Phillip Sise:
CLASS OF 1967
South High SchoolClass of 1967
Knoxville, TN
Phillip's Story
Life
My only remaining goal is to get through the rest of life without negatively impacting others but I have difficulty with short term memory and staying on task.
There have been and are people in my life but if I were to discuss that aspect, it would be from my, somewhat skewed, perspective. Which could lead to possible demands for equal time, dirty laundry strewn about. I certainly do not wish to start a chain of events that could possibly result in an introspective rediscovery of reality. Currently there is a wife, daughter and son. A few of you know them, some of you know more. That's all.
Otherwise, between there and here was right, wrong, slipping, sliding, light, darkness, bitter cold, intolerable heat, sadness, sorrow, regret, enlightenment and denial. Also there have been wondrous, amazing times, people and places far beyond what I ever expected or could have imagined. Here, I only chart a portion of the path. Easy to find, send a message.
CONSTANTLY UNDER REVISION AS DELUSIONS BECOME CLEARER.
School
I attended the old Meads School through third grade; South Knox Elementary fourth grade; someone decided I lived in the county so I went to Anderson Elementary fifth grade; someone decided I lived in the city so back to South Knox for sixth. At age 12 I was a paper boy for K.N.S., my route started at Webb's Grocery. I would stop for a yeller dope and Moon Pie or something similar, put it on Mom's account. Head down Fisher Place, up and Down Hillsboro Heights, Maplewood Drive, back up Fisher and finished. Since Mom never requested reimbursement for dopes, moon pies and such, I saved enough to buy my first motorbike ($75.00 used Sears moped) and a season pass to Riverside pool. Somewhere around this time, I started what was, at that time, called Junior High at South, where I remained for a few more than the normally allotted seasons, becoming quite familiar with eighth grade math and freshman English. Please, feel free to critique my punctuation and prose. I never know for sure where a coma belongs, where it doesn't. Sometimes I'm fairly sure it's a sentence, others not. If important, not often, I have a little secretarial guide book to consult or not.
Sitting at the pool one day, enjoying my season pass, Buck came over, said "You're here every day, come early in the morning, take the Red Cross course, I'll put you to work." So I went early, trading news papers for summer life guarding but eventually summer work, while paying more than paper carrying and enjoyable, failed to supply sufficient annual funding. I traded my whistle for a white apron, paper hat and the glamorous, less entertaining, life of fry cook for the fabulous Blue Circle. You've eaten my burgers, there on Gay Street, when town was the only place to shop or see a movie. A floral shop is there now and it is soon to be the site of a new office building.
I graduated from South High School, Class of 1967. To be accurate, I should say 'I was graduated' since the accomplishment certainly wasn't due to academic achievement. A hundred and something in a class of a hundred and something but I'm not sure anyone ranked below me actually graduated. I think some of them dropped out sophomore year and their grade average was still close to mine. I loved high school, including the extra year and wou...Expand for more
ld have been delighted to spend a couple more, but the administration and faculty apparently had a different concept of why I was there and how long I should stay. After a while, F became D, even C-, allowances were being made, mere attendance was credit enough, sleeping evidently earned credit for meditation as '60s California psychology crept southeast. Being ignorant, by the time I realized the conspiracy I was flipping a tassel and thrust, ill prepared, into a strange, cruel world where, hamburger flipping, egg frying, whistle blowing and swimming though honorable and highly sought after skills, the minimum renumeration allowable by law was the maximum employers were prepared to pay.
Someone at that school should have been much more adamant about ensuring I understood the consequences of my inaction. The indecision concerning whether I resided in the city or county, sending me back and forth during my formative grammar school years, probably traumatized me, also. Product of my environment, that's it! I believe I have cause for a law suit. Wonder if there is a statue of eliminations?
Military
So, being ill prepared, whether because of an inadequate public school system, due to my own lack of maturity, ability and/or initiative, I began seeking some sort of way to provide for myself. Also, being at that time, a concentrated effort to recruit, voluntarily or not, large quantities of young males to kill commies for Jesus and country on the other side of the planet, there were other concerns. OK, I'm not giving proper credit. Actually, there was a teacher at South High, Mr. Maxwell, a retired Air Force officer, who had, unknowingly, long before graduation determined my career, not through coercion but by example. So, I joined the U.S. Air Force in February, 1968, Basic Training, Amarillo AFB, TX; Tech. School, Sheppard AFB, TX, where I again found myself in a classroom learning to become something called a 'Aircraft Maintenance Technician'. There was no sleeping in class there. Being awake and somewhat interested, at the end of that fifteen weeks, they claimed I was the class Honor Graduate. I reckoned it must not have been one of the brightest classes to gradgeate from there. My first assignment was, England AFB, La, 319th Special Operations Squadron, from there to NKP, Thailand, July 1969 - 1970, 23rd TASS, O-2A Crew Chief; Travis, CA; Warner-Robbins, GA; Dover, DE; Kadena, Okinawa; Loring, ME, and retired 1990, Andrews AFB, MD. What I did was, wiped grease off some airplanes, pumped gas, checked the oil, washed the windows, fixed this, that and saluted a fare thee well to some brave young men who would then fly them off into the middle of hell, usually in assistance of some other brave young men stuck in the middle of hell with some commies that weren't especially interested in being eradicated. Luckily and by their skill, I greeted them all, on return, wipe grease, pump gas.....repeat. Then, there was a great, long debate concerning Jesus' desire for dead commies, etc. Growing weary, it stopped. Later I watched people wipe grease and ensured they were qualified to wipe properly. Eventually, I watched people, watching people wipe grease and ensured that they were ensuring that they were qualified to wipe properly. Then I did something else but I grow weary.
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