Goodfellow Air Force Base 1963
Memories of David Ullian Larson from ElectricianEducation.com
Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, is where the US Air Force
sent airmen after
language school to receive training in intelligence gathering
and reporting for the
USAF Security Service.
San Angelo, Texas, was a wonderful geographic location to place the orientation center. I spent several months there learning the mechanics of voice intercept processing to include radios, tape recorders, typewriters, and procedures. The intelligence training was precise and harsh.
One orientation took place behind closed doors guarded by people with guns. Secret information was transmitted. Probably bogus stuff you could find in Time magazine of the day. Then we were turned loose. Anyone foolish enough to start taking about secret stuff was kicked out. That did happen. I do recall being surprised that a kid like me from the Midwest who had as work experience only worked on farms while going to high school could have moved into such an interesting job.
One skill we did have to master at Goodfellow was typing. The class was pitiful because the keyboard keys had no letters on them. They were blank! And they were black. To pass the exit examination, I resorted to a yellow china marker which I used to mark letters on keys which I could not seem to learn. Once I did that, I was out of there. Eventually I managed to translate and type at 100 words per minute which included symbols, abbreviations, and numbers.
There was a gang of four of us Air Force guys who would hang. We got in John Likerics' Mercury and head out for parts unknown. I did shoot quite a few jack rabbits in those days. I had a 22 rifle. Farmers put out the word that anyone could hunt on their land if dead jackrabbits would be the result. We complied. The others were Phil Alman and Miles Baker. The old gang.
Kaiser. While there I traveled around in my 1951 Kaiser which I bought there for $160. It was my first car. A bunch of the guys piled in one weekend and we went to Carlsbad Caverns. The drive was really beautiful. I remember we stopped at several watering troughs to jump in for a swim. We slept out under the stars and cooked on a campfire. I don't remember McDonalds in those days. Here are some photographs of that trip.
I sold the car to my brother when I went overseas in 1963. He drove it for a while before he got a 1957 Ford convertible. When I got back to the states, he sold me the convertible.
We did get foot long hot dogs in San Angelo fairly regularly. That I remember. The good old days.
Here is an article which was published in the USAF Magazine in 1964:
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