Bus ride to the future

Bus ride to the future -

Way back when in the early 1970s the draft board bought me a greyhound bus ticket from Waco, Texas to Dallas, Texas. This was supposed to be a two day trip, ride the bus to Dallas, take some physical and mental test to determine if the Armed Forces wanted me, return the next day from Dallas arriving back in Waco by late afternoon.

The life and times of ME back in those days was centered around Waco, but had been to Dallas several times and even managed to see Houston, Galveston, Austin, Killeen, Temple, and San Antonio, and lots of small towns in the Central Texas area so I was a well traveled kind of guy.
Riding the bus from Waco to Dallas was an interesting drive since the bus stopped in every little town along the way, picking up other folks who got a free bus ticket from the Draft Board, so the trip took forever. On arrival in Dallas the bus pulled into a garage complex in an old 1940s style office building in the bad part of town. Once off the bus Me and a number of other folks who rode the bus were taken to an even older hotel adjacent to the office building, checked in, and then taken back to the Dallas Armed Forces Reception Station!

The reception station was a very busy place, had not seen that many 19+ year old folks in one place in some time. We were broken into groups of twenty and moved from section to section taking written and verbal test as well as getting blood drawn, got a bag lunch to eat while being processed, poked and prodded by medical folks. This process started about 1:00 PM and lasted till 9:00 PM. When the day was over we were worn out and ready to get out of that place. Spent the night at the hotel, ate breakfast at the reception station and then started more test, there were not as many folks the second day for some reason.

Around 3:00 PM my group was taken into an open area and told to pick a door. Each door had a Military Service Flag hanging over it, so the door picked would determine what Military Service you would be going to. The majority of my group picket the U.S. Army door and moved in that direction. Once inside we were lined up in a formation and a very large U.S. Army Captain stood in front of us, had us raise our right hand, we repeated some patriotic words swearing our allegiance to the United States and were welcomed to the U.S. Army!

This free bus ticket turned out to be a glimpse of my future, or should I say the start of my future, at 19+ am not sure I or any of the others in the room had a clue what was coming. Thought we would be on our way back to our respective homes later that day to let our families know what was going on, wrong. We made our way to the reception station snack bar, ate, then were taken to a bus in the underground parking area where we saw our personal stuff being loaded on the bus, then we were loaded on the bus. The bus took us not back to our homes, but to the Dallas airport where we sat around till 9:00 PM.

After it was sufficiently dark and we had no idea what was going on, we were loaded on a special air craft for another free ride, which is another story for a later time.