Monthly Archives: August 2013
Chapter 81, Del Rio Part 2
Leave a reply
First of all I’d like to welcome some new members to my little community of “Hoverers”. As a quick recap to catch everyone up, I started this blog over a year and a half ago to pass on thoughts and experiences of my 34+ year career in the USAF. It has, however, evolved into a somewhat wider format. The name “Hovering over Send” comes from the experience we’ve all had when we write an email in a moment of passion and then hover that little pointer over the “send” button on the screen before we make the final decision whether or not to click. More often than not, I click. That’s it, the whole history. I thought I would do this once a month or so but, as you can see by the title, I’m up to 81 and I’ve only missed 2 or 3 weeks since January 2012. If you would like to be removed from the list, just let me know. My feelings won’t be hurt. All past chapters are available at hoveringoversend.com and I’m on Twitter at hovringoversend. It’s no typo, there’s is no “e”. I had to remove one letter to keep it short enough for Twitter. And one more thing, you can’t access the website from an Air Force computer, The computer Nazis have it blocked!
Last week I wrote about my trip to beautiful Del Rio, TX to begin my Air Force career in Undergraduate Pilot Training or UPT. After my first night of cockroach horror I set off to find a furnished apartment since there really wasn’t any furniture in the trunk of my Studebaker. I wasn’t going to be too picky, I just wanted something I could afford on the pay of a new 2nd Lt, and that wasn’t much. After a few frightening drive-by assessments I found a very clean and quiet apartment complex, with a pool, that obviously, judging by the license plates of the cars in the parking lot, catered to UPT students. I parked the car and headed for the manager’s office to see if there were an vacancies. I knocked on the door and heard footsteps. The door knob turned, and then it got a little weird. A short, elderly woman opened the door, looked up at me, began to smile, opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Her face went blank, her jaw fell open and she just stared.
Now, I’m not what you would call a handsome guy. I knew she wasn’t stunned by my manly visage. I’m tall, but not freakishly tall so I’m sure that wasn’t it. I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I said “hello” 2 or 3 times. I waived my hand in front of her face. And, just as I was about to call for help thinking she was having some kind of seizure, she snapped out of it. She just kind of shook it off and said hello. I introduced myself and asked if she had an apartment. And she did it again. Only this time it was a little different. She obviously heard the question but it was like she was thinking real hard about how to answer it. After an uncomfortable pause she said, “Yes I do, let me show it to you”. It was a second story, furnished, neat as a pin, one bedroom unit with monthly exterminator visits to keep out the pervasive Texas roaches. Perfect! I moved in immediately.
Nearly a year later I had my last flight at UPT. I graduated second in my class but got my last choice of aircraft to my last choice of geographical area, but that’s another story. The night of my last flight two of my classmates invited me over for dinner. John and Todd were best friends at the Academy and shared an apartment in the same complex. After dinner we sat down in their living room and they got very serious which, for them, was radically out of character. “We invited you to dinner tonight because there’s something we need to tell you. Something we promised we wouldn’t tell you until you flew your last flight. Do you remember your first day here, when you came looking for an apartment?” I had to think for a moment but then I recalled my first encounter with the landlord. “Oh yeah”, I said “She was a bit odd that day”. “Well”, Todd said, “There was a reason for that and she’s the one that made us promise not to tell you this until today”. I was getting, more than a little, creeped out. “Several months before you got here there was a T-38 crash in which the student pilot was killed. He lived in this apartment complex. In fact, he lived in the apartment you’re living in. And, you could have been his twin brother. When the landlady opened the door that day she was terrified and when you asked to see the apartment, his apartment, she almost told you she wouldn’t rent it to you but couldn’t think of a reason to send you away.”
I thanked the guys for telling me and waiting to tell me. I’m not superstitious but I didn’t sleep much that night.
The year of UPT is tough one. Lots of studying. Highs and lows. But it flies by (pun intended). At the time, you’re glad when it finally ends and you pin on those silver wings. But, in hind sight, it was one of the best years of my life. The camaraderie, the challenges, the pure joy of flying, there’s almost no better experience.
Chapter 80, Del Rio
The loneliest drive I’ve ever made was the 152 miles from San Antonio Intl Airport to Laughlin AFB, Del Rio, TX. It’s a lovely drive through Castroville, Hondo, Sabinal, Uvalde, and Bracketville. I think D’Hanis is in there somewhere! Miles of dirt and rocks and cactus and the occasional speed trap to keep you on your toes. It was August 1978 I had dropped my brother Tim off at the airport so he could fly back to Pittsburgh and I could make the final leg of the trip on my own. I was driving my trustworthy old ’66 Studebaker with all of my earthly possessions in the trunk and embarking on the great adventure of an Air Force career. Alone, unafraid, but a little apprehensive.
ROTC had taught me the big picture of how the Air Force worked but when it came to the details, things were still a bit sketchy. I knew the first step was going to “billeting” and figuring out where I was going to live for the next year and, if you’ve ever been to an Air Force base, there are always signs to get you there. It was an ATC base so the staff was well trained in dealing with new guys and the lady behind the desk went through her inprocessing checklist and eventually asked me where I was going to stay. I told her that it seemed to me that staying in the “Q” on base would be convenient since my entire life would revolve around pilot training but she frowned and said, “You really don’t want to do that”. I was a little surprised but I insisted that it seemed like the most logical choice. She said, “How about you stay here for tonight. Sleep on it and in the morning you can decide”. I was tired, it had been a long day of desert and no air-conditioning, so I agreed. I dragged my bags to my room, which was in a 1950’s era converted barracks, and settled in for the night. I think it was about 1:00 in the morning when someone speaking Farsi slammed a door down the hall, we still had Iranian students in 1978, and I decided to take a leak. I reached over to the night stand, flicked on the light, and the horror began. There was movement, lots of movement!
Now, you have to remember, I’m from Pittsburgh. I had never been to the south or the west, just the northeast. I was used to green trees, rolling hills, four seasons, and bugs that stayed outside. I had never even seen a cockroach and now I was surrounded. I leapt out of bed and started swatting and stomping. I turned on the bathroom light and the floor was moving. I opened the dresser drawers and things scurried for the dark corners. After 30 minutes of carnage the movement finally stopped and I tried to go back to sleep. But I wasn’t about to turn any lights off and all I could envision was tiny eyes watching me from dark corners just waiting for me to fade off so they could come and crawl under the sheets. It was a long night.
The next morning I staggered down the hall to the office and asked the woman at the desk for a list of apartments in town. She gave me a knowing smile and a list with my name at the top. A list she had made the day before. One of the best lessons in life is to take the advice of someone who is obviously more knowledgeable than you.
Next week “My first apartment”.
Chapter 79, Mabel Part 2
My grandmother was, shall we say, a bit quirky. Last week I told ya’ll about the last time I saw her and her love of horror movies but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Some of you know that my brother Bob is an author. He’s written scores of children’s books but one of his earlier works was titled “Aunt Mabel’s Table” (It’s available on Amazon along with 31 others). Although the book is fictional it is roughly based on one of my grandmother’s interesting quirks.
She was a child of the depression and it was her generation that made the sacrifices, suffered through the poverty, and made the mistakes (like the FDR ponzi schemes) that have brought us to where we are today. Great sacrifices that saved the world but great mistakes for the “perception of financial security” that will eventually enslave us. But I digress. Grandma would never pass up a bargain. And it had to be a REALLY good bargain. Just up the street was a grocery store called Thorofare. It was a chain that eventually was absorbed by another, larger company but, if I close my eyes, I can still see the aisles and smell the smells.
Every Saturday we would walk up the street and go shopping with grandma at Thorofare. We would walk the aisles looking for deals but at the end of the last aisle there was always the best deal of all, a cart full of very odd canned goods. They weren’t dented or damaged in any way, they were just all missing labels. I’m assuming that either somewhere in the back room during the process of unpacking, or while the shelves were being stocked, or during the manufacturing process, the cans lost their paper labels. This left the store with very few options. They could throw them away, or they could put them in a cart and sell them for a dime. Of course, a dime is better than nothing so there they would sit waiting for someone to take a chance.
We would stand there picking up the cans one at a time. We would smell it, hoping that there was some remaining odor from the factory. We would shake it, hoping that we could get a clue by the sloshing sounds. Assuming there was a sloshing sound. We would size it up. A tuna can is different than a soup can is different than a vegetable can. But in the end, it always came down to rolling the dice. You might think it feels like a can of corn, smells like a can of corn, and you can visualize it as a can of corn, but ALPO isn’t a can of corn.
We’d load paper bags (there were no such thing as plastic bags) with the days treasures and wheel them home in a cart. And with excitement, and a little fear, we knew that dinner that night would be “interesting”. Grandma would randomly select several cans and whatever slid out after the top was removed was what we had for dinner. It made for some odd combinations like mushroom soup and peas, or tomato paste and lima beans and, yes, there was the occasional can of dog food but, to my knowledge, she never actually served it to us! When it comes to food preparation you might not like surprises but when you’re 7 everything’s an adventure.
Most folks like to think they’re in control of their lives. That it’s all in a neat comfortable package. But sometimes, life is like an unlabeled can, “you never know what you’re going to get”. My apologies to Forrest Gump!
Chapter 78, Mabel
I’m usually not one to remember anniversaries of specific events. There are dates which, out of necessity, I do remember. Peg’s birthday, our wedding anniversary, the kids birthdays they’re all pretty much burned into my brain. But they’re ingrained into my psyche because, well, Peg would kill me if I forgot. (Although she did forget that the 31st was Erin and Tom’s wedding anniversary!). All of that being said, this week is the 35th anniversary of my departure for pilot training.
My brother Tim and I loaded all of my worldly possessions into the trunk of my 1966 Studebaker and started the long drive to Del Rio, TX. Three days in July in an un-air-conditioned car through West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas. Good times! But more on that next week. My grandmothers name was Mabel.
Mabel is one of those names that fell out of popularity about 2 days after someone thought of it. I haven’t checked the “popularity of names” website but I’m pretty sure you won’t find Mabel in the top 100, or even 250 most common names. None of us have even considered giving it to our children or grandchildren as a middle name. Maybe it’s because it rhymes with so many words and we don’t want our kids to be taunted by bullies or maybe it’s just one of those names that are just too old-timey, like Henrietta. (I had an aunt Henrietta, we called her aunt Hank). I think I’m totally off track so let’s get back to it.
My grandmother lived in the little house next door to my parents. She suffered from a heart condition brought on by childhood rheumatic fever so, as I was growing up, she suffered a series of heart attacks and would move in with us after each one while she regained her strength. She still wanted to be independent, so once she was well enough, she would move back to her house. But eventually she needed to be closer, so my parents moved her in next door. Close, but not too close.
She was the kind of person to take the opposite side of any discussion. We never knew if she really disagreed based on reason and facts or if she just didn’t liked to agree. She was also a great fan of horror movies. Frankenstein, Dracula, the creature from the black lagoon, the scarier the better. When we were little we would all take turns going to grandma’s house for the weekend. She always had the breakfast cereals our mother wouldn’t buy and she would let us do anything. The quintessential grandparent. But the price we had to pay was taking part in her horror film addiction. She would drag us down to the old Garden theater on the Northside to see all of the old horror classics. (It later became the kind of theater you wouldn’t ever take your kids!) We would stay up with her late into the night watching “Chiller Theater” on TV. Probably not the best activity for a seven year old. It might explain why the only dreams I remember are nightmares and why none of my siblings are great fans of horror films.
The night before we left for Texas, grandma called us over to say goodbye and give us a box of brownies for the trip. Brownies were sort of a tradition for her and we could certainly use the sugar to get us through the first day. As we climbed into the car early the next morning, we saw the window blind go up in her bedroom and she waved goodbye. That was the last time I saw her. Two months later she passed away. I had just started T-37 training and, after being warned that any interruption in training might result in being washed out, I was afraid to go home for her funeral. A decision I regret to this day.
We don’t really know when we’ll see someone for the last time. I think it’s human nature to assume things will stay the same, that family and friends will always be there. But there are no guarantees. Life is too short. Treasure every moment with those you love. Make sure your last word is a kind word. Savor the brownies. But don’t name your kid Mabel.
hoveringoversend 