Touring the Cold War: A Long Learning Curve

To avoid being drafted during the Korean War, a 19-year-old Oregon logger with a 9th grade education joined the Air Force. His military career would span three decades and take him to three continents at the height of U.S.-Soviet tensions. That is how he got his real education - by Touring the Cold War.Engagingly told is the life of an ex-logger turned aircraft mechanic working on the three principal Cold War-era nuclear bombers (the B-36, B-47, and B-52). The mechanic becomes a staff officer in Southeast Asia during the three peak years of the Vietnam War, rising through the ranks to Major in the days before you needed a college degree. Through tours of duty in North Africa, Southeast Asia, and the United States, the author acquired a rich experiential education based on four pillars: reading, friendships, work, and travel. The book allows us to follow the author along this long learning curve through details of friendships, travel observations, reading lists, literary commentary, and historical trivia, as well as mechanical and technical details of aircraft maintenance. It is the story of a different time, when the threat of nuclear annihilation hung over a brave new world and you could rise on the strength of merit alone. It is told in the clear, unadorned prose of an 87-year-old veteran remembering his past. It is history from the bottom up.