I didn’t know it at the time, but my journey towards small business ownership started back in 1990 when I was a 20-year-old sophomore in college. During the fall semester, I wanted to take 18 credit hours, but by the time I got around to registering (yes, I procrastinated), there were only 16-hours available in my core classes. The only thing left open was a two-hour ROTC elective on the history of the Soviet army. I signed-up and fell in love with the entire program. A couple months later I accepted a two-year Army scholarship that paid for the rest of my college, and was off to basic camp at Fort Knox, Kentucky that summer. It was a pivotal moment in my life.
Situated in the middle of Kentucky and covered in densely forested sand hills, Fort Knox has been one of the Army’s major training centers for over 100 years. Originally established during the American Civil War as a training ground, it was renamed Camp Knox in 1918 and became Fort Knox in 1932. Millions of young men and women have gone through basic training there. As anyone who has seen the 1965 James Bond film Goldfinger knows it’s also been one of the nation’s gold depositories since 1936, and in times of national crisis, has safeguarded other precious items such as the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The place has some serious history, and I immediately felt connected to something much larger than myself as the bus passed through the main gate.
After in-processing, small groups of us were loaded into 15-passenger vans and taken to our company areas where would spend the next six weeks. We were in one of the newer sections of the post, and our barracks were large, three-story concrete buildings with open rooms that held roughly thirty bunk beds, wall lockers, and a common bathroom for each floor. The second we stepped out of the van all hell broke loose. Drill sergeants descended on us like a pack of wolves and began the same circus of chaos that had been played-out for generations.
Zac Northup at Fort Lewis, WA, 1991.
Grabbing all our stuff, we were herded onto a paved area between two separate barracks buildings. I was standing there at attention with thirty-four other college students, trying to not be noticed, when one drill sergeant came up and educated me about everything that was wrong with my posture, haircut, and general appearance. I was “all ate up” and he seriously doubted I’d make it through the training. He ordered me to grab all my bags, run inside the barracks, find my wall-locker, secure my stuff, change into a physical training uniform, and be back outside in two-minutes. As I scrambled up the small set of stairs leading into the building, another drill sergeant came running down. I stopped dead in my tracks. Standing on the step above me, he stuck his face so close to mine that the brim of his hat was touching my forehead as he shouted, “What the hell are you doing cadet?!! Why are you standing on my stairs?!!”
To say this man was imposing would be an understatement. He was at least 6’2 and looked like he could bench press a small automobile. His uniform was immaculate and despite the 95-degree heat, there wasn’t a bead of sweat on his face. He had horrible breath. I mean, like, the worst beath I have ever smelled. I later learned that on the first day of every training cycle he would not brush his teeth and ate a raw onion for breakfast just to add another layer of unpleasantness to the trainee’s experience.
As he pecked away at my forehead, for the first time in my life I experienced true stress-induced cognitive paralysis. When I tried to respond to the barrage of questions being hurled at me, the only thing I could spit out was, “I don’t know what to do drill sergeant!” The drill sergeant’s well-rehearsed rage turned into pure disgust at my inadequacy as a man and human being, and he sent me on my way. It was a stark introduction to what lay ahead. Of course, I was already one-minute late changing into my PT uniform.
The shock I was experiencing wasn’t unique. Every cadet was in the same boat. A little later, we had to go into the drill sergeants’ office one at a time and complete a standard form that they would send home to our parents letting them know that we arrived safe and sound. All we had to do was write our parent’s or loved one’s name and address in the proper space. That’s it. There was even an example on the drill sergeant’s desk next to the pile of blank forms that was filled-out to help us get it right. It read, “John Smith, 123 Nowhere Street, Nowhere, KY, 12345.”
I filled out the form and ran back to my position next to my bunk. About fifteen minutes later, after the last member of the platoon returned from the office, the drill sergeant screamed a series of obscenities so loud it could be heard on the other side of the concrete wall. Kicking the door open, he came storming into the room and threw all the addressed forms on the floor and said, “There are twenty-seven f***ing John Smiths in this platoon!! Fix it!”
Yes, even though we were all highly intelligent young men and women from universities around the country, out of thirty-four cadets, twenty-seven of us had been so stressed-out standing in front of those menacing drill sergeants, that we copied the “John Smith” example verbatim rather than writing our parent’s name and home address on the form. I am pretty sure I was one of them. Obviously, we had a lot to learn about stress management.
