To Grandma's Condo We Go

Five hundred years ago in 1513, Ponce de Leon discovered Florida and Don and I arrived in 2001 to begin our next adventure. What a difference 500 years make! We moved into our condominium at Spring Run in The Brooks and when the Barbers were enroute to see us our first Christmas the song led by Keith was “over the River and through the gate to Grandma’s condo we go.” Our third retirement brought us to beautiful southwest Florida. We had already sampled the mountains and the desert and now it was time to try the beach and the gulf. We arrived In May, a warm humid time of the year in Florida, the exact opposite of the hot dry climate of Arizona, whose motto was “but it’s a dry heat!”

Kelly was nine years old, and Laurie was five, the perfect age for granddaughters! The Florida years with Jennifer, Keith and the girl were about to begin. To complete the picture our good friends Bill and Marie Demmer lived five miles away on the beach in Bonita Springs. We had stayed in touch through the years by annual Christmas cards, but now picked up in person where we left off after our wedding. Many great boat trips, lunches, concerts, and visits to their house at Lake Winnipesaukee filled the next years, not to mention days at the beach!

Florida memories are like looking through a kaleidoscope, there are so many in a wide variety of colors..Jennifer was now the media specialist at Pinewoods Elementary, a nearby school, and I was ready to put my library skills to work shelving books. Dinosaur books were among the favorites of boys and girls and it was fun to be around the children. Kelly and Laurie had plenty of energy and enthusiasm to share and they spent many hours and days with Grandpa and me at our condo. They would come overnight with their backpacks and suitcases and proceed to set up shop with dolls and other toys in the middle of the living room floor. They were very inventive and creative and could play for hours in their own world. Many art projects were worked on at the kitchen table and some of my vintage clothes worked perfectly for dressing up. They also had one outfit that came via a shopping trip to Good Will with Jennifer and Keith. They put together some very glamorous outfits and Laurie’s flair for clothes may have started there.

When they started Tae Kwon Do Grandpa and I went to watch their sessions. It was very hard to watch the struggle they had to get into their gear, which they had to do themselves with no help from grown ups, as part of the program. Sometimes they would practice their routines on the golf tee outside our condo, watching out for errant golf balls and golfers! They progressed through many belt colors and I imagine their training stands them in good stead traveling in Oakland and San Francisco today. There were also gymnastic sessions to see and balance beams to conquer.

On Saturdays their friend Sam would spend the day and was always part of any excursions. It was on Saturdays that I learned how to order a sandwich at Subway by standing behind Kelly and Laurie and saying “I’ll have what she’s having.” Laurie liked the meatball sub and through Kelly I learned to add banana peppers to my sandwich. I also learned you could create drinks at the soda machines by pushing different levers!

And then there was Halloween in Orange Tree, a night not to be missed! Such excitement, it was like a giant festival where many houses were decorated with pumpkins and witches, and people sat outside giving out candy. It was the perfect place to live with so many houses to visit. Kids came from miles around because Orange Tree was not a gated community. As I walked around with them on Halloween night I was enjoying my second childhood.

Birthday parties were fun events, especially ones held at Germain Arena ice skating rink. Ice skating in Florida is still a novelty to me. Pizza and ice cream and birthday cake were the refreshments provided and of course, ice skating. Grandpa was excited to take part and was out on the ice skating around only to learn that our session hadn’t yet begun! We had done a lot of outdoor skating in NJ growing up and were happy to learn that our skating abilities had held up, but we sure didn’t have the endurance of ten year olds! Not bad for sixty five year olds though.

An easier party for us was the pool party Laurie had for her ninth birthday at the Orange Tree Clubhouse and pool. Her whole class was invited; it was a beautiful day and a birthday to remember! And easier on our older bodies.

On occasions when Laurie’s school had an early dismissal day I would pick her up, and we would go home to her house for the afternoon. What I remember most about those days is that Laurie would get in the car and talk excitedly all the way home. What she probably remembers best is the time I drove right past the turn for her house and kept on going. I believe she pointed out my error. Years later Grandpa called her Magellan as she called out directions from her iPhone as we were looking for the restaurant after Kelly’s graduation from the University of Florida.

One day I took Kelly to a downtown federal building for something she had to do there. I wasn’t familiar with the area but felt confident that I could return a different way. As I drove I realized I was lost when it turned out we were on the road leading to the small Naples airport. Kelly’s comment was “I didn’t even know Naples had an airport!”

Grandpa and I enjoyed going to Kelly’s swim meets and football games where Laurie played in the band, with an instrument that was bigger than she was. The school concerts and awards ceremonies and banquets rounded out their school years.

Grandpa thought that since we were surrounded by water here we should have a boat. He had loved fishing growing up and Florida fishing from a boat would be great. He had many good hours exploring the waters in the area and sometimes the Barbers would join us. Kelly and Laurie would struggle into their cumbersome life jackets and away we would go. One time Grandpa asked Kelly and Laurie if they would like to take the wheel. Kelly declined but Laurie jumped at the chance. Might have been a precursor of travels to come for her as she has accumulated many driving miles driving coast to coast!

One of our boat trips was to Mound Key, which was the home of the Calusa Indians for ages. The key was comprised of millions of shells piled up by the Calusa. Our boat trip ended at Strawberry Corners for ice cream. We went there often with Bill and Marie Demmer on some of our adult excursions. Some days we would take Kelly and Laurie in the boat and anchor and go to the beach.

In the meantime, Keith was running an entertainment company, so sometimes small hermit crabs would be delivered to the house. They were painted with numbers on their backs and were used in crab races at the Ritz Carlton. Once Grandpa had to deliver something to Keith that he had forgotten, and on his way out helped himself to some refreshments at another party.

We had one very enjoyable weekend at the Sandpiper Club Med where Keith was doing caricatures. Kent joined us from California and we learned about his girlfriend Kimberley on that visit. One of the most memorable parts of that trip was watching Kelly and Laurie on the trapeze. Perhaps a better way to describe it would be to say that it was a very scary part of the trip watching Kelly and Laurie flying through the air with the greatest of ease. And Kent also did it. A weekend to remember.

A few years later Kent asked Kimberley to marry him and the Demmers offered their beautiful beachfront home for the wedding. They had to attend a wedding in Boston so were not there. It was a beautiful wedding on the beach, followed by an elegant dinner at the Ritz Carlton in Naples. We have lovely pictures of the Barbers and Grandpa was resplendent in his “penguin suit” as he called it. Apropos as Kent spent time in Antarctica with penguins, flying helicopter support for the National Science Foundation.

Jennifer was now at Sabal Palm School as the media specialist and Grandpa and I helped her in setting it up. She also held book fairs twice a year where I was able to help. It is a major undertaking, not just books but so many other things to chose from. I loved being part of the whole reading scene.

Kelly in the meantime could often be found in her “tree,” reading a variety of books. A tree is a good place for reading if you can’t find a quiet corner!

And then there is the story of Keith and the motorcycle. He knew I hated motorcycles; I won’t count the ways. It was the one opinion I was loud and clear about. So through the years we would give him toy motorcycles, motorcycle birthday cards, etc. and I was hopeful that would be enough. Until one day Kelly and Laurie, with gleeful expressions on their faces, said “We have something to show you in the garage” and voila! There was Keith’s motorcycle. Seems there was some discussion ahead of time as to “who was going to tell Grandma that Dad has a motorcycle!”

Since my days seeing shows in New York I have always loved theatre and Naples has a lot to offer. It was great going to the lunch dinner theatres with Jennifer, Kelly and Laurie, seeing The Secret Garden at the Naples Players and West Side Story at the Philharmonic, in addition to seeing Laurie’s friend Chris in Cats at the Kidz Act. Grandpa and I joined Bill and Marie at many wonderful concerts at the Phil, now Artis Naples. The Christmas concerts are magnificent and the Patriotic Pops concerts where Grandpa and other service members would stand when their service song was played were memorable.

One summer, Don and I spent one month in Highlands in the mountains of North Carolina in a fabulous house on the side of a hill among the trees. We did a lot of hiking, especially to waterfalls, visited beautiful homes on a garden and home tour. Grandpa loved seeing the landscape design of these mountain homes. One summer we took the Rocky Mountaineer train trip across Canada, a wonderful trip through gorgeous scenery and especially nice for Grandpa. On camping trips he was driving and couldn’t enjoy the scenery too much. We returned to Caneel Bay three times. Once for our 50th anniversary, but went on our 49th, in case we didn’t make it to the 50th. We spent time each summer with Bill and Marie at their great waterside home at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, where every day we went out to lunch by boat.

In the meantime we were living in Florida enjoying the beach and the boat. Grandpa was playing a lot of tennis, I was doing water aerobics, I learned to play mahjong, we were going out to lunch frequently, and Grandpa volunteered at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida as a boat captain. He was a great boat captain, taking guests on boat tours and giving talks on the Florida ecosystem, he is a born educator. Laurie volunteered there for a period of time, working in the animal hospital. One of the supervisors gave Laurie the job of cutting up a dead rat to feed a snake. The woman told Laurie that she couldn’t do it because she was a vegetarian! There really is humor everywhere.

In 2016 we were now in our eighties (how did that happen!)? And time for another move. This time we moved a few miles down the road to a new rental retirement community, American House. We continued to “downsize” and are almost down to two reclining chairs and a television set! We are in Independent Living; there is an Assisted Living Section and a Memory Care unit. Since moving is in our blood, we may not be done yet! Our sense of humor is intact and every day brings something new to laugh about!

Florida

By Don

So why did we move to Florida? Well, A...our granddaughters were there, B...We wanted to watch them grow up in a timely fashion (or as I once told people who asked, “Before they threw us over for a rock star.”), and C...that window was now open and we were not sure when it might close. 

We made two visits to the Barbers, now living in Cape Coral, Florida. Not the least of which was for the arrival of Laurie on May 24, 1996. With two granddaughters, it now seemed appropriate for us to move to Florida for the fun of watching them grow up. See, I could nuance it but in the first paragraph I bored right in with the truth. By the time we arrived in Southwest Florida, otherwise known as the land of humidity and hanging chads, the Barbers were now living in Orangetree, in Collier County. We were in a condo in Spring Run, part of the Brooks, where in order to play AM golf, unlike Arizona, one needed rubber boots due to the dew and swampy wet grass, but we were still only 35 minutes away from the girls.

Spring Run was indeed a golfing community with fees, only two tennis courts, a clubhouse, a pool, and a restaurant that needed more customers to survive. Management told us that we were allocated a certain amount to spend, or we would be considered deficient. I wanted to bring homeless people to lunch to achieve the required amount but cooler heads prevailed. 

Meanwhile, we felt different about golf due to missing our old golfing friends at Saddlebrooke, and the mysterious lack of dry air like at Breckenridge. As a result, I found myself playing tennis all alone, sometimes against a backboard, trying to rekindle old tennis skills. After all, I was the flight student champion of South Whiting Field in 1956. No need to mention that the last two tournament games were won by forfeit when the other student pilots had flights and could not play. For that I got an 8” high plastic trophy. Remember, I was much younger back then. What to do? Put an ad in the paper? Meanwhile the paper person stopped delivering our paper at our door because one early and dark morning, a gator was in the way and it wasn't a young Tim Tebow.

Early on at Spring Run, I was at a fishing meeting when a secretary came into the room and plugged in a television. We then watched live and open mouthed as the 9-11 terrorist planes hit the World Trade Center. Life would never be the same but we did not know it.

I rode my bike a half mile east to another tract called Lighthouse Bay which had no golf course, six tennis hydro courts, a paid tennis pro, a tennis shack, lighted courts and actual players looking for a game. I rode home and told Doris that I liked Lighthouse Bay. She agreed that we were paying for our golf course but not using it on the same level as at Saddlebrooke. Besides, the golf pro was a putz. So after two years at Spring Run, we sold that condo and bought one at Lighthouse Bay. Yes it was another move but at Lighthouse Bay there was a better fitness center, more year round people and it was a mile further from any storm surge.  

I found tennis friends and my tennis skills were adequate but nothing to brag about. I enjoyed being on a team and going to nearby places to play in tournaments. Then I had a bit of bad luck as I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, had six weeks of getting nuked and a bit later, had my L-4 and L-5 Vertebrae fused to get rid of chronic back pain. Gee, when we got to Florida and the new MD asked me what meds I was taking, I said none at all. So then the pills started, and kept coming. If TSA ever looked in my bag, they would think I was a pharmaceutical rep. But I did rehab and after a while, it was back to tennis. 

In the process of learning Southwest Florida, we also found Bill and Marie Demmer in a lovely three story house on Barefoot Beach. I had walked Marie down the aisle many years earlier and Bill was the best man at our wedding. I have known Bill for 80 years, having first met in kindergarten. Bill had a big boat and took Doris and I from Marco Island to Sarasota on neat boat trips. Bill then had a quintuple bypass and he went into rehab. Months later he became my Sunday singles tennis partner while I played doubles at Lighthouse Bay. I found that playing with people with two artificial knees, double foot surgeries, a bad shoulder and a quintuple bypass did make me look somewhat better. Besides, after tennis, Bill and I went to Taco Bell for a Chalupa. Culvers had yet to be discovered. I played more tennis, slowly devolving downhill towards geriatric incompetence, but at four days a week.

Later, on a trip to Club Med with Jennifer and Keith and two chicks that kept in local touch with something called iPhones, Kent who was visiting from California where he bought a house, quietly told us he was in a relationship and Kimberly entered our lives.

Feeling odd that the Navy had strangely forgotten us and since we had not moved in quite a while, with wanderlust in our blood we undertook to be proactive, and again packed ourselves and the Cuckoo clock and moved to a retirement place that had independent living, assisted living and memory care. The cuckoo took the move well but we were aching for days. Now if Jennifer and Kent would ask us, when are you moving into an old folks home, we could say A...we are already there. And B...people there have walker races and eat mounds of broccoli. Besides, this time we are now two miles closer to the storm surge. 

One odd thing about living at the home that I never even thought about was this...There are so many single old ladies and the male-female ratio is 4 to 1. Only then did I realize that the men all die young. They drop like flies until in assisted living they say the ratio explodes to 7 to 1. Hmm...Hello, Dr. Kevorkian...

For life at a typical old folks home and a video... Please Google  “Assisted Living, The Musical.” 

Jobs and Finances Through the Years

By Don

My first experience with doing something for money was shoveling snow off a neighbor’s sidewalk for 25 cents, 50 cents to include the driveway. Before that, I wrangled an allowance out of my parents for ten cents a week which was spent at the drugstore at Johnny the Cop’s corner for Life magazine. I sometimes had a few dimes and nickels and used them playing Ski Ball at a local amusement park, which I usually snuck into through a hole in the fence. My friends paid at the entrance and I met them at the seesaws. Now they are too dangerous for kids to visit alone. 

One day I even carried water for the elephants. I made a few cents but the big deal was getting within ten feet or so of the animals. Then I became a painter boss’s helper (Rudy) and learned how to paint houses. In the beginning, just the back of a garage. A year later I fell off a ladder and dropped 20 or more feet into a large soft bush but was unhurt. Then I worked some Saturdays which led to sometimes working during the summer. By junior high school I was being paid almost the same as the other hired hands — Andy the Italian and Fred, the German. I got to where I was about as fast as they were.

Once in my high school, I pushed the wrong button on the elevator and got off by mistake in the belfry next to the huge bell. It was 12 o’clock and it rang and rang. I almost dropped the paint. As I progressed as a painter I realized we were not poor, not cheap, but very frugal as working class people and were still not fully recovered from the fear of the Great Depression of 1929-1939 which effectively ended only with the advent of the second World War and the required industrial expansion. But I knew little of this history at the time. 

I worked more during the Clemson years as the first year cost a bit over $1,000 plus uniforms, books and transportation which escalated each year. To compensate, my father did additional commercial work like churches and schools to increase income and keep me at Clemson. I once went outside a church to get something out of the truck. I was in all white painters coveralls and ran into two men with signs that were picketing my dad because he had left the painter’s union. We had words but they left me alone. Lesson one in life’s labor vs management issues. In total I suspect that my Clemson education cost about $8,000. The ensuing Navy education was better and more importantly, it was free.

At Officers Candidate School at Newport, RI, otherwise known as OCS, I was paid $85 per month which included free room and board. This was for four months until graduation. The following numbers are not given for any reason other than it shows historical monetary facts that, except for inflation, remain the same in today’s world.  

Don’s last government paycheck

On arrival at Pensacola, my pay was $222.30 per month plus $47.88 per month subsistence. When flight pay started it was $100 per month so that an Ensign student pilot got $370.18 per month. When we retired in 1976, by the grace of congress our pay was $1,655 plus $250 flight pay or $1,905 per month or $22,860 per year. The smartest thing I did was when a flight instructor walked into my BOQ room in Kingsville, TX selling mutual funds, was buy one. For a very long time $100 per month went into a mutual fund. I never saw the $100. It was an allotment from my pay straight to the fund. As a result, while a bachelor at Bermuda I could cash my mid month paycheck at the coffee mess. Remember, after the auto accident, some of my squadron mates said I would probably marry Doris to keep her from suing. As reported earlier...Yes she did, and the money was used for the honeymoon.

Our first house in Meridian in 1961 cost $13,700. Our last condo in Lighthouse Bay cost $160,000. Real estate and mortgage costs have made renting a better deal in most places. For many folks today, the elephant in the room is healthcare. Doris and I In have been most fortunate in that we have supplemental medical insurance that dovetails with Medicare plus a Navy pension. Now, in our old age, that is proving out to be another of the Navy’s legacy.  Another part of that legacy is that, like Elvis, after I leave the building, Doris gets my Social Security pay and has a paid up government annuity. She has earned it.  

Vacation Adventures

By Don
Mae and Rudy came to Meridian to see baby Jennifer and Doris and I took some leave and the opportunity to drive to Gatlinburg, TN and tour and hike the Smokies. This included the town which even then was quite touristy and we also drove to Cades Cove. In April of 1961, the Bay of Pigs Cuban invasion was of much interest. Later afterwards, one recent pilot’s arrival at Meridian said he had been on a carrier, ready to launch to provide close air support when president Kennedy abruptly called the whole thing off, leaving the Cuban CIA trained Brigade on the beach to be captured by Fidel Castro’s troops. Some of those Cuban soldiers were trained by the CIA on Useppa Island, about 35 minutes north of the Sanibel bridge by my Boston Whaler. Google "Useppa and the CIA.” Cuban volunteers would secretively arrive from MIA, catch a CIA van to a dock on Pine Island, and a boat to the secret island. The Demmers and the Lidke's once ate lunch there at a resort.

In October of 1962, we were again mesmerized by the TV reporting of the 13 day Cuban Missile Crisis and how close we came to a war with the USSR. This was watched on a little black and white TV in Meridian. My prior squadron was now flying missions, my prior base at Key West was full of mobilized troops and pilots, and it was quite obvious that "this was no drill.” Tensions were high, even at the Meridian Navy base as we all had friends involved or some that might be involved.

A year or so later, we were at Meridian on November 22, 1963 when Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy in Dallas and we watched, spellbound, as television came of age with his funeral. I will always remember Walter Cronkite’s coverage and his taking off his glasses and with a slight tear stating president Kennedy had been pronounced dead. The funeral was especially sad and poignant and demonstrated how to have an orderly changeover after such a tragedy.  

About two weeks later, with 14 days leave from the Navy, Doris, Jennifer and I drove our VW bug west towards California. It was now December. With President Kennedy’s death still on our minds, we were shocked to see and hear our windshield suddenly and loudly cracked outside of Dallas. At first I thought it was from a gunshot but we settled down and had the windshield replaced in Dallas and continued west. Strange that the first thing I thought of was a gunshot, but is was from a truck’s stone.

We went through Colorado Springs and the Rockies with Jennifer sometimes sleeping in the “well” behind the back seat. Our motel of choice was the Holiday Inn. Jennifer loved the crackers on the table. Doris wondered why they filled a glass of milk for a child to the brim. Jennifer kept calling me Don as if I was a stranger. Once I told Doris with a straight face…”It was nice to meet you both. Perhaps we can meet later.” That was for those that were listening to Jennifer who kept calling me Don.

But those Rocky Mountains... Little did we know that one day we would live in those mountains that were so great. We next climbed to almost 12,000 feet at Monarch Pass, viewed the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, went south at Montrose and again climbed to almost 12,000 feet at Red Mountain Pass, enjoyed Durango where we would some day take the train back to Silverton, visited Mesa Verde National Park and caught our breath. We worked with my many maps, including topographic maps for elevation, because the little bug was elevation sensitive. I planned it so that we would drive Monument Valley southwest at sunset. I had seen too many western movies to pass this up and the timing was critical. 

The roads I needed to get the sunset effect meant driving to Blanding and taking a gravel road southwest. This was December and the last road grader of the summer season had long gone. Doris still has fear when she thinks of this road. There were places where I drove as slow as possible with my head out of the driver’s side window so I could just keep the bug up against but not scraping a rock wall. On the right side Doris could look down and not see the road, only 600 feet straight down to the bottom. In the "well,” Jennifer slept. We made it just fine and the great stone monuments in the sun were great. The next day we did the Grand Canyon, Boulder Dam, and then to San Diego to our Navy friends. It was there that we experienced a minor earthquake. Jennifer woke up when a transom window fell open from the quake and spoke her first full sentence...”Window go boom.” 

We next visited relatives in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles and Mickey at Disneyland and discovered McDonalds. The drive back to Meridian was uneventful. After the Adak adventures and the trip to the Alaskan mainland we had our first California vacation and that included Kent. I got a trailer hitch and a camping trailer from Navy Alameda special services and hooked it up to the old Nash. On long trips it tended to overheat but I would not abuse the Squareback. We went to a California river campsite to swim, raft and watch a family of raccoons in a nest in a hollow tree above our camper. We toured a little of northern California and the coastal area but the squadron workload took up much of my/our time and we struggled to do much in the way of vacations. We did make it to Lake Tahoe in summer and winter where we rented a toboggan.

Arizona

By Doris

In moving to Arizona, we were part of a large group of “senior citizens” migrating to “over 55” communities, a phenomenon that was developed when Del Webb opened the first Sun City in Arizona in 1960. We chose Saddlebrooke, outside Tucson, at the foothills of the Catalina mountains. It was a beautiful setting in the desert, a new community with residents from many other places. It was easy to make friends through many activities, including golf.

The golf course was beautiful and I often went for walks along the paths when nobody was playing. Since Don was working, I joined the Ladies Nine Holers group, where golf was fun and lunch afterwards was more fun! One of the ladies insisted she knew me from somewhere, and when we compared places we had lived, it turned out she had worked in our vet’s office in New Orleans. As soon as she mentioned that, I remembered her. She and her husband became good friends. Don played golf with her husband and one summer we visited them at their summer place at Pine Top, which was a nice cool change when it was 100 degrees. Golf is a pretty safe sport but I managed to fall out of Martha’s golf cart and fracture my skull one day when she made a quick turn. There were no seat belts in golf carts, like there weren’t any in volkswagens in Bermuda. Our friendship continued when Martha insisted I had to receive an insurance settlement for my injury. Yes, there is golf cart insurance!

The lot surrounding our house was like a canvas for Don to create an oasis, and what a beautiful job he did. In order to get some native cactus plants we put on some dark clothes, got in our golf cart one night and went cactus napping in the desert. Kind of like taking pine branches from the National Forest in Colorado!

I was good at digging holes and moving stones, used instead of grass. We actually picked out the colored stones we wanted, kind of like picking out carpet from samples! I did not have a green thumb which one of my neighbors, Ruth, learned when she asked me to water her 100+ plants when she was out of town. Or maybe I lacked focus. When she returned, we were chatting about her trip when she casually asked “So, when did the petunias die?” Whoops! I guess I missed those. For awhile, I was known in the neighborhood as “Petunia.”

Grandma and Grandpa Lidke were now living in a retirement home in Tucson and we would see them frequently. Jennifer, Keith and now Kelly visited us from Colorado, and Grandma and Grandpa were so happy to be able to see and play with their first great granddaughter. On another trip, when Kelly was now walking, they visited Mae and Rudy at their apartment, where they could show her off to the residents. Unfortunately they never had the opportunity to know Laurie, whom they would have also bragged about!

One year over the Fourth of July, Jennifer, Keith, Kelly and now Laurie, came for a memorable visit. Our challenge was to make a place for Kelly and Laurie to sleep. Grandpa to the rescue!  We had a very large space which was designed for a washer and dryer, but ours lived in the garage, so Grandpa constructed bunk beds for them in the closet, a very cozy arrangement without doors.

We went to see our local fireworks at Saddlebrooke and had some Fourth of July decorations and placemats for our picnic supper, and we had Kelly for our waitress, as she had been for other meals, taking orders for drinks and food, with help from Laurie. I believe it was this trip when we went to the zoo on a day that a baby giraffe had been born and watched it struggling to stand. It was truly exciting, especially for the zookeepers because the gestation period for a giraffe is 15 months! Grandpa took the girls, as they soon became known, for a ride in the golf cart where they came upon a family of javelinas, Arizona’s wild pigs. Pretty exciting. A local author wrote a book about “the three little javelinas.” We used our community pool for a cool dip and visited a local park that had ducks, and every day was more fun than the last. I think it was during this visit that I became the “laughing grandma.” Laurie made me laugh one day when she made an observation about clothes. I hadn’t noticed, but apparently Kelly had been wearing shorts every day and Laurie was wearing dresses. Laurie’s question was “How come Kelly never wears a dress?” She was three years old and I didn’t have an answer! It was several years later that we moved to Florida so we wouldn’t miss these special every day moments!

Our neighborhood had a monthly ladies lunch group and we would pick a different local restaurant in the area. One of the most interesting ones was the tea room at Tohono Chul, which was in a beautiful botanical garden covering several acres in Tucson. It was a delightful oasis with wonderful food and a unique bookstore, The Haunted Book Shop. I was puzzled about the name, thinking maybe they only carried ghost stories. It turned out it was from a quote from a poet who was “haunted by the books he hadn’t read.” I could identify with that!

On a historic note, we lived several miles from Biosphere 2 that was developed with the idea of testing humans for future colonization of Mars. The biospherans were a group of scientists who agreed to live inside the biosphere, which looked like huge greenhouses, growing their own food and being self sufficient. There was an ocean and a rainforest. They were dependent upon the sun to support the growth of food, and the first year was difficult because there were far fewer sunny days than usual. They remained sealed inside for two years, survived on the food grown, and even wrote a cookbook. It was a matter of great public curiosity. It is now operated and controlled by the University of Arizona and is open for public tours. 

During our years in Arizona, Kent would visit on leave from the Navy, and we made a trip up to Mt. Lemmon with the Barbers once. Mt. Lemmon was high enough to be cool and it had its own small ski area. It always felt good to be among the pine trees, a change from the desert. 

Kent in Antarctica

Kent first became interested in computer animation when he wanted to preserve some video and photos from his tour in Antarctica. It was during this tour, where the Navy flew helicopters in support of the National Science Foundation, that he became acquainted with penguins, fascinating creatures. He worked hard at learning animation, some of it on leave in Arizona.  While still in the Navy he did the Flying Bubbas, his version of the Blue Angels, starring helicopter pilots.

Along with our new friends and neighbors at Saddlebrooke, our old friends Jerry and Rosemary lived nearby, and we played a lot of golf with them. On one occasion we went to Phoenix with them to see Jim and Jody Peterson, other friends from Breckenridge, where we played golf when the temperature was 110 degrees. Mad dogs and golfers go out in the noonday sun!

There are so many memories and stories from those years, but I will close with one about Jerry and Rosemary. They had five children. Rosemary worked in an office near her home. Rosemary was a very compassionate person. One of their sons was visiting at the time of an approaching wedding anniversary and Jerry and Dan planned a “surprise” for Rosemary. Their other four children were coming from Colorado. Jerry and Dan went to pick up Rosemary from work and as they were driving her home, they came upon a group of ragged looking people holding a sign that said, “Will work for food,” and Rosemary says “Oh, look  at those poor homeless people.” They got a little closer and here was Rosemary’s “surprise,” her “homeless” kids were there to celebrate with her!

We were now going to “retire” for a third time. We loved the mountains, enjoyed the desert, and now it was time to go to the beach in Florida! I have always loved the beach!

Saddlebrooke, Part Two

By Don

I enjoyed working at the golf car store. Much of the time I was the only one there, working, selling, delivering and answering the phone. One day I was under a golf car, wiring it for lights, and did not initially realize that a couple was in the shop until I heard the woman's remark disparaging the color of a car on display. So, from under the car came a voice with a German accent that said, “Ve also have one der color of a french vine, but I vould suggest a a Chablis.”  I rolled out from under the golf car and made a sale. 

Another time I got a call from an angry customer complaining that it was an emergency, his golf car would not run, and it was my fault because when he called on Sunday, no one was working and because of that, he missed his sacrosanct %&% Tee Time. I drove over to his house. I found corrosion on his battery cables, a result of his ignorance relative to keeping them clean, and read him the riot act. At the time, the Iraq war was in full "shock and awe.” I told him that if my wife was in a car accident, that was an emergency, if my son who was a Navy pilot in Antarctica was missing, that was an emergency, and I did not like his attitude. To some golfers, usually retired, sometimes wealthy, nothing in life was more important than a favorable tee time, his golf handicap, and the quality of his golf car. 

Another time I was in the middle of talking to a couple, was interrupted by a phone call, and excused myself. The customers heard some of the incoming call. It was a man selling workmen's insurance and he asked about “our” health plan. I told him we had one and it was hanging on the wall next to the phone. I explained that it was a first aid kit and if I hurt myself at work I would be taken home to drip on my garage floor to prove that it was not work related. He hung up, the couple laughed, and I made another sale. I even sold a car to the former second highest army general, now retired. He told me he wanted a windshield on the back of the car. I told him I would put one on. He repeatedly told me about the windshield, giving me the impression his army experience was that not everyone listened to him. The next time he commented about the windshield I told him…”It’s okay General, I used to be an Admirals’ pilot, when delivered it will have a rear windshield.” He smiled and we got along fine.

Another time I was making a delivery with a golf car on the truck’s trailer when a Moma Quail led about ten babies across the road. I braked and swerved but ran over tail end Charlie who did not make it. I felt bad for the rest of the day, consoling myself with the rationalization, “That was why they had so many babies, what’s one death.” I made deliveries to women whose husbands passed away and left them with a big car. In one case, a widow did not know how to drive. So I sold a golf car as her daughter’s solution, delivered it  and showed her how to charge and drive it.

Doris and I had a Cushman golf car. Cushman was known for making motor scooters but made a few golf cars. I rehabbed one from 1968 and it became ours. It was a classic and ran well but was slower than most. Two men going to play golf usually alternated taking one or the others golf car. Speed was usually a requirement but not for our classic oldie. I told a WWII vet from across the street that he drove his golf car as if he was over Chittagong, in his B-24 making a bomb run. It was better going fast in the heat because we took our hats off going downhill for the chill. There were rattlesnakes among the cacti along the gold course. Sometimes one left his ball to the snake rather than reach to pick it up. I played 18 holes about twice a week and loved the game, but found its major characteristic to be it made for too much humility. That can be tough on the ego. Fortunately, you only remember the good shots.

I usually made one solo hike each week up a nearby mountain or on another trail. Another neighbor chastised me for going on a four hour hike alone. I explained that I went alone for the...wait for it...solitude. It was peaceful, being up a thousand feet and looking down at where we lived. Other times Doris and I hiked the many trails in the Tucson area, across streams and through areas of trees and shrubbery not usually associated with the so-called desert. 

Every few years, just the right amount of rare spring rain came along and parts of the desert went wild with blooming flowers. Most cactus plants also bloomed and there were many animals and birds when one just stopped making noise, sat down, and took it all in. Of course one had to account for the summer heat. We bought the Honda in Colorado which did not require any A/C. I told Doris I would put a little rotating rubber fan in front of the steering wheel. Doris, doubtful, me certain, said let us go shopping. About three stops later the steering wheel was too hot to touch. It lasted about a week and we got the car air conditioned. Speaking of A/C, the Saddlebrooke night temperatures were about 8-9 degrees less than PHX which made for a much lower electric bill which was from a local co-op.  We still get small annual checks from them.

Besides many flowering plants, each with their own drip system, we started a garden. We had tomatoes, some early lettuce, and green peppers. This too was watered automatically. We had a bobcat visit our yard at night, swatting a cactus that had a birds nest. It also plopped down outside our lanai one morning. We had a Moma Javalina and three little ones cavort in our yard one night and I shooed them away and down the street in my slippers and boxer shorts at 2 AM. Sadly, no photos were made of this event.  

I think we could have stayed in Saddlebrooke much longer than we did but circumstances have a habit of being overtaken by events.  So it is on to...I cannot remember. I am getting to the short term memory...Could it be Florida?

Arizona, First Retirement

By Don

I call this event our first retirement because we left the Navy, were years away from Social Security income, and were no longer employed. We had vacationed in Arizona and had dear friends that retired at Sun City from Breckenridge. They were near Tucson and we had visited them. We preferred TUS over PHX for the nearby Mt. Lemon and the greater spread of high and low temperatures. It just had a better feel than sprawling PHX. But this move would be very different in a lot of ways.

Jennifer was now graduated from Drake and was teaching at an elementary school on board the USAF Academy at Colorado Springs. She met Keith Barber and they were soon married. Kent finished flight training at Pensacola and was due to get his wings. After the wedding where I gave the bride away, Jennifer and Keith began life in Colorado Springs. I went to Pensacola and pinned an old set of wings on Kent and in effect, gave my son away to the Navy.  

After those two teary events, it was time to find a place to live in Arizona. This search led us to a retirement place about 20 miles due north of Tucson called Saddlebrooke. We found home prices were a bit above our now nonexistent pay grade but we put money down on some property and chose the smallest model available. We needed a mortgage and we were unemployed. The Navy job security was kaput. Fortunately, our friend who had previously retired to nearby Sun City now had a home watch company. He wrote me a letter on letterhead stationary that allegedly gave me a job as his assistant at his real Sun City Home Watch Company. I was even invited to the non existent company Christmas party. We got the mortgage and the sale was later closed when the house was completed. 

The next step, as usual, was to put the Breckenridge house on the market, using our realtor friends where Doris still had a job. We hoped for a sale before the Saddlebrooke house was completed. We had a lot of experience in the buy-sell or sell-buy act, courtesy of the Navy. Fortunately, it worked as hoped. We made a bit of money on the sale and now there was the Navy pension. 

Meanwhile Jennifer and Keith moved to Western Colorado where they had teaching jobs and Kent was soon to go to Antarctica to fly Helos. The family nest was empty, except for the packers. We packed and packed, box after box. We rented a large truck with a car trailer and loaded up. Hooked to the truck trailer was a semi-new Honda. The Honda replaced a bunch of prior vehicles. The red VW bus had earlier been traded for a used VW pop top camper. Doris drove the VW camper full of boxes and plants and I drove the truck and trailer that got 10 miles per gallon...downhill. In Tucson we lived for a while in a furnished apartment, the furniture being in a storage facility. Then the house was completed and we once again moved. We had the aforementioned Navy pension but Social Security was a few years away. So now I had to find a job.

I found one masquerading as a golf car mechanic. Everyone at al the AZ retirement and golfing communities drove a golf car or cart. I rehabbed old golf cars and sold new ones at a place owned by a PHX golf pro. It was a perfect fit and I worked there until Social Security came along. While waiting for SS, not the Nazi kind, we landscaped our rather large property, digging hundreds of holes and planting hundreds of bushes, flowers, cactus and trees. Grass was verboten and we dug in underground feeder lines to each plant where each plant had a tiny valve that dripped water according to a timer. Gravel was the thing vice grass and our chosen color was apache brown. Little did I know that even in AZ, water could make everything a green jungle, requiring maintenance.

Wait for AZ part two where Don and Doris do golf, plant a garden, go on camping trips in the pop top...alone, and make new friends. 

Breckenridge Family Stories

By Doris

Grandpa Rudy and Grandma Mae were a big part of our family activities, driving from Colorado Springs through South Park and over Hoosier Pass for holidays and school events. Grandma never came empty handed, sometimes making a bakery stop, other times with homemade goodies. They moved from NJ to Colorado Springs when we retired to Breckenridge so they could watch Jennifer and Kent continue to grow up. Sound familiar? I am so glad we were able to enjoy those special times with them. 

We have some interesting stories involving cars and driving experiences, starring both Jennifer and Kent. Don taught both of them to drive, and particularly how to drive in snow, from skidding on ice to climbing hills in low gear. Our cars, mostly Volkswagens, were all standard shift cars, not automatic. It was all I drove for years and driving automatic cars still doesn’t feel like real driving to me. One night Jennifer was going to play practice, got in the Square back, and backed into the van parked behind her, knocking off the spare tire mounted on the front. When she came in to tell us I had to try really hard to not laugh. I had an immediate picture in my mind that struck me funny then and it still does!  

Our Volkswagens were not known for their heaters and Jennifer sometimes had to drive with big down mittens, holding an ice scraper in one hand to keep the inside windshield clear. One episode involving Kent happened when he was near Swan Mountain Road on Highway 6 and Keystone, when one of the back wheels on the square back came off, and he managed to skid to a stop.  Don took his tool box, Kent had the wheel, and they put it back on.

Six weeks after Kent got his license he got a speeding ticket on the way home from Frisco. Don had told him that in dealing with law enforcement the only correct way was to say “yes sir, no sir.” The trooper was so impressed with Kent’s responses that he explained to him how to cop a plea in court so he would get fewer points on his license. This was important because at 16 years of age you could easily lose your license with a certain point count with another minor offense. It was an experience for Kent to go to court and go before the judge and learn that fines also had to be paid in cash. My takeaway from the episode was that every teenager should have a point count on their license to slow them down!

My proudest driving moment came when Jennifer, Kent and I were returning from a trip to Denver. There is an intersection there called the “mousetrap” where you have three choices: one to Ft. Collins, one to Colorado Springs and one to the mountains. There was no sign to just Breckenridge, and with my notoriously poor sense of direction, I had to do some deductive reasoning and make the right choice at 60 miles an hour. As we made it successfully through the mousetrap, I got a round of applause from the back seat!

Kent was on the ski team at Summit High which meant getting to school very early on ski race days to travel by bus to the site. Summit High had one section where the building was round, and one morning Kent arrived a little too quickly and ran his car into the building, which has left me with a very funny picture in my mind! He did win a race that day and it was suggested that he tell us that first, and then break the news about hitting the building!

When Jennifer went to Colorado College in Colorado Springs and would come home for the weekend on occasion, I would insist that we follow her over the pass in snow conditions to make sure she made it. It was too easy to slide off the road and prior to cell phones, it could be hard to locate someone. She always carried a down sleeping bag in the car. When she transferred to Drake in Des Moines, Don gave her instructions one day on how to fix the starter on the car, all by phone. The guys living in the house next door were pretty impressed!

Our outdoor fun was also cross country skiing and one time near Christmas we were out skiing on National Forest land. Summit County was comprised of a lot of National Forest acres. I thought it would be nice to take some of the pine branches for decoration, and as I broke one off, Jennifer informed me that it was against the law to cut branches on National Forest Service land. But I took them anyway!

There are so many stories to tell, but we will leave it to Jennifer and Kent to tell some of theirs.

Jennifer and Kent both had a number of jobs growing up. Businesses in town always needed help. Jennifer worked in a sporting goods store, another store operated by our duplex neighbors, a summer day camp, and at the Courthouse as part of a program with the school. The courthouse was an interesting place because she came in contact with a lot of local people and had quite a bit of responsibility and learned a lot.

Kent had a job with the Whale’s Tail restaurant, Goods (a clothing store), and the movie theatre in town. The theatre job involved cleaning the theatre every day before the night movie. A movie story about Kent was pretty funny. Before he worked there, I gave him money to go see a movie. He had money to cover the ticket and snacks. He was to telephone when the movie ended and we would pick him up. At about 10 o’clock the phone rang and the operator asked, “Will you accept a collect call from Kent Lidke?” He had used up all of his money, and problem solver that he was, he called collect! Another job he had was shoveling snow off steps at a condominium development. This was dependent on when it snowed. Jennifer and Kent had quite the resumes by the time they were 18 years old!

We decided to get a golden retriever following our bad experience with Baron, our last German Shepherd. Sandy was the easiest dog we ever had, with the sweetest disposition. Jennifer took Sandy to be put down when she was home from college because Don and I couldn’t bear to. She had surgeries to remove growths from her mouth. She was followed by another golden, Casey, who when he was close to the end of his life, went on a tour of the local hotel kitchens. We let him out one night and then couldn’t find him. At two in the morning we got a call from one of the hotels saying they had Casey, so we gratefully “retrieved” him! 

Both dogs always retrieved our newspapers for us so we didn’t have to go out in the snow. Sandy would sit out on the deck and the squirrels would be hoarding nuts, some pine cones falling on her, but she never looked up! We all loved those dogs.

When Jennifer had her first teaching job in Colorado Springs, she stayed with Grandma and Grandpa, but later when she had her own apartment she got Jazper, a little Sheltie. When she would visit with him it was great fun to see him with Casey. For some reason Jazper never liked Kent and would growl at him, no matter how hard he tried to be friends. One day as Kent was coming down the stairs and Jazper was growling again, Kent looked at him and said “You would make a very good hat!”

Time marched on and Jennifer and Kent had lives away from Breckenridge — college, teaching and the Navy called. Don told Kent that if he joined the Air Force, he would disown him. He soon left his lift attendant job and drove to Pensacola to meet his Marine Gunnery Sergeant for close order drill and other fun and games before actual flight training. 

Jennifer met Keith at Colorado Springs and we were soon planning a wedding in the Springs. Keith had been working at the Four Seasons in Colorado Springs and it was a perfect setting for the reception. The exchange of vows was at a beautiful church where they were members. It was a pleasure to meet Keith’s family who came from Illinois. Brother Gary was the best man. Keith’s dad, a professional photographer did the wedding photos. All of Keith’s family knew how to fall quickly into place for pictures from years of practice. My father and stepmother came from California, and of course Grandpa and Grandma Mae were there. Jennifer was beautiful in my wedding dress, which she redesigned to make it uniquely hers, and her attendants were in beautiful blue, her favorite color and mine too! I spent a lot of time with Grandma Mae shopping for her dress. She was very concerned that we wouldn’t be able to find one to fit. On a clothing note, older ladies usually shopped for half sizes, which were not particularly stylish. Fortunately the petite category, a recent designation in clothing, fit the bill, and we found the perfect dress for her. I realized it was very important for her to have a pretty dress because Jennifer was special to her, and she was so happy she was able to be at her wedding.

At the time we were planning Jennifer’s wedding, Kent was in the Navy going through basic officer training. The date set was so far in the future we foresaw no conflict for him. Unfortunately he developed pneumonia during basic training, but it was missed by the Navy, and he kept plugging along, until they finally discovered it. During basic training any recruit can drop out at any point, and many do, but Kent persevered. He was in a unique position, between a rock and a hard place, which is often the case in the Navy. Because of the delay in his training caused by the pneumonia, for a period of time it was touch and go as to whether he would finish without a conflict of dates. There was the possibility that his ceremony in Pensacola and Jennifer’s wedding would fall on the same day! Fortunately it turned out to be a week earlier and he arrived in time. It was wedding jitters for the parents of the bride!

Another life changing event happened in 1982, the year Kent graduated from high school and left for RPI. In August I developed Type One diabetes, often known as juvenile diabetes. I was 46 years old! Kent pretty much got himself ready to leave home and drive from Colorado to New York State, driving the 1966 VW Square back, which we purchased upon leaving Adak because Kent had been born and the VW bug was too small (the same car he drove into the school and the one Jennifer used backing into the van). That car had a long interesting life!

Jennifer and Keith eventually settled in Eckert and Kent began his eight year Navy career. One tour of duty took him to Antarctica (at his request). We all celebrated Christmas in Breckenridge that year and one of his gifts was electric socks!

In writing these stories I found that each one triggered ten more, but I will conclude with this final one. Kent was home on leave, Grandma and Grandpa were living in Colorado Springs and Jennifer and Keith were living in Eckert. We arranged for all of us to get together at Jennifer and Keith’s. Don, his folks, and I drove in one car and Kent left an hour behind us in his car, which was now a BMW with many thousands of miles on it (the squareback was history). Awaiting us in the kitchen at Eckert was a malfunctioning dishwasher, which Jennifer happened to mention. Don sprang into action and dismantled the dishwasher in the middle of the kitchen floor, because any broken thing is a challenge to be fixed immediately. Kent arrived in the middle of this scene, looked around and by way of greeting said “Okay, so who is the dummy who told Dad the dishwasher didn’t work?” And our mini-family reunion was under way!

Settling Down in Breckenridge

By Don

Many people, including my mother and father, when they first looked at Breckenridge, saw old mining tailings, disheveled buildings, and a quaint but poor town that was waiting for a blood transfusion. Summit County as a whole was even much less attractive with the exception of the gorgeous topography. At the time of our arrival, I read that the three counties in the US with the highest level of per capita education were Los Alamos county NM, Pitkin County CO and Summit County CO. I later read that people in Summit County had the highest longevity in the US. Must be something good going on here. Just prior to our discovery of the town, with the advent of Ralston Purina Dog food money and oil money, Keystone and Copper Mountain ski areas joined Breckenridge, now owned by Aspen Ski Corp to make a major destination for winter sports. I had hopes but little did I know that we had bet on a winner. So let’s see what was really there. Let’s meet these people.

We found the people to be a very diverse group. There were the old timers like Frank and Theta Brown that lived on Main Street.  Doris asked Theta what it was like to live on Main Street in the good old days. It was understood that in the 1930s, huge gold boats or dredges navigated up the Blue River and through the town, working shifts all day and night. Theta said that “It was noisy…the trucks, the snow plows, the dredge.” She was born in that house on Main Street. Apparently, the dredge on the river passed by her house within 50 feet and every time a shift changed, the noise quit for a few moments and everyone in town woke up. There were late arrivals that opened up restaurants for the skiers. Ski shops appeared, condominiums were built, and people came to fill the new jobs. Some middle-aged old timers still ran the town council, including the mayor. Change was afoot but at the time we were too busy with the business to see it all coming.

Young people came, some as ski bums or to become lift attendants, living six or more to an apartment. There were dropouts from city rat race jobs that became bartenders or realtors, or found other more peaceful jobs away from city pressures. There were even “hippies" that lived on National Forest land in tents and abandoned cabins who managed to stay both summer and winter. It was common to know a lift attendant who had a Master’s degree and loved his life in Breck. Or a college graduate who now ran a business cleaning condominiums. Or a former NY stock broker that came west for a change of life.

We met them all and were assimilated into their ever-changing environment and its many coexisting cultures. To each his own, seemed to be the way. As a retired Navy pilot, I was slowly accepted into this diversity, along with Doris and the kids. There was humor everywhere. The wife of a well to do family complained to me about her feeling self conscious driving her Mercedes into town among the pick-up trucks with golden retrievers in the back, each with a red bandana around its neck. She laughed when I suggested she put a plow on the Mercedes. We went to an ecumenical Christmas service at the Protestant Father Dyer church with Catholic friends. We heard our Catholic friends behind us mimicking us Protestants saying to each other…”What do we do now, read or sing? When do they do bells?” That's ecumenical humor for you.

We got to know an ex-Marine who was the minister of the Father Dyer Church. He was making a cellar in a church building and needed help. I showed up to rake concrete as it came through a cellar window in a chute. Next to me was an old Norwegian and former underground patriot during the Nazi occupation. He was much older than I, very fit, and worked twice as fast. He passed me once and I said, "Olaf, I hate you.” Olaf laughed and asked me how old I was. Besides Olaf who represented the allies, we had a cook in the Ore Bucket restaurant that had been a wartime Messerschmidt gunner in the Luftwaffe. Now that’s ecumenical and geopolitical camaraderie. When we needed a vacation, a couple running a t-shirt shop told us to use their condo in Phoenix. They were repaid with a case of toilet paper and other items from J-J Supply.

A year later I got the Red White and Blue volunteer fire department to bring their multi-story bucket fire truck to the church. Wearing an old flight suit, I repainted the steeple. When asked why I would go up that high and do that, I told everyone “I was just trying to get closer to God.” I really did it for the minister who was my friend.

I first met that minister one cold day on the ski slopes. The businessmen, including a toilet paper delivery boy, would get a free half day pass from the ski area every Thursday and young and old would “boom” the hill for two hours and retire to the bar in the Bergenhof for whatever. A stranger joined me on the ski lift chair. It was a near 20 below chill factor. I smiled and said “Jesus Christ, it’s cold.” It was Al Brown, the minister. I did not attend church but Al and his wife also became friends.

Don throwing toilet paper

Breckenridge parades, summer and winter, started whenever they were ready. We decorated our Chevy panel truck with a huge chicken wire snowman that was wrapped in toilet paper and made a very large arch made of toilet paper at the back of the truck with a sign mimicking McDonalds that said "Over a Million Served.” Double clutch Doris drove the Chevy. I was on top with New Orleans style throws that I tossed to the masses, some unwashed. Our throws were toilet paper rolls. We always followed our realtor friend whose Jeep was towing an outhouse with him standing in the outhouse wearing a rubber mask of the current president. There were three or four of these parades a year and the snowman was kept in our warehouse between parades. The parade featured other “floats.” A yellow backhoe with funny people in the bucket, a flat bed truck where known characters were using an axe and a chopping block to cut off the heads of rubber chickens, a dignitary on a horse, namely the only black man in Breck and the Democratic whip in the state legislature…to whom I loaned my sword for affect and best of all…the famous Breckenridge marching folding chair drill team that sometimes included Kent. The winter parade was called Ullr Fest and yes, some Schnaps were consumed. 

Doris reinforced her mantra of never turning down a lunch and we ate many a lunch in town. In the summer, a phone would ring around 11 am and someone would ask if we were up for golf, with which we had recently become vaguely familiar. On went the answering machine and off we went, usually to a nine hole course at Leadville or Buena Vista which had trout streams running throughout. We once met a fisherman with a nice fish and naturally asked him, “What club did you use?” We backpacked with the kids, camping at a pond hours away. We vacationed on road trips using the bus and went to Lake Powell each May to spend a week on a 50 foot houseboat with ten other people. I could never understand why my bathroom number was 28. It was home alone time for Jennifer and Kent. That was unwinding time for the hectic winter business season of occasional seven day work weeks. We said, “What happens at Lake Powell stays at Lake Powell." Was there drinking? Well, the toughest job of unloading supplies from the cars to the boat was finding enough native bearers to move the booze cartons.

After two years in the duplex, we bought a house being built a half a block away and put the duplex on the market. It sold fast and we made a winter move, as we called it, by flexible flyer sleds through a path made by our big snow thrower. We also used the VW bus. Locals helped move the piano. Winters were usually fun. After a big dump I would snow throw the driveway and front walk, then drive the snow thrower up a ramp into the bus, go to work and clear the snow from the J-J supply loading dock. Sometimes the snowfall required that I chain up just to get to work and keep the VW  bus chained up until noon when the plows were done. We sometimes accomplished more just getting to work than we did during the day. JJ Supply sent Jennifer to Colorado College and Drake University and Kent to RPI. Both kids found local jobs, the last of Kent’s was being a lift attendant. He left his lift attendant job to join the Navy and departed for Pensacola. Then we sold the business and I worked as dispatcher and driver for a Denver airport to Breckenridge transportation company for the last three years while Doris was a receptionist and secretary at our good friends’ real estate office.

Breckenridge, Town and Culture

By Don

We knew a few things about Breck from summer trips there camping and staying at a motel and later at our trailer-like house at #17 Vacation Village. There were still three old ramshackled buildings on Main Street that were from the 1800s and some roads had yet to be paved, such as in Warriors’ Mark where we bought our duplex.

The town hall was in an old brick building not too far from the Summit County Seat offices. The county was run by a manager and elected county commissioners and the town had a mayor and a town council. There was an old post office, the Breckenridge Inn motel, two gas stations, a small grocery store, and a drug store. There were about ten bars or bar-pub combinations, some of which served sit down food. There was a newspaper which served the town and Summit County. Breck had an elementary school but the rest of the schooling was done nine miles north in Frisco. The mayor of Breck was the owner of the “midtown" gas station and the fire chief was a paid position for a large group of volunteers. 

About 85% of the town economy was derived from the Breckenridge Ski Corporation which was not affiliated with any other company. There was no snow making anywhere in Colorado at this time so the ski season varied with the amount of November and December snowfall and the spring thaw. This meant that most businesses had to make their money in about four to five months to survive. There was a new set of businesses and a hotel that got its start from money put up by some airline pilots and rumor had it that Breck was close to being profitable year round. It was safe to say that the 1976 ski area was on a very tight budget for operations and development compared to a few years later when it was bought by 20th Century Fox.

We were continually introduced to old time Beckenridge people by our realtor and his partner, the county treasurer and his wife, the town clerk, and the mayor, who was elected by seven votes and was known in some circles as landslide Peterson. At this point we were ensconced in the duplex. An attic room was created for Kent’s bedroom, Jennifer had her own room, as did we. In front of the duplex was a giant old rusted eight foot wide boiler that once powered a sawmill in the 1800s. We thought it rather unique as did visitors passing by. I even made up stories to tell them that the Reverend Father Dyer, a famous local historical figure known to many, once lived nearby and operated the sawmill. Some homes featured a small rusty old push rail car in their front yards from the old days, we had our boiler.

I began making the rounds looking for a business. My retirement papers said I was suited to be in the airline industry but there was no airport. We looked at a waffle shop in the new hotel area but could not fathom how to make money after breakfast when everyone went skiing. We talked seriously with a couple of airline pilots that were going to have a startup. They needed a manager. It was to be a management company for people to rent various rooms during ski season. But I envisioned them at 30,000 feet and Doris and I answering angry questions from renters wanting fresh towels. We looked at the Phillips 66 gas station and even met with the company's regional director in our duplex living room. I told him the station was an eyesore, needed paint, paving and other things or my name would not go over the door. He left in a huff. The station property was later sold and a ski town business appeared. I went to the president of the bank of Breckenridge to ask him what he knew of business opportunities. He said he would put the word out about me.

Then Jim Landslide Peterson, the mayor, knocked on our door and made us a proposition. Doris and I bought his condominium supply business, called J-J Supply which had followed his midtown gas station sale and we were in business with a mom and pop shop. He taught us what was what, I became a delivery boy, and Doris ran the office in an old ramshackle warehouse. Jim became a fast and great friend and became the first and newly paid supervisor of the Summit County EMT volunteers.

A few months into the business, disaster struck. The ski area remained closed due to no snow.  J-J Supply business fell way off and then the VW bus blew its engine. The town and its business was devastated. No ski area, no income for many. But as some said...people will always need toilet paper. It is recession proof.

I dutifully made deliveries in Rudy’s old 1950 Chevrolet panel truck which I had earlier driven from New Jersey. Denver VW put in a new engine and the snow finally came around Christmas and we lived happily ever after. I became well known as a toilet paper delivery boy and Doris was a whiz in the office. We took orders by phone and via a phone message recorder. We eventually delivered over a thousand cases of toilet paper a year. At 46 pounds a case, plus hundreds of other supplies like Scotties, paper towels, light bulbs, and 50 pound kegs of rock salt, there was no chance for me to get fat. And this was done on and through snow packed roads and drifts.

We had improvised, adapted, and endured. We were on our way in our new town. Before this we had never had any tap roots while the Navy moved us around. Neither had the kids. Rudy thought what I did in buying the business was less than good. My mother wondered why we came to such a town and put Jennifer into high school and Kent into another elementary school. We were convinced that both Jennifer and Kent would enjoy and grow intellectually as big fish in a small pond. Meanwhile, my dad said I paid too much for the duplex, thought poorly of my suggestion that he should invest in town real estate, and went back to their new house in Colorado Springs.  

Within two years, we were on our feet making a good profit. The ski area got snow making and the town was booming. The town which had about 3,000 people in 1976, grew so that during ski season, there was lodging for 35,000. We bought a new condominium type warehouse, J-J Supply moved into the new building, we vacationed in May in Cancun, and the business put Jennifer and Kent through college.

There is more to come about Breck, some of it very funny.  I wanted to set up the town for you and what we did as military retirees.

New Orleans the Second Time Around

By Doris

New Orleans, 1973.  Here we were, the second time around.  It was the same in many ways; the same Navy, different assignment, same development, different house, same schools, but now the schools were integrated. The student body and the staff were integrated.

Jennifer was now in junior high, which had a large number of students from “the projects,” a totally new socioeconomic group.  This was integration “up close and personal.” At least one student coveted Jennifer’s lunch and would manage to steal it. We considered putting hot pepper in the peanut  butter sandwich to catch the culprit, but then thought better of it. Jennifer made some new friends, one of whom was a Jehovah’s Witness. The most unusual aspect of their faith to us was that they didn’t celebrate birthdays or holidays in their family. There are Bible-based reasons for their beliefs which are respected. Their friendship expanded our horizons.

In elementary school Kent’s third grade teacher was Mrs. Walker, a wonderful black teacher. She took it in stride when Kent corrected her concerning the land bridge that at one time existed between Russia and Alaska. After all, who would know this better than an eight year old boy born in the Aleutian Islands? Upon meeting Mrs. Walker for the first time at an open house, she greeted me with “I have REALLY been wanting to meet you!”

Our good relationship proceeded from there. She was an excellent teacher and sensitive to the needs of each child. She once said the old folks had a saying “that one walked this way before,” with a knowing glance in talking about Kent. We benefited greatly from knowing her. Another part of my cultural enlightenment.

A girl from Mississippi moved in down at the end of our block, another Jennifer, who was Jennifer’s age. She had beautiful blond curls and spoke with with a thick Southern drawl. I was shocked when I met her mother, who had no accent at all. Turned out Jennifer “from the block” was born in Mississippi and lived there until they moved to New Orleans. Her folks were from middle America and her dad’s job took them to Mississippi and then to New Orleans.  Brings to mind the “nature vs. nurture” discussion, in this case outside influences vs. the home environment.

Kent had a new friend, Robby, who noticed that I was “directionally challenged!” The Harlem Globetrotters came to town. They were a talented black basketball team who could do all kinds of impossible tricks with a basketball in their very entertaining version of a basketball game. Because Don had to fly at the last minute, we invited Robby to join us. This involved me driving across the big Mississippi River bridge to the arena in downtown New Orleans. We made it there and had a lot of fun at the game.  And then it was time to drive home, and I could not find the way to the Mississippi River bridge! As I mentioned, this is a very BIG bridge, hard to miss!. In my efforts to get there I went around in circles for awhile. Robby’s voice came to me from the back seat,  “Mrs. Lidke, we passed that gas station before!” Finally the bridge loomed up ahead and we made it back across the mighty Mississippi.

The best way to learn about a school is to volunteer in it, so I helped out in the office. One day the principal asked if I could do an emergency subbing job in a first grade classroom. Undaunted, I said yes, after all, I once led a brownie troop. The teacher had left some work, which the kids finished in quick order, and then I lost control. It was bedlam, kids needing to go to the bathroom, running around, one little boy who was on crutches using them as a weapon, and then the lights went out! I turned around and one little guy, who was the culprit, says “that “bees” what Miss Brown do when we “bees” bad!  It was time to call for help, the principal to the rescue! My teaching days were over.

In September our second New Orleans hurricane adventure began. Jennifer had a slumber party for her birthday on a Friday night, and for added excitement, we were keeping an eye on the approaching hurricane. By Saturday morning I had made my decision --we were leaving before its arrival. Don had already evacuated with a plane, so I packed up Jennifer, Kent, Chris, the family photos, and the insurance policies, and we were off, across the mighty Mississippi River bridge again. My plan was to go west to Baton Rouge, when the radio announced that the hurricane was veering in that direction. The decision was made for me, we would go north instead to Hattiesburg, MS, a good choice. Unfortunately, many other people chose it too and there were no available motel rooms. So now it was on to Jackson MS, with a stop to eat. We tied Chris to a tree while we went into the restaurant to eat. He expressed his displeasure loudly!

At one point during this odyssey, Jennifer announces excitedly “We’re having an adventure just like the Bobbsey twins!” Yes, we were indeed, and so was Mom, who had never driven a car by herself further than 25 miles around towns where we lived! We found a room in Jackson, made contact with Don who was very happy to hear Chris bark and learn we were okay. The hurricane missed us and we returned safely the next day, encountering only a huge bug hatch that covered the windshield. A great ending, but there was an even greater longer lasting effect; I now felt empowered to drive anywhere. To quote the Helen Reddy song “I am woman hear me roar, in voices too loud to ignore, no one’s ever gonna keep me down again!”

One day a newspaper ad caught my attention. H&R Block was offering an income tax course, with possible employment during the upcoming tax season. It seemed like a good idea to enroll; looking to the future and the possibility of having a business of our own, I signed up. It was a detailed course and I was offered a position at its conclusion. I was now going to be a working mother, wearing two hats!  

Clients would bring their records to our office and we would do their return as they sat at our desk. We worked using adding machines; there were no computers. After three days I concluded this was not for me, but then they offered me the job of receptionist. It was a perfect fit and I loved it. It involved interviewing the client and taking down all of their personal information! What could be better, everyone was a story and you learned their marital status, their income, how many dependents they had, and where they lived. Best of all I then passed them along to a tax preparer to do the hard work. It would have been a perfect job for a young single girl! It was a good experience in returning to work and it only lasted through tax season. I learned that Women’s Lib and this working mom thing needed more study. Job sharing at home would be a necessity for this new concept to advance!

During our stays in New Orleans we were pretty healthy. We had one bout with the Hong Kong flu over Christmas break. Jennifer and Kent didn’t leave the house for ten days and Don had a fever that had him hallucinating and seeing things on the ceiling. Grandma Mary and Grandpa Rudy had come for a Christmas visit and were not sick, at least until after they left for Florida. We think perhaps Grandma was a carrier, so in family lore she became Typhoid Mary!

We had three hospitalizations for Jennifer and Kent at the Public Health Hospital, the place for tonsillectomies for military families.  New Orleans was a strep belt and we traded strep infections up and down the block. Strep throat was the disease du jour, so both Jennifer and Kent had their tonsils removed at different times. Jennifer was first and told Kent about a really BIG needle they used. We had a hard time holding Kent down when his turn came!

While we were in Adak I noticed that one of Jennifer’s eyes seemed to wander when she was tired. Upon returning to the lower 48, doctors watched it and in New Orleans it was decided to do corrective surgery to tighten the muscle that was the cause; apparently both eyes needed treatment. Jennifer had a friend, Dawn, who lived on our street, another Navy child who needed the identical surgery! They were hospital mates at the same time! Many years later when Jennifer needed surgery for cornea replacement because she had kerataconus (where the cornea tries to go cone shaped) she was an old hand at it.

Also while there Kent was tested for allergies, which resulted in weekly allergy shots. I would administer them but I didn’t have the right touch. He always wanted to go to the doctor’s office and have Bertha do them! Upon moving to Breckenridge we were able to discontinue the shots. I guess he wasn’t allergic to pine trees, just grass!

To end on a note of a fun trip, when Grandma and Grandpa Lidke visited we went on a Mississippi River trip on an old fashioned paddle wheeler to a Louisiana plantation home. It was a Fourth of July picnic on the grounds of an old plantation, with a beautiful home in the process of being restored. The event was a benefit for the plantation and we enjoyed a box lunch of fried chicken. It was a taste of history and a step back in time.

Our Navy days were coming to a close in New Orleans, and we would be moving from a house below sea level, protected by a levee, to Breckenridge in the Colorado mountains at 9600 feet, surrounded by snow capped peaks towering over us at 14,000 feet!  

New Orleans, Second Tour

By Don

Okay, it is almost the end of the game. The orders back to New Orleans from Nebraska means we are almost finished with the Navy. It’s the two minute warning. This is undoubtedly getting close to retirement. Once again, we packed up and sent our furniture to New Orleans. 

We all drove to New Orleans in the new red and white VW bus without Christian who had passed away. We again holed up in a motel and went house hunting with our old real estate agent from Comet Street. She got us a house on Mediamolle Street in our old neighborhood. The furniture arrived, we moved in, and NOLA life number two began. Jennifer and Kent now went to integrated schools. We had some concerns despite our support for public schools. There was some theft of lunches but our red line was never crossed -- Jennifer was never threatened with bodily harm. That would have meant changing to a private school. It takes generations to change culture and we would see it all. South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana culture would eventually change for the better, but not completely at this writing.

My job involved scheduling all the reserve transport planes in the US. A civilian was the boss and I knew him from the last tour. He was a fine man and we worked well together. I was also one of three pilots who flew a VIP C-131 to wherever the local admiral wanted to go. This included trips to Navy Dallas for Coors beer and Adidas sneakers that were on sale at the Navy Exchange store. Las Vegas was another destination but the main trips were to Andrews Air Force Base in D.C. I had a schedule board with flights listed by certain prefixes. One call from an Admiral’s aide that we called LCDR Horsecollar was relative to a trip to Jacksonville. Horsecollar said that on the way back, the ADM wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on sourdough bread. Naturally this request somehow became known to others, especially the folks at JAX. On my schedule board, the flight was listed as usual but under remarks it said, on return flight “One P B and J on SDB.” Apparently at JAX, at a reception line, there was a PB and J sandwich.  

While there were a few weekend flights, most were during the week and the family and I had many chances to see the real New Orleans and take part in attending Mardi Gras parades.  What a difference from the last tour! There was one reservist Commander that was a US attorney in real life. One day I was in Operations and saw him looking at approach planes to small airfields in Vietnam. I knew him as a great guy and challenged him as to his real service. He quietly told me he had flown missions in Vietnam for the CIA. To see the airfield charts he had flown into is to know bad things about a war gone bad. He later died in a motorcycle accident on a Texas border road while dressed in grubby old clothes and a long beard. My gut still tells me that it may not have been an accident and he may have been undercover for the government. He had been the CO of one of my reserve C-54 squadrons.

But now I received my retirement orders. We knew we wanted to live in Breckenridge, CO. So how to set this up...I flew to Denver, rented a car, drove to Breckenridge and found a realtor who took me around to see what housing we could afford. He also became a lifelong friend and ten years later, after we sold our business, Doris worked in his office. We settled on purchasing a duplex a half a mile out of town. I went back to New Orleans and finalized my plans which meant I would live again in the Bachelor’s Officers Quarters while finishing the last few months in the Navy. I met a Chief who had been a top player on the all-Navy racquetball team. He taught me racquetball and I took to it rather well, playing with him a few times a week. We also sold our little place in Vacation Village in Breckenridge which helped the bank account. Doris and the kids left for Breckenridge with me meeting them at the Denver airport with the red bus. Later, above Breckenridge at 11,000 feet, there was a court where I played many a game of racquetball in the ensuing years. One could not ski in the summer but hiking, racquetball, and golf were great.

Now here is a neat side story on VWs in the mountains. Squarebacks, campers and buses had dual carburetors, set for sea level. At Breckenridge’s elevation of 9,600 feet, there is almost 30 to 32% fewer molecules of oxygen than at sea level like New Orleans. Engines run on gas and air, read oxygen. So 30% less air means the engine runs very rich at 10,000 feet. I found that about 7,000 feet as I drove west, the VW’s tended to make black smoke and almost charcoal briquets out the tailpipe. The centrifugal distributors were also a pain. Cars these days do not have these problems as their fuel mixtures are controlled by computers.

So we found that any VW, camper or bus, needed different carburetor jets than what we had or the engine ran very rough and had trouble in the mountains. So we always stopped at a Howard Johnson in Denver where Doris and the kids would go in for food while I took about 20 minutes to change the carburetors  to smaller jets. I would then join them for lunch, after which it was up the mountain to Breck. I returned to NOLA for the final act.

With Doris living a bit primitively in the duplex, I met the furniture truck at the NOLA address, supervised that our household goods were properly packed, and sent the truck off to Denver and Breckenridge. As this was our last Navy move, we were entitled to one last free move to a place of our choice. When the truck arrived at Breck, Doris supervised the offload and set up housekeeping while I remained at NOLA, awaiting my true separation date. The next four moves as civilians would not be free. 

For once, Jennifer and Kent went to school on the first day of school. The red bus at Breck was for Doris and the family. When the great retirement day came, I refused a retirement ceremony as being another mickey mouse formation for the troops. I drove the Squareback to be reunited with the family at Breck. So ended the Navy days, however, we still have friends from Breck and three Navy couples that we see and others with whom we communicate. Most of the others have passed on.

So now begins civilian life in 1976.  I wonder what I will now do for a living and how everyone will really like Breckenridge.  Stay tuned...Grampaw

The Nebraska Chapter

By Doris

Many things come to mind when remembering Nebraska.  Last night the College World Series in Omaha was on television and I was transported back to 1971 and our years attending baseball games there. Watching young college athletes play ball was a lot of fun; Kent especially enjoyed visiting the hot dog stand! We went to a hockey game at Ak Sar Ben Arena (Nebraska spelled backward) to enjoy a very popular sport with the local people. Bellevue High School played football games on Friday nights and we would attend rooting for the hometown team. It was great to have a “home town,” even if it was almost entirely military. Our local development was “Cherry Hill” and I bowled on a team with other wives.

Our bowling shirts identified us as the Cherry Hill Bombers!”  We made good use of the neighborhood pool in the summer, which the kids loved. Fifteen minutes of each hour was rest time for the children and only adults were allowed to swim. An excellent idea, as kids would never get out of the pool on their own. There was a nearby roller skating rink with music and lights, a magical activity that I recalled from my own childhood.

Although Don was gone often flying the admiral around, we led a very normal life in middle America.  

Somerset Drive was very similar to Comet Street, with many kids of all ages for friends. Jennifer had an immediate group of girls and Kent had a group of boys with whom to play football.  He was six years old and loved it. A little girl, Donora, in Kent’s class, lived up the street with her mother, little brother, David, and her grandpa. Her father had been killed in Vietnam. It brought the war home to your doorstep and was very sad. Our next door neighbors were an older couple, Harvey and Eunice, who were raising their two grandsons, Matt and Stevie, who were five and two. Their parents were killed in an automobile accident when they were home on leave. We became very good friends and Matt, Steve, and Kent spent many hours together. Stevie was very bright and would converse with Don from his side of the fence. Don also did a lot of car work and one day while he was under the car, he became aware of a little voice talking to him. He was very involved under the car and had apparently tuned Stevie out, until he heard “I’m going to kick you Mr. Lidke,” which got his attention in a hurry!

A month after one Halloween, Jennifer came into our room at night to say “there is something under my bed.”  I got down on my hands and knees to deal with this monster, and a frightened mouse raced past me, brushing my arm. My scream could be heard in downtown Omaha! Turns out Jennifer had stashed some Halloween candy there and the mouse was enjoying the buffet.

A mouse story involving Kent happened when we had to set a mouse trap due to cold weather, forcing field mice to seek a warm haven. One night we caught a few and disposed of their bodies by putting them on the back deck, where they became frozen. The next morning we had to dissuade Kent from taking them to school for “show and tell!”

I volunteered at the school library, which was a great place to learn what was going on in the school. A favorite magazine for the boys was National Geographic — they would gather around it to look at pictures of “naked ladies.” Dinosaurs finished a close second.

Ann and Hap Easter and their five girls also lived in Cherry Hill and we spent a lot of time together.  One day they were at our house when Kent came in banged up with skinned knees. As he was coming down the hill, the front wheel of his bike came off!  Never a dull moment. Don and I, along with Ann and Hap, would attend military events at historic Fort Omaha, often in formal attire. It was like taking a step back in time. Our families stayed close and after we moved to Colorado Cheri Easter, Jennifer’s friend, came for a visit. Also Harvey, Eunice, Matt and Steve visited us there. Good friends for us and good friends for Jennifer and Kent made for a wonderful tour of duty in Nebraska.

One unusual attraction was Fontenelle Forest near Bellevue. It was a great natural area of trees, hiking trails, wildlife and marshlands, and a bird watcher’s paradise. We enjoyed the natural feel and the history which involved Indians, traders and the Lewis and Clark expedition camping nearby.

In the spring in Nebraska there is a great migration of the sandhill cranes in the Platte River Valley on their journey north to Canada, Alaska, and Siberia. It is known to be one of the greatest wildlife spectacles on the continent. Jennifer’s fifth grade teacher was an avid birder and when she learned we were going to Colorado via the Platte River, she was most insistent that we go see the sandhill cranes. This meant getting off the interstate and meandering the backroads looking for them. For a great migration they seemed be hard to find. Don commented as we were driving, “Well, I see a Bay City Crane” sitting in a field, but no sandhill crane. We were really laughing at this sandhill crane search, when an entire field of sandhill cranes took off in front of us! It was spectacular and well worth our side trip and Jennifer could report to her teacher that we were successful. We have followed stories of sandhill cranes ever since.

No Nebraska story would be complete without a tornado. Our house was a split level with an under the stairs large closet, which became our shelter when one minor tornado made its way through Bellevue. Fortunately there wasn’t much damage done, although the base had some. Huddled under the stairs you become very respectful of nature. Don, of course, had to venture a peak outside, not wanting to miss anything.

All good things come to an end and orders arrived for our transfer back to New Orleans. This time we would be returning to a familiar place, familiar in some ways but different in others. Our friends, the Easters, would be joining us, and Jennifer and Kent would be attending integrated schools.

We would be living another part of history as it happened.

Off to Middle America

By Don

With Doris and the kids in New Jersey, I drove to Offutt Air Force base and found a small nearby motel. The owner said I could park the Squareback there as long as I needed. I found a house under construction at 1108 Somerset Drive in Bellevue, Nebraska, a suburb of Omaha. 

But first…why Nebraska and why an Air Force base? Because there was a Navy ADM based in downtown Omaha at a Naval Base called Fort Omaha. This ADM toured the US, inspecting little Naval Reserve facilities that trained shipboard personnel, not aviators. We were to fly him and his staff wherever he wanted to go. From Maine to Oregon to Chicago to...yup...New Orleans. For some reason, there were many inspections of a naval facility in Las Vegas. See the logic? No? Few did.

I flew commercial back to NOLA, got Chris out of the kennel and again drove to Nebraska, this time in our pop top VW camper.  The family joined me at the little motel and we soon transferred into a USAF Inn for a few days until our furniture delivery showed up at the new house. This type of shuffling family members was typical of getting orders to a new job in a new town. This time the A/C was not new but was a familiar C-131 in a VIP configuration and only 15 seats. It was great to arrive somewhere and know that I would not have to study up for another new A/C. I knew this one cold.

The pilot I was relieving was named Little Dow Player. The flying was much much easier than Alameda and we loved the town of Bellevue. Jennifer and Kent went to good schools, Chris had a big fenced in yard and the neighbors were friendly. Most of them were Air Force types. One lived up behind us and on Halloween, he would launch bottle rockets toward our house, getting us to answer the phone while he said “incoming!” Another civilian family was next door and the diversity in conversation and family talk was greatly appreciated. I must say the pilot I flew with that I liked best was “Hap” Easter.

The inter-service rivalry was evident at Offutt, even among the Royal Air Force crew that manned a giant V-shaped Vulcan bomber. We made sport of the rich USAF with its big pile of $$ compared to the relatively poor assets of the USN or RAF.  The USAF made a habit of having outfits with very long names like the 5505 Maintenance Group. Or the 6053 Composite Refueling Wing. In the Navy, we actually had Patrol squadron 1 or VP-1. In BDA, I was in VP-45. The RAF and the Vulcan A/C was detachment 2. That meant that a huge 50 yards long by 20 yards wide wooden box with four foot walls INSIDE a hangar was always overflowing with a giant pile of salted sand for the base roads in winter. That hangar became known as the home of the 6606 Composite Sandbox Group. Just a little rivalry humor. Offutt was also the home of a USAF Boeing 707, one of which was always in the air as an airborne command post in the event the Russians nuked the country and we had to retaliate. 

The pop top VW camper proved to be great on vacation trips to Colorado, driving the interstate with the steering wheel almost a quarter turn to the right to compensate for the cross wind. We skied at Keystone and camped in Rocky Mountain National Park where one day I read about a small town in the mountains that was touted as the next Vail. Leaving Doris and the kids using the camper’s tent, I drove through the park at skyline elevations and went to Breckenridge. Returning to the campsite, we all packed out and drove back to Breckenridge. Doris liked it as well as I did and we thought that Breckenridge might soon be part of our lives. We were especially enamored with the sign hanging over the town clerks' counter which said…”We don’t give a damn how you do it in Denver, this is Breckenridge.” But back to Nebraska. We knew we soon were to grow out of the VW camper and we traded it in for a red and white VW bus. Later in life, we would again have a VW pop top camper.

Of course the locals loved the Nebraska football team and constantly said “Go Big Red.” One could even buy red toilet paper in support of the team. Seats in the stadium at Lincoln were so scarce that people read the obits to get season tickets to the games. Political comment follows: Currently, many/some disgruntled Americans view our country as having only two important areas, the east coast and the west coast. They call the middle of the nation flyover country.  I would say that the people of Nebraska and the people of Colorado were the most friendly and interesting of any place we lived. We kind of knew we would be back to Colorado.

So we were sorry to say goodbye to Nebraska when we received a set of illogical orders back to...wait for it...New Orleans. To fly the same type of plane, the C-131 for a different admiral, on a different staff, to go to different places for different reasons. We knew that once again we would live on the west bank, somewhere near our old house on Comet Street. But now the schools were integrated and with considerable angst. We were strongly in favor of public schools, with one exception. Stay tuned for NOLA, second tour. 

Comet Street, Mardi Gras, and Hurricanes

By Doris

Our move to New Orleans and Comet Street was the beginning of three good years living in a picture perfect neighborhood of many houses, children of all ages for playmates and very welcoming neighbors, many of whom worked for oil companies. The oil companies moved people as often as the Navy did, so again we were meeting people from other parts of the country.

Our neighbors across the street were Navy people, and had a daughter, Debbie, and a son, Ricky, close in age to Jennifer and Kent, so instant friendships were formed. It was a neighborhood made to order for children, the kids could come and go up and down the block, and we were all still stay-at-home moms in 1971, so they were well supervised. They played school in our house — we had four bedrooms on a second floor and an intercom between all of the rooms, just like a real school! I played the role of the principal from my station in the kitchen. One family had six children, one of whom was a Down syndrome girl, Linda, and twins Rita and Nita. All of the kids were so great with Linda. She was part of everything they did and we all struggled watching her learn to roller skate and ride a bike, but to the kids accepted her as just one of the gang.

At Mardi Gras, the kids organized their own special Mardi Gras parade. Jennifer and Kent made the move very well — Jennifer enrolled in elementary school and Kent in nursery school, and Comet Street was a real gift to us. Not all military moves go so smoothly.

New Orleans schools did not have a good rating nationwide, but Habans School had excellent teachers, our experience over two tours of duty was outstanding, and the kids did very well. There were no special ed or gifted programs, so the teachers made the difference. Many New Orleans families preferred private schools, shades of Meridian! I once made telephone calls to gain support for a tax increase for schools and was astonished to be met with resistance to what amounted to a few dollars per year. Very different from California schools.

Jennifer decided she wanted to be a Brownie, so I was enlisted to be the leader. I had never been a Brownie or Girl Scout, but I was game. We met at our house once a week after school — another mother, me, and twelve girls. After our first meeting my neighbor, Karen Ewing, said it was very evident I was otherwise occupied when Kent decided it was fun to aim the garden hose at cars in the street! Things were never dull on Comet Street.

The father of one of Kent’s friends, Kevin Enoch, became the subject of a story Kent later wrote, when he was stranded overnight in the Gulf of Mexico on a group diving expedition.  The boat pulled away without him, so he swam quite a distance to an oil platform but couldn’t communicate with rescuers until the following morning. Very scary, Mr. Enoch was missing! That story showed Kent’s talent for writing at a very young age.

And then there was Mardi Gras Fat Tuesday, which was preceded by parades every day or night for two weeks leading up to the big day. My first parade was nearby in our neighborhood, on a Saturday afternoon. Don was now working on weekends because he was assigned to train reservists who came in on weekends, hence the name “weekend warriors.” Jennifer, Kent and I attended the parade with Karen, Debbie, and Ricky Ewing. There were many floats with people in colorful costumes. These people were part of a “Krewe” that met all year round to plan their special parade. The parades culminated with the big Mardi Gras Day parade, presided over by the King and Queen of the Rex parade.The Mardi Gras balls were wonderful events attended by many of the elite families going back several generations.

Our first parade in Walnut Bend, (the name of our subdivision named after a plantation) was a great eye opening experience for me as I discovered a competitive streak I didn’t know I had. You see, the riders on the floats throw beads, doubloons, and candy to the parade watchers, and the object is to catch something. The refrain is “throw me something, mister.” Well, my inner kid took over, and I became very competitive with small children when something came flying in my direction! We had a great time and I remember that day vividly. When Don finally went to a parade with us he couldn’t believe my transformation! On Mardi Gras day, families gathered in the Garden District, where there are many grand old homes. People line the streets and bring ladders for children to sit on so they can see better and are well positioned to catch beads. Families dress in costume. One year we went as clowns. The picture that stands out most in my mind is of a family of little black children all dressed as Indians. Most parades have a designated route, but the Zulu parade, comprised of all African Americans, wanders all over the city, with people trying to locate them because they throw golden coconuts. And then there is the music and the marching bands, our favorite was Pete Fountain’s “half fast ‘marching band!’ We certainly were enjoying all that New Orleans had to offer!

At the end of Comet Street was a levee holding back the mighty Mississippi River. Looking toward the levee, you could see the tops of ships as they passed by. Our neighborhood was within walking distance of a McDonald’s restaurant, and one day Jennifer and one of the twins went to have some lunch. On their way, Jennifer fell and cut her knee badly. She sent Nita into the restaurant for some napkins to staunch the flow of blood, limped home, cleaned the wound up herself, and then came upstairs to tell me about it! Our brownie troop went on a field trip to McDonald’s where we learned that their French fries were from fresh, not frozen, potatoes and the employee motto was CAYG which stood for “clean as you go,” a very good motto for the Brownies.

When Kent started kindergarten we discovered that he had a doppelgänger, Dale Lockhart, a year ahead of him. His mother and I had trouble telling them apart, both tall with red hair and blue eyes. They were a Navy family and we later skied with them in Breckenridge when we all lived in Colorado. I still hear from them. Marcy and her daughter went back to the old neighborhood a few years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city and gave us a report. Our side of the city was not devastated like some parts of the city. One of the big changes was that all New Orleans public schools became charter schools and were able to rebuild from the ground up.

I volunteered in the school office and thoroughly enjoyed working with Mr. Puyagh, the principal, who was the father of seven red headed children. He always explained that his children went to parochial school for the religious aspect, but he was a firm believer in public education. On our second tour in New Orleans when the schools were integrated, both staffs and students, he was a firm supporter of the black families. He sent a school bus to bring black parents to PTA meetings because as he explained, “many of them as children didn’t have good experiences in school” and he wanted them to feel welcome. An exceptional man at an extraordinary time.

Our lives were now more normal on an everyday basis, except Don was now working weekends. This meant that his “weekends” were Monday and Tuesday, but Sunday nights he had to fly the airlift to return the weekend warriors home. The Officer Wives Club was a very active group.

Our neighbor Karen was president and could run a meeting better than anyone I have ever known. Each Christmas we had a Christmas party for the children at an orphanage in downtown New Orleans and many hours were spent wrapping toys and making food for children who had no families. This was always a very special event each year.

And then there was hurricane season. I had experienced remnants of hurricanes in New Jersey, but that was high waves and downed trees, not the vulnerability that we felt in New Orleans. When Hurricane Camille took aim at New Orleans, I grabbed Jennifer, Kent, and Chris, our insurance policies, family photos and evacuated to the Naval base, figuring whatever happened we would have support there. I remember hearing there were 200 mile an hour winds approaching the mouth of the Mississippi, not good, as I remembered Adak winds of 100 miles an hour! Camille turned out to be the strongest storm to hit the United States at that time. The devastation was incredible. People who opted to stay and have a hurricane party on the gulf coast were never found. A sheriff took their names when he warned them of the seriousness of the approaching storm. This was before cell phones and the internet so the areas hit were incommunicado for a long time. A helicopter from the base flew over the area, saw a nun waving a flag on the beach, and landed to see what she needed for the orphans in her care. It was an incredible operation for the military and they did a fantastic job. Our homes and lives were safe, but I learned that I would never stay put for another hurricane!

As Navy life would have it, orders for our next move arrived and we were off to middle America and Nebraska. As the saying went, “Join the Navy and see the world!”

New Orleans, First Tour

By Don

It was not easy driving an old Nash with numerous deficiencies from Alameda to New Orleans. Both Christian and I missed having A/C. But I had a big ice chest which when opened made some cool air blow from the vent window. The oil consumption was so bad that I wound a wire and string from a major engine leak to a can bolted to the side of the engine block, which filled after 300 miles, after which I poured the reclaimed oil back into the crankcase. I replaced a radiator thermostat and had to flush the radiator in the very hot town of Bakersfield, and got a used tire in New Mexico where I also fixed a short in my tail lights. 

The trick was to nurse the car to an auto parts store each evening, park, and lock it up. Chris and I would then walk to a nearby motel I found earlier and get a room. That way, in the morning after breakfast, out came the tool box and if a part was needed, I was right there at a parts store. Chris was usually chained in the shade and learned some new bad words. 

We lost a windshield wiper in Texas but the driver’s side worked fine with the bad one removed and the bladeless arm raised up, swinging back and forth in the wind. There were bug hatches everywhere in Louisiana which required many stops to scrape and wash the cockpit window. We made it to NAS New Orleans on the west bank of the river. The actual place was south of the winding Mississippi River but it was called the “west bank” by locals.

I located a vet with quarters for dogs, dropped Chris there, and flew commercial to Oakland. In the morning, the Squareback and I left California again without any A/C. Northern California didn’t need A/C and the Squareback didn’t come with it in Seattle. This run to NOLA was a piece of cake. I found a realtor and bought a house on Comet Street on the west bank. Doris and the kids flew in and we were again in a motel waiting for our furniture shipment. This act of frequent moves is typical of Navy life as is the unfortunate business of having your kids being “the new kid in class.” Finally, we were in the Comet Street house and it was on to the new base and job. Oh, and we traded the Nash for a new VW Pop Top Camper which we later used on a trip to Disney World, and the Florida Keys, and came back via the west coast of Florida through a sleepy little town called Naples (where Jennifer later raised her own children).

Farewell award at NOLA

Since I was a reservist on active duty and now at a Reserve Naval Air Station, and since I was still restricted to pilot in command, I became...again...Base Legal Officer. In a few weeks, I drove to the NAS Pensacola Naval Hospital for a re-evaluation of my alleged asthma. By now, I was only occasionally wheezing. I went there with many bronchodilator pills hidden in my electric razor box. I played the perfect patient, took my hidden pills, and set up for the big test. It was a pulmonary function test where I had to blow into a tube until I was too weak to go any further. I had made friends with a Navy corpsman and told him I had to pass that test. He said he would make me pass it. When the time came, that corpsman yelled bloody murder at me like a Marine drill instructor. He called me every name in the book to keep me blowing in that tube. I passed and became a pilot again. I owe my remaining Navy salary and pension to that man’s assistance. He is as big a deal to me as Butch Voris was at PHL. Without him I would have been behind a desk for the rest of my Navy days.

On my initial arrival to my new legal office, I found it was just my legal yeoman and myself and the office had three phone lines. Every morning, one line was put on permanent hold. That set the tone for me with my legal yeoman. One of my jobs was to oversee the Navy guys that were prisoners. They were guys that went AWOL and were caught and sent to the nearest naval facility with a brig. Our brig was like a makeshift closet with a window. The CO instructed that prisoners were not to be transferred right away to a real brig but were instead to be held for at least a week or two to do common labor on the base. They would paint, cut grass and keep things shipshape for the CO, especially the vaunted golf course and the entryway to the main gate. I was also in charge of the main and back gate security.

My yeoman and I found ways to get the prisoners  to a real brig as fast as we could so they could have their case promptly adjudicated. We did not tell anyone about this. Then there were prisoners that escaped into what surrounded Camp Swampy. The CO would rant a bit and tell me to get Helos up and find them. It reminded me of the WWII movie about US prisoners in Germany when the German Commandant proudly said…"No one has ever escaped from Stalag 17.”  But William Holden did. The CO became somewhat of a laughing stock. 

As my next A/C was a 4 engined C-54 or DC-4, sometimes I flew into small local airports where a cajun police chief would hand over an AWOL sailor The first thing I did was lock him to an aft seat with leg irons. I once had a sailor jump out of the plane while taxiing toward base ops at Pensacola. Bad form indeed. Another time, I had to form up six side boys in a quarterdeck formation and have a bosun's mate pipe an Admiral aboard. This was not done ashore, only on a ship. But this CO was weird. So I scrambled to put the show together inside of fifteen minutes as the Admiral was due shortly. I caught a kid in dress blues checking in with the Officer of the Day. He was a raw recruit and did not know about this formation but I grabbed him and took him out to the sidewalk in front of the building and told him to do whatever the others did.  Another I hastily found was a new prisoner in not so good dress blues. How weird was that? Here comes the Admiral. What sport. It was not a place for the faint hearted or anyone without a sense of humor. 

Another time, someone stole one of the six shell-like prop pieces between which VIPs walked upon arrival. I was hard pressed to play Inspector Clouseau and get it back. Then I was directed to fly to Jacksonville and go aboard a ship to get a brass case from a 3”50 shell and have the woodshop make a replacement fake shell. This also required some woodwork on a lathe and further delay. Not my job, sir. Talk to the civilians at the base wood shop. SIR. But the CO kept calling the base wood shop complaining that his wooden shell had priority. Now all the civilians were laughing. 

After Hurricane Camille, while people around Gulfport and Biloxi were looking for bodies, he directed me to gather all the prisoners and clean up the golf course. Doris had spent Camille on the third floor of the concrete BOQ with the kids and Christian. I had hurrivaced a C-54 to Navy Dallas. I knew they had come to the base as Camille’s 200 mph winds passes over Pilot town and headed up the Mississippi. At the last minute, it veered a bit east and hit Gulfport. We then flew a C-54 loaded with DPT serum and other medical supplies to Gulfport. Initially the southern governors would not allow federal aid to their states. The old segregation and the bad feds story. My old squadron at Alameda, CA actually flew supplies in to Gulfport MS two days ahead of us. But the golf course was spotless. Now figure out what was actually humorous and what was so sad and stupid. Shades of Beetle Bailey and Gomer Pyle.

The C-54 was designed around 1940 and was MacArthur’s command A/C in 1942. I flew it in 1968 through April of 1971. We did not have to practice a required engine failure in flight every 90 days because we had actual ones that often. But as bad as that plane was to fly, being in a thunderstorm was peace and quiet compared to working for those idiots on the ground. On the good side, I managed a trip to Rota and Cadiz, Spain from which Columbus departed on two trips. It was great to stand on the docks and envision such an historic event.

But back to my next job, the VR or transport program. We also had Friday night and Sunday night airlift pick ups of reservists at six different airports along the Gulf coast. I eventually became the Reserve Transport (VR) manager and had four C-54s that were used every weekend for three different VR squadrons in training flights. An example of a reservist is a man who owns a tire shop in Alabama, drives to Pensacola after work on Friday, is picked up and taken to NOLA to fly/work at a reserve squadron on the weekend, and is returned to Pensacola Sunday night. Those men were great. When the Korean war started, the first jets supporting the ground forces were flown by reservists that were called up. Too bad the base was manned in part by clowns, some of them senior clowns.

The Lafayette incident.

The most exciting night flight was when a friend of mine let a recruiting officer sit in the pilots seat and land his C-54 at Lafayette, LA. He skidded and ran off the runway, stopping only when great balls of honeysuckle rolled up ahead of the main mounts and stopped the plane right next to a road that was a lovers lane. Before they did the checklist and turned off the landing lights, a couple was seen hurriedly driving away. No one was hurt in the accident — don’t know about the couple. As the duty officer, I had to call the CO at 9 PM and report. I held the phone way out from my ear so everyone at operations could hear. They heard it all. What sport. I went with 2 other C-54s with work crews to pull the plane back onto the runway and fly it home with the landing gear down.  

But now it was hopefully back to a more normal US Navy, or so I thought. After Kent and Jennifer’s segregated school experience, which I will leave to Doris, we were glad to leave NOLA and go to Bellevue, Nebraska. I would become one of three pilots and a crew that flew an Admiral around the U.S. in a familiar plane. The C-131 Convair type from Alameda. So it was time to pack up and repeat the process as Doris flew to NJ and I drove to the Omaha area to Offuttt Air Force Base…..Grandpaw

In the first photo, we see General Douglas MacArthur getting off his C-54 in Australia, 1942. In the second photo, we see LCDR Don Lidke getting off his C-54 in New Orleans, 1968:

California

By Doris

California was a dramatic change from Adak, with it’s beautiful sun filled days and perfect temperatures. The house and yard were perfect playgrounds for Jennifer and Kent, who now had a treehouse and a sandbox, and a great play area inside next to their bedrooms. Every room had a door to the outside because Don Stivers had a fear of fire and wanted to be able to escape in case of an emergency. However, this now meant that children could also escape without Mom or Dad noticing.  Kent pulled this off one day when he decided to get our mail from the mailbox located at the end of the long winding driveway next to the road! We quickly became more vigilant, especially when things would become strangely quiet!  Jennifer took swimming lessons at the local pool, where we sometimes had to drive through the cool early morning fog.

When we moved in Kent had the chickenpox so I was unable to meet our neighbors the Kline’s right away. Jennifer became acquainted with two of the boys, Steve and Johnny, in their backyard. (Like Meridian our next door neighbors had four boys!) After a few days when Kent was recovered, I met the family and was surprised to learn that Johnny had cerebral palsy, either used crutches or crawled, and had eyes that didn’t focus well. His mother said “he can do everything but mind,” just like any normal kid.

Jennifer never mentioned anything, he was just a kid to play with, and years later in New Orleans a down’s syndrome child Linda, was accepted by the neighborhood children the same way. How great that she saw right past the disabilities. They spent a lot of time together, along with some little girls, Betsy and her sisters. All of the properties were an acre so we were probably among the first to arrange playdates.

Jennifer started kindergarten and became good friends with a little girl named Karen. Fast forward 35 years to Tucson, Arizona and to a golf course at Saddlebrooke where we lived. One day my golf partner was a new resident and as we chatted between holes, we learned that we both had lived in Oakland and our daughters were friends. Jennifer had a class picture standing next to Karen, where Karen has her head turned and is talking. Her mom said they called her Chatty Cathy, after a popular doll.

We spent a lot of time outdoors. When Grandma Mae and Grandpa Rudy came to visit we went to the nearby Knowland Park Zoo and to feed the ducks at Montclair. It was wonderful because Kent was 15 months old, Jennifer was four, and they saw Kent for the first time. Until I was a grandparent I never really understood how that must have been for Grandma.

Our “grown up” lives were centered around the base and the people in the squadron. We hosted a Super Bowl brunch for a huge group. The whole squadron came, including guys on their way to and from flights. It was a great house for a party. I made eggs and muffins with the help of a wife named Dawn, who was almost deaf. She and her husband were young idealists and conflicted about the Vietnam war. He made the unfortunate decision to march in an anti-war parade in full uniform and was gone immediately from the squadron.  

The 1960s were the decade that changed the country, starting in California and Berkeley with the anti-war demonstrations, the counterculture movement, the summer of love in 1967, the founding of the Black Panther movement in 1966, and the advent in 1960 of the birth control pill.

The Black Panthers armed citizen patrols to monitor the behavior of officers in the Oakland Police Department and challenge police brutality in the city. Sound familiar?

When Martin Luther King was assassinated, it was reported that the Black Panthers were marching. The Oakland schools dismissed all students without any pre-planning. Fortunately I had arranged to pick Jennifer up so we escaped the chaos that ensued. 

During the summer of love in 1967, 100,000 people in hippie attire and flowers gathered in Haight Ashbury, opposed to war, against the materialistic society and into poetry, music and meditation. Contrasted with this was the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968 in Los Angeles.

Our friends Ron and Kay Pickett from Meridian were now stationed in Alameda, with their two children Cindi and Brent.  Ron did three tours on a carrier, flying missions over Vietnam and was gone for nine months at a time. Kay, who was married right after high school, used this time to take college courses which eventually led to a degree. To quote an old World War II saying, she was one of “the women who wait for them.”

Don, meanwhile, was busy ferrying servicemen back and forth on the California coast on their way to Vietnam. Days off were rare, but we did manage a few day train trip to Keddie in the mountains, which Jennifer and Kent loved.

Don and I managed a few trips to San Francisco, one of them to the Hungry I, where we saw a young Bill Cosby. The Hungry I was a small, intimate club where you were very close to the stage. We also saw Mort Sahl who was a rather avant-garde comedian. We rode the cable car with an old high school friend one night. Other California memories involved our friends Ceci And Kennedy Snow from Bermuda. They and their children stayed with us for several days on their way back from Kodiak.

For a number of days, Don was speaking with a German accent. Kennedy used to refer to him as Sea Kraut, as in senior Kraut. One night, the four of us went to San Francisco to the top of the Mark at the Mark Hopkins Hotel. We were in the elevator when the door opened and a very proper gentleman entered asking for “twelfths pleese” in a thick German accent. That was all it took, as Ceci and I collapsed in a fit of giggling to the Top of the Mark. Kennedy was an aficionado of lamb, so off we went to the restaurant, Charles. The plaque on the door read “A San Francisco Lambmark.” The bartender who spoke with a passable French accent turned out to be from the Bronx!

The officers Wives Club was the source of a lot of activities, including bridge, which I learned to play in Bermuda so I could be a fourth and available for games, as needed. I never was very good as my mind wandered while playing, and concentration is needed. Also talking was frowned upon! But I did play, anyhow. We went as a group to see Gypsy and also there were the monthly luncheons and squadron picnics. I was secretary of the Officer’s Wives Club and due to become president, but was spared that responsibility, thank goodness, when orders were received to go to New Orleans. Navy orders are interesting, sometimes you have three months notice, this time was two weeks. Coincidentally the Stivers wanted to sell their house, so it was a nice tidy ending. I was so organized we went to a vacation bible school picnic the day before the movers came. I found my calling, I was good at this moving thing!

One interesting Oakland and Skyline Drive fact not to be missed is that Tom Hanks is from Oakland and graduated from Skyline High School!

Life in the Bay Area

By Don

With a few days left before reporting to the new squadron, we settled into an apartment, familiarised ourselves with the Oakland area and the roads leading to the Alameda Naval Air Station, and relaxed a bit at the end of February 1966. From gravel roads to major interstates, from a somewhat primitive life to the big city. 

I decided that I did not want to commute on the Oakland area interstates and was interested in the Oakland hills which meant a commute on city streets and through the Alameda tunnel. With that in mind, we looked at the rental ads in the Oakland Tribune. One real estate ad found Doris and the kids in the car with Christian, while I knocked on a door at 13500 Skyline Blvd Oakland. I introduced myself as Don. The man at the door replied he was Don. I said I had a daughter and son in the car. He said he had a daughter and a son. He said his son had red hair and was named Kent. I told him my son had red hair and was named Kent. I told him I had a German Shepherd. He called for Ringo, his German Shepherd. I begged him to tell me his wife’s name was not Doris. He thankfully introduced me to Bev Stivers and a lifelong friendship began. 

Doris came to the house and in a few minutes we had rented the house, bought sight unseen, an old Dodge with push button transmission controls for $50, and firmed up the dates for his moving to Connecticut and our moving in. “Conn., that’s where the money was for a commercial artist," or so he said. We soon moved in. All this despite his having been told to never rent to the Navy.

We loved the place. About an acre with a great patio, tree house, and a huge sandbox. It was on a ridge, overlooking the Bay, with grassy knolls and horses at stable only a three minute walk away. It had three bedrooms, all of which had a door to the outside, a great stone fireplace and a great atmosphere. We moved in after our furniture from Mississippi storage became available. I still email with Don’s son. Both Don and Bev have passed on but not before we visited them in Connecticut and met them both at Disney World where he was a VIP for doing the artwork for the boxes for GI Joe dolls. Now to the squadron to see what was going on there.

C-131 1016 in VIP Paint @ NBG.jpeg

Learning the C-131, a 44 passenger/cargo transport was my 12th different Navy A/C. The training was exacting as now I would be in charge of a three man crew and the safety of a full load of Navy passengers. We also moved cargo such as atomic weapons. It is strange sitting on an atomic bomb and eating your box lunch. 

The Vietnam war was in full swing and we mainly flew up and down the west coast with a few trips to the east coast. Flying in the Navy was always a secondary job. My primary billet was to be the squadron Legal Officer: non-judicial punishment, courts martial, and whatever the troops did wrong, working with the Naval Investigative Service, you name it…it alone was a full time job. It needs to be said that the USAF trains a pilot in type and he stays in that A/C sometimes forever. That is their primary job or billet. In the Navy, flying is something you do after you do the work in your primary billet or job. Consequently, you always both flew and worked at a desk during the week and many times flew on weekends.

Doris enrolled Jennifer into a local grammar school, watched Kent in the sandbox and monitored Christian who took well to the neighborhood. She also adjusted to my flying for two days all day and then flew for two days all night, then a day off. Somehow she managed all that including taking the kids to a park and lake to feed the ducks while I slept during the day to get ready for the next flight. I used the old Dodge that smoked very badly and Doris used the new Square back. In effect, Doris raised Jennifer and Kent much of the time on her own, certainly through high school and even to their leaving for college.

This went on for two years until February 1968 when I got very sick and so tired I would pull over and rest on the way home from Alameda. I was sent to the Oakland Naval Hospital and diagnosed with pneumonia. I fought that hospital like it was the enemy because they might take away my wings and the family livelihood might be in jeopardy. 

I was a lousy and angry patient in the hospital’s Nimitz ward for officers. I would refuse a car to the x-ray place and jog to the building. I met Chicken Delight at a back gate in my pajamas and robe. Squadron mates would come at night and bring beer and pretzels. I refused to lie in bed after Nurse Cratchet made hospital rounds so the Chief of Medicine could ask me questions.  Instead, I sat on the bed with a yellow pad full of questions. At night, the corpsmen and I would listen to tapes from Vietnam made under fire. These guys were my kind of guys as were the Marines on the amputee ward, fresh from ’Nam. I did squadron legal business from a payphone in the lobby. 

The docs now said I had asthma which was very bad news for remaining a pilot. I educated myself on everything about asthma and my lungs. Another Navy doctor told me I needed to be my own advocate, to keep fighting them and to always remember, “All that wheezes is not asthma.” They then sent me to a psychiatric consult. I told the shrink what was happening to me. He told me to “go get ‘em” and wrote in red ink sideways on his report...”There is no basis for a psychiatric diagnosis.” I even thought about getting a stool sample from Christian to see what they would do with that but chickened out. To cut the medical bracelet off my wrist they had to have a finite diagnosis. So they gave me a medical board at which I could not participate. I was entitled to a Flight Surgeon present and did not have one. I was declared an asthmatic, told I could no longer be at the controls of any A/C, due bronchodilator medications, and sent back to the squadron.

I wrote a letter to the Navy Bureau of Medicine pleading my case relative to the Navy throwing away a pilot for a diagnosis that I maintained was not finite. The response came back and modified my status. I could keep my flight pay and fly but not in control and I would be in that status for one year and then get a reevaluation. So said a letter of July 9, 1968 from D.C. I later found out from a Navy MD in Pensacola that I was the first pilot so managed. For the next year in the squadron, I did my job but more importantly, I managed to wean myself off of prescriptive bronchodilating medicine and substitute massive amounts of over the counter equivalents. I stopped wheezing and was ready for my reevaluation.

Now came our orders to leave Alameda for...the Naval Air Station New Orleans. We got ourselves in order once again. We packed out and sent our furniture and belongings to storage at New Orleans. Don and Bev came west to prime the house for sale. In the years there I had done a lot of landscaping — pruning, and planting hundreds of ice plant cuttings to stabilize the hills — and maintained the house and grounds. They were overjoyed with what I had done.

I was sitting in the patio resting from cutting the grass and in old clothes when some woman with a poodle arrived with a realtor. I quietly reached a finger into Chris’s choker collar after she said to someone to not let Poopsie out because there was a big dog out there. Don Stivers heard the comment and climbed off a ladder. The old biddie came outside and asked if my dog would bite. I looked at Chris, sitting quietly with perfect discipline and said..."Christian, do not kill.” As the prospective buyers left Don Stivers said loudly to them...”And do not come back, this is German Shepherd country.” How could you not love Don Stivers?

Doris flew east with the kids and I managed to get the now second car (an oil eating old Nash) safely to New Orleans, flew back to Oakland and this time drove the Squareback to New Orleans. Once again, I lived in another BOQ, however temporarily. I spent some hours in a west bank library, interviewing mothers about the quality of the schools in the area. Satisfied, I found a realtor and bought a two story three bedroom house on Comet Street and sent for Doris and the family.  

 So began the first story of New Orleans.  There were actually two separate tours of duty at NOLA, as locals called it. 

While there I went to the Pensacola Naval Hospital and lied and cheated my way to pass a pulmonary function test, pass muster and get back to being a pilot again...Grandpaw

Seattle and Adak

By Doris

Because of the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962 many apartments were available to rent when Jennifer and I arrived. We found one that took dogs that we rented for two months. In the open area between buildings, the residents would gather and we were instantly part of a community of friendly working people. While Seattle can be very gloomy and rainy much of the year, the months we were there were perfect. Everything we needed was available at nearby Northgate Shopping Center, including a gynecologist, which was a necessity as I was several months pregnant. This was yet another new experience for me — at age 28 I had never lived on my own! Jennifer and I had a great two months, seeing the space needle, swimming in the pool and having occasional meals with the very friendly community.

Housing in Adak became available and it was time to leave. The next hurdle was to get Chris into the crate provided by the airline.  The creative solution was to throw his ball into it, and he cooperatively chased after it.  Problem solved! We were off to Adak and our new home, anxious to be together again.

The Aleutian Islands were a special place to me. During World War II, my older cousin Freddie (the son of my father’s cousin Fred) was stationed there with the Seabees. The Seabees were responsible for building runways with Marston matting and support facilities. In 1943 when I was seven, I wrote to Freddie at Christmas. He responded, telling me that he was working near Santa’s workshop, and assured me that Santa would be bringing me many toys. Here I was 20 years later living near Santa’s workshop!

Our military quarters were very nice and well maintained.  Adak would be the only time we would live on a military base, and it was a great experience. We were very happy to be together as a family. Don built Jennifer an igloo, not an easy task as it meant accumulating snow, which blew in sideways, courtesy of the ever present wind. They also went fishing at Lake Andrew, home of some very big fish, especially if you were three years old!

Our family was about to grow by one. Kent Steven Lidke was born at 3:33 on January 3, 1965, a month past his expected due date. December was a very long month but we had a wonderful Christmas with Jennifer. The base hospital was staffed with doctors, nurses, and hospital corpsmen. The hospital corpsman assisting with Kent’s delivery was experiencing his first birth and I think he was more excited than I was! To our surprise, Kent was born with a full head of red hair! We had to reach back three generations to find Aunt Kate, Grandma Louise’s sister, to find red hair.

Jennifer now had a new baby brother who she happily showed off to her nursery school friends. We dubbed them the Lavender Hill mob. Some days were nice and the kids could play outdoors. One day they decided to pay a call on the commanding officer’s wife and just appeared at her door. She graciously received them. Another Saturday morning they went to visit their nursery school teacher, Miss Sue, a Navy wife, who was surprised to see them on her day off. There was also a television show put on by Miss Marie, the wife of Larry Philips, who flew with Don through an area of extreme turbulence which Don has written about.

Wally Baloo with the News

The adults did not lack for entertainment, as a group put on a show called Aleutian Antics. Don was “Wally Baloo” and our good friend Bill King from Bermuda was the MC. He and his wife Phyllis had recently arrived on Adak. It’s a small Navy at times. Bill was the ultimate showman in his white suit. I was recruited to do makeup because I once did it for a little theatre group in Meridian. Bill claimed I made him look like Charlie Chan. A series of skits depicting life on Adak began, from potholes swallowing volkswagens to the supply ship arriving without lettuce but cases of sauerkraut juice. The commissary officer would roll cans of sauerkraut juice down the aisle in the commissary to get rid of them to unsuspecting shoppers. A chorus line of wives showing their legs performed, along with one set of hairy legs belonging to Larry Philips!

And then there were the earthquakes. We learned to always take a robe into the shower in case a quick exit was necessary. Weather in the winter was mostly gray, with high winds blowing sideways. At 3 pm the school bus would drive down the street with headlights on. In the summer it was light until 10pm, not sunny, just light. I decided to order a baby carriage so Kent could enjoy some fresh air. It arrived from Montgomery Ward but it didn’t last long as a baby carriage, as a williwaw came up one day and started to carry the carriage down the street, with Kent in it. Mr. Toad’s wild ride! After that it was used to haul groceries.

The quarters were all drab gray, as were the dumpsters beside them. One night an enterprising group decided to paint one in bright colors. It was such a hit people adopted their own dumpsters and decorated them. It turned dumpster world into a garden of color and creativity.

When Don was promoted to LCDR we had a “wetting down” party in our quarters for a standing room only crowd of our many friends…it’s a great Navy tradition.

The Navy offered R and R trips to the mainland  (rest and recuperation) and so began my very first camping trip with an almost four year old and a seven month old active baby. We rented a cab over camper and were on our way. We made a playpen area in the back for Kent in the back (pre-car seat and seat belt days) hard to believe now, and Don, Jennifer and I rode in front. As we were traveling along, I looked back to check on Kent to find him standing up for the first time! It was a wonderful trip in a very beautiful state, but not a whole lot of R and R! Once when I wanted to take a picture of a reindeer I handed Kent to a complete stranger. Anything for a picture, it became a mantra for my picture taking through the years.

Our Adak adventure came to an end and it was on to California and more culture shock, as we moved to Oakland, near Berkeley, a center of everything new that was happening in the 1960s, the decade that changed the country. 

Living in Adak

By Don

So we leave Meridian for the island of Adak. Its location is 1300 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska along the Aleutian Islands. At the end of the chain are Attu and Kiska, which were invaded and occupied by the Japanese in 1942. I visited a few of their graves. With my many hours of seaplane time in the tropical setting of Bermuda, naturally, it was proper for those in D.C. to send us to Adak. Their logic was that the plane I would fly at Adak was the Grumman made HU-16 Albatross. It was an amphibian, which is a boat hull with retractable wheels, made for land or water. In Vietnam, many pilots were plucked from the South China Sea by the Grumman Albatross. In Adak, you’d be dead in 10 minutes due to water temperature.

The plane was built mainly for search and rescue, of which the Aleutians Islands provide an abundance. While at Adak I made four water landings in a bay to requalify and landed once on a lake at another island on a search and rescue of a sick native Aleut Indian. So much for water landings and D.C. logic.

Family housing on Adak was not available at the time so after flying into Seattle, Doris set up in an apartment with Jennifer and Christian doggie and I flew to Adak to live in the BOQ. We were concerned that the housing would not become available before Doris’ pregnancy would restrict her from joining me. 

At Adak, I learned that I would be in charge of the air terminal, the photo shop, man the search and rescue room, monitor the many earthquakes and possible tsunamis, and fly missions in the Albatross. The first task after the VW arrived was to modify the car doors so that they only opened 2/3 of the way. This was done so that the frequent 60-80 mph gusts would not tear off the doors or break the hinge or your arm. 

The Aleutians were known as the birthplace of the wind and home of daily fog. Any morning that dawned in the clear meant that holiday routine would be declared and most did not go to work. It happened twice in the 18 month tour on the island. 

The weather was always foggy, drippy, cold, sometimes snowy, and windy to the point of 60 to 100 mph gusts and at least weekly moderate earthquakes. The weather was the enemy at Adak, just like it was in 1942 to 1945 when Adak was an important base to stop the Japanese from invading the Alaska mainland.

The weather was also the common denominator that bonded everyone on the island. The people were fun, humorous, and friendly. I say people instead of military because there were many civilians whose jobs were to work certain positions. The telephone system was a 1930s plug-in switchboard. A woman named Marge worked that job for many years and was still there when we left. We learned that on Adak there was the right way, the wrong way, the Navy way, and the Aleutian Solution.  You adapted, improvised, and endured, knowing everyone was doing the same thing and mostly with a smile. The major exercise was called tundra stomping, Aleut for hiking in wet grass with no sun and no trees. Trout fishing in a large freshwater lake was excellent.

Then, as some other family left the rock as some called it, family housing became available. I was in the control tower in October 1964 when a very pregnant Doris, Jennifer, and Christian doggie appeared out of the fog at 200 feet altitude flying sideways to stay on the glide path for runway 23 (230 degrees) in a 4 engined DC-6. The wind indicator was at 180 degrees at 60 knots, gusting higher and the DC-6 was at that altitude to stay on a required course guided by the Radar ground controller. 

I was aghast and was told by the tower chief that it would be okay, that the Bob Reeves of Bush pilot fame and his Reeve Aleutian aircraft and its pilots were superb. I remained concerned as it was the worst crosswind I had ever seen. Runway 18 (180 degrees) had 60 mph wind straight down the runway but it did not have an instrument approach to guide A/C. I watched, wondering how the plane could land in such conditions. I saw the big plane fly partially sideways at about 60 feet altitude halfway down the runway and expected the pilot to take it around.

Instead when he got to the runway intersection with runway 18, he lowered the left wing even further, stood on the left rudder pedal and expertly pinwheeled the big plane in the air, to point down runway 18 and landed quite smoothly. The tower chief said, “I told you it would be okay.”  To this day it was the greatest landing that I’ve ever witnessed. I learned that Reeve Aleutian had fantastic pilots and a fantastic stew called Big June who was known through the Aleutians and Anchorage.

I again breathed normally and drove my family to our latest quarters and married life began anew...and before wifi or internet. As such, the one channel TV, the Armed Forces Radio or AFRS, and outdated magazines and newspapers were our main source of news. Jennifer went to a day school, Kent was born, and I attended. 

Then there were the ships that went aground and became a situation for me at the search and rescue room. It was so sad talking to men by radio who are aground in horrible weather. Weather so bad that death was inevitable. Weather so bad that no aircraft could fly. One Captain of an aground ship pleaded with me to send helicopters or they would all die. They all did and all I could do was go on a Helo after the storm passed and go to the wreck. 

The Helo landed and we moved the three naked bodies we found to the Helo and took them back to Adak. Their clothes were ripped off by the wind and waves. I later flew a Chaplain to the scene where it was so foggy, our position was at best accurate within 5 miles. But Father Biddle threw out a wreath, said a few words and reported to the US State Department that a ceremony was performed. 

During another SAR, I talked with the captain of a US Fleet Tug towing a freighter through another storm. He would say about six words, then about 8-10 seconds of silence, then the rest of his sentence. He later explained to me that the sea was so rough, when the tug rolled, he had to drop the mike and hold on, finishing his sentence when the tug rolled back upright. 

1919 over Adak

After one strong earthquake, it was my voice over Adak AFRS (radio) announcing a tsunami warning and instructing everyone on the island to get the hell to high ground immediately. Everyone always had AFRS on for information and emergencies. One woman heard my voice while in the Commissary, came to me and said, “I heard you while fishing at Lake Andrew. What was I supposed to do?” I answered, ”What bait were you using?” 

Doris, Jennifer, and I once got the VW to the top of a gravel road on a steep hill. Cars had yet to make it to the top. Father Biddle had a red VW, saw us and come down. He then made it to the top. Next thing we read in the island paper was that it was named Mt Biddle. I protested to him on behalf of all non-Catholics.

The flying was challenging to say the least. One flight got me mentioned in a two page article in a naval safety magazine. In all my 20 years of flying, there were about five serious issues like shutting down an engine. In only 18 months at Adak, I was scared just short of terror three times. It is interesting that even then, your hands, feet, and brain still function and you are able to fly. The Adak experience taught me the difference between apprehension and pure fright and that knowledge was invaluable for the rest of my flying career and maybe my life. There are some scary things from which one cannot run.

In July, we left Christian with a neighbor and went on a ten day trip touring the Alaskan mainland. We flew free (space available) on government contract A/C to Anchorage and return. We rented a cab over camper for Doris’ first ever camping trip. Two days into the trip our camper’s windshield got hit with a shower of stones from a passing truck. We patched it up with adhesive tape. We went all over the state including Anchorage, Homer, Seward, Talkeetna, Tok Junction, Fairbanks, and the great Mountain of Denali and the National park.  

The daily family humor at Adak was great and I will leave it to Doris to tell such things as Kent in a mail order baby carriage loose in a high wind, going down the street. Oh and I got promoted to LCDR which helped pay bills…but where would they next send us?

We got orders to a Transport Squadron at the Naval Air Station (now closed) at Alameda, California. Hello Bay Area. But seeing the need for additional transportation and Doris having seen photos of a new VW model, we wrote a VW dealer in Seattle and ordered a new 1966 VW Squareback with the old Bug for trade. Doris and I took the front with Jennifer and Kent in the back along with five suitcases and of course, Christian doggie, and drove to Alameda. We found an apartment that would accept “small dogs” (we vouched for Chris being better trained than Kent),  moved in, and began searching for a house to rent. This led us to another Don, another Kent and our lifelong friendship with artist Don Stivers and his wife Bev. So began late February 1966.