Tag Archives: UPT

Chapter 84, Heartless

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Alright, I’m back in the saddle.  For those of you who care, Cotton Patch Gospel is going great with only three performances left.  Friday, 11 Oct @ 7:30 and Saturday 12 Oct @ 2:00 and 7:30.  If you have any questions, from the audience perspective, I’m sure Stan George will fill you in!  Thanks for coming Stan!

It occurred to me the other day that there is a large percentage of the population that has little or no understanding of how bureaucracies actually work and why they’re so potentially dangerous.  For the most part, you never really have to interface with them on a day to day basis until you start getting older or you work for an agency of the government.  Sure, we all have to deal with the IRS, state and local tax collectors, and the DMV, but you really can’t grasp the true nature of bureaucracies until you’ve aged a bit and run into the immovable force of the barely competent that makes up the federal government. Or as Dr. McCoy said it in Star Trek, “The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe”.

As I’ve certainly mentioned before, I attended UPT (Undergraduate Pilot Training) at Laughlin AFB, Del Rio TX.  Peg and I became engaged a year before I started UPT and we decided it would be best if we set a date for the wedding after I graduated.  Her spanish skills are non-existent and we decided that I would have enough stress in my life without being a newlywed at the same time.  So, for the whole year of training, my input into the wedding planning involved talking to Peg on the phone every Saturday and dutifully agreeing with all of her wedding plans or, at the very least, saying “Does Hartman care?”  A rhetorical phrase I picked up from one of my instructors.  However, I did have one very critical function in the planning process and that was graduating on time.

At  the time I really didn’t grasp how easy it was to “wash back” a class and not graduate on time.  Even a minor injury could keep you from flying for several weeks and you’d find yourself delayed a month.  Bad weather, broken airplanes, busted checkrides, all of these things or combinations could wreak havoc with wedding plans but contingency planning wasn’t really part of our thought process.  Luckily, other than some really bad weather in January which forced us to fly 7 days a week in February, everything stayed on track for graduating on 4 August and an 11 August wedding date.  That is, until the bureaucracy stepped in.

There was a lovely woman who worked in the personnel office at Laughlin who had worked there for many years.  When you were about four months from graduation she would brief the class about follow on assignments and schools.  She was in charge of scheduling your life after UPT and she had figured out how to avoid all of the pitfalls of system and she had done it for decades for thousands of students.  I remember clearly her asking if there was anyone in the class that needed to take some leave after graduation before their next school.  I fully understood my role in the wedding plan so I rushed to the front of the room after the briefing and explained that I was getting married exactly one week after graduation and that I needed at least a total of two weeks off before my next school.  She smiled, congratulated me, thanked me for letting her know, and made a note.  I had fulfilled my duty, mission complete.

I think it was the first week of July when our orders came down.  I actually go mine before anyone else in the class and I was anxious to see how the next three schools would flow out.  I opened the manila envelope and panic set in.  She had, indeed, made sure that I was available for my wedding on the 11th of August, but she had scheduled me to report to survival school at Fairchild AFB, WA on the 12th of August.  A honeymoon of trudging through the woods and being smacked around in a POW camp with 30 other guys.  Good times!  I was, to say the least, a little perturbed.  I found the office of the lovely lady from personnel and I, the lowly 2nd Lt, politely asked her what had happened.  She looked up from her desk,  immediately recognized me, and then proceeded to tell me that it had worked out better for her scheduling to do it that way and that I could at least get married.  She said it all with a smile on her face and ended it with a curt “Sorry”.  Well, I figured, it is what it is.  I serve at the whim of the Air Force.  So, with my head hung low, I headed back to the squadron.  All the while trying to figure out how to break the news to Peg.

I guess I was a little distracted the rest of the day because my instructor, Bill (Buck) Vrastil finally asked me why I was so uncharacteristically forlorn.  I told him my sad story and he leapt from his chair and stormed out of the room.  Ten minutes later my flight commander and squadron commander called me into the office and asked me to tell them the story.  They had a similar reaction. As the squadron commander left the office he told me he was going to see the wing commander.  I tried to stop him.  I didn’t want to make waves. I didn’t want to buck the system.  I didn’t want the bureaucracy to get mad at me.  He told me something that I have taken to heart my whole career but which flies in the face of everything I’ve seen from the federal bureaucracy since then, “We don’t treat people this way!”.

Within an hour the wing commander and the “lovely lady” from personnel had both called me and apologized for what she had said and done.  My orders were changed.  Survival school was rescheduled.   And Peg got a honeymoon.  She was still stuck with me, but she got a honeymoon.

Now don’t get me wrong.  There are caring compassionate employees in all systems but the further up in an organization you get the less personal and compassionate it gets.  People become numbers.  Customers become liabilities and problems.  The desire to solve the problem the system was created to address becomes secondary as the bureaucracy becomes a self-perpetuating “career building” organization.  History has proven it time and time again.  Maybe altruism gets the ball rolling but careerism and empire building take over.

That is why socialized medicine cannot ever work.  The middleman will just get bigger and bigger and absorb into the bureaucracy what should be going towards medical care.  If you really think adding another layer between you and your doctor will cut costs then you might need to take advantage of some of your mental health benefits.

Chapter 81, Del Rio Part 2

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First of all I’d like to welcome some new members to my little community of “Hoverers”.  As a quick recap to catch everyone up, I started this blog over a year and a half ago to pass on thoughts and experiences of my 34+ year career in the USAF.  It has, however, evolved into a somewhat wider format.  The name “Hovering over Send” comes from the experience we’ve all had when we write an email in a moment of passion and then hover that little pointer over the “send” button on the screen before we make the final decision whether or not to click.  More often than not, I click.  That’s it, the whole history.  I thought I would do this once a month or so but, as you can see by the title, I’m up to 81 and I’ve only missed 2 or 3 weeks since January 2012.  If you would like to be removed from the list, just let me know.  My feelings won’t be hurt.  All past chapters are available at hoveringoversend.com and I’m on Twitter at hovringoversend.  It’s no typo, there’s is no “e”.   I had to remove one letter to keep it short enough for Twitter.  And one more thing, you can’t access the website from an Air Force computer, The computer Nazis have it blocked!

Last week I wrote about my trip to beautiful Del Rio, TX to begin my Air Force career in Undergraduate Pilot Training or UPT.  After my first night of cockroach horror I set off to find a furnished apartment since there really wasn’t any furniture in the trunk of my Studebaker.  I wasn’t going to be too picky, I just wanted something I could afford on the pay of a new 2nd Lt, and that wasn’t much.  After a few frightening drive-by assessments I found a very clean and quiet apartment complex, with a pool, that obviously, judging by the license plates of the cars in the parking lot, catered to UPT students.  I parked the car and headed for the manager’s office to see if there were an vacancies.  I knocked on the door and heard footsteps.  The door knob turned, and then it got a little weird.  A short, elderly woman opened the door, looked up at me, began to smile, opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.  Her face went blank, her jaw fell open and she just stared.

Now, I’m not what you would call a handsome guy.  I knew she wasn’t stunned by my manly visage.  I’m tall, but not freakishly tall so I’m sure that wasn’t it.  I wasn’t quite sure what to do.  I said “hello” 2 or 3 times.  I waived my hand in front of her face.  And, just as I was about to call for help thinking she was having some kind of seizure, she snapped out of it.  She just kind of shook it off and said hello.  I introduced myself and asked if she had an apartment.  And she did it again.  Only this time it was a little different.  She obviously heard the question but it was like she was thinking real hard about how to answer it.  After an uncomfortable pause she said, “Yes I do, let me show it to you”.  It was a second story, furnished, neat as a pin, one bedroom unit with monthly exterminator visits to keep out the pervasive Texas roaches.  Perfect!  I moved in immediately.

Nearly a year later I had my last flight at UPT.  I graduated second in my class but got my last choice of aircraft to my last choice of geographical area, but that’s another story.  The night of my last flight two of my classmates invited me over for dinner.  John and Todd were best friends at the Academy and shared an apartment in the same complex.  After dinner we sat down in their living room and they got very serious which, for them, was radically out of character.  “We invited you to dinner tonight because there’s something we need to tell you.  Something we promised we wouldn’t tell you until you flew your last flight.  Do you remember your first day here, when you came looking for an apartment?”  I had to think for a moment but then I recalled my first encounter with the landlord. “Oh yeah”, I said “She was a bit odd that day”.  “Well”, Todd said, “There was a reason for that and she’s the one that made us promise not to tell you this until today”.  I was getting, more than a little, creeped out.  “Several months before you got here there was a T-38 crash in which the student pilot was killed.  He lived in this apartment complex.  In fact, he lived in the apartment you’re living in.  And, you could have been his twin brother.  When the landlady opened the door that day she was terrified and when you asked to see the apartment, his apartment, she almost told you she wouldn’t rent it to you but couldn’t think of a reason to send you away.”

I thanked the guys for telling me and waiting to tell me.  I’m not superstitious but I didn’t sleep much that night.

The year of UPT is tough one.  Lots of studying.  Highs and lows.  But it flies by (pun intended).  At the time, you’re glad when it finally ends and you pin on those silver wings.  But, in hind sight, it was one of the best years of my life.  The camaraderie, the challenges, the pure joy of flying, there’s almost no better experience.