I had more free time on Okinawa, more privacy, less noise.

There was more to do, off base, than there was in Waco, Texas.

There were cabarets, fish-houses, stand-bars, sake houses, beer gardens, nightclubs.

On base was an Airman's Club, with a package store, and floor shows on the weekends. Maybe a jazz combo during the week.

There was a Base Cafeteria, a Base Theater, a Bowling Alley. All of them served beer.

A Base Library.

The library had a listening room, and you could check out records and listen to them in a comfortable chair, in a headset.

I remember several other white guys listened to classical music and one colored guy listened to jazz.

I listened to jazz, too, but he was superior to me, because jazz was black music, and he could understand it, while I, being white, could not.

I didn't have any friends in Okinawa. My roommate shacked up, downtown, so I only saw him the night before an inspection, and we didn't have many inspections.

I ate every meal, the 18 months I was there, alone.

But I wrote a lot of letters.

One time I went TDY to Korea for two weeks.

The middle weekend I got the key to an empty office to use the typewriter.

I spent Friday night, Saturday, and Saturday night writing a long letter to Jack Neff.

I got into it.

I enjoyed writing this letter very much.

My enjoyment of the writing confirmed my belief that I had found my vocation.

During this weekend I went back to the transit barracks to sleep, and went into the dayroom, and saw some NCOs from my outfit drinking beer, eating fried chicken from the Flight-Line Snack Bar, and playing pinochle.

They were having a good time, slapping cards down and laughing at each other.

I thought at the time that if I didn't have another career planned--that is, if I was not going to be a writer--a career in the service wasn't all that bad.

That is, I had no ambition.

No ambition to be a doctor, a lawyer, a business major.

Rather, I had an overweening ambition. To be a writer. A writer who refused to compromise with business majors, or lawyers.