Twenty years old and just out of basic training, I was given a three day pass form Ft.*******. It was the first one that I had ever gotten one and I wasn't sure where I was going to go.
A lot of the guys just took off for the town closest to the camp but I had heard a lot about that place and really didn't want any part of it. It was just two long streets of sleazy beer bars—it was a dry county except for beer and wine—and those were jam packed with rowdy, randy GI's. Most of the girls in the town that went to those places were just plain old hookers, not the type I was really interested in meeting.
On top of that, I didn't really fit in with most of the guys that I knew in the service. They were a pretty crude bunch and I had been raised in a fairly refined home. They were pretty tough and loud but I was just the opposite. Most of them were just out of high school but I had put in a couple of years at college before I decided to enlist. They liked whatever music was on the radio but I preferred classical music and opera. If they read at all, they read Playboy and I liked nothing better than to absorb myself in a good non-fiction history or serious fiction. ALL of them bragged about their numerous sexual experiences with the girls but I really hadn't had but one or two not very satisfactory ones--certainly not anything that I would want to brag about—and on top of that I was a terrible liar.
So, I decided to take off and go to a large city that was about 200 miles away where I knew there would be some enriching diversions that were quite different from military life and worlds apart from the redneck town outside the camp.
It was more than four hours by bus to the city and I spent my time reading a book about the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. There were some girls on the bus but I didn't even try to talk to any of them. They were either old, or married with kids, or fat. One or two were old, AND married with kids, AND fat.
When I got to the city, I checked into an inexpensive hotel near the bus station. The place was a five or six story building. It wasn't exactly the Hilton but it wasn't a flea bag either. I stowed my gear, got a newspaper, and looked up the local theaters. I figured I could catch an art film.
The theater that was showing the type of thing I wanted to see was within walking distance of the hotel. It was showing double bill, both films were documentaries—one Melanesia culture and the other on neo-classical art and architecture. I enjoyed both completely. The show let out at about 9:00PM