Right after our marriage in June 1959, Bob was sent to Pensacola to start Navy pilot training. He started in the first July 1959 class.
When Bob and I arrived in Pensacola with a station wagon full of our clothes and household goods, our first stop was the Naval Air Station. As we were driving out, a grey haired man stopped us and asked if Bob was entering the pilot training program. When we said that he was, he said that he rented unfurnished apartments to the student pilots for the BAQ. (The housing allowance if you didn't live on base, which in those days was $80/month.)
Photo of our landlord and land lady coming out of the next door duplex - photo taken from our bedroom window
We followed him to his house, and signed a lease. The apartments were duplexes in Beach Haven right under the flight path for the base. When they were doing touch and goes, we couldn't hear the radio or stereo (we didn't have a TV). We paid our own electricity, water and phone, and the only phone we could get was a party line
Our living room - couch from my grandfather, coffee table from Bob's grandmother who called it a hat rack, and Bob's stereo.
We had a small eat in kitchen, a bathroom with an electric space heater, and two bedrooms. Our living room backed up to the living room of the duplex next door. Most of the newly married flight students rented furnished places, but this was much better.
The other couple in our building had A/C (they supplied their own - we didn't have any), and he was a Lt. jg in the Coast Guard. They had a baby. The building next to ours had a Marine and his wife and baby, and the other tenant was an unmarried Navy nurse. The third building had another Marine couple. I don't remember who the 6th tenant was. We socialized quite a bit with the two Marines.
Bob and I were very frugal. But he did NOT do as some of his cohort did, put me on a budget. He told me before we were married that I should be in charge of the money because he would often be deployed. He gradually moved most of his pay into automatic deposit so that I would have to it regardless of where he was.
My commissary bills were a little high in the beginning because I was getting condiments and spices in addition to actual food. But he never gave me any push back about it. He ate my cooking mostly without complaint. I learned to bake bread for 90 people while I was living in the co-op and for the rest, I followed the Good Housekeeping Cookbook recipes carefully. Bob would cook sometimes too. I don't know where he learned. My dad could cook so I took it for granted that husbands could cook.
When we first got to Pensacola, they called the wives together and gave us a talk. If we were caught driving on the base without a seat belt, they would take away the base sticker for the car, and it would go on our husband's record. And it was VERY IMPORTANT to give our husband's a healthy breakfast with Protein or they would crash burn and die. This was kind of a problem for me because Bob basically hated eggs, bacon, ham and sausage.
The bacon, ham and sausage part was because on his first midshipman cruise on a destroyer they served cured pork products 3 meals a day for a month. I had a ham slice one night, and when i had another one a month later, he said "What - ham again?" The problem with eggs was that his mother made him eat a soft boiled egg every morning. (My mother had the same idea.) Both of us hated soft boiled eggs, but he wouldn't eat scrambled or fried either. So for awhile when he was going to fly that day I would get up and cook him a hamburger for breakfast. It wasn't until some years later that I found out he would happily eat a hard boiled egg. And he would eat and could cook scrapple.
One of the ways he decided to save money was a little unexpected. He bought a hair cutting kit (clippers, scissors, comb) from Sears and sat down in a chair in the kitchen and told me to cut his hair. I protested that I had no idea how to cut hair - I had always had long hair and didn't even know how to cut girls hair. He just pointed to the directions that came with the kit. So I cut his hair. He could have gone to the barber shop on base and had his hair cut pretty inexpensively and quickly, but I was cheaper. When he was home, I continued cutting his hair until some 50 years later when I could no longer stand long enough to do it without pain. I cut my dad's hair, and even cut my father-in-law's hair and my brother-in-law's hair (my husband's brother)
I didn't do a very good job that first time. There were 'holes'. But Sunday we went out to the beach, and Bob got sunburned and the sunburn was about the same color as his hair so it didn't show much. And the next week I did better
Sign at the end of the bridge to Pensacola Beach
The white sand on the beach looks almost like snow.
Bob would take Navy showers. Which meant you get in the shower and then turn the water on, get wet and turn it off. Soap up and turn the water on again to rinse off. Saves scarce water on a ship. Unfortunately in our apartment, ants built a nest in the shower head so each time he did this he would get sprayed with ants. It took the ants awhile to learn not to build their nest there.
There was a ceremony when they graduated from the first part of the training
Lined up in their dress whites - Bob is the sixth from the right.
This picture shows him in his working uniform on the unpaved road next to our first apartment on the NW side of the city. (My mom came to visit and she took this picture.) The road made of reddish clay, and so when I washed and starched his summer dress white uniform and hung them on the line to dry, the dust from the road turned them pink. I would do it again - I washed and dried the laundry at a laundromat. But the dress whites had to be heavily starched and dried on a pants press. And pink whites were unacceptable. Plus they had metal buttons on the fly and they used to burn me when I tried to iron them.
Our first crisis. We decided that it would be more cost effective to have the whites done at the base laundry. I could do the khaki uniforms myself. I even tapered the shirts so that they would fit nicely.
When my mother visited that first time (without my dad) we took a trip over to Mobile
It was a rainy day and this was one of the few photos I have for this trip
We also went to an air show and I have a bunch of photos of little tiny planes in the sky
We had only one car, so either Bob carpooled or I drove him in or I was left at home with no transportation. The apartments were very close together and we had the windows open because it was hot. And humid. I had to wipe the mold off the sides of the bookcases each week. Bob would come home and hug me and kiss me passionately and say (in his quarterdeck voice), "What the hell have you been doing all day" The people next door couldn't see the hugging and kissing and thought we were on the verge of divorce.
I was a little bored so i registered with the high school as a substitute teacher. And right after Thanksgiving they called me in to substitute for the IPS teacher because I was the only substitute they had on the rolls who could type. ISP (Independent Study Program) was a program where students went to classes in the morning and worked in the afternoon. Two of their classes were ISP classes - one general class and one linked to their work. One of the ISP teachers coming back from the Florida State game in Tallahassee had an automobile accident and broke her arm, leg and jaw. She was going to be out until after Christmas. Since they knew I couldn't do the individual study curriculum, they asked me to do the general program for both classes. The other ISP teacher did the individual workbooks. I decided to give them a budget to make somewhat like Bob had told me that he had been given his final year at the Naval Academy. And then I asked them to do things like figure out how much interest on time payments cost. I cane in one morning and one of the boys was using the blackboard to do some figuring. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was figuring out how much it would cost him to buy a hi-fi set on time. Then he added that he would probably just save his money for it because that would be a lot cheaper. I felt that I had scored at least one victory.
In December, Bob finished up local classes (included PE and survival training where they went out into the swamp and tried to catch snakes to eat), and was to go to Whiting Field for the next part of his training. So that he wouldn't have so far to commute, we moved to Avalon Beach. We rented a house from December to May or June and moved ourselves, except that we rented a truck to move the piano. The house was on a small creek or arm of the bay and there was a little bridge over the creek and an office where I picked up my mail. The office was only open 0900 to 1500 on weekdays and Saturday morning.
Roads were unpaved and had no names. It was an under developed development.
Our rental house - the one in the middle - taken from the bridge over the creek
I used to take photos of the bridge and go out to stand on the bridge to take photos of the creek
The view from inside the living room
The 2.5 bedroom house looked quite ordinary from the outside, but INSIDE...!!!!
Corner of the living room with my piano and a rocker
The living room had at least five different textures including a checkerboard wall around a brick fireplace and a cathedral ceiling. The floor was green tile. You could see into half bedroom/office where the wall was blue. From the living room you could also see into the kitchen which had bright pink cabinets, weathered gray walls, grey tile floors, and black countertops. The water had so much sediment in it that you couldn't see the bottom of the dishpan, and when you drained the water, it came back up through the floor.
The bathroom had aqua counter tops, green floor, swirly pink and purple tile and patterned wallpaper with treasure chests under the water on it. They also had striped curtains, which I replaced with something plain.
The fireplace had no way to keep logs from rolling out onto the floor. Once a log rolled out onto the floor there wasn't really a way to get it back. But there was no other heat other than the fireplace so we had to use it.
Bob unloading wood from our station wagon
In January, they called me back to Pensacola HS to be sort of a permanent substitute. They were short office workers and were having an evaluation which needed to be typed, and after that I averaged the seniors grades for rank in class and went through the records of the ninth graders for the guidance counselor gave intelligence and reading tests and substituted for anyone who went home sick. But we had moved out to Avalon Beach - It was a half hour drive for me back to Pensacola and my hours were 8:30 to 4:30
Because Bob had to be at work really early, and got done several hours before I would get back from my work to pick him up, we got a second car - a 1949 Plymouth. h It had a clogged radiator so you had to run the heater full blast but it was winter.
My hours meant that unless Bob got off work early, we were only able to pick up our mail on Saturday morning because I left for work before 8 and got back after 1700. I also had to go to the commissary on Saturday because it wasn't open on Sunday. I would get up with Bob for breakfast and have lunch in the cafeteria, and come home and cook dinner. By the time Friday arrived I would be mostly out of food to cook so Bob started taking me out to dinner at a restaurant on Friday.
Because I was working we didn't really have time to go to a laundromat to wash clothes, so we bought a Maytag washer. When the guys came to install it, they just knocked a hole in the wall of the utility room for it to drain out on the lawn
We also bought a TV. We could only get one channel and it went off the air at midnight
Picture shows the TV on the dining room table (from Bob's mom), and one of the dining room chairs. You can see through to the hot pink kitchen.
One night when Bob was night flying, there was a swarm of termites. They are positively phototropic so they headed for the ceiling light. I turned the light off, and they flew into the TV So I turned it off and went to bed. That turned the termites into kamikaze because they flew to the only light in the room which was the fire in the fireplace and incinerated themselves. VICTORY
At the end of the school the guidance counselor had a picnic at her place. I tried water skiing with no success. I ended up with big bruises on my legs from falling on the skis
Guidance counselor on the left, and some other teachers with Bob on the dock.
Bob's next duty station was New Iberia to learn to fly the S2F. So in June, the Navy packed us up and we moved
When Bob and I arrived in Pensacola with a station wagon full of our clothes and household goods, our first stop was the Naval Air Station. As we were driving out, a grey haired man stopped us and asked if Bob was entering the pilot training program. When we said that he was, he said that he rented unfurnished apartments to the student pilots for the BAQ. (The housing allowance if you didn't live on base, which in those days was $80/month.)
Photo of our landlord and land lady coming out of the next door duplex - photo taken from our bedroom window
We followed him to his house, and signed a lease. The apartments were duplexes in Beach Haven right under the flight path for the base. When they were doing touch and goes, we couldn't hear the radio or stereo (we didn't have a TV). We paid our own electricity, water and phone, and the only phone we could get was a party line
Our living room - couch from my grandfather, coffee table from Bob's grandmother who called it a hat rack, and Bob's stereo.
We had a small eat in kitchen, a bathroom with an electric space heater, and two bedrooms. Our living room backed up to the living room of the duplex next door. Most of the newly married flight students rented furnished places, but this was much better.
The other couple in our building had A/C (they supplied their own - we didn't have any), and he was a Lt. jg in the Coast Guard. They had a baby. The building next to ours had a Marine and his wife and baby, and the other tenant was an unmarried Navy nurse. The third building had another Marine couple. I don't remember who the 6th tenant was. We socialized quite a bit with the two Marines.
Bob and I were very frugal. But he did NOT do as some of his cohort did, put me on a budget. He told me before we were married that I should be in charge of the money because he would often be deployed. He gradually moved most of his pay into automatic deposit so that I would have to it regardless of where he was.
My commissary bills were a little high in the beginning because I was getting condiments and spices in addition to actual food. But he never gave me any push back about it. He ate my cooking mostly without complaint. I learned to bake bread for 90 people while I was living in the co-op and for the rest, I followed the Good Housekeeping Cookbook recipes carefully. Bob would cook sometimes too. I don't know where he learned. My dad could cook so I took it for granted that husbands could cook.
When we first got to Pensacola, they called the wives together and gave us a talk. If we were caught driving on the base without a seat belt, they would take away the base sticker for the car, and it would go on our husband's record. And it was VERY IMPORTANT to give our husband's a healthy breakfast with Protein or they would crash burn and die. This was kind of a problem for me because Bob basically hated eggs, bacon, ham and sausage.
The bacon, ham and sausage part was because on his first midshipman cruise on a destroyer they served cured pork products 3 meals a day for a month. I had a ham slice one night, and when i had another one a month later, he said "What - ham again?" The problem with eggs was that his mother made him eat a soft boiled egg every morning. (My mother had the same idea.) Both of us hated soft boiled eggs, but he wouldn't eat scrambled or fried either. So for awhile when he was going to fly that day I would get up and cook him a hamburger for breakfast. It wasn't until some years later that I found out he would happily eat a hard boiled egg. And he would eat and could cook scrapple.
One of the ways he decided to save money was a little unexpected. He bought a hair cutting kit (clippers, scissors, comb) from Sears and sat down in a chair in the kitchen and told me to cut his hair. I protested that I had no idea how to cut hair - I had always had long hair and didn't even know how to cut girls hair. He just pointed to the directions that came with the kit. So I cut his hair. He could have gone to the barber shop on base and had his hair cut pretty inexpensively and quickly, but I was cheaper. When he was home, I continued cutting his hair until some 50 years later when I could no longer stand long enough to do it without pain. I cut my dad's hair, and even cut my father-in-law's hair and my brother-in-law's hair (my husband's brother)
I didn't do a very good job that first time. There were 'holes'. But Sunday we went out to the beach, and Bob got sunburned and the sunburn was about the same color as his hair so it didn't show much. And the next week I did better
Sign at the end of the bridge to Pensacola Beach
The white sand on the beach looks almost like snow.
Bob would take Navy showers. Which meant you get in the shower and then turn the water on, get wet and turn it off. Soap up and turn the water on again to rinse off. Saves scarce water on a ship. Unfortunately in our apartment, ants built a nest in the shower head so each time he did this he would get sprayed with ants. It took the ants awhile to learn not to build their nest there.
There was a ceremony when they graduated from the first part of the training
Lined up in their dress whites - Bob is the sixth from the right.
This picture shows him in his working uniform on the unpaved road next to our first apartment on the NW side of the city. (My mom came to visit and she took this picture.) The road made of reddish clay, and so when I washed and starched his summer dress white uniform and hung them on the line to dry, the dust from the road turned them pink. I would do it again - I washed and dried the laundry at a laundromat. But the dress whites had to be heavily starched and dried on a pants press. And pink whites were unacceptable. Plus they had metal buttons on the fly and they used to burn me when I tried to iron them.
Our first crisis. We decided that it would be more cost effective to have the whites done at the base laundry. I could do the khaki uniforms myself. I even tapered the shirts so that they would fit nicely.
When my mother visited that first time (without my dad) we took a trip over to Mobile
It was a rainy day and this was one of the few photos I have for this trip
We also went to an air show and I have a bunch of photos of little tiny planes in the sky
We had only one car, so either Bob carpooled or I drove him in or I was left at home with no transportation. The apartments were very close together and we had the windows open because it was hot. And humid. I had to wipe the mold off the sides of the bookcases each week. Bob would come home and hug me and kiss me passionately and say (in his quarterdeck voice), "What the hell have you been doing all day" The people next door couldn't see the hugging and kissing and thought we were on the verge of divorce.
I was a little bored so i registered with the high school as a substitute teacher. And right after Thanksgiving they called me in to substitute for the IPS teacher because I was the only substitute they had on the rolls who could type. ISP (Independent Study Program) was a program where students went to classes in the morning and worked in the afternoon. Two of their classes were ISP classes - one general class and one linked to their work. One of the ISP teachers coming back from the Florida State game in Tallahassee had an automobile accident and broke her arm, leg and jaw. She was going to be out until after Christmas. Since they knew I couldn't do the individual study curriculum, they asked me to do the general program for both classes. The other ISP teacher did the individual workbooks. I decided to give them a budget to make somewhat like Bob had told me that he had been given his final year at the Naval Academy. And then I asked them to do things like figure out how much interest on time payments cost. I cane in one morning and one of the boys was using the blackboard to do some figuring. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was figuring out how much it would cost him to buy a hi-fi set on time. Then he added that he would probably just save his money for it because that would be a lot cheaper. I felt that I had scored at least one victory.
In December, Bob finished up local classes (included PE and survival training where they went out into the swamp and tried to catch snakes to eat), and was to go to Whiting Field for the next part of his training. So that he wouldn't have so far to commute, we moved to Avalon Beach. We rented a house from December to May or June and moved ourselves, except that we rented a truck to move the piano. The house was on a small creek or arm of the bay and there was a little bridge over the creek and an office where I picked up my mail. The office was only open 0900 to 1500 on weekdays and Saturday morning.
Roads were unpaved and had no names. It was an under developed development.
Our rental house - the one in the middle - taken from the bridge over the creek
I used to take photos of the bridge and go out to stand on the bridge to take photos of the creek
The view from inside the living room
The 2.5 bedroom house looked quite ordinary from the outside, but INSIDE...!!!!
Corner of the living room with my piano and a rocker
The living room had at least five different textures including a checkerboard wall around a brick fireplace and a cathedral ceiling. The floor was green tile. You could see into half bedroom/office where the wall was blue. From the living room you could also see into the kitchen which had bright pink cabinets, weathered gray walls, grey tile floors, and black countertops. The water had so much sediment in it that you couldn't see the bottom of the dishpan, and when you drained the water, it came back up through the floor.
The bathroom had aqua counter tops, green floor, swirly pink and purple tile and patterned wallpaper with treasure chests under the water on it. They also had striped curtains, which I replaced with something plain.
The fireplace had no way to keep logs from rolling out onto the floor. Once a log rolled out onto the floor there wasn't really a way to get it back. But there was no other heat other than the fireplace so we had to use it.
Bob unloading wood from our station wagon
In January, they called me back to Pensacola HS to be sort of a permanent substitute. They were short office workers and were having an evaluation which needed to be typed, and after that I averaged the seniors grades for rank in class and went through the records of the ninth graders for the guidance counselor gave intelligence and reading tests and substituted for anyone who went home sick. But we had moved out to Avalon Beach - It was a half hour drive for me back to Pensacola and my hours were 8:30 to 4:30
Because Bob had to be at work really early, and got done several hours before I would get back from my work to pick him up, we got a second car - a 1949 Plymouth. h It had a clogged radiator so you had to run the heater full blast but it was winter.
My hours meant that unless Bob got off work early, we were only able to pick up our mail on Saturday morning because I left for work before 8 and got back after 1700. I also had to go to the commissary on Saturday because it wasn't open on Sunday. I would get up with Bob for breakfast and have lunch in the cafeteria, and come home and cook dinner. By the time Friday arrived I would be mostly out of food to cook so Bob started taking me out to dinner at a restaurant on Friday.
Because I was working we didn't really have time to go to a laundromat to wash clothes, so we bought a Maytag washer. When the guys came to install it, they just knocked a hole in the wall of the utility room for it to drain out on the lawn
We also bought a TV. We could only get one channel and it went off the air at midnight
Picture shows the TV on the dining room table (from Bob's mom), and one of the dining room chairs. You can see through to the hot pink kitchen.
One night when Bob was night flying, there was a swarm of termites. They are positively phototropic so they headed for the ceiling light. I turned the light off, and they flew into the TV So I turned it off and went to bed. That turned the termites into kamikaze because they flew to the only light in the room which was the fire in the fireplace and incinerated themselves. VICTORY
At the end of the school the guidance counselor had a picnic at her place. I tried water skiing with no success. I ended up with big bruises on my legs from falling on the skis
Guidance counselor on the left, and some other teachers with Bob on the dock.
Bob's next duty station was New Iberia to learn to fly the S2F. So in June, the Navy packed us up and we moved
- Next entry in the series 'Life of a Navy Wife 1959-1979': Bob's Planes
- Previous entry in the series 'Life of a Navy Wife 1959-1979': Honeymooning on the Road in 1959
