If you get to go to Hawaii, and you go to the big island especially, there's certain areas in O'ahu its the same, but in the big island rain forest that it's got that smell that you get in leis that you put around your neck it's orchids and everything that's got a special smell when you go through that rain forest.

We drove through there. Your mother -- we rented a car. We went over there thanksgiving weekend with another couple that had a couple of kids. We had your mother and Debbie, her sister. We went over and stayed at the armed forces, on the mountain where the volcano is, around the top of the volcano, but just a little bit off where you could walk to where the volcano cone was. And they had an armed forces hotel there. That was the navy, air force, marines, and army I guess, those services. They all participated in it. Each one of them had their own deal. The air force I think was fire fighting and something else, the navy though was cook, they had the mess halls and all. So we ate thanksgiving dinner there.

But my story was, we rented a car, that couple did and we did, and we started going around the northern end of the island where the big volcano is. We took off, and as we went along your mother got car sick, dizzy and car sick. She had a miserable trip. But we'd already committed. And doggonit, I looked down and didn't have enough gas to get back to where we was supposed to come back to, the way I read it. And it was the thanksgiving weekend, so everything was closed down. And there's not too many stations anyway there. But we ended up about nightfall, it was almost dark, and I'd been looking and looking and we pass this little town. It was right there on the high way, and they had a service station, but it was closed. So they had a phone number on the door and all, so we called them, asked if they'd come down and give us gas, well they was closed on thanksgiving weekend. So we headed on around and we made it back to the hotel area. But I sweated that out. If it hadn't been that I'd probably never remember the trip [laughing], but I remember worrying about, here I've got my family with me and Linda's sick anyway, and it's dark, getting dark quickly and we're still a few miles from where we wanted to be for the night.

But it was interesting. They cooked rabbit for thanksgiving, one of the meats for thanksgiving. The cooks, I was talking to one of them, he said "yeah we got some rabbit over here," it came up in a conversation about what all they were serving. And I said, I don't know, the kids had never eaten rabbit. And so this other couple, I told the dad what was going on, and he goes, "well, let's let them try some." So we ordered a plate of rabbit. Of course, I'd eaten it when I was small. My uncle used to go out and kill squirrels and rabbits and everything for food. So they brought that tray out, and it looked very appetizing, sort of like chicken legs or something.

But they started, I think Linda started eating it, and another girl. And somehow the conversation, "well what is this?" So we told them it's rabbit. And boy, the other kids, Debbie and the boy that was with the other couple, they wouldn't try it. You know its .... you got your mental problems with never eating meat from rabbits, or squirrles or anything. But they had a big menu there that day and really fed us good.

But you could walk down and look into the volcano, the cone, and the smoke, and there was coals down there. You don't walk down in there because of the heat, no. It was really interesting. It erupts every once in a while, and on the north side of the volcano going down into the ocean, it does add -- the lava runs down and it's forming an extension on the island. It's growing. But not that quickly, a few feet a year or something.

Ben: How did you two meet?

Don: Hmm?

Ben: How did you two meet?

Don: How did I commute?

Odell: How did you meet Billie?

Don: Oh, through my sister. She was working in the telephone office, not an operator, but in the office where they were taking care of all the business. And living in a house in Oak Cliff for Women, my sister lived there too. And when I came back from Puerto Rico I was stationed up at Ardmore Oklahoma and I came down on the weekend and seen my sister. In this house you had to stay in the living room if you came in, if a man came in because it was just women. So I was sittin there in this big room talking to Wanda my sister, Billie came bouncing in the door, she'd been out on a date with some guy. She knew my sister of course, a little bit. Wanda introduced me to her. We talked a little while, and next weekend I came in and went to see my sister again and Billie was there. So we went out and had us a coke, and go around town a little bit, in Dallas. Six weeks later we was married. Been married fifty-eight years.

Odell: A powerfull coke [chuckling]

Don: I came in on the weekend every weekend and spent time with a couple, they was about my sister's age. Went and stayed with them on the weekend. They didn't have any kids. So I stayed with them. Billie and I would go and visit with them, or we'd go out. They had what they call a drive in, sort of like Sonic, except that was all they had. They didn't have buffets like we have now. They did have some, but they was in town or something. But we'd go out and set in the drive in. Drink coffee, or coke or something, and talk til midnight and I'd take her back to the rooming house and go back to Cordia(?) to the lady's house and man I was staying with. Every weekend I'd come in and we'd go out on a date. I'd leave on Sunday night about 9 o'clock, go back to Ardmore.

We both, early on in the relationship said we're not ready to get married. She was -- I was twenty-five and she was twenty-three. We had an understanding we weren't going to get married, we're just -- cause I knew in a few weeks I was going to get orders to go to a factory school and then go to Tennessee in the Air Force. So after about four weekends we got a little serious about, talking about, what would happen if we got married, what would we do, and this stuff. So I told her, "well, I'm waiting on my orders." So we decided, well, maybe we'd get married in June. This was the first of April. No it wasn't, it was back in March because we got married on March 29th. Anyway, the next weekend I came in we made arrangements to come out and meet her folk. And when I came in on Friday night, we came on out here, stayed with her folks that weekend. And next day, I don't know what her dad and mother thought, but we kind of mentioned we was going to get married in June and [laughing] they didn't know I existed until that weekend.

So anyway, I went back, and doggonit if it wasn't about two weeks later I got orders. And came in on a Friday night and told her, I said, I've got my orders here. And we kind of had a little fight the weekend before when we got back from her folks. We had went out with my sister and a couple I was staying with on the weekend, and some more people we knew. We went to a place where they had dancing. And Billie -- I didn't dance, I told her that I didn't dance. She -- And this ole boy kept coming over wanting to dance with her, and she asked me if it was ok. And he spent all night til we left hanging around her. And I kind of got peeved a little bit, and I told her when we got in the car to come home. I said I didn't like that at all. And she said, "Well you didn't want to dance! And said it was ok!" But anyway, we kind of got in a kind of tiff. But when I got my orders, I came back down on the weekend and told her, I said I'm leaving next week.

And we got serious about getting married [chuckling], we got married the next week. I went back out and told her folks. We got the preacher from here in Tolar, and his wife, come to Dallas to marry us. And Billie's folks came over. And kin, aunt and uncle and cousin all came over. And got married in this couple's house. And that was it. We left that night for Ohio. Dayton Ohio. For six week factory school. Then went to Tennessee. And that was the beginning of it.

During daylight hours. And every night we'd come in. They'd take us out there and drop us off. We went through several different training episodes.

One of them they had a big ship. It wasn't that big, but it had the ... like an LSU. You know, Landing Ship Tank. On the back of it they had a big steel tower. And we had to wear our flying suit. But we didn't wear a parachute but we wore the harness. So they'd hook us all to that tower and we had to jump off the back of the boat that's dragging us along. And you had to get un -- get your parachute harness off. And of course you flip flopped on there. Then, the Navy had a SEAL team there that was supposed to come by and pick you up with an arm hook. You know, they'd come down and SEALs would be in a rubber boat attached to their bigger power boat. And. First time you go through that, you think that boat's going to run over you [chuckling]. Cause they got to get real close. And you're supposed to hold your arm up. As soon as that hook goes over, you're supposed to grab this arm, they swing you into that rubber boat. Man that's tough, I tell you. Cause BOOM! BOOM! It's over with before you know it. But that was one exercise.

Another one, we had to go on a five man rubber raft. Jump off the boat, and get ... inflate the raft, get into it, five of us and get back to shore. And they'd take us out far enough where we'd just barely see the shore. And where you landed, you had to carry that raft back [chuckling] to the starting point on shore. And it's pretty hard, the first time you do it. You kind of ... wondering where on the shore you want to be at. The closer you get to the shore, the more you try to adjust to that point. But you may be way down here, and it's way up here by the time you get ready to adjust. And then we had to do a twenty man raft. The next day. And so we did something every day. That was an experience there.

...

And just stuff like that. This is all Vietnam.

That was Tuy Hoa, a little town we stationed in. We had different fences around, this is the most outer fence. Then as you got in, the fences were a little better [chuckling].

Ben: Who's taking those pictures?

Don: Well this picture came out of a photo lab there in Tuy Hoa. They had a team of aircraft photographers and I knew them. And so it was easy for me to ask for pictures.

...

And let me see what else. Ok this book here. From the time I went in the air force til I got out. And different things. And a presentation we had. And there's my enlistment papers. There was five us from Dallas went in together. Joined together.

Ben: Like friends? Or just when joined up?

Don: Well, I knew three of them. Personally. I mean we, rollerskated together and did things. But a couple of them, they lived in the Dallas area, and they just inducted us all the same, the same day.

Ben: Ben Burns!

Don: Mm-hmm. Yeah, but this was related to us, and some more [unknown]. And we went to Lackland to ... basic training. So that's when I went in. That's when I did different things in the Air Force.

I tell you. I had two things. I looked on ancestry.com and it gives you a lot of people from there. And you get to correspond with them, and they've got information. Some. There's a lot of Tramels out there. Some are kins. I think if you went back far enough they're prolly all kin.

The furthest I went back was when our ancestors landed in South Carolina. And then they migrated West to Tennessee, basically. Course they went a little lateral ways. From Tennessee they stayed there awhile then they went back to Alabama. And they stayed in Alabama a long time. Prolly fifty, sixty years. And I don't think any of them is there that's named Tramel now. But your Grandmother, Billie and I, we went to see yall a couple of times. And we'd go up to the area just to the East of Birmingham, where they were at. It's all there in the books. They lived there quite a while. And then they migrated West again and ended up in Oklahoma, and also -- well before Oklahoma they got into Texas and Arkansas. But primarily Texas. And ... course they were marrying as they went along or they got older. The kids [unknown]. But then they went to Oklahoma territory, before it was a state. And they lived there, and that's where my mother and father, our mother and father were born there in Oklahoma in [Native] territory. Then it become a state in 1907. And that's where our dad and mother were, and we were born in Oklahoma.

And then, of course I joined the Air Force [coughing] when our parents were killed. Well, died. Our mother, our mother died in forty-four [May 5, 1945] of cancer. And our father got killed in forty-five [Jul 28, 1946] by a motor scooter [chuckling] of all things. Got hit, and caused him to fall on the cement, on the road. He had a concussion and never did wake up. So they're both buried in Oklahoma, one in Chickasha and one in Guthrie. It's all in my book there.

So when I was about forteen I started heading towards Texas. I worked in Duncan, Oklahoma. Went to school there. I've got my year books and all that there. My sister Wanda, our sister, her and her husband, they got married just a few months after my dad got killed. I graduated from high school and they got married. And they moved to Dallas. And I eventually ended up in Dallas. That's where I finished school and went in the Air Force.

Acutally, I guess instead of being an Okie now I'm a Texan cause I married one.

Odell: They're two alligator restaurants down there.

Linda: Alligator?

Odell: Yeah.

[unknown]

Odell: I didn't think it would be either. It is. I thought it was good.

Linda: Is that expensive?

Odell: It's a little above your regular meat order, things at a restaurant.

Don: No more than lobster or anything else though.

Odell: That lobster, I love it, but at nineteen dollars a pound [chuckling]

Don: Yeah those claws, the lobster claws area really good, some good meat in them.

The only place I ever ate any was in Puerto Rico. When I went down to San Juan, and ate in a restaurant down there. On the [unknown] one end of the island at the base, and the other was San Juan and all of them. If you really want to see downtown Puerto Rico, or ... the city living we'd go to the other end of the island, it wasn't too far. But we'd go down there and have, go to the restaurant.

My experience with drinking coffee in Puerto Rico though. They've got these little coves, or little windows in some of the stores, and you could order a coffee and stuff there. Just like they'd have a Starbucks or something here, it would be part of the building.

And first time we went down there, we'd always stayed at the base and hadn't been there very long, but we'd get coffee [unknown] at the mess hall you know and stuff, so American coffee. But coffee in Puerto Rico, you can stir it with a spoon. It's real thick. It's real powerful. So you quickly learned to tell them, "I want a cup of American coffee" [laughing]. It's weakened down a lot. Cause they can drink that sucker, man it is bitter and real thick.

1952 I went for a, we went to a factory school. From Chanute Field Illinois to Caldwell New Jersey. Another guy and I. And on the way up there in New Jersey we stopped and ate at a restaurant and ordered tea. Well down here if you order tea you get iced tea. Up there when you order tea you get hot tea. And I think it's changed though since, like I said, that was in '52. You know, my gosh, 50 years ago. 60 almost. So.

They lived about two, three doors down. It was air force housing. And it was about three or four quarters in each unit. And they lived down, a couple doors down where we did. And he gave me his duck he'd shot that morning. And Billie didn't know how to cook duck, I didn't know how. So anyway, she did it almost like you would a turkey or something, bake it. And man the greese come out of that sucker. And it was so greasy you couldn't eat it. And we ended up throwing it away. But that was my experience, and Billie's experience with wild geese.