Oral History Interview with Gary W. Scalzo

[Interview Begins]

[Pause]

RIEWESTAHL: Today is July 29th and this interview is taking place at the Washburn County Fair. My name is Emily Riewestahl and I'm here interviewing Gary about his military service.

SCALZO: My name is Gary. I'm a Air Force veteran.

RIEWESTAHL: So, we can start by explaining a bit about your connection to Washburn County.

SCALZO: I lived here all my life. I went to school here. I graduated from Spooner High School. But because of the situation after I got out of high school, I couldn't go to work. So, I got with the government, my dad signed me up to what was called the SEP [Soldier Enhancement Program] program. So, he sent these-- the government sent me to school to be a machinist for a thousand-hour program. And then after that, I went to work in Minneapolis at Fridley Manufacturing, making guns and missile launchers for the Navy. In the meantime, while I was gone, I got a letter from the Selective Service Board that I was drafted, but I did not know it at the time. So, I turned around and I came home not four days later and my mom handed me the letter and said, "Here, this is for you." And I opened it up and I read it and it said selective service and I turn around, walked over to the garbage, and I dropped it in the garbage. She got a little excited. She wanted to know if I was going to go to jail or go to Canada. And I said, "No, I belong to the United States Air Force. I just joined yesterday." And she said, "You did not." And I say, "Yes, I did." Just by 00:01:00accident, and then Monday came before I went to Minneapolis to go to work. I called the social services. I called up social service and told them that I joined the Air Force on Friday. And they said, "That's fine, we'll mark it down." And that the end of that. That's how I got in the Air Force. But I didn't go to active duty until August 9th of that year, 1968. That's when I went in.

RIEWESTAHL: I'm sorry to interrupt, but do you mind setting the water bottle down? I can hear a little bit of your fingers on it. Thank you. I'm really sorry, but if you need to take a drink, feel free to grab it.

SCALZO: That's good.

RIEWESTAHL: Thank you. I'm sorry, but I'll cut all that out. Don't worry about it. Great. So, what led you to join?

SCALZO: We went down to Rice Lake, a friend of ours, of mine, and his name was Bob, and him and I went in and we were going to harass the recruiter and he scared us. He says, "Are you guys nineteen?" "Yeah." And he says, "You guys 00:02:00haven't been drafted yet?" And I says, "No." "Well," he said, "You know what's in the next half a year. You're going to get called up." And I says, "We are?" And he says, "Yeah." "What's your specialty?" he says. And I says, "Well, we just got out of school." He says, "What is it?" I told, we told him, "Machinist." "So, you guys got two hours? Two to three hours?" We says, "Yeah." "I want you to take this test." So, we took the test and then we sit there and then all of a sudden, he made a telephone call, and he says, "We want to put you in the delayed enlistment program. You want to sign up?" We looked at each other and we says, "Oh, I don't know. When's this take place?" He says, "If you sign up right now," he says, "We will have you do a physical on Friday." So, we did a physical. Says, "Okay, we will." So, we signed some papers and Monday came. We were down in Minneapolis anyway, so we went and had a physical and passed and 00:03:00all the oath and the whole bit. And we joined the United States Air Force and we were there. That's how it happened.

RIEWESTAHL: And what led you to the Air Force instead of other branches?

SCALZO: I didn't want to go in the Army. I didn't think that-- I didn't feel that-- I would like to do something. I don't want to-- of these things that were going on at that time in '68, I didn't want to be digging mud holes and laying in ditches and so on and so forth. I said I can do something that's useful. I will do it. And then when I went to basic training, I went to Amarillo, Texas. One of the last squadrons to go there for training. I took a bypass test so I wouldn't have to go to tech school, and I had to have a 35 percent evaluation passing grade in order to pass it, so I didn't have to go. And the lady said that--wanted to know how long ago I was in school. And I says, "Why is that?" I said, 00:04:00"What do we got to have to pass?" She says, "35 percent." "So, what did I get?" She says, "85 percent," she says, "I think you passed." So, that's how I stayed in the service. And then when I was at Moody Air Force Base, I found out that while I was down there, there was 2,000 second lieutenants learning how to fly airplanes. T-37s and T-38s. And I learned through history of [Wikipedia], I looked up the bases that I was at when I was in the service and found out that President Bush was training to be a pilot for the Air National Guard of Texas when I was there. But I didn't know-- he didn't even know he was going to be president to start with. But that's what I was told on the Internet. From [Wikipedia], I call it [Wikipedia]. That was kind of interesting.

RIEWESTAHL: And what was your training experience like?

SCALZO: Training, as far as classes go? I mean, for when I was in training for basic training?

RIEWESTAHL: Basic training.

SCALZO: Basic training was five o'clock in the morning. You were done, you better be done by-- the whole system, you're back in bed by eight, nine o'clock at night because you had to get up at 5:00 in the morning. Yes. And then while I was there, we went through the whole thing, physicals, and they do a lot of mind judging. They do a lot of mind talk. They turn around and they try to break you. Not physically, mentally they did, but in the meantime, I got to know them pretty well. I was in pretty good shape back then. Even at my age, I was 19. When I went in, I turn around and I did the mile in 5 minutes. That was impressive, but most impressive was that, of course, then they went through the 00:06:00weapons department. We all had to shoot and there was four people out of 80. There was two squadrons of 40. There was four people that got expert riflemen and three of them are from Wisconsin. One of them was from California. The three from Wisconsin was-- one was from Milwaukee, two of them were from Spooner, Wisconsin. One of them was a guy that I graduated from high school. His name was David Hanson. He got expert riflemen and so did I. And that was something different. The only other phenomenon that happened that when I was in the service, when I was overseas, by the time before I left Vietnam and I already 00:07:00had been in the service for already only just barely two and a half years. When I went overseas, I had a line number for staff sergeant already. I was already a sergeant when I went over to Vietnam. But there was people that were coming out of tech school that were sewing on their second stripe and I was already on third- my third stripe was already on, and I got a line number for my fourth number, which means that you were to make that rank in within the next six months. So, that was not too bad. But in the meantime, I found out that there was a lot of guys that I knew when I was over in Cam Ranh Bay. Another kid that I graduated from class after I got back home was on the same base as I was, but he was on the other side of the flight line. His name was Lyle Simpson. I graduated with him from high school, but he was over there. He was a cook in the Air Force, and then there was Barry Danielson. He was in the Navy. There was two or three guys that were from Minong. In fact, I made the Spooner Advocate with 00:08:00us drinking a beer for Christmas, that would be 1970. December 1970 was in the Spooner Advocate. They said that we were enjoying Christmas together. He was from Minong. I don't remember his first name. His last name was Smith. And the pictures? I don't know. It was in January, February, it would have been December or January issue of 1970. So, that was different. And then while I was there, they wanted me to stay, but I'll get back to that in a minute. But I had about three months left to go over there, and they wouldn't let me go home early. I 00:09:00was trying to make it, ask them if I requested to be home early for Easter, but they wouldn't let me. And we did all our communications over in Vietnam not through letters. We did cassettes. They had cassette cases that you could send back and forth from Vietnam free. So, they would fill up a whole cassette with a speaker. My uncle Bud, my dad, everybody, and they would talk what they did and what they're doing and wanted to know how I was doing and so on and so forth. And I would take the same cassette and I saved one of them, by the way. And I turn it on and I took the other one and I gave it to-- I would send one back to them. And they did that about three or four times while I was over there. But while I was there, I got paperwork on my-- because by that time, I was the head of second night shift, actually, they call it just night shift. I was in charge. But I got paper come on my desk and I read the paperwork and it was a guy that 00:10:00was transferring to Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, machine shop. The gentleman that was coming to take my place was the guy that I went to the recruiter with and joined the Air Force. Now how simple as that? And then when he went to go over there, he went to go to Vietnam, and they changed his orders. He didn't end up going. He was looking for me and he couldn't find me. So, I said, well, then they turn around and you know [inaudible] got over there and they shipped out again already. His name was Bob Gravening. And I just talked to him. We just had our class reunion. And he lives in Las Vegas right now, so I had a long talk with him. So, it was fun. And then after that, I turned around and when I came back, I joined the last year and a half, the service in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 00:11:00Kirkland Air Force Base. I was on research and development. I built at that time laser machines that were all secret. That's what my job was. And people don't understand what lasers are. You can't see a laser beam. Did you know that? You can't. The reason why is because laser is a light. Even though it's energized light, you can't see it in the daylight. You can see it at night, but you can't see in the daylight and how you see in the daylight, you have to run it through a prism of clear color. And there's only two-- they'd run it through two different stones. You see either a red one or a green one. Do you know the name of the stone?

RIEWESTAHL: Ruby and emerald?

SCALZO: That's right. That's the only thing. That's the only way you can see one during the day. Yep. And you went behind closed doors when you had to go in there to fix something. And what just like they showed on TV, you just open up a 00:12:00big, giant, safe room, big door, and you open it up and you walk in. They closed it behind you just like a bank. You go in there and go to work and there's a guy following around till you get your job done. Then he escorts you back out again. Yeah, you had to have quality. And they also threw-- they flew in the spy planes at Kirkland Air Force Base. And the reason why they're doing all the experimenting at Kirkland Air Force Base is because Kirkland Air Force Base is higher altitude than Denver. And Denver is a mile high city. Kirkland Air Force Base is higher yet, so that's why they did it. And then after four years and before I left there, just before I left, they were going, to get back to the story, they wanted me to re-enlist for eight months. The eight months that they wanted me to re-enlist for was they wanted to send me to Vietnam to be an 00:13:00instructor. And I told them no. So that was the end of my story. And I got out of the service and then I moved. I moved here. There was no work in Spooner, I was working all over the place. I was working at Madison, Stoughton for about five, six months till 1973. I came back to Spooner, I talked to the guys at Spooner, then I run on the railroad for 14 years. Well, that's my story right there.

RIEWESTAHL: Can you explain a little bit about why you said no when they asked you to stay?

SCALZO: They weren't giving you any incentives to stay, number one. Number two, as a young person, there's better things in life than the Air Force. There's better things in life than the military. And then after you get done and then about 25 years later, you're going, you know? If I had stayed in, I'd already been retired by the time I was 39. And then you think about that all the time, 00:14:00you think to yourself, what would it be like if I had retired? What then? What would I have done? Would I have been married? What I would have had kids? Everything goes through your mind. You say, "Oh, geez, I wouldn't have gotten married to the same person." What was going to go then? Would I made it back? Would I have made it back after eight months? I don't know. They're going to give me 30 days free leave. That didn't make any difference. But then they were trying to make me stay. Another reason why is they wanted me to stay because I was-- I can't say I'm a smarty pants or nothing like that, but I went up through the ranks so fast that I had-- if I had stayed in, even that eight months when I come back from Vietnam, I'd have been a tech sergeant which would have been 00:15:00about an E-6 already in less than five years. And people just don't do that nowadays. People stay in the service, they don't get above E-8. They never get above E-7, hardly. And they're in for 20, 25 years. So, you don't know. If you knew the future, you could take care of it, you know, but you don't. You just do what ifs. You do a lot of what ifs. Yeah. You know, if a frog-- didn't-- If is a big word. You know that, don't you? Because if a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his butt every time he jumped. That's how big it is. That's a big word. [laughs] My grandpa told me that.

RIEWESTAHL: What do you think contributed to you moving up the ranks so quickly?

SCALZO: Knowledge. Basically schooling. I guess it was it. That was it. I tested against all the rest. Everybody that was going to go up in ranking in the service, all went. It went worldwide. So, your test that you took as a machinist and you were what's called a 153-05, you took that test with everybody else that was eligible to take that test, where you stood on that platform of that test, if you were up on the top or you were down in the bottom. If you're down the bottom, you're going to just sit there. If you're on the top, you're going to move on. And that's what happened. So, every time, when you turn around automatically, got to what they call a line number, they give you a number because they went in by numbers. There could have been 25,000 people that took that test. Where do you stand? You could say, well, I was right up on the top because within three months I had, [inaudible] I had staff sergeants. I had a 00:16:00sergeant stripe already. Well, the guy that I was in basic training was just sewing his second stripe on. He hadn't even started to work for his third stripe yet. He just got his second stripe. And I had three months' time in grade to go to make E-6, and I would have been tech sergeant in the Air Force. And my shirt's hanging up over there. My staff sergeant shirt? Did you know that that was mine? With the ribbons on it? One of them is, the one of the ribbons over there is expert marksman, one's the defense ribbon, one is a unit citation, and the other two is Vietnam. That's how I got six of them over there. I can't remember what the other one was. But it's all on my DD214. Yeah.

RIEWESTAHL: When you reflect on your years of service, are there any particular memories that stand out that you'd like to share about?

SCALZO: Oh, I think I learned a lot about the world. And people don't understand. You don't have to leave the United States to find out how bad people live because-- and the main thing is education. I was down there in Georgia. When I was down there for a year and a half at Moody Air Force Base, I joined the USO and helped them out and it was where you can go and play pool and so on and so forth. And then the weekend come by, and you were off on the weekend or whatever, they'd get you on a bus, they'd take you to Florida, they'd go to St. Augustine, they'd go to the oldest fort in the world in the United States and all that stuff. I got pictures of that yet too and it's interesting because then they would have cleanup days, like for Memorial Day? All the Air Force guys would get in and the Army guys said we would help out the National Guard. We'd 00:17:00go downtown, Valdosta is a pretty good size town. And we would go into the low-income people and you just can't believe it. You have houses lined up one right next to the other. They're all the same color because they're not-- none of them have ever been painted. There is hundreds of trees between all them houses. In between them trees there is not one blade of grass, and all you see is kids running around barefoot and half their clothes are all ripped off because they don't have any good clothes. And we go by what they call cleanup day, and we fill up deuce and a half trucks with nothing but garbage and stuff that they-- I mean, old couches, you name it. Unbelievable. And the people, the way they live was just-- and it was it was sickening at that time because here I 00:18:00am from Wisconsin and I'm down there and I get right, I didn't have a driver's-- I had a driver's license, but I didn't have no ride. I would ride downtown, and these guys and we'd go over and sneak in the back door and have a drink and stuff. But that was kids saying back 19, you couldn't drink, you know, down there. But we would turn around and go down. You go walk down the street here and these poor colored people would be coming up the road-- older colored people, you know. And I was growing up, I was taught to be nice to people no matter who they are. And these people were elderly people. They walk right on the streets and walk right on by. Next thing you know, you go down to half a block and there's a water fountain on there, says "White Only" on it. This is back in '68, and it was still going on. Nothing's changed. Even when I went on the honor flight. See how they live down there in Washington, D.C. isn't all pretty, I'll guarantee you. They make it sound pretty, but it's not all pretty. 00:19:00It's not. It ain't. It's not. You can do that down in the cities or whatever. I drove the van for five years down there. Unbelievable. The tents and stuff. Oh, my gosh. You don't understand how these people end up that way. Number one is because they want to. That's the only thing. They don't have no education. If they don't have no education, you don't work, you don't make any money. That's all there is to it. It's pretty [inaudible], it's a livelihood of surviving. But how do you want to survive? Do you like to survive that way? Then I guess that's what you're going to do. I guess it makes me-- I get upset. We were down at Walmart the other day and there's a guy holding up a sign. "I don't have a job", but they're sitting right in the lot where these people right next-- that same lot. They got doors, they got things hanging out the doors. "We are hiring now." 20 bucks an hour and they won't go to work. Do you think I'm going to stop by 00:20:00there and give them money? No, I ain't gonna. Stupidity does not count, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, that's the way I am. But still, that's the way it is. I mean, I got kids, and I got grandkids. I got some of the best grandkids I ever had, anybody could ever enjoy. Jace, he's a wonderful kid. I took him, I paid his way to go to the honor flight. And there isn't very many people that have been on an honor flight out of Duluth from Spooner since 2019 because of the pandemic. And I got him going. I paid his way with $600 for a guide to go, and I paid his way to go. And I think he really appreciated that. He really did. And he didn't know I paid for it. He didn't. No, that was nice. And I give him-- It was a tag, it was like your ID tags, that your dog tags. Had a saying on it 00:21:00about what his grandpa thought of him. And I lost it. That was in 2019. Guess what? I just found it last week. And he says, "I'm going to wear it," he says. That's good. But other than that, we're okay, I guess. Other than that, there's things that happen that you can't change. People change. We're just guys. Most of the time, people change. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they get worse. Everything's all different. You just got to-- and you slow down. When you get my age? You start learning to slow down. You tell people they're always in a hurry. 00:22:00They're trying to pass you when you're doing the speed limit and they're trying to pass you because they're in a hurry or they don't understand. All you have to advertise. You go from here to Shell Lake at 50 miles an hour and you go from here to Shell Lake at 60 miles an hour. How much time do you save? One minute. Do it on paper. That's what you're going to get. There's only one minute difference between 50 and 60 miles an hour and you're doing 55 and these people are doing 65 and they're 5 minutes late for their appointment. Do you think that's going to help? No. No, you're not going to catch up. There's no such thing as catching up. You learn that. There's no such thing. I'm just not in a hurry. I can go from here to Eau Claire at 62 miles an hour and I can get 24 miles a gallon with a pickup. But if I go 70 miles an hour, 75 miles an hour, guess what I get for pickup? 18. So what do you want me to do? Save money? Sure. 00:23:00Enjoy your ride? Yeah, I do. Everybody's passing me like I'm standing still, I don't care. It don't matter to me. I ain't hurting anybody. That's good. Saving money. Happy go lucky. Laugh at them a little bit. Giggle. That's [inaudible]. But other than that, life is good.

RIEWESTAHL: So, reflecting back on all of this, what does your service mean to you now?

SCALZO: It means I learned a lot. I went to Sydney, Australia, too. I forgot to tell you. On R&R. I had to go back to Vietnam to get rested. [laughs] Sydney, Australia was such a paradise. Right in the middle of Vietnam, you had to have at least 300 dollars on you to get on the plane. They wouldn't even let you on the plane if you didn't have 300 dollars on you. Period. That was it, off the 00:24:00plane. We don't want you. Because they thought it was because you knew what's going to happen in a week. First of all, you got to pay for a place to stay, got to eat, and of course, everything is party, party, you know? But Kings Cross, they called it. That was a party. I'll never forget Sydney, Australia. And I brought a lot of pictures back to [inaudible], I even took a day off. I couldn't handle it anymore. I took a day off and I went to the-- it was like a zoo and wildlife preserve type deal, seeing all the kangaroos and stuff. By the way, I have a plush koala bear and a platypus. And it's made out of-- and they're made out of kangaroo hair and the softest thing you ever seen. And I still have them. They're over-- this here I bought for myself. When I was twenty-one, guess where 00:25:00I was twenty-one at?

RIEWESTAHL: I don't know.

SCALZO: Vietnam. I bought that for myself, right there. Twenty-one. You know why? Because I made it to twenty-one. Except now I've added fix-- it cost me 600 dollars to get it fixed as I was getting so thin, I couldn't wear it no more. So that was good. I saw other things. Things are coming up. Rode a motorcycle across the United States when I was in the service. Went from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Colorado Springs, I rode from Colorado Springs at one o'clock Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon, ten o'clock Monday night, I was in Mongo, Indiana, twenty-five miles from Ohio. In one day. On a motorcycle. Little one. 650, was no big Harley or anything, it was a 650 Triumph. Yeah, and I got pictures of it 00:26:00going back. Stopping at Custer, South Dakota, waking up in the morning and there's five inches of snow under my motorcycle. You learn a lot. That's in September, by the way. September 19th that happened. I remember days like crazy. But that's all right. What I have had this fun if I had not gone to the service? No. I went all over the place. Yeah. It was fun.

RIEWESTAHL: What advice would you give to anyone that's thinking about joining the service now?

SCALZO: Right now, the service itself, if they don't have any education other than high school, it's a good experience. And it's only four years. Four years is not a lifetime. When you get your four years up, you think oh, you got it 00:27:00made now. Next thing you know, you wake up one morning and you're going, geez, I've been out of the service for 20 years and this goes that fast. And people say, oh, it does not. I said oh, yeah, it does. Yeah, it does. Right. You sit back and say, you know, it's like my grandson got a girlfriend. His grandma, it didn't put two and two together very fast. I go two to two and I'm going-- I met her dad. Her dad didn't look much younger than me. I thought, Jesus. Well, you know, whatever. I didn't say nothing. Then she was talking about her grandpa, her grandpa and her grandma and her grandma's name was Cathy. And I said to Jason, I says, "Cathy, what was her maiden name?" He says, Jellen. And I 00:28:00says, "Cathy Jellen?" He says, "Yeah." She was only a year ahead of me in high school. And that's your girlfriend's grandma? And then I find out that that's his grandma. The guy that looks just a little bit younger than I am is her dad. And I go, I just don't tell you. It just didn't mix right. It didn't look right. [laughs] It's just that way, it just didn't look right. I just had a-- it's like a phenomenon. It's like, well, what's-- oh, this can't be. [laughs] This could be. Yeah. Stuff like that, that's just-- you wonder sometimes. And I dazzle people a lot. I do. I love to dazzle people. I just dazzle. I tell jokes. I turn around and I dazzle people like you wouldn't believe. Yeah. They can't believe. I can take you right down this road and go over this way over here, make a little left turn, it's not even half a mile from here where my daughter lives. I 00:29:00used to own that house. I built that garage there when I was 65. Somebody said, you didn't build that. Yeah, I did. No, you didn't. Yeah, I did. I built it. I go in there, I can assure that that garage is pretty. It's nice. I think it's nice. Nice garage, two car garage. Nice one. It's good. I just put my deck on my house. Beautiful deck. I had people driving by, taking pictures of it. I live on [XXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXX X XXXX X XXXX XXX XX XX]. I don't know where that-- you know where that is?

RIEWESTAHL: Yeah, I do know where that is actually.

SCALZO: You go to the top of the hill, there's a big blue house on the right on the east side. It's got big pine trees in the yard, that new deck that's on there? I built that. Two years ago, I built that.

RIEWESTAHL: Did you dazzle people when you were in the service?

SCALZO: Oh, yeah.

RIEWESTAHL: Has it been a lifelong pursuit? Yeah.

SCALZO: Kind of. [inaudible] I was always thinking of stuff, fixing stuff. I could do stuff that people don't realize I could do. It's like my son says, 00:30:00"Dad, how did you put all them?" I put bars in. Tubes. Aluminum tubes. You can take a tape measure and you can take-- there's 243 of them in that deck just for the railing. That's what they're for. And they're spaced apart. You're never going to find any of them less than sixteenth of an inch off. You can't tell. And they looked as exactly the same apart, every single one of them. Somebody says, "How do you do that?" I says, knowledge. I can't tell my secrets all the time. People don't know how I did it, but I says, you turn around, and you make-- I made a system that you could put on the board. You cut both boards at the same time, you have a system where both boards are together. You mark where 00:31:00the center of the board is, and you put this strip on here that I made. And I put it on there and then I bolt them all down. I [inaudible] and I drill holes. I turn around, I drill holes. All right. I mark them with the screws. I put the pads inside these holes. I drilled the holes already. The pads are in there. You put a screw on this, and you take the screw off, and you take this off, and all the pads are all lined up, and you turn the other board over all the way like this. You do the same board when you go to put them together, everything is 100 percent because every hole is the same. Identical. You ain't going to be off. As long as that line is lined up, that's how you do that. My son goes, I don't know how you do this kind of stuff, he says, I could never figure that out. I says, well. You learn a lot when you got to make machines, you got to make parts. How to make parts and how to put them together and so on and so forth. And what would be the best way to do this job and this job and this stuff? People just don't understand. I look, too. Sometimes I look too far. So, I go to 00:32:00do a project and I say, I can't do that because later on I want to fix this. I want to fix that. So now where am I going to start? I'm not going to start over here. I have to start over there and work myself over this way so everything will be right. See, that's the way you got to do things. It takes time, but it's all right. And I'm not ever-- I'm not in a hurry anymore. That's another thing, too. You learn. Doesn't pay to be in a hurry. All you do is mess up and then you got to start over. My wife used to get mad at me. I tear stuff up, put stuff together, didn't like it, I tear it all apart, start over. She didn't like it. So, I don't like it. It's not good. It's got to be better then that or I don't put it there. [laughs]

RIEWESTAHL: As we close up, is there anything else that you'd like to add about your service that we haven't covered?

SCALZO: I did about pretty much everything. For the last beginning, since I was out of the service for the next 25, 30 years, nobody knew who I was. I was in 00:33:00the service. Nobody knew. Nobody cared. Don't make any difference. Now, it's different. Now everybody cares. Which makes me feel better. That's all I can tell you. It makes me feel better. But I don't go around in some places where you don't necessarily-- no, I tell them. United States Air Force. Used to. The Marines and Army guys and they would always try to one up, try to pick on the Air Force guys or the Navy guys all the time because they were the grunts, you know? You have your loaders and so on and so forth. That's all right, because then I wouldn't say too much till my wife say, that's all right. We could fly you in and fly you out, couldn't we? Never said another word. No. And by the way, boys, you 00:34:00think that's-- I know. I says, I've been around this world. I said, I watch. How come all you Marines, I says, and Army guys go to the chow hall in the Air Force? Because it's the best food in the market. You got a point there, they say. Then they-- that was the end of it. There are no more stories. That was it. Oh, yeah. They thought they earned king heaven when they were over-- we were over in Vietnam, we had our own chow hall and everything. It was all real stuff, boy. Oh, yeah. Makes a difference. Like when I was on base at Kirkland Air Force Base, even Moody Air Force Base, that two servicemen or two servicemen in that whole kitchen, the rest were all civilians. Oh, yeah. They have civilians. Government paid them good money and they put out good food. And it was no hospital food. It was good food. But that's the way it is. And there's that 00:35:00little girl that stopped me from coming over here. She came. She wouldn't leave me alone. You know why? She come over there to talk to me, and she wanted to shake my hand. She wanted to know where I was, and I said I was in Vietnam and then she started asking for stories. Guess what she was wearing? U.S. Air Force. A USAF Air Force hat. That's what it said on her hat. When I grow up, she says, I'm joining the Air Force and I says, that's where I was from. Right there. That was it. She didn't want to quit talking. So, I kind of get going. [laughs]

RIEWESTAHL: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story with me today. I really appreciate it Gary.

SCALZO: Yeah. Okay. Sure.

RIEWESTAHL: Go ahead and turn this off.