The trip to St Louis was uneventful.  A normal greyhound bus ride of a couple of hours in the predawn glow.   Time to think was the last thing I needed.  The bus had several of us on it.  All going to get the physical.  I expected to have to manouver the city bus system to get to the address but, the driver pulled up in front of an old, run down smelly little hotel.  It was right next to the AFEES, where I was to be inspected, injected, and neglected before heading off to boot camp.

Boot camp, there's something that I'd not allowed to creep into conscious thought.  I knew nothing about it, other than what I'd seen in movies or on Gomer Pyle.  The exam would take an overnight stay so we were put up in this hotel.  I can't remember the name anymore.  I remember the room though, Tiny, with an iron frame bed that had to be sixty years old.  It stank and had one window with bars across it.  Made me feel safe.

We gathered in the lobby at seven a.m. and a Petty Officer gathered us for the short walk to the AFEE station.  He wasn't like good old Sgt. Carter, just a guy who looked like he would have rather been doing just about anything other than what he was doing.  I wondered if he'd have us marching down the street and when would we get fed.  One question was answered quickly, when we stepped out of the hotel we were told to keep together and stop at the door so we could be checked off.  The other? answered only with a vague when we tell you to.

The building was kind of nasty,  painted in colors that must have been selected for their inability to pass as colors in the regular world.  Tile floors of black and white squares and lines of many colors laid out in tape leading in several directions.  We milled about in the cavernous lobby there and before long a young man in a white coat stepped out of a grey door and started getting us in place for the big number.

There must have been people in more than one hotel.  Many more people started to accumulate in that space.  The man read from a list on a clipboard names in alphabetical order.  In groups of ten we were told to line up on a line of a particular color and wait.  Wait we did, we'd arrived there at just after seven a.m. and it was now eight thirty.  By nine we were still standing there.  Thirst, hunger, and the extreme need to urinate had become an epidemic.  Requests for access to a toilet or water or food were rebuffed with the command to shut up and wait in line.

Many of the forty guys lined up started to grumble about leaving.  One or two threatened to just take a leak on the floor there.  I only recall one actually leaving.  No one stopped him, I wondered why since as far as I had been told, we were all subject to the military laws once we had signed the contracts.  

At nine thirty, four men in white coats stepped in to the room and took the place in front of the lines, one for each line.  Each had a cart with papers, plastic bags,  and little cups with lids.  They all carried clipboards and spoke in unison as though the others weren't there.  We were told to step forward when they called our names.  As we did we were handed a brass key with a number stamped on it, a plastic bag, a stack of poorly mimeographed papers, and one of those little cups.  The line nudged up as each got his items and once we were all equipped we were told to follow our color line to the first door that it stoped at and wait.  We did, some lines went one way and some went another but all of them ended up at the same door. 

We were lined up four abreast and filled the whole hallway.  Our group leaders began to drone.  Find your locker, the number is on the key, Take your cup, remove the lid and fill it with urine to the second line, replace the lid and remove the first sticker on page three of your package, affix it to the cup, strip to your shorts and line up on your color and await instructions.  Even after exactly thirty two years to the day, the scene is clear when I think about it.  

The locker room seemed to be full of contradictions, the lockers were all painted grey and were stacked two high.  The floor was spotless and all of the chrome and brass and copper shined as if just installed.  There were two rows of toilets, in the open, no stalls or even dividers.  There were old wooden benches that literally had butt prints worn into them.  There, in this room full of strangers, we all stripped and pissed and lined up with keys and papers in hand.  No pockets in my underpants.  

There we stood, forty grown men in underpants in a huge building full of people who we'd never seen doing jobs we didn't understand and each of us holding a cup of fresh urine.  Breakfast looked to be a long way off too since I was pretty sure they wouldn't feed us in our drawers.  The group leaders arrived and called our names one at a time to which we were to answer here and proceed to the cart and place our cups there.  When we'd all delivered our cups and fallen back in line we were herded off down the hall and as we passed other doors, stairs, and hallways, each color went it's own way.

 As we reached the first stop on the maze we saw a door and nine chairs.  It didn't take long to figure this one out.  Inside the door was a doctor, he did nothing but take our pulse, blood pressure, and listened to our breathing with a stethoscope that must have been kept in liquid nitrogen.  It was so cold it left a mark.  he'd do this then take our stack of papers and flip through it.  He then picked up a rubber stamp and stamped the page and filled in the numbers.  When that was done we were sent to wait again in the hall.

It was after eleven and still we sat unfed, naked but for our underpants.  I noticed that rumbling stomaches were getting louder.  Finally we were troped to the next stop on the way, same set up nine chairs and a door.  This time a fellow who called himself a corpsman took or our vitals, our blood, and measured us and weighed us.  He too flipped pages and stamped and wrote in numbers.  Once more we sat in the growing thunder of empty bellies, in our underpants.

 Soon after we were all done the group leader reappeared with his cart.  On it now were stacks of hospital gowns.  One each he told us, and the split goes in the back.  We stood and put on the garments and then heard the words we were all so eager to hear, chow time.  We followed our line and our leader to the cafeteria door, hereafter to be forever known as the chowhall.  As we approached, we saw another group leaving the door.  It was a public chowhall, filled with people of all genders and ages.  There we stood, in open backed hospital gowns and those underpants again.  We stood inline with everyone.  We were given trays of food and directed to the table in the corner.  The group leader told us we had twenty minuts so we'd better get busy.  

We wolfed it down and soon were hustled out of the chow hall and as we went I looked back and there came the next group. One thirty in the afternoon and the smokers were getting restless.  None of them had a smoke since about seven a.m. and the nicotine was screaming to them.  One spoke up to the group leader and asked him if they could smoke.  He just said sure, if you've got one.  I guess he thought that was plenty funny.  He laughed all the way to the next stop.  He told us that this would be it for the day.  We went in and saw that this was where we'd be checked for several things, a skin test for tuberculosis, chest x-rays, and a hernia check.  Hernia check? What was that? I was pretty sure I didn't have one anyway.  Waiting here took longer than anything else.  When my turn came I went in and a man in rubber gloves girnned at me and said for me to drop my skivvies.  Oh crap, I did as I was asked and a total stranger began to fondle my balls.  "Turn your head" he told me "and cough". 

 So I thought the core of military training is humiliation and unquestioning obedience.  Still, I did as I was told and went to wait with the others.  It felt like a long day to me.  I was tired and more than a little ready to just get the hell out of there.  We got dressed and the group leader lined us up and addressed us.  We were handed a meal chit (ticket) and a couple of the guys who'd been with us were handed travel vouchers and sent home.  The rest of us were to report to the lobby of the AFEES building a 0700.