The Cutting Edge

 The Cutting Edge
I was assigned to the Naval Station hospital in Orlando, Florida upon my graduation from Corps School in Great Lakes, Illinois. It was my first actual assignment after boot camp and corps school. At this time Orlando was pre-Disney and the Naval Hospital and Naval Training Center was the biggest thing in town. The airport was a concrete block, L-shaped building with airline and car rental counters on both sides of the L-shaped corridors. The airport offices closed at night with metal gates that closed off each entrance. The gates were similar to those that close the shop entrances at the malls.
Other than fishing and bars, there was little that a person could do without a car. I don’t drink so the clubs were out and I fished a lot. I liked night fishing in the small lakes on base and others that I could walk to. I would wade into the reeds shoreside and cast my purple night crawler into the lake in front of me. Mostly there were bass in the lakes. The bass were measured by weight, not by inches as we do in Pennsylvania. I was blessed to fish on the ocean just off Cape Kenneby on occasion. I enjoyed being on the eighteen foot boat, even when there were six foot swells rocking the boat.
There were occasions of down time. I took some on line courses and carved. I would use the wood from old boards that we would pad and use to restrict the movement of an arm that had an IV stuck in it. I carved two elephants anout one inch high, a frog wearing a crown, and even made a trinket box about six inches long, four incher wide and four inches high. I connected the corners with interlocking dove tails. The lid for the box fit snugly. On its top was carved a bunch of grapes.
I started to collect HO gage trains and to add to my accessories, I carved two tunnel entrances. From wooden tongue blades I created a water tower with a working spout. I shaped a railroad station, complete with benches, a clock, and ticket booths with metal grills. It kept my hands busy during my down times to reduce the stresss.