Chapter Three
“Good Timin’”
Nine months later
July 1st, 1960
Williams Air Force Base, AZ
We stand today on the edge of a new frontier.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
It was déjà vu, all over again.
Just as he’d rushed from last year’s Academy graduation to make Stanford’s start of classes, after Stanford’s June 23rd commencement he moved his young family to the southwestern town of Chandler, Arizona to meet his pilot training report date.
But the difference in last year’s 20 days between graduating from the Academy and starting Stanford, was that he’d gotten married, Nanette had been born, and they’d moved from Colorado to the Bay area.
This year he felt as though they had an infinite amount of time to make the 20-day move.
And for himself, his greatest accomplishment was not in completing his Masters in Aeronautical Engineering, but successfully avoiding Barbara.
The Sonoran desert stretched out all around, punctuated by brown, rocky mountains. Dust swirled over the car as Rod drove his ’59 station wagon up to the Williams Air Force Base gate. The outpost was situated miles from any sign of human presence.
A lone wooden guard shack sat next to the gate. Yucca and saguaro cacti dotted the bare landscape, and the flight-training base looked uninviting and bleak after living near the bustling San Francisco bay.
He pulled to a stop as he approached the guard shack. An air policeman wearing a tan uniform, pith helmet, a side arm, and a white armband with the letters AP, stepped out and bent his head to speak through the window. “May I help you?”
Startled by the loud voice, Nanette woke from her nap and started crying. She lay on the front seat on a pink blanket between Julie and Rod. Julie picked her up and frowned at the young airman.
Rod reached into the glove box and pulled out an ID and a sheaf of papers. “Good afternoon. I’m Second Lieutenant Simone, reporting for pilot training.”
The guard studied the papers and seemed to straighten his posture as he read; he handed them back. “Welcome, Lieutenant,” he raised his voice over Nanette’s cries and pointed to a cluster of low brown buildings in the distance, barely visible on the shimmering horizon. “The 3525th Pilot Training Wing headquarters is about two miles straight ahead, on your left next to the flight line. Sign in there, then continue on this road to the housing area. During in-processing you’ll be assigned base housing with the rest of your pilot training class, so there’s no need to go to the housing office.” He drew to attention and held a salute. “Welcome to Williams, sir.”
Rod was taken back for a moment before he returned the honorific. It had been a year since he’d last saluted, and he knew he’d have to quickly transition from the relatively casual pace of civilian life he’d been living the last year while at Stanford. “Thank you, airman. Carry on.”
He drove slowly from the gate as Nanette continued to wail. He felt a touch of pride at receiving the salute and being called “sir”; he’d just about forgotten the ever-present decorum found on a military base.
Julie rocked Nanette and spoke up over the din. “You’d think he’d try to be a little more quiet. Couldn’t he see she was sleeping?”
Rod threw her a smile before turning back to look for the Wing headquarters. He couldn’t see her expression through the sunglasses and white scarf she wore over her head, but her tone was unmistakably curt.
“Give him a break,” he said. “The air policeman looked like he was just out of high school. And if he’s guarding access to the base, the last thing on his mind is disturbing a napping toddler.” He reached over and patted Julie’s hand.
She stuck out her tongue and then grinned before turning her attention back to Nanette. Things had really turned around since Nanette had outgrown her colic and had become a toddler—although that had opened a whole new set of concerns, ranging from her playing with electrical outlets to finding her on top of the kitchen counter.
Minutes later he turned into the Wing headquarters parking lot. He spotted an empty space near the main door and pulled to a stop. “It may take a while to in-process if you want to take her for a walk.”
She looked around. “Good idea. I’ll find some shade. Just don't be too long; this heat is incredible, and no telling what Nanette will get into.”
“Right.” He gathered up his orders and ID from the glove box and walked quickly into the headquarters building.
A grey metal table was set up just inside the door, manned by young airmen and a brown-haired woman with streaks of white in her hair. Three other officers about his age were at the table, and Rod was motioned forward and told to start filling out paperwork.
Twenty minutes later he stepped out of the building and held a hand over his eyes to shade the glare. Sunlight reflected off concrete and brown stucco buildings; heat shimmered up from the black asphalt parking lot. He spotted Julie leading Nanette by the hand as they walked around in a small circle under an overhang at the end of the building.
He stepped up and helped them back into the car, then started driving further into the base, keeping his eyes open for the junior officer housing area. On the way they passed old, concrete buildings that looked as though they had been constructed out of cinder blocks during World War II. Every few hundred yards dusty signs pointed out the commissary, Base Exchange, base chapel, hospital, personnel services, maintenance, Wing and Squadron logistics, and airmen dormitories. Without exception the facilities were painted a mute brown, as if the Air Force was attempting to blend in the buildings with the ever-present desert and dirt.
Up ahead in the distance he spotted a sign on the right that pointed to FAMILY HOUSING. Reaching the narrow road, he turned onto the arrow-straight avenue.
They drove several hundred yards and a collection of dusty buildings came into view, materializing from a wavering mirage. He slowed and drew to a stop. In front of them he saw row after row of squat, one-bedroom, single-story coffee-colored houses lining the street. It looked as though an east coast slum project had been plopped down in the middle of the desert, without any of the trees, bushes, ponds, or foliage that might have existed in a more humid environment.
A lone tumbleweed blew across the road; heat rose up from the asphalt. Rod had an uneasy feeling that all the housing area needed was a garish SALOON sign to make it look as though they lived in an old west town instead of on the most technologically advanced air-training base in the world.
“Oh, my,” Julie breathed. “Everything’s so … brown.”
“They must have had a million gallons of this paint left over from World War II,” Rod said. “Why else would they paint everything the same color?”
Rod drove forward; they drank in the sight in silence. Even the cactus looked dirty with the ever-present dust.
“And I thought Stanford married student housing was cramped,” Julie said.
Rod nodded to a small playground at the end of the street, sitting in the middle of a dustbowl. At the center of the playground stood a metal swing set with three chain-link swings and leather seats, next to a metal slide that reflected intense sunlight. A dozen barefoot children, all covered in dirt, were on the swings, sliding down the slide, or running across the bare ground playing tag.
A row of women in folding chairs sat next to the playground’s perimeter, young moms dressed in shorts and loose fitting blouses. Half the women held umbrellas to keep the sun off their head, the others wore white scarfs wrapped around their heads; all wore sunglasses and most of them were smoking cigarettes; a few held babies on their laps.
“This must be the social center,” Rod said. “Do you want me to drop you and Nanette off while I unpack?”
“Fat chance,” Julie said. “I barely got to see you at the Academy, and not much more at Stanford.”
“Hey, I had less than a year to complete a Master’s!”
She lifted Julie to her side and patted his knee. “And this year will be even worse. I’ll have plenty of time to spend with the neighborhood wives. Let’s get unloaded and put Nanette down for a nap.”
Rod started the station wagon back up and turned down the row of identical houses. “I didn’t know you were in a hurry to get the house in shape.”
“I’m not,” Julie said. She rubbed her hand along his leg. “I’m anxious to get you alone before you start flying.”
*
The next day Rod sat in the flight physical and tried to control his heart from racing. This couldn’t be happening! His mouth felt dry and cottony; it was difficult to breath.
He squinted at the eye chart, but he couldn’t make out the details of line 9A.
“Don’t squint,” the doctor said.
“Yes, sir.” Although he was in an air-conditioned clinic he felt as though he was burning up. If he failed the eye exam, he wouldn’t be given a second chance and he’d be kicked out of pilot training before it even started.
He squinted again.
“I said don't squint, Lieutenant. Just read the last line.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rod stared at the eye chart and cursed himself for not having more light available during his graduate school studies. He hadn’t had that trouble at the Academy; there’d always been plenty of light, from the desk lamp in his room to the fluorescent lights in the library. But in the cramped student housing at Stanford, after he returned from the library he’d tried to keep the lights low to avoid waking Nanette. If he’d only used more light he wouldn’t be having this trouble now—
But wait, it wasn’t fair to blame Nanette. He couldn’t blame others for the choices he’d made. If he didn’t put a stop to it now, then no telling who he’d blame if he screwed up and flunked out of pilot training. Now that he was here, succeeding in pilot training was up to him and no one else.
He straightened in the optometrist’s chair.
“Read the letters on the bottom line,” the doctor said. “We don’t have all day.”
“Yes, sir.” He stared at the chart and tried not to squint.
The doctor tapped a pencil on the counter; it sounded as if he were attempting to telegraph his growing impatience via Morse code. The tapping continued. “Go ahead, lieutenant. I’m waiting.”
Someone loudly laughed in the other room as something banged against the door; the optometrist turned at the noise. A slew of young officers were just outside the examination room, waiting to take the eye test after Rod.
As the doctor looked away, Rod saw his chance and squinted.
There, that was better. He started to make out the bottom line, and before it slipped out of focus he blurted out, “P Q H N V T.”
“Correct.” The doctor scribbled in Rod’s medical records, swung his chair around, and called for the next lieutenant in line, all in one fluid motion. “Next!”
Rod grabbed his records and hurried from the room before the optometrist had a chance to change his mind.
The rest of the medical exam flew by, a piece of cake compared to the dreaded eye test. From turning his head to cough for a hernia check, to dropping his trousers and bending over the examination table, Rod detached himself from the mechanics of ensuring he was physically fit and instead mentally prepared for immersing himself in flight training.
*
Two and a half months later
Rod tried to focus and concentrate as hard as he could in case there was an upcoming emergency. Sitting behind him, his most cynical critic watched his every move and was prepared to berate him if he didn’t get everything right—not to mention what would happen if he failed to successfully recover from the emergency. He wasn’t sure what emergency he’d encounter, but he knew he had to perform flawlessly if he wanted to survive.
He sat upright in his seat and moved his hands and feet to keep the aircraft steady on final approach as he was preparing to land—
A sudden scream came from behind him. “Spin! Spin!”
“Spin recovery,” Rod said in a clipped voice; he reacted as a machine. “Close throttle.” He reached down and coordinated his movements as he recited the “Bold Face” emergency procedures from memory. “Clean up aircraft; ailerons neutral; retract flaps; retracting landing gear …”
“What are you doing? What are you waiting for?”
“Waiting for landing gear to retract to maintain hydraulic pressure … and retract speed brakes,” Rod said without emotion. “Check turn indicator. Visually check direction of roll against turn indicator indication.” He glanced up, and then back down. “Direction is the same; moving full opposite rudder to turn indicator; move control column forward until the spinning stops.”
“The spinning has stopped! What now?”
“Centralize rudders,” Rod said. “Easing out of dive, deploying speed brakes and taking it in for landing.” He held up his hands. “Mission complete.”
Julie grabbed him from behind and wrapped her arms around his neck while still holding a thick flight manual. She squeezed and almost made him topple from the metal folding chair. “You did it! Chair-flying an entire T-37 sortie from memory with three in-flight emergencies—without ever leaving the kitchen!”
Nanette laughed shrilly from her high-chair, probably mystified as to why her father had been play-acting by pushing on imaginary buttons, moving unseen control sticks, pushing against hidden rudders.
Rod sat directly in front of her; he leaned over and tousled her wispy hair.
She banged a spoon and giggled, unsure why Rod and Julie were so animated, but obviously enjoying the moment and her parents’ excitement.
Rod stood and pulled Julie close. He whirled her around the small kitchen, missing the square folding-table, the wooden cabinets, the white O’Keefe and Merritt gas stove, and the bottle of vodka and orange juice sitting on the counter. “That’s it! I’m ready for tomorrow’s flight.”
“Does that mean you won’t need me for chair-flying anymore?”
“Nope.” He bent her backwards and gave her a long kiss. “I’ll have to chair-fly more often—with an IP on board, he’ll be looking over my shoulder to catch any mistakes. Later, when I’m flying solo, if I screw up I may not recover. Especially when I transition to the T-33. And that’s a real fighter.” He pulled her upright. “But now, I’m ready for anything—even your mother.”
“Then it’s time to celebrate, Lightning,” she said, using his call sign. She kissed him and turned to pick up her vodka screwdriver. “This will be the last time we’ll be alone for a week.”
Rod motioned with his head to Nanette. “What are you talking about? We haven’t been alone for over a year.”
Julie punched him in the shoulder and drained her drink. “She doesn’t count. But mother goes crazy if she hears a pin drop—so what do you think she’ll do if she hears me start moaning?”