Читать книгу Racing Toward Recovery. The Extraordinary Story of Alaska Musher Mike Williams Sr. онлайн

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Fort Ord is near Monterey, California, a very pretty area. Up until that time, even though alcohol was becoming common in Akiak, I had never had a drink, never tasted beer. But at basic training we had weekends off to go to town sometimes and the guys would say, “Come with us. Come with us.” That was the first time I tasted beer, my first Coors. I was twenty years old.

Although I had other plans for college in Oregon I wasn’t opposed to going into the military. My dad was in the National Guard. I was familiar with the uniforms. He was in charge of the Akiak unit of the Alaska Army National Guard. He’d go to training periodically, so I had some idea about the military. And, of course, my oldest brother, Frank, was a veteran. He was in the National Guard by then and my second oldest brother, Ted, was in the army serving in Vietnam. I think the Williams family did its service to the US Army.

After I completed my basic training in California I had a couple of weeks off and I went to the Portland, Oregon, area for a visit. I had made friends with a bunch of guys from Native communities in that area and during the time I visited they had a bunch of basketball tournaments going on different reservations. I joined up with a team. I hooked up with a squad from Chemawa school and decided to play Indian ball for two weeks before resuming my army commitment. I was a five-foot-nine guard. That was how I spent my vacation from the army. Then I went back to California and it was somewhere between six and eight weeks later that I received orders that I was going to be deployed to South Korea. After I got the orders I got another two weeks off and went back to Portland to play some more basketball.