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.