shelf in front of it. They told me to empty my pockets. I figured the mirror was a window with a crowd on the other side to evaluate me for suspicious behavior. Then everyone left the room, leaving me alone in the privacy of standing on show in front of the massive mirror/window as I complied. They came in, looked the pile over, then told me I could go.

That Saturday I was in the now familiar setting, explaining myself.

“Airman Fenimore! What this time?”

I was headed to work and remembered that I’d left something in my room. There was no traffic so I did a u-turn and headed back to get it. The base police pulled me over and the driver explained to me that he despised little British cars and anyone who drove them. So he was angry. I was in an MGB GT. Small. British.

I explained why I had no identification.

They let me go outside and wait.

Then Master Sargent Salley (a man) came to me with the verdict.

“Airman Fenimore, you always have a good explanation. This is three times. They can’t just keep letting you off the hook. So here’s the deal, you don’t have your military license, so you can’t drive out to the launch silo’s. We can’t use you in the shop because we have too many in there already. So for now, you can’t drive your MGB on base and just report for work every weekday morning in case we can find work for you.”

I liked Master Sargent Salley. He was excellent. So serious, yet fatherly. He was a good guy and a career serviceman at the top of his game.

There were extenuating circumstances to take into account. For America, the Vietnam conflict was freshly over as of a week or so before. We were reducing our ranks accordingly. I’d signed up for six years and most of that still lay ahead. There really was a glut of airman at my rank.

The guy who bought my first sports car was one of the first to be culled, having been found with some radio tubes in his closet, stolen for the gold in their filaments. He was sent packing with less than an honorable discharge and didn’t get to keep the tubes.

On the other hand there was Airman Franzen, a guy without even a single hair, who found it impossible to get released from service. He was a local boy and just wanted to go home to his mom. Nothing he did could persuade them to discharge him.

So every day I showed up at the office to be told to go home and check back at the same time tomorrow. It was truly boring, and you should note that I rarely use that word or experience the concept.

I owned another car they didn’t know of and I also had extra permit stickers, so I was able to drive downtown and find things to do.

All around me were homage to the coming bicentennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence, mostly in the form of garrishly painted  fire hydrants.

My idea was different and I presented a plan to Sargent Salley, who then got the wheels turning and freed up the resources so I could do the deed.

Part of the execution was unnerving because as an artist, I’d always created in the privacy of my room. To pull this off meant working from a man lift in plain sight of the very busy base store. People would come over to comment with gems such as, “You know the flag is white and red, right?”

Yes, I knew. But primer only came in green and grey and this was just the underpainting.

After the project was done, I was in the back seat of a police car on a ride-along and word came over the radio that I was to report somewhere else immediately. The bicentennial project had made the front page of the local paper with a positive spin and all the good community relations that comes from such a thing. The base commander was pleased and promptly rewarded me with an early discharge and full benefits starting that day. He knew I would be happy with an early out.

At two A.M. before the next sun I was stranded in the deathly cold of Smelterville Idaho in my little sedan full of possessions, including a pile of DD form 214’s and an Honorable Discharge. But that is another story entirely!