My Air Force Career #2

Before I go into my first duty assignment, a little background is needed.  I'm a military brat.  My Dad did 20 years in the Air Force also.  My Mom was a homemaker until my youngest brother started school, then she worked just to work and help with the finances.  My Dad ALWAYS worked two jobs.  He had to have a part time job just for them to make ends meet.  We were a family of 6.  I had 3 brothers, I older and 2 younger.  My Dad and Mom were really upset about me joining the military.  Most of the time my Dad was in, "good girls" didn't join the military except as nurses.  But, I was 20 years old and didn't want to be stuck in Massachusetts for the rest of my life.  I wanted Warm weather.  One other thing.  At the time I joined the Air Force, I was 61 1/2 inches if I stretched it and weighed a whopping 98 pounds.  Not the ideal build for a mechanic but I'm stubborn.  Indicating you don't think I can do something is like a triple dare.

I got the warm weather or should I say, HOT weather.  I was lucky enough to get my first choice on my "dream sheet".  Tuscon, Arizona, here I come.  I drove from Massachusetts to Tuscon in 3 days and 1 speeding ticket later.  Oh what we can do when we're 21 years old.

My sponsor met me at a truck stop to help me find the base.  You should have seen the look on his face when I got out of my car.  He was this pretty muscular dude and he looked at me like I was a foreign species.  He was a really nice guy actually.  He picked me up at my quarters for my first day at work and took me to the shop.  I walked in and you could have heard a pin drop.  About 20 guys and me.  The shop boss just shook his head.  He took me to the break room to give me a run down.  To get to the break room we had to go through the in-shop area.  There are two ways to work on jet engines.  The major work is done on the engine when it's removed from the aircraft; some work can be done on the engine while still in the plane.  Walking through the in-shop, I saw all kinds of women.  I guess about a third of the 30 or so were women.  Also, in-shop work is only done on day shift (7am to 3pm)

His first words were, "you're gonna be our experiment".  I thought okay, that's interesting.  The engine shop currently had no females working the flight line (working on the planes with the engine installed).  They were trying to accept that they had to appear to be giving females the option.  I was pretty excited.  I was gonna work on actual airplanes.  There was a lot of paperwork required to get me the security clearances and basic flight line safety.  I was going to be around planes with engines running, planes moving, all kinds of vehicles driving around on the flight line.  So, my first month at my new job, I ran the snack bar when I wasn't in training.  They didn't even let me work in-shop as they thought it would confuse me since flight line work and in-shop work were so different.