My older brother broke into a place where was working, after hours, to steal beer and I don’t know what, and was caught. He was probably seventeen at the time (I was a toddler) but I remember watching him and our mom in a deep discussion at the kitchen table. Next time I saw him he was in a Navy uniform fresh out of boot camp, soon headed out to be a torpedo man aboard a Sixth Fleet destroyer. That was how the legal system back then dealt with “good boys” (and novice hoodlums like my brother) who’d gotten on the wrong path. That being said, busting into someone’s occupied home armed isn’t teenage hijinx and back then it would have gotten him just as shot as this “yute”.
great posts and i can see the military changes many men for the better.
Three Italian Uncles and a Window changed me for the better :)
The problem we have now is that the military would not take your brother. I went in the Marines and had a juvenile record. The Marines would never take me in this day and age.
There was a guy at our high School that got caught with a couple of joints in an overlook up on the mountain above town. He never came back to school and we found out the judge made him join the service.
Eight or nine years later I was a Staff Sergeant in the Air Force stationed in Tampa and my brother was a Captain stationed in Orlando. I was visiting my brother when he was on duty at the CBPO (personnel office) and in walks this classmate of ours. He had reenlisted and was out-processing for a TDY deployment with the 2nd Mobile Communications Group. We only got to talk for a few minutes. Dave was a little jumpy to find that my brother was an officer. That is the best way to turn your life around.