Forty-five years ago today, I piled into my 1961 Plymouth Valiant — the first car I ever owned — and started the drive down Interstate 5 to my hometown of Portland, Ore.

I said “good bye” to the U.S. Army, where I had served precisely two years.

An Army acquaintance who also lived in Portland asked if he could ride along. I agreed, so we took off together from Fort Lewis, Wash.

The drive lasted only about three hours. It was uneventful. I took him to his house and then proceeded to my parents’ house in suburban east Multnomah County.

It was a heck of a two-year hitch. It was my first time away from home; it provided me with my first visit to the East Coast, where I completed my advanced individual training as an OV-1 Mohawk aircraft mechanic.

Then came a trip across the Pacific Ocean to Vietnam, where I participated for a time in a war.

I returned home and was assigned to an armored cavalry unit in Fort Lewis, where I finished my tour.

Two years … to the day!

Any regrets about any of that? No regrets, per se.

I do, though, rue somewhat a missed opportunity to see what I was really made of. I don’t talk much about it in my wife’s presence, because if I had said “yes” to this chance, our paths wouldn’t have crossed upon my return to college in January 1971.

It involved officers candidate school. Near the end of my basic training at Fort Lewis, four other guys and I received orders to report to the company commander’s office. He then told us we had tested well enough for acceptance into OCS.

He proceeded to tell us about the hell we would go through. “You think this was tough?” he said. “Wait’ll you have to go through OCS. Sixteen weeks of it.”

Well, I was in good physical and emotional condition. I felt at that moment as though I could kick the world in the backside. I was ready for anything. None of that physical stuff bothered me in the least.

Then came the deal-breaker. He told us we would have to commit to two years as a commissioned officer upon completion of our training. I rolled that around. That meant I’d be in the Army another four months longer than I had planned.

I turned to the Old Man and said, “No thank you, sir.”

That was that. Yes, I have wondered about the kind of officer I would have become. I believe I’d have been a good one … but that’s just me.

I finished my time and returned home a good bit different — and a lot better — than I was when I left the house in the wee hours of the morning two years earlier.

Time has flown by ever since and life has been so very good.