Kinsler: Armed Forces glad they never drafted me
Keesler Air Force Base, home of the U.S. Air Force’s radar, communications and air traffic control schools, is located in Biloxi, Mississippi. It’s a huge place, filled with top-secret decoding machines inside atom-bomb-proof buildings. An efficient security force thoroughly inspects every vehicle and credential at the main gate.
None of this adequately explains what M Kinsler, boy wonder, was doing there in the late summer of 1990 with his red Schwinn bicycle, patiently waiting while a stern (and attractive!) lady air officer with a machine gun sought to ascertain what species he might belong to.
What I was doing there, in point of fact, was assistant-professoring at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Regional Campus, headquartered a few miles down the shore in Long Beach. USM held some of its classes in borrowed space at Keesler AFB, and that’s where my digital electronics design course was assigned.
The building we used did not look collegiate: there were no windows and the walls were 30 feet thick. It bore a helpful sign over the door which read, approximately, “AFMO568,” which meant that I found it each day principally through luck. One foggy afternoon, I became hopelessly lost for 45 minutes, pedaling around in circles because the only signs I could find were written in military jargon.
To the undoubted delight of the Defense Department I explored the building. I’d never seen an armored filing cabinet with a big combination lock, nor desk computers encased in thick aluminum shielding, the better to keep secret codes from the enemy. You’d think they’d keep their office doors closed.
The Mississippi Gulf Coast is almost entirely military bases and tourism. Our townhouse complex, built during the tennis craze of the 1970s, had six disused tennis courts, and there was a spooky little amusement park on the beach at the end of our street. Natalie and I, a pair of puritans thrown into an eternal spring break, found ourselves dressed up for our teaching jobs among vacationing families with beach balls and college students from afar dancing around giant inflated replicas of beer cans.
Every two days, I’d faithfully ride out to Keesler to teach my class and get glared at by the guards. The students, all Air Force officers, were there to convert their Air Force training into credits toward a college degree. They looked at me like the security female did, but tried to take care of me anyway; one day refusing to let me on my bike when a tropical storm threatened. The palm trees were scraping the ground before they got me home.
Ultimately, USM’s Gulf Coast engineering program proved too weak, and much of the staff was let go. I had mixed emotions when some years later Hurricane Katrina came ashore twice, destroying the Long Beach campus and then most of Keesler.
It was sure interesting while it lasted, but we wanted to go to graduate school anyway. “I’ve certainly had lots of adventures with you,” says Natalie.
Mark Kinsler, never apprehended by the U.S. Air Force, is a science teacher from Cleveland Heights who lives in an old house in Lancaster with Natalie and the five cats. He can be reached at kinsler33@gmail.com.