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.