mr. raburn died, and our state senator ran for congress, and i ran for his place. then when our congressman decided to quit, i ran for congressman. i have had very good breaks all my life. people that help me and people that i care about -- that's what makes it easy. people have been overly good to me. >> when you were in the military, where did your wife stay? rep. hall: she went back to texas. she stayed with me on the west coast until we shipped out. >> how long were you gone at one time? rep. hall: a matter of months. for 72 weeks, we trained. from the time we had been strapped to an airplane and go back on board a carrier, the navy did a good job of training us. i never thought about the danger. all i thought about was what a powerful airplane i had that i was strapped to and what it cost and how careful i had to be with it and the devastation that it could do. we were all disappointed that we were not in the mainline, but as i look back on it now, i have great admiration for the guys that really fought the battles and had the dogfights and got shot down. i do