When my dad joined the Air Force at eighteen years of age, the Korean War was barely over. Boot camp for him was
in the middle of winter near Syracuse, NY. One time Dad was so sick that he ended up in the infirmary, a barracks that bedded about 50 men. Dad had heard that a fellow recruit had just died there the day before, and when all the windows along both sides of the infirmary were open to the winter air, all hope that he would survive was banished. However, hopeless or not, Dad survived, only to have another frightening experience when he was clobbered over the head for making a mistake with his rifle. Along with other recruits, Dad had to learn to shoot the M1 rifle. Before pulling the trigger, the instructions were given that if the rifle happened to not fire, the recruit must not hold the rifle up to see what on earth was the matter. It was a rule of safety. As things would go, Dad's rifle was one that did not shoot when he pulled the trigger. Promptly forgetting the instructions, Dad held the rifle up, wondering what was wrong. He didn't have long to wonder. The drill sergeant grabbed the rifle and clobbered Dad a good one right on the side of the head. Dad would never forget the clobber or the rules of gun safety!
From boot camp, Dad was transferred to Biloxi, Mississippi, from April through June,
where he took three months of air traffic control training. From there, he was shipped directly to Taegu, South Korea, the one place in the world that Dad did not want to go since the war was barely over and tensions were still high there. Landing overnight in Japan, he noticed "lovely" smells which he later learned was sewer which donkey-pulled wagons, called "honey wagons," spread on the fields all around.
The officer in charge soon realized that Dad was not made out to direct air traffic, and Dad was soon delegated other duties, including guard duties or once directing traffic to a fire incident. Dad was permitted three or four R&R's during the one year he spent in South Korea. With the low pay airmen received, he did not have much money to spend, but he browsed downstreet in Tokyo, traversed around Mt. Fuji, and otherwise visited around Japan.
From South Korea, Dad was sent back to the States and was stationed at Loring Air Force Base in Caribou, Maine. This base was part of the Strategic Air Command that was preparing for possible war with Russia at that time. The base was at the very northern tip of a state where, in Dad's words "winter was winter, and summer was summer." There were no warm-cold or cold-warm spells. He loved the weather there as well as the rolling hills that reminded him of his home area in western Pennsylvania.
Dad's job as Airman First Class was an office job. When he arrived at the office, there were six men working there. One by one, the other men were transferred elsewhere until Dad was the only one working in that office. He had to make a folder and store personal information about each new recruit, keep tabs on what was happening at both Loring and Presque Isle Air Force bases, report if an airman was sick, and otherwise keep up the daily report. Dad would have to travel to Presque Isle base at times to bring back necessary data.
Dad's office work required typing on an old fashioned typewriter and filling in forms. Only three mistakes were allowed per form, but Dad's goal was to try to have no mistakes at all.
Little by little Dad worked his way up, taking and passing courses to improve his office work. It was obvious that although Dad's nerves had not been able to stand directing air traffic in South Korea, he was well able to manage office work.
Dad organized his time and duties so well that by the time he left the office, he was getting his work done in just two hours a day.
Besides his office work, Dad was the head of his barracks. Every month there was a competition between his barracks and five other barracks to see which one could be kept the neatest and cleanest. Dad himself buffed the floors of the halls of his barracks and encouraged the airmen under his charge to strive to win. After his barracks won the competition six months in a row, the other barracks were so upset about it that they quit the competition!
On Saturdays, because there was nothing else to do, Dad would take walks of up to twenty miles. On Sundays, he walked ten miles to the Methodist church in Caribou where he sang in the choir. Then he would get a ride back to the base. There was only one time that Dad got invited to someone's home for Sunday dinner. That was when a man who had more than one eligible daughter invited Dad for dinner. Since the daughters were not the least interested, that was the last time he went anywhere besides the barracks for Sunday dinner!
Soon Dad was going to have the opportunity to take four more years of courses that would upgrade him from Airman First Class to Staff Sergeant. After that, his plan was to work until the end of twenty years and retire from the Air Force. But as Providence would have it, something happened that changed the course of his life.
Dad's life, like that of all the others on the air base, was boring enough that he found himself coming up with bright ideas such as the fateful idea to write a letter to his congressman asking that airmen at the base be allowed to make their barrack rooms more homey. A couple airmen were getting away with making their room more comfortable by painting the walls more colorfully than the drab paint of the rest of the barracks, laying a rug on the floor, and setting a coffee table in their room. Why couldn't the rest of the airmen be allowed the same choices?
Somehow, Dad's letter did not just sit on the desk of the congressman of Pennsylvania. News of it got back to the head of Dad's eastern district of Air Traffic Control. This general was furious that one of his airmen had dared to send such a letter, and he decided to visit the air base in person to deal with this terrible airman. Staff sergeants and master seargents who were friends of Dad got wind of the arrival of the general, as well as the man's purpose. To help protect Dad, they urged Dad to apply for two weeks of R and R right away. Most of the men at the barracks, as far as he knew, were as upset as Dad about issues at the barracks and hated to see Dad get in trouble for speaking up. With the general this mad, they were afraid Dad would be court martialed. Dad wisely listened to his friends and applied for the R and R.
Not knowing what to do during that time, Dad had heard that a person could pick up potatoes behind the potato harvesters at the potato farms nearby and could earn fifty cents for each big burlap bag filled. So for several days, Dad left the air base in the mornings and went to a farm where he filled bags with Aroostook potatoes, earning a few dollars a day.
Meanwhile, the furious general called a special meeting at the barracks. The whole battalion was required to gather in the auditorium.
"Who is this Brenton Morley?" the general demanded, apparently expecting someone by that name to stand up, shivering in his boots.
Strangely, Brenton Morley was away that day. Not one of the battalion seemed to know where he might happen to be. The general had to be content to merely investigate Brenton's room, which had nothing awry in it. Thus Dad escaped possible court martial by the skin of his teeth.
Dad had plans to go on with more training to work toward becoming Staff Sergeant after four more years, after which he hoped to fulfill his twenty years of service before retirement. But after this incident, it seemed to everyone around him that it would be better for him to simply take advantage of the opportunity for an early discharge which happened to present itself at that time.
"Will I lose my GI benefits if I take the early discharge?" Dad asked.
No, he was told. Those benefits would still be intact. So Dad accepted the terms and received an honorable discharge from the Air Force on the last day of October, 1958. Arriving back in his room to pick up his No. 10 can of change he had been collecting, amounting to perhaps $100, Dad found that someone had stolen it! Nearly penniless, he shipped home a box of possessions and packed for his journey. Donning his hunting suit with a rain suit over it, he rode his motorcycle from Maine to Pennsylvania in the chilly November weather.
There a new life awaited him. For the next four years, Dad attended Slippery Rock State University where the GI bill covered his tuition as he majored in geography and minored in speech. It was while living in the third story of his mother's large house on Broad Street that he met the tall, slender young lady who was renting the apartment in the second story. Originally from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Mom had graduated from Indiana State University and was teaching English to junior high students in an area school. Her choice to rent the second story apartment in Dad's mother's home would change both their lives forever.
And so the four-year story of Brenton Morley, Airman First Class, was laid to rest for a while--to be unearthed again by his daughter, Anna, in honor of Veterans Day, November 11, 2019.
Jonathan and Timmy sanding it to make it smooth.
Then there were the layers of polyurethane to make it shine.
It's called "live edge" finish, when you have bark, knots, etc. left on the edge instead of straight edges sawed. 
It's important, though, to permit the sawing, sanding, and shining processes.
