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.

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. 

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.

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

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. 

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:

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

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. 

Meridian Navy Stories

By Don

The first 9 months flying the T-2 was sort of a reversal of learning to fly the P-5. When I got to the big seaplanes, I had about 300 hours in jets and the P-5 was a piece of cake to fly. What was different was the seaplane had a 10 man crew and the plane commander managed the crew and the plane. I used to say one took the number of crew and multiplied that number times the number of engines (in this case the number was 20) and that was the screw up factor, 21 if you counted maintenance issues. Transitioning to the T-2 jet from the P-5 meant it was me and a student and a screw up factor of two, three if you counted maintenance issues. After all, in the long run it was the chiefs and sailors that maintained the planes that kept you alive. 

T-2 at Meridian

Then I ran into a maintenance problem. On March 14, 1962, my student and I were shooting landings at an outlying field. I told him to pick up the landing gear and flaps and head for home.  Whoops, we had a red light on the right main landing gear. We cycled the gear and tried again. No luck. It was hard to see from the back seat so I released my shoulder harness, leaned way forward, and looked out the canopy at the right wheel. It was twisted in such a way that it would not fit into the wheel well. I took the controls and headed home, climbing to about 8,000 feet to then pull back the power to conserve fuel. The wheel created right side drag and I had to fly a bit crooked, left wing down with a bit of right rudder to go straight. 

We informed the tower and we were ordered to make a low pass so they could see the problem. I requested that the crash crew foam a runway so I could land with the wheels up. I was told to put the gear down and land on the left wheel and nose wheel and just “tick” the right well to make it align fore and aft. I declined, saying I had a 50-50 chance of that working and I did not like the odds. In the meantime a general recall called back about 60 other T-2’s out on training flights. If I pranged on the runway before they got back, where would they land?

We orbited while all the other planes landed on the two N-S runways. The tanker truck then laid foam on the east-west runway. This took time and I was watching my fuel gauge. The air conditioning control was in the front seat. I asked ENS Shannon to set it on full cold. He replied…”Mr Lidke, it has been on full cold for 20 minutes." Hmm…then what was that running down my back? Must be sweat. Oh well…I briefed Shannon on my ad libbed gear up cross wind landing plan for runway 28 and turned toward the runway, letting down. 

The right side drag was greatly accentuated as I got slower and slower in airspeed. I keep countering this by constantly lowering my left wing into the cross wind and standing on the right rudder. I touched down gear up, in the foam, on centerline while fully cross controlled, full left stick, full right rudder. We stopped in the foam after sliding a little sideways. Shannon opened the canopy and we stepped onto the wing and as I stepped down into the foam, slipped and fell. As I got up, I noticed hundreds of spectators watching from the hangar roof. Gee, and I wanted to look so cool?

When I got back to the ready room, I called Doris to tell her I had a landing problem but I was okay. The local radio station paid a few bucks for newsworthy tips and she might be listening. The CO of the squadron insisted I had let the student land in a skid and I denied it. He knew I had been a seaplane pilot and did not like some of the pilots that D.C. sent to him. 

A week later I was transferred to the base as a ground school instructor.  A week after that I was at base operations for some reason when a pilot got off a helicopter that picked him up at the outlying field. He saw me and shouted, “Don’t worry Don, I found my scissors bolt.” The same thing happened to him on a landing roll out and he skidded to a stop. He went back up the runway and found a bolt from his plane that when fastened, kept the wheel lined up fore and aft. The squadron found about 20 or so planes with over torqued scissors bolts and grounded every plane to get checked. I was absolved. But I was now a ground school instructor teaching classes about the T-2 aircraft. They did minimum repairs and the plane flew again in about two weeks.

I found the Commander and boss of the Training Department to be a first class jerk. He always had to look good and he always had to be made to look good. He was Trumpian ahead of his time. I was ordered to send a sailor to pluck a dandelion outside his window. He was a nut about that lawn. A missing rubber tip on a classroom pointer was a crisis. 

He ordered me to make sure the department Christmas tree was set up and trimmed ahead of all other departments. I sent a sailor into the woods to cut a tree down and set it up for trimming. He complied. Then the Base CO sent an edict that no trees would be cut down for Christmas. I directed a very sharp sailor to check that the CDR was not looking, grab the untrimmed tree and race it out the back door and into a drainage ditch far away. Another sailor was ordered to immediately sweep up any needles in the building entryway and dispose of them.

By now, I had orders to Adak, Alaska. Doris was pregnant and would soon be flying to New Jersey with Jennifer. I would be driving with Christian doggie to Seattle FFT to Adak. But first, I had an idea.  

El Supremo now wanted flowers to be planted around the Training Department sign at the front of the building facing the Admin building and the base CO’s office. Anything to look good. I had the troops prepare the soil as would a good cow college graduate. Then I planted various plants in rows around the GD sign. I told the troops they were to water those plants as if their lives depended on it. About two weeks later there were many young sprouts showing from the seeds and mounds. I had told my troops what was up and that they were to keep watering. Later, after flying to NJ and then back to MS and my VW, I took about four days to drive to Seattle. All the way I had a big smile on my face, thinking how the wax beans, corn and other veggies would be saluting the sun next to his sign.……Grandpaw

On to Mississippi

By Don

Up until this story, there was always humor. There was humor in Meridian, Mississippi. There was life. There was our daughter Jennifer. Navy families go where the Navy sends them. All places have good aspects and in some places, the good conflicts with the bad. Such a place was Meridian.

I thought the culture I experienced in South Carolina would have made me immune to anything in Mississippi. Like going to a Baptist church at Clemson and hearing a minister greeting students with racist jokes so as to encourage them to go to his church. It did not. After arriving in Mississippi, Doris and I went to the MS Highway Patrol office to get our drivers licenses. We spoke to a sergeant. Doris produced her Bermuda license and was asked if it was an English speaking country. Meridian had a serviceman’s club. No blacks allowed. One of my sailors was pistol whipped trying to get into it. I bailed him out of the segregated tank. 

Meridian was a dry town but booze was all over the place. I bought booze at Sadka’s sandwich shop and soda counter as a one-year-old Jennifer looked on. Cops would sit in patrol cars outside a hotel having an "approved” event (meaning white) to assist drunks leaving the party.  But illegal booze was legal if the tax had been paid on the bottle. 

Never mind segregation, it would take hours to fail to explain it. Suffice it to say I was one of three officers to supervise busloads of flight students and sailors to form up with FBI agents and search for three civil rights workers (Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner) murdered by the KKK whose members were police officers. We especially looked where vultures were circling. The atmosphere was so uptight in the search area that the second day, I carried a weapon. At one point a farmer held me and my search group with a shotgun. Local gas stations in Philadelphia, MS refused to sell gas to our convoy.  

We radioed back for a tanker truck from the base. We were Feds. Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner’s bodies were eventually found. It was the day we went to war with Vietnam. James Chaney was the nephew of our maid Lucy, who we hired to clean the house and babysit Jennifer. When Doris would give Lucy a ride home she insisted she had to ride in the back.

Initially every person we met was very nice. They were similar to today’s one issue voter. We were good people as long as we believed what they believed. Their main issue was that they were against blacks. Everything was segregated. That atmosphere even infected the Naval Air Station. My leading Chief once referred to MLK Jr. as Martin Luther Coon. After I talked to him, he never said it again. The Navy was supposed to get along with their neighbors downtown. Some of us did not like the politics of it all.

We found a furnished second floor walk up in Meridian and the renters were most kind, giving us a basket full of kitchen items and their best wishes. Doris was almost eight months pregnant and we only had our express shipment and a few suitcases full of clothes. I was at the base learning the ejection, hydraulic, electrical and avionic systems of the T-2 training jet.

Nights at the apartment were boring. When an encyclopedia salesman knocked at our door, I welcomed him and we enjoyed his presentation but did not buy. We found a realtor and bought our first house that came with FHA sod and two trees. I was now a full LT (two bars). My pay was a whopping $347 a month plus $100/mo flight pay. When our furniture arrived, we moved in, buying a washer and a lawn mower.

The birth of Jennifer came next and Don, Doris, Jennifer and Christian doggie started another chapter with me starting to teach young men how to fly a jet. I usually took a 20 minute ride in our VW to the base in time for a 5 AM briefing and a 6 AM launch, flying two to three flights a day and maybe one or two a month at night.  

Doris enjoyed getting up early, feeding Jennifer and talking to our next door neighbor.  On weekends, I built a fence around the large yard and made a brick patio under some trees at the back of the lot. 

Characters in My First Squadron

By Don

We had a prematurely grey 21 year old pilot, Harry. We would go with Harry to our favorite pub, the Waterlot Inn, and sit outside for lunch where other tables were within easy earshot of our conversation. We would ask Harry questions as to what it was like in the old days to fly the great British clipper seaplanes from the UK to Bermuda. The surrounding tables would listen to this apparent grand old old aviator's tales as he would point to nearby Ireland's Island and say that yes, he flew many a trip to right there. We were obviously navy pilots from the base that idolized this old geezer who would be embellishing his sea stories of yore. It was great sport as we had our lunch and drinks. Harry was also prone to borrowing $20 and “forgetting” to pay us back, probably due to his being quite drunk at the time. We got our money back by waiting until Harry was again inebriated and asking him for $20. Of course he could not remember his borrowing or our method other getting our money back. 

One strange character decorated his room with a solitary can of spinach hanging from the ceiling. He never explained that oddity. Another pilot could not find his “other” white glove for an Admiral’s inspection in Tropical Whites. So he stood at attention wearing one white glove and one white sock. Another guy was the athletic officer and he vowed that as long as he had that billet, there would be no athletics. He did order ping pong balls but claimed that he just made a mistake when a pallet load showed up. We had a designated “uncouth officer.” This of course meant we also had a designated “couth” officer.

One officer did not have his picture posted along with the other officers on the squadron picture board. Big Boo Boo. He was told numerous times to go to the photo lab and get his picture taken but he said he was too busy. The CO finally sent for him and chewed him out as there was another Admiral’s inspection coming up. Seeing the picture board unlocked by the leading Chief who was removing the photo of a pilot who had left the squadron, he talked the Chief into putting the photo of the now gone pilot into the slot for the missing photo. It went in right above the correct name plate. The Chief smiled knowingly because he knew the charade would not last. In about a week the CO saw the wrong photo above the right name and again sent for that pilot. In pleading his case, the pilot said...”Captain, do you really think the Admiral would stop in front of the picture board and say that the wrong photo was above the name of LTJG Lidke?” Of course the Admiral did not know who was who anyway. And that is how, after a year, I saw to it that my photo was properly hung on the squadron picture board.

Another time there was going to be a surprise "recall” to see if those in the Bachelor Officer Quarters could report in a timely manner to the squadron in an emergency. Of course we all knew when this surprise drill would happen. And the hated LT Schmuck that lived to make our happy go lucky group miserable also lived in the BOQ. When the word came around 2 AM, we all snuck out of the building and reported to the squadron. The only one missing was Lt Schmuck. He made trouble for us and reciprocity took various forms. During one loud party, he yelled at us for being too noisy and took many names. As he wrote the names he looked at me, sitting quietly there with my bongo and asked do you want want to join this list? I replied by beating my bongo. Later the Executive Officer said to me. Mr Lidke do you play the bongos? I said no, not really but it seemed like the right thing to do because he (Lt Schmuck) was about to froth at the mouth and we all wanted to see that. Afterwards, a steward came to the party room to warn us that “That man, he crazy, he called the Marine Officer of the Day saying there is an open revolt in the BOQ.” We fell down laughing. The CO and XO tore up the list and BOQ life resumed as usual.

One day, Doris and I were in the Commissary when an officer said I was to report to the XO immediately. It seems that three days prior, while two planes and crews were on temporary duty at Key West, a plane dropped box lunch “garbage” on the Havana-Key West Ferry. It was years before Castro but still could have risen to an international incident. Mostly because the Ferry Captain appeared at the Admiral’s office with old box lunch mayonnaise on his uniform. He said in broken Spanish, it was a large seaplane that did it. Naturally it must have been Lidke because it was so accurate a drop. I drew a rough sketch of our two hour track from memory that was as accurate as the actual track produced by my navigator. The two tracks were so similar that it looked like we were in cahoots and lying.  Somewhere I still have that sketch. My co-pilot on that flight was a LTJG that later made Admiral. I knew the other plane did it but that pilot was a wuss and I got even with him later.

One day at happy hour at the O’ Club bar, Leroy the bartender rang the bell. That meant that someone came in wearing his cover, or hat. It was a full Commander from Norfolk. All Navy O Clubs have a rule that “All who enter covered here, buys the bar a round of cheer.” It could amount to a big bar bill as I found out one day in Kingsville, TX. The CDR said he was not buying any drinks and returned to the foyer and put his hat with all its expensive gold leaf on a table.  Three of us left the bar, took his hat, went down to the edge of the water at Port Royal and threw the hat into the water. We watched it float and sink and went back to the bar. Some rules are inviolate, some are sacrosanct and he screwed up and paid for it by buying a new hat.

The Bermuda Police were rather British and oh so proper. The judges wore wigs. One night I was speeding in my VW bug along South Shore Rd. and noticed a blue flashing light in my mirror. Since the Waterlot was my destination and its driveway was right there, I pulled in. I was in Dress Blues. I got out and came to attention as the officer got out of his car. He whipped his right hand into that flat well known British salute to his ear, smiled and said, “You looked very good on the turns sir.” I returned his salute and stood by as he wrote me a ticket that cost 35 pounds at $2.32 per pound. You did not mess with Bermudian law and order.

 A squadron pilot that got caught driving while intoxicated the second time went straight to the “pea farm” or jail where they grew veggies while waiting for trial. That officer got a Navy undesirable discharge and a ticket home. But British law and civil servants were also to be honored. On a car inspection, my VW had a tail light out and I was being told what to do about it which was very involved. The uniformed man suddenly stopped when he looked at my ID. He said, “Oh I see you are an officer, of course we will take your word.” Certainly a far cry from signs around Norfolk that said “Dogs and Sailors keep off the grass.” Rank has its privilege but it come with the expectation of honor and discipline.

Next dog story....In 1958 there were a series of murders on Bermuda and one woman was found cut up about a mile from our cottage, near Marley Beach. Scotland Yard was flown in from London. Some of the guys now living ashore armed themselves. This resulted in a few incidents of hearing a noise at night and reaching for a weapon only to find that it was his roommate coming in on the side roof and through a window. At the time, a couple was due to leave the squadron and had a German Shepherd pup. They were going to put him down but said they would sell him for $60. At the time there was a serial killer in the States due for execution named Carol Chessman. So we referred to the dog as Chesman and said we would not save him. But we did and he was loyal and the greatest guard dog ever. We still miss him.

After Doris and I got back from our honeymoon at Caneel Bay, we paid our respects many nights with the bachelors of Patrol Squadron 45. They were characters that not even Hollywood could invent.  Of those that I knew well, most are still alive, some still married to their one and only, some not so lucky at marriage and none of them as lucky as me since I met Doris at Bermuda’s Elbow Beach Hotel…..Grandpaw.

Newlyweds in Bermuda

By Don

Doris was easily assimilated into the officer’s wives social circle and she soon learned the ranks of those ladies’ husbands and what everyone did socially. Most of this involved visiting other couples living ashore, visiting the Bachelor Officers Quarters (or BOQ) and especially happy hour every Friday at about 1700, 5 PM to you civilians. The O' Club bartender was a Bermudian and Leroy put your drink down as you sat and was quick to refill any almost empty glass. I was a rum and coke guy as was Doris. One evening, a LT arrived at the club in his Morris Minor and opened the front double doors. He drove the little car (they were all little in BDA) through the front entrance, turned right, turned left at the open double doors to the bar, drove up to the bar and said “Scotch and water Leroy, if you please.” He reported to the XO in the morning. A LCDR’s wife drank whiskey sours. Everyone knew how many drinks she had sipped as she kept the cherries in her glass. It was a place I have long remembered. There has never been a place even close to those memories. Hollywood would think it was fiction.

I was now a LT which meant I had been in the Navy for almost four years and that alone warranted a promotion. I was still the squadron Supply Officer and had three enlisted storekeepers to keep me from making mistakes. I challenged the one accounting line in an important report in which a few thousand dollars was kept there as a hedge for any errors. My guys were so good, I vowed to spend that money in that account on needed squadron equipment. One monthly report went to Norfolk taking the account down to a dime, scotch taped to the report. I was so proud of my troops. The CO knew what I had sent to Norfolk. 

Trouble was, some equipment that we returned and listed as a credit was rejected by the Norfolk people and the result was that we, I...the squadron, had busted that report by around $100. I flew to Norfolk to explain my actions to a Supply Commander. To my CO, the amount was not the issue, I had sent an improper report. When the CDR called me into his office, I expected the worst. Instead he got me a cup of coffee and had me look down at about 20 cubes full of workers auditing reports. He told me most squadrons busted their OPTAR reports by thousands of dollars and if not for a lack of credit on some batteries, I would have been perfect.  I flew back to tell the CO who said “OK Mr Lidke but no more dimes for effect.”

I was initiated into my first crew by being served a great looking plate of scrambled eggs, Joe Higareda did the cooking on 7-8 hour shifts. Most of the crew gathered around to watch as I dug into those eggs. Trouble was, Joe had put in a lot of Jalapeno peppers. I swallowed a lot of water as everyone laughed. Like all new pilots I started out as a Navigator. I did not know how to use a sextant but I was a crackerjack using LORAN and dead reckoning. 

On one exercise, a Norfolk observer declared the first navigator dead and I took over. Problem was, when he died the dividers were under his body. No one can navigate without dividers and at a debriefing I was singled out as basically incompetent. The XO stood up and chastised the observer, telling him I was a new pilot, a jet pilot, and was a good officer. He also said that I was as good a navigator as some that had been trained as a navigator, which I hadn’t.

I eventually became a Patrol Plane Commander and had my own crew, usually a Co-pilot, a Navigator, a Plane Captain, an Ordnanceman, an Electrician, two Avionics technicians, and at least two others in training for those jobs. Always in training, always leadership. 

P5M-2 flown by Don in Bermuda

The squadron's mission was to find Russian submarines which were located at the time by a top secret set of trackers around the Atlantic Ocean, one of which was on BDA. Any taxi driver knew where and what it was. In three years at BDA, I saw one Russian sub which was on the surface, holding “swim call.” By the way, at the time, the ever dangerous Albania also had a submarine.  We had trouble finding our own subs even on a canned exercise. We went out at night using all sorts of electronic equipment including radar. When we found a sub or periscope on radar, we zoomed in at 200 feet and lit him up with a multi-million candlepower searchlight. One plane lit up the Bermuda Queen enroute to NY. 

We flew missions when chimps like the famous Ham was sent into near orbit and recovered. We looked for downed planes and vessels in trouble and a few times worked with other planes and ASW Helos. We put Sunday papers and comics in sonobuoy tubes and when the sub we didn’t find surfaced when the exercise was over, we went down to 50 feet and dropped the floating tube just forward of the sub.  It was immediately fished out. Those guys were at sea for a long time. I went aboard a sub when it was at a pier at our base. We deployed to Jacksonville, Port of Spain, Trinidad, the Bahia de San Juan, Key West, Corpus Christi, many days at Gitmo, and of course, my favorite, Pillsbury Sound in the Virgin Islands. While deployed, Doris lived alone in our cottage with Christian. She even could listen to our shortwave radio and hear us reporting to air controllers as we came home. 

I got a prized new primary job as Division Officer of 120 or so crew members for all the squadron A/C. I loved that job and learned a bit of leadership in the process. Most of those men were great guys. Only two or three were problems and that was a great ratio. It was getting to be time for a set of orders to somewhere. I had requested a fighter squadron, on any coast, any type aircraft for “any nationality.” Naturally, the Navy sent Doris and I to Mississippi.

The Wedding and Honeymoon

By Don

Being a bit excited for the wedding, I lost track of the time at the base and drove my VW rather fast to Kindley Field, leaving the car in a long term lot and flew to NJ. Enroute to Newark in a NY Airways Helo, I dropped the ring down a hole in the floor but snapped open an access hole, reached in between some control cables and rescued it. 

I had set up to rent a Chevrolet Corvair to use after the wedding simply because I had never driven one. Ralph Nader later said it was “unsafe at any speed." I do not remember much about the ceremony other than that I was there, said "I do,” kissed Doris and wanted to leave immediately.  I remember I did the cake thing, fumbled at dancing with Doris, and finally we left in the dark and in the Corvair for Idlewild airport on Long Island. It became JFK later. The plane was a 707 night coach to San Juan and a stewardess gave us two coach seats away from the other passengers, apparently knowing that we were just married. Must have been my glow.

We landed at SJU or Isla Verde International and checked in to the local puddle jumper airline for the next leg to the Saint Thomas Airport, then known as Harry Truman Field. His stamp was all over. I remember the Margaret Truman launderette was in Key West at the corner of Margaret St. and Truman Avenue. The plane was a DC-3 or Gooney Bird which has a tail wheel, 2 prop engines and you walk downhill to your seat. It took off and flew to HST Field where one now walked uphill to debark. Being a modern navy pilot I thought the plane was rather ancient in that it was designed in the 1930s. My log book says I have 76 flight hours in one while at Meridian, MS. 

The next leg was to go by a 35 minute taxi to the other end of Saint Thomas Island and get on a 30 minute small shuttle boat which took people to St. John and the dock at Caneel Bay, a Rock Resort, as in Rockefeller, where we had reservations. So how did I know about Caneel Bay?

Long before I met Doris I had flown into Pillsbury Sound between St. Thomas and St. John along with ten other P-5M seaplanes to fly training flights and live aboard a large Seaplane Tender anchored in the Sound. One day on the USS Albemarle, I heard the ship's announcement to call away the Captain’s Gig which would depart for shore in 15 minutes. Curious, and with no other duties, I quietly boarded the gig with the Captain and five or six officers and was surprised to find we went to a dock at an apparent resort. The trip was for those officers to have a drink and talk to the resort manager, possibly about the activity and seaplane noise on his heretofore serene Pillsbury Sound. I managed two Rum Punches in 30 minutes and we all returned to the ship. No one asked me who I was and I volunteered nothing.  But what a fabulous resort. I thought to myself...“What a place for a honeymoon.” About a year later, I had reason to remember that resort.  

But back to our adventures. It was now getting dark and we were both exhausted and slept very well. So I was pleased that we got this far on my planning. Months earlier, I had made reservations for the resort at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, somewhere on the 40th floor. They accepted my information and my credit card and I went back to the ground floor and around the corner to a Pan American Airlines office:

I was in a dress blue uniform and a nice man said “How can I help you?” I said I needed a plane reservation from BDA to Idlewild for myself on 21 April, 1960. He said OK and wrote it down. Then I tell him I need reservations on a night coach from Idlewild to San Juan for two on 23 April and he said OK and wrote it down. Then I said I need two reservations from SJU to Harry Truman Field in St. Thomas, VI and he said OK and wrote it down. Then I said I need reservations for two from HST airport on St Thomas to SJU and he said OK and wrote it down.  Then I said I need two reservations on British West Indies Airlines for two from SJU to BDA and he said OK, wrote it down, and gives me a long look. Then he said…”and then where to?” and I said “that’s it, that’s all.” He gave me another look. Yes, that one.

Then he said that, as a serviceman stationed at BDA, I could get off the plane at Bermuda but my wife could not get off or stay at Bermuda and must continue on. Thinking fast, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a Navy letter to confirm that my dependent wife could join me without further papers and stay at Bermuda. He smiled and left to take about 15 tortuous minutes to check that out, returned, and read the entire itinerary back to me. I gave him my credit card, took the tickets, and walked out with a big smile on my face. So ends my part of the marriage plans.

Again, back to our adventures at Caneel Bay. We ate like kings and queens. Comedian Shelley Berman was there at a nearby table. We swam at a number of beaches, tried our hand at sailing, and had our first argument (see Doris’ story). What a great place for a honeymoon. I wanted to come back someday. But it was time to go home to Bermuda where I had rented a cottage. But upon arrival at SJU, we found that the BWIA flight had been cancelled and we were stuck in SJU for two days and were a bit low on cash. 

But Doris had some cash in envelopes given to us at the wedding. I argued with BWIA and got a free room at the motel that the airline used for their flight crews and we became San Juan tourists. I had been to San Juan before with a ten day deployment of a bunch of seaplanes, hanging on buoys in the Bahia de San Juan while we lived in a BOQ. With our plane to be the first out to BDA, we knew that no check would get to BDA before we did, as any check for the Bank of Bermuda would be on the plane with us, and I had a paycheck waiting at the squadron.

We rented a VW and drove west. We continued on, taking a small open flatbed ferry pulled by a cable on each side of a river. We continued on to the big rainforest mountain of El Junque to a town called Fajardo, past the Naval Station at Roosevelt Roads and back to San Juan. We walked the Old town San Juan, visited El Morro, the old Spanish Fortress, went to the Carribe Hilton and did touristy things before flying back to BDA, our cottage and the squadron.

Meeting Doris

By Don

I did pick up one girl and one dog in BDA. First the girl. One night Fred Easter said let's hit the Elbow Beach Hotel and see what the crop is. We arrive and go to the Patio Bar to talk to the social director Bill who once a night tells everyone to turn to their right and say “hi” as an ice breaker. We finally got to talk to Bill.

Don, 1957

But Bill Allan told us they were all dogs. I told you this was a dog story. Then he introduced us to two girls. After some conversation, they said they were going to eat upstairs. Fred and I went upstairs after a while and drank a few until they came out of the dining room. We invited them to go with us to a restaurant. They seemed good with that and we departed in my VW. Half a block away, I slid on some sand and my right rear fender hit a wall, pushing the fender in and it acted like a tire iron. The tire came loose from the rim and went flat. My date was to have been June who was in the front seat with me. No seat belts, so June’s head nearly went through the windshield. She had recently had a nose job and was disturbed.

Fred was in the back seat and had his own collision. It was his hip bone against the lady’s hip bone and pelvis. No seat belts. Fred hailed a cab and we abandoned the VW and went to Our Lady of Whatever Hospital. Yes, his date was Doris who after getting in the taxi, then said she could not walk into the hospital. To which Fred said something like “Oh come on now.” Doris was hospitalized while June, Fred and I made like a vaudeville show and laughed everything off. We dropped June off at the hotel and went back to the base.

The following morning, I marched into the CO’s office and said that I had an accident last night, a girl is in the hospital and I’m going to take her home to New Jersey and I need some leave papers. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet and said ”Do you need any money?” I went to my BDA insurance agent who arranged for a friend at the Bank of Bermuda to meet us at the bank (not a working day) and change pounds into dollars and gave me $600, no questions asked. 

So that’s how Doris Karg flew home on a scheduled Pan Am (C-97) Clipper as a stretcher patient with a dislocated hip and a cracked pelvis. As the safety lecture showed how to don a life vest. I asked Doris “How long can you tread water?”  She laughed and has been laughing ever since.  

The plane was met by an ambulance and I rode with her to her home, got out and said something like “Mr Karg, here is your daughter.” I still do not remember how I got home from her house that day. But I learned how to get back there many times before going back to BDA. At the squadron, the talk was that Lidke is so cheap, he will probably marry her to avoid a lawsuit.

Her friend’s father was a lawyer.  She did sue. We used the money for our honeymoon at Caneel Bay in the...wait for it...Virgin islands.

Thanks again Butch Voris, the Norfolk Commander that sent me to BDA, Fred Easter for his Friday night suggestion and the sand on the road. Without them I honestly don’t know to this day what would have happened to me. I regret not even knowing her in high school. What a wasted puberty. What a wasted six years. Were the stars aligned that night? I do not know but they sure have been aligned for the last 59 years.

……..Grandpaw    P.S. The dog story will be next

Adventures in Bermuda

By Don

Arriving at the Bermuda Naval Operating Base bachelors officer quarters in September 1958, the first thing I had to fix was the air conditioning in my room. Not easy. There was none...the building had no A/C. My personal effects shipment arrived in one week and my first VW Bug arrived in six weeks, courtesy of my father who shipped it when he and Mom returned from a trip to Germany. I had sent him a cable saying oh so sadly, “Forget Porsche 911, I’m being sent to Bermuda, send VW.” The Porsche had too many CCs, too big an engine for BDA law. So very terribly sad. I also told him my new Pontiac at home in NJ was now his and he should sell it and keep the money. 

Within a month, I installed a small window A/C. I had a phone but did not know the number. The first time the phone rang was about two weeks later. I answered it by saying, “Please, what number are you calling?” So now I had a base phone but only I knew the number. No need to tell the squadron. I had a single bed, a metal table and a metal chair. I shared a shower with an adjoining room. Numerous pieces of soap were stuck to the shower walls. It was filthy. My request to paint the room got a good laugh. 

Within three months I painted it, lowered the ceiling by using a fishnet effect two feet lower than the ceiling, replaced the overhead light with a lantern, cleaned and stocked the fridge, made a sofa bed out of two mattresses and a red bed cover from Sears at Norfolk, put in a nice chair, got a grass rug, painted the inside of the door red and made a bar out of a rum barrel that cost me two pounds and six pence at a Hamilton booze warehouse. The rum dregs were still in the barrel and the Bermudian and I had to empty the barrel. We did with smiles. I made and hung full length bleached muslin drapes at the window wall. I also had photos and jet models displayed. 

I was ready for inspection and ready for female guests. It happens that all BDA hotels use brackish water in their showers and the base was popular for its fresh water showers, with the water coming from a giant man-made hill that was a water catch. Little did I know that a year or so later, my wife would learn to drive around that water catch. I forgot to teach her how to back up and she failed her driver’s test.

One or more nurses visited frequently and thought my room was “cool” and not because of the air conditioning. Liebfraumilch wine and cheese were always available along with St Pauli Girl German beer. Later on, when my parents visited, salami was also available. It took a few more weeks but the room finally got a two piece six speaker Fisher Hi Fi phonograph stereo which when put on full volume, would make the curtains vibrate. By the way, a 40 ounce bottle of rum cost $1.10, scotch and whiskey was cheap and the Cuban Rum of choice was Matusalum at a horrible cost of $2.35 a quart. It was not sold in the States as it was considered a drug of sorts.

Initially, many of the officers were NAVCADS or Navy ROTC peeps made officers after failing to complete college. Two or three years at an Ivy league school apparently ranked way above a Clemson grad. Still, I made friends with the good guys and tolerated the others. Strange, I never met a Navy jet jockey I didn’t like. But then again, I wasn’t around long enough to really know them. The senior officers like LDCRs were much older, many from WWII and some were very easy going, especially at the officer’s club bar.

Time off was spent at the island’s hotel bars and in downtown Hamilton where one outside upstairs patio place allowed one to watch the waterfront cruise ships, ferries and girls when in season. Season was College Spring Week and Vacationers. Restaurants were superb, steel bands played, and lobster tails tasted wonderful even after too many drinks. We also had many beach parties at Horseshoe Beach, a very large length of wide sand with craggy hidden coves. Two officers had boats and we spent many an hour cruising around.

My room was considered by most girls that entered as a den of iniquity but few could resist. Not that the straight arrow owner was a threat. There were many parties, some of them simultaneous in other rooms down the hall. Occasionally, we would tee up multiple and duplicate recordings of a 21 gun salute of the battleship Missouri on three or four Hi Fi rigs, including mine. The turntable would spin and we would hold the needle at the beginning as someone yelled the count down, 5,4,3,2,1 and we all placed the needle at the start. Of course the volume was full up on all the Hi Fi’s. The second floor would vibrate with the sound and we drank to it. We also frequently played the 1812 overture and when the bells of Moscow sounded, drunks would pretend to ring those bells a la Quasimodo.

I met three or four girls in BDA. On one date, a girl pulled out a cigarette and held it towards me for a light. I had no matches or a lighter, nonsmoker that I was. My friend reached over and ostentatiously produced a lighter and that date was effectively over. On another date, I now had matches and when the cigarette stunt was pulled, I grabbed my matches but the wind kept blowing them out. My friend then smoothly pulled out his matches, rolled the cover to make a circle and lit the girl’s cigarette through the circle. I began to feel snake bit about co-eds that smoked. Sometimes at a bar, a girl would start a conversation with “do you have a light?” So I began to just say I do not smoke. They just went away down the bar to the next guy. Understand the ratio was near 5 to 1 during Spring Week and we had cars and local knowledge. 

All in all, the junior officers were all unique characters with wild personalities. In 20 years in the Navy, I never again saw a bunch like those guys. Maybe it was the plodding big seaplanes, maybe it was the rum, maybe just BDA. Our favorite pub and bar was the Waterlot Inn. It was partway to Hamilton and the Langosta (Lobsters) were fantastic. After one bachelor got married he honeymooned at BDA at an unknown hotel. If we knew, we would have ruined his honeymoon. His last two nights were spent at one of the few rooms at the Waterlot. Ten years later I got a "training flight” to BDA from New Orleans in a C-54, DC-4 to civilians.  I went through the Waterlot’s guest book for ten years ago. This family became lifelong friends. In the guest book for that date it had their names and it said, under remarks, ”Conceived Here.”

Don Does Puberty

By Don

My childhood through age 12 was so full of adventures that I didn’t really notice girls. Joining the Boy Scouts at age 12 further expanded my outdoor life and by age 14, I was a Life Scout and thought about working towards being an Eagle Scout. But there was not enough time to do it all. By age 14 I was very aware of girls but did not know what to do with them. 

A psychologist would have said that my testosterone had yet to kick in, while some of the older guys began acting like theirs were out of control. What to do? It was sometimes very confusing. I did not realize that the guys I knew were “changing.” Mind you, I knew of no parents of that era that ever “had the talk” with their sons. Certainly not my parents. Sex education was boys conversations, talking among themselves in what I thought were crude terms that made me interested and uncomfortable. The times were different then, the culture different. TV was not around nor was Marilyn Monroe or centerfolds.

Those conversations made me feel like they knew everything about girls while I felt like a dunce, which was a shattering blow to my otherwise high level of self confidence...for my age anyway.  Later on, in retrospect, I realized that late puberty was damaging to the ego if not cruel and that it was typical for teenage males to be braggarts if not liars when it came to girls.

At the time I reasoned that girls did not play any of the boy sports, did not fish, go on bike trips or hike and camp. Some of them even smoked which became another level of teenage macho posturing. I became so aware of how phony some of the boys looked while smoking, I became disdainful of anyone that smoked, especially girls.  Maybe if I had taken up smoking I would have been like the “Marlboro Man.”

While I had many enjoyable days “socializing” with groups of boys and girls, especially at the Jersey Shore, I plodded along, content with who I was, whatever that was. I did not date in high school. I certainly was not a nerd, played all sports but not really well enough to be on a team.

I did date a little at Clemson and found that southern girls were also nice and were especially curious about “Yankees.” Sometimes too curious. Even after rising above their accent, I could see that it was not a good fit and let it go. Then a friend was designated as a cadet date for someone that later became Miss America. I envied him. Doug became known as Mr. America. I later went out with a friend of Miss America to be but alas, I struck out. Back to saving lunch money for flying lessons in the Piper J-5 at Anderson, South Carolina.

Another friend fixed me up with a girl from North Carolina. Another zilch. Still another date in Atlanta with a girl from Agnes Scott which was a disaster, or so I thought. Then she wrote me a letter at Clemson but I never made it back to Atlanta. I then became a Clemson graduate but unlike Dustin Hoffman in the movie “The Graduate.” Where was Ann Bancroft when you needed her?

Now it was on to the next big thing…Naval Officer School at Newport, RI.  Other than almost flunking out and being saved by a visit by my friends the Demmers who drove there through a snowstorm after I had told them I was about to flunk out. Newport ladies back then are best described as life imitating art. Art being the movie “An Officer and a Gentleman.” Yes, Richard Gere got a girl and I went to Navy Pensacola for flight training.

Pre-flight training was initially tough for me physically. The obstacle courses and all that. In class I was competing with real college grads from around the US. I struggled academically but was accomplished in all things military due to the Clemson Cadet Corps experience. I did surprisingly well in something called speed reading. For some reason I was the third fastest reader in the program records. Must have been all my years reading every book I could find. In 1942, my mother bought me a book. That was a big deal for our family in a lot of ways. It was about a pilot and two crew members that went down in the Pacific and spent 32 days in a small raft and survived.  Strangely enough, the title was “The Raft.” I was hooked.

I still remember the first line in my first very own book. “Captain Bligh would indeed have fancied Dixon.”...In 1942 there were no books in our house except an old Bible.  My mother saw me reading excerpts from The Raft in the Sunday paper. She went to Newark and bought the book which was a bigger deal than I realized at the time.  That started me into books, school libraries and public libraries. But I digress...on to the next big thing -- Whiting Field and actual flight training.

SNJ-5 WB from Whiting Field

I soloed the yellow trainer called the SNJ and what an ego trip that was. The experience with the little plane at Clemson helped but I could do anything they asked me to do in that SNJ.  Maybe it was my enormous confidence in general, maybe it was the end of the longest puberty on the planet, but my ego knew no bounds. How could anyone resist me? I was becoming a Naval Aviator. I dated a little at various Florida bases and some at advanced training at Kingsville, TX where I trained in jet fighters which stretched new boundaries in all areas, flying and women.

Any woman that saw me in a flight helmet, boots, sun glasses and G-suit was bound to melt at my will. Sure they would. Home, on leave, I dated a school teacher from West Orange and a nurse from New York and a few others. I found the New Jersey girls much better than the Floridians or the Texans, especially the Texans. Was I becoming an egotistical snob or just trying too hard to make up for lost time? But this was not a time for any analytical thinking…the next big thing was here. Flight training was over. I had my wings.  

F3D Skynight (DRUT), flew at RAG Key West

My Navy orders took me to Key West to learn ground control radar interception flying the ugly F-3D or DRUT. Do not spell it backwards. It did not have an ejection seat. You unhooked your gear and straps, moved a hatch and slid down a chute into a mattress on the hangar deck. In practice, none of us got out in less than a minute. 

Later, I was diverted from the Key West Naval Air Station due to thunderstorms. The LCDR leading our flight of two lost his radio so ENS Lidke led him north to MacDill AFB at Tampa as directed, which created a problem. MacDill was a SAC base and it was restricted to flights with prior landing permission. The LCDR was low on fuel so I had to ignore the tower repeatedly telling me (us) that we could not land. Instead I declared an emergency and flew a precautionary flame out approach with the LCDR on my wing and landed anyway. 

The vehicle that met us had machine guns pointed at us and we were “taken” to the aerodrome Commanding Officer under guard as unauthorized arrivals. We went into his office and there on his desk was his name plate: Col. Paul W. Tibbets. My God, he was THE Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay B-29 that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. He was most gracious, sent his secretary to get us coffee, arranged for a new radio for the LCDR’s A/C and for a fuel truck, and apologized for the necessary security. We spent the night and flew to Key West NAS the next morning with our story.

Now for my first fighter squadron and RAG, or replacement Air Group VF-21. The Mach Busters flew the F-ll which had been the A/C of the Blue Angels. Thank you Butch Voris. Weeks later, after more training in a F-9F swept wing jet, the time came for my f hop in the F-ll.  It had only one seat. That day came but three of us newbies or “jet nuggets” were called into the CO’s office. 

We were told that Navy budget cuts required some pilots to be cut from the jet pipeline and we were to report to a Norfolk office for further orders. I was living with four other pilots at 112 and a half 58th street, on Virginia Beach. The house was between a house full of Seal team types and a house full of airline stewards. We went to Norfolk  to check the available billets. I took a chance on the big four engined P-6M jet seaplane being tested at Martin Aviation. 

P5M

I was sent to Bermuda for seaplane experience to prime me for the P-6M. There I was to fly a twin-engined big gull wing P-5M propeller A/C. The P-5M was known as two prop fighters glued to a dempster dumpster. I felt this choice was the pick of the litter but I was crushed and angry.  One of the other guys broke down in tears of disappointment. I said screw it, or words to that effect..at least I’m not being sent to Maug Maug. That’s Guam spelled backwards. A few months later when I was learning about seaplanes at BDA, a P-6M blew up on a test flight and the program was canceled. So I got to fly at 200 knots instead of 500 knots for three years at BDA...Epitome of a bummer.  But stay tuned. There were girls at BDA and after a year or so...Doris and friend came to the island on vacation…Grandpaw

Childhood Freedom

Don, 1935

By Don

Only in retrospect have I realized that my childhood involved a level of freedom not recognized by today’s five-year-olds. At age four I could ride my tricycle a full block away provided I did not cross the street.  Straining at the bit, I disobeyed and was stopped by “Johnny the Cop” who made me walk my tricycle across the street. I wanted to ride across so the next time, I stopped three houses down from his beat and rode across the street. He told my mother. 

We played outdoors all day.  No TV, no radio, just outside.  My mother went to the grammar school to argue that I should be allowed to enter kindergarten with my friends. The school said I missed the age group by a few months. My mother won the argument. So I got to hobnob with older kids and walk to school six blocks away.

It seemed natural that each year I expanded my world and roamed farther and farther from home. I came home for lunch and returned to school. On non-school days, I came home for lunch and then again disappeared into my very own world, being sure to depart for home “when the street lights came on.” At age seven with the advent of a full size bike, the world further expanded. Initially the big bike was a challenge in that once I stopped, I had to find a big rock or high curb or sewer grate that could give me a boost up to start

No one knew where I was, what ropes I swung on from what tree, that I snuck into the local amusement park, which local park drew me, which friends I found block after block after block. No one knew which streams I waded in, which ponds I built rafts in, where I chased rabbits and turkeys, or caught tadpoles.  When I later read Tom Sawyer, I thought my life was much more exciting, except for Injun Joe.

After Pearl Harbor, my friends and I scoured the area for scrap metal. We filled our wagons and took our loot to collection bins, doing what we thought was good for the war effort. I mounted two flashlights like headlamps on the bike and began staying out later. I fixed my own flats and when it snowed, I put homemade chains on the rear tire and looked forward to driving on snow pack. 

Around that time, I was given a white rabbit for Easter. Of course I named it Peter and built a hutch in the backyard.  I used to follow some railroad tracks, sneak into the railroad yard, and climb into a freight car that was full of loose rabbit food to take some home in bags that I brought. My father knew Peter was not a male and one day he went to a pet store and left Peter for a day or two. Wow, I now had three little white bunnies! I found a way to make a small cage for my wagon, put Peter and family in the cage, and towed my wagon via my bike to a few parks. Yes, I was a big hit. 

There was a small stream leading to a very large pond in a reservation. I discovered it about five miles from home and that started my fishing days.  We sometimes fished a lake near Newark. It was there that I remember lying on a bank, waiting for a fish to bite and looking up at the constant overflights of planes from Newark Airport. That led to bike trips to Newark Airport where for three cents in a machine, one could listen to real pilots talk and watch planes land and take off. 

At age 12, I joined the Boy Scouts and my parents sent me to Camp Ken Etiwa Pec in the Kittatinny Mountains. That started me hiking. By age 14, I hiked the Appalachian Trail for many miles, camping as I went with other scouts. We spent one November day and frozen night in a storm that the weather folks said had 150 MPH winds and heavy rain. We knew it was bad as we passed by a lake atop a high ridge and noticed three foot high waves from the wind. We took the train home to Maplewood. Our story was printed in the Maplewood News.

All this was without a cell phone, Facebook, Snapchat or Twitter. We had our own communication device. It was conversation with our peers. There were arguments and fights but we always resolved thing by talking it out. I don’t remember any bullying whatsoever.  We chose teams and played baseball in the street or at a diamond in a park. We all had helmets and shoulder pads and played tackle football. I was usually chosen next to last. My mother recognized my poor hand-eye coordination and quietly played catch with me in the backyard to help me. By junior high (7th grade) I was playing basketball. Not a good shot but I hustled. I actually went to Yankee Stadium before I saw a game on TV.

By the time I got my driver’s license, I knew by memory every road in northern NJ, having been everywhere on day-long bike trips, week-long camping and fishing trips, or family car trips to summer lakes or winter skating and skiing. I also made a handheld sail to use on skates at Budd Lake. I had to dump the sail before I got to the far end of the lake where there was open water.

There is a short book called Change of Idols by John Taintor Foote (1935) about a teenage fisherman who discovers girls. So my next story will be titled...wait for it...Don does puberty...Grampaw