Hell Freezes Over
Part Three
February 1963-February 1964
Business Booms
By mid-June, I was working and getting paid for two full details: The Rec Room detail and the Laundry detail. Of the two, I preferred doing laundry—as it was cleaner, I could do it at my own leisure, and it paid the best.
Once I filled up and turned on the washing machines I could leave them until they reached the beginning of the last rinse cycle. During that time, I would hurry to the Rec Room and do a cleanliness check. If there was a problem I could deal with it during the few minutes that the laundry was on “Wash” and “2nd Spin” cycle. If the Rec Room needed deeper cleaning I could usually complete that at the end of my normal shift.
When the washers would reach the last rinse cycle I would return to pour a pre-measured amount of Faultless Starch (given to me free by the Supply Sergeant) directly into the tub and let the cycle soak the starch into, and spin dry the uniforms. Once that was done I would remove them, and place and seal them into large plastic bags—to avoid them drying out—and damp iron each piece.
It was a snap, and I got so good at it that with a hot iron set on the “Cotton” setting, that I could iron and hang a two-piece fatigue uniform in under ten minutes.
Irons and ironing boards were also supplied free of charge by the radar station, so the fee I charged my customers for laundering, starching, ironing and delivering a uniform was all profit.
When I first took over the Laundry Detail I offered a decrease in price from what had been charged by my predecessor (from thirty-five cents to a quarter for a uniform set) to boost quantity. It worked almost too well, swamping me with orders for the first few weeks.
To make up for the reduction in price for each piece, I offered little extras like adding military pleats to the shirts (vertical creases starting at the lower front shoulder yokes and extending down to the lower skirt and through each front pocket). I charged an extra nickel for those, and if the customer also wanted them along the back side of the shirt (the back side required three vertical pleats) I would charge eight cents total for both front and back. Although most of my customers preferred no pleats in their shirts, there were enough that did that the little perk actually give my bottom line a healthy boost.
After the first month of operation I expanded my services to replacing missing buttons (3 cents per button), hemming pants (15 cents per leg), and sewing on name tags and rank insignias to shirts and shirt sleeves (10 cents per label or insignia).
My Air Force salary was paid to me once a month. However, when the time came, the members of the Enterprise Group would get paid first—that is, we would stand in line and receive our pay in cash from the Finance Officer, before anyone else—then we would take a seat to his left on old-style wooden classroom desks to collect our fees from the rest of the airmen. As soon as one would collect his pay he would move to his right, cash in hand, and settle up with the airman who had taken on his detail(s). I was the last stop, since I operated the Laundry Detail and the Rec Room Detail, and by the time the payee got to me his pay would have taken a bit of a hit.
My first month’s take was such that it allowed me to pay off Donny and his Group’s buy-in fee plus tax, and still leave me with a tidy profit.
Keeping profits secure was a problem, since you didn’t want to keep money anywhere in your unlocked room. The station’s administration preferred that we buy U.S. Savings Bonds with our profits (of course) but most of the group’s members opted to use the safe behind the bar in the Officers’ Club. The Group distributed pull-cord cloth bags with printed numbers on them and suggested that any surplus cash be put in these bags and stored in the safe.
The sergeants working the bar would note the number on the bag, count the money to verify the amount, and stuff the bag into the safe. A paper tag with a corresponding number would be given to the member as a deposit receipt. Access to the bags was limited to those certain times when the bar was closed for cleaning and restocking—usually no more than an hour a day.
After the second month I took most of my profits from the safe, bought a postal money order from the post office, and sent it home to Sharon. I told her to use these funds to augment her monthly military allotment, buy clothes for her, Ricky, and the new baby, and to help mom and dad with grocery money. I also told her I would start sending her a money order for the vast majority of my profits once a month, keeping a small percentage for my own use
When she finally wrote back she advised me that she planned to use most of the money to put down a deposit and pay rent on a house that she intended to move into as soon as the new baby was born. Although this news shocked me at first, I eventually accepted that the relationship between her and my parents had probably hit rock bottom. I was deeply saddened and disappointed but quickly decided that this was a problem that I could not and would not fix from my present location. I would just have to not think about it too much and keep on working.
Since I was now too busy to spend any time at the club drinking and listening to the unending stream of gloomy country music, I decided to use some of my saved money to buy a small stereo turntable for myself via mail-order catalog.
Several members of the Enterprise Group had purchased similar turntables with their profits and had also accumulated small collections of vinyl LPs. Since becoming a member of the group, I had been spending some of my off-time fraternizing with some of the other members, and had grown fond of their collections of jazz, classical music, and comic performers such as Moms Mabely, Red Foxx, George Carlin, and Cheech and Chong.
And as if I hadn’t taken on enough off-duty activities to keep me out of trouble, I also submited my request to become a volunteer DJ at the station’s small FM radio station—whose miniscule transmitter sent its signal about a mile in all directions around the site. This allowed us to broadcast over FM frequencies without having to request FCC authorization from the Air Force. Once my request was approved by the base commander I played mostly classical music from the station’s small record library, from 11:00 AM until 1:00 AM, three nights a week.
Volleyball, Eskimos, and Twisted Ankles
During the first week of July, I found out that the radar station was hosting an all-day/all-night volleyball tournament against, of all people, Eskimos from the villages surrounding Tatalina. I’d been on site for over four months and never knew we had any villages anywhere close to us, much less villages populated by Eskimos!
When I heard about this “tournament”, I was convinced that it had to be some gigantic prank perpetrated by one of our most prolific jokesters— a reed-thin black airman from New York City named Fagan. To date, his best hoax ever involved a supposed visit to Tatalina by a USO troupe featuring Bob Hope, Ann Margaret, Dean Martin, and the Rockettes. The ruse was so well executed, including faked teletype messages (he worked in the communications office), printed flyers and bogus telephone inquiries made from the communications switchboard, that he even had Major Rusk making repeated frantic calls to Elmendorf to verify the exact date of the renowned entertainers’ arrival. I’m surprised they didn’t send a helicopter to evacuate him off the base—flying him straight to the looney-bin.
But the volleyball tournament proved to be no ruse. It was, and had been an annual event for several years.
During the Alaskan summer, full daylight lasted about twelve hours; the sky never really getting dark. At about six in the evening, the sun would dip ever so slightly into the pine tree-covered skyline and hover there—its faint light skimming the horizon just out of sight. The result was that the days would dim down to a dusk-like state and stay that way until around three in the morning. Then the sun would punch back up and slowly flood the station with its eye-squinting brightness—reaching its zenith three hours later.
Accordingly, the volleyball tournament was scheduled to last for a full twenty-four hours—midnight to midnight—with food, mostly hot dogs, hamburgers, grilled chicken and steak, all provided by the station’s kitchen cooks and stores. Beer and soft drinks (no hard liquor), was provided by the Officers’ Club.
On the day of the tournament I was scheduled to work the last day of my series of midnight shifts; and although the game was to start precisely at midnight, the contingent of local Eskimos had their own idea of when to show up.
After going to my room to change out of my uniform and into a set of almost forgotten jeans and a t-shirt, I headed out to what was supposed to be our helicopter landing pad. It was actually an area that had been snow-plow scraped clean of any vegetation by one of our snow cats, with a big red “H” spray-painted in the center.
Someone had plunged two metal poles into the spongy tundra and stretched a volleyball net between them. White spray paint had been used to mark off the court boundaries. Out of nowhere five or six volleyballs magically materialized, and after a few beers had been consumed by the participants, a pick-up game quickly ensued.
By the time I arrived there were about twenty to thirty airmen, in various stages of inebriation, who had been playing some version of volleyball for at least five or six hours. It was quite a sight. The Eskimos hadn’t arrived yet, but chatter from the drunken group mostly centered on speculation concerning the gender makeup of our soon-to-arrive visitors. Basically everyone wanted to know if there were going to be any “Skee-mo” chicks in the group.
There were a couple of short-timer airmen who had arrived at Tatalina the previous year, a couple of weeks after that annual volleyball tournament had occurred, and they swore that those short-timers who had attended the event told them about beautiful teenaged Eskimo girls who had attended the tournament along with their families. Further, the Eskimo parents, they had been told, were willing to look the other way as some of the guys had their way with the girls, as long as they were allowed to drink all the beer they wanted for free.
This particular tidbit of drivel had the most gullible of the group, already in a near drunken frenzy, anxiously awaiting the arrival of our guests. The obnoxious and rowdy behavior of a few of them had the officers and non-coms, who were armed with live ammunition in case a bear or two decided to attend, on extra alert and had already caused them to cut off and send back to the barracks a couple of the more intoxicated in our group.
It felt strange walking out into the cool Alaskan morning at six o’clock right after a mid-shift, fighting off hordes of mosquitos while waiting for a hamburger to be served up. When one of the bar sergeants offered me a can of beer I took it without hesitation. I’d been on the wagon for a few weeks so I felt that a couple of beers, quaffed down with a greasy burger or two, wouldn’t do much harm.
About an hour later we all heard the buzzing of what sounded like motorized snow sleds slicing through the surrounding forest. This caused a prolonged hoot and holler to rise from our group, and the ongoing volleyball game immediately screeched to a halt. All eyes were on the tree line where the airport road cut through when the roaring sound finally produced three or four two-wheeled motorized vehicles followed by half a dozen, or so, bouncing pickup trucks.
Major Rusk, dressed in combat boots, khaki shorts, and a Hawaiian shirt, put down his can of beer and struggled for a few seconds to extricate himself from the canvas beach chair that he’d apparently found stowed away in base storage.
“Welcome to Tatalina, one and all!” He bellowed, as if greeting tourists, and trying to out-yell the group of near crazed airmen jostling and elbowing each other—each stumbling to be the first to reach our strange-looking guests.
The armed sergeants turned their gaze from the woods where hungry bears may be eyeing our smoking grills and instead eyed the boisterous group of volley-ballers with cautious interest.
The snow sleds turned out to be knobby-tired, off-road motor bikes ridden by large men who must’ve weighed in at more than three hundred pounds each. They were followed by several pickup trucks. The vehicles stopped short of the volleyball court and the lead pickup drove up almost to the edge of the helicopter pad. All of the pickups’ beds were packed with at least six people who seemed to hanging on to each other for dear life. And yes, some of them were female.
The lead truck’s door screeched open and a very small, dark, leather-faced man dressed in a really oversized khaki shirt and pants hopped out. He walked a few steps forward then turned around to face the rest of his entourage. Raising both arms and shaking his head he motioned for them to dismount. As if one, all the truck doors suddenly opened and the truck beds emptied. Men, women, teen boys and girls, and little kids all piled out and ran towards us, yelling loudly. I pushed my arms out in front of me, in a half gesture of welcome and the other half in self-defense, but I soon realized that they were all heading for the smoking grills.
Major Rusk, plodding carefully through the mushy tundra reached the little old guy who seemed to be the leader and shook his hand merrily.
“Welcome, welcome! I’m Major Rusk!”
The grizzled little guy smiled broadly, his parted lips exposing several missing front teeth. The little guy’s eyes reduced to mere slits, taking the major’s beefy hand and shaking it enthusiastically.
I couldn’t make out what they were saying so I turned back and headed to the iced-down beer barrels. A few of our more testosterone-fueled and beer-filled Lotharios had already cornered a couple of the Eskimo girls and were eagerly showing them how a volleyball worked. The sergeant-guards were keeping a particularly close eye on them.
Since I’d never had any real contact with Eskimo females, I won’t attempt to disparage their appearance here. But, suffice to say that they all smelled, well…a little fishy, and for the most part were pretty much on the south side of homely.
As the day wore on and the beer flowed, the girls apparently began to look pretty good to a few of my work-mates. So when they attempted to lure a couple of them into the buildings to “show them around”, they were gently but firmly dissuaded by the rifle-toting sergeants.
After a while I lost track of time, and it was really hard to tell from the sky what part of the day it was, but after more than a few beers I decided that it was time for me to take the court and show off my volleyball skills. I replaced one of the airmen who was finding it harder and harder to return to vertical after landing on his back after every volley. I took his place, and when I finally rotated up to the net I found myself in a position to finally score a flying kill.
Two set up shots behind me put me in perfect position and I saw the ball float directly over my head. I rose majestically over the net, back arched and right arm hyper-extended behind me—cocked and ready for the slam. The ball descended just to the right height and I struck down with all my might.
In my inebriated state, I badly misjudged the ball’s actual trajectory and when I swung down I ended up missing it completely. On the way back down to terra firma, I caught my arm, chin and nose in the net, and now completely off-balance landed awkwardly onto the hard-tack with my right foot turned in towards my left. With nothing but the right side of my foot and ankle bone to absorb the full weight of my rapidly falling body, I felt a sickening pop before landing flatly on my right buttock and elbow.
My alcohol-soaked brain sent out a bevy of confusing signals, some of them ordering me to maintain my machismo and just get up and strut off the court. Others, more in harmony to what had just happened to me, ordered me to just roll over in the dirt and scream like a girl.
I decided not to get up right away and instead just rolled over and groaned.
Hands reached out and pulled me up to near upright as others supported my right leg. I looked around and saw a couple of teen Eskimo girls come close, gawking oddly and talking excitedly to each other. I couldn’t understand what they were saying but I was oddly reminded of cod liver oil.
My arms were urged to hold onto offered shoulders and I was carried off the court to the raucous cheers of our opponents on the other side of the net.
“Bring him to the medical room!” I heard a familiar voice say sternly, and the bodies supporting my weight turned in unison, carrying me in the direction of the entrance to the administrative wing.
***
I opened my eyes to find that I was being carried back into the antiseptically-bright white room where I’d spent some time recuperating a few weeks ago. Once I was lifted onto a white-sheeted table the orderly/medic began gently pull my jeans off, causing my right ankle to protest painfully.
“Sorry, I don’t want to cut them off because they’re probably the only pair you’ve got, right?”
“Yeah,” I said through clenched teeth.
“So,” he continued, still yanking on my jeans, “I thought you were going to lay off the booze.”
“Oh, I have!” I said, slightly annoyed at the question. “Today’s the first day I’ve had anything to drink since…you know.”
“Yeah well, it didn’t turn out too well for you, did it? I’m hoping it’s not broken, but I won’t know until I can get a good look at it.”
“Broken?”
“Your ankle. You landed on your right foot and it turned in, popping your ankle. Let’s hope it’s only sprained.”
“What if it’s broken? It hurts like hell.”
“Well, I’m gonna treat it like it’s a sprain at first. I don’t feel any broken bones…” He said as he squeezed my upper ankle, causing me to squirm a bit and moan softly.
“OK, see we don’t have an X-ray machine here and the nearest one’s at Elmendorf. And if it is broken, it’s evac time for you.”
“Then what?”
“Then they cast you up, put you back on a helo, and add about a month to your remote assignment to make up for your sick time. Trust me, you don’t want that.”
“No, I don’t. I wanna leave here when I’m supposed to!”
He asked me to sit up on the table and then moved a large bucket of crushed ice next to me.
“This is going to hurt a bit at first, but we need to keep the swelling down. Stick your foot in here.”
I looked down and saw that my ankle and the top of my foot were swollen to roughly double their size and the skin was turning blue, green, and black.
“Oh man…” I grumbled.
“Yeah, not pretty.” He agreed.
After a while in and out of the ice water he wrapped my ankle and gave me a shot for pain. Before I left the room he gave me a small bottle of pills, with directions to take one every four hours, and then handed me a pair of wooden crutches.
“Know how to use these?” He asked, adjusting their height.
“No.”
“You’ll learn. Now, I’d escort you back to your room but you need to learn to walk with these anyway. Go slow. When you get to your room, lay down and sleep the beer off. I’ll write you a duty release so you won’t have to go to work for a few days.”
“What about my details? And my laundry? I got a load to get out by tomorrow.”
“Not my problem, Frank. But you need to stay off that foot.”
A Baby, 21, and A President Dies
Frank DeLeón, Jr., was born on August 14, 1963. I learned this by reading a letter written by my mother about two weeks after he was born. The letter was mostly informative, telling me how she and my dad had rushed Sharon to the hospital when her water broke and the labor pains began, and how they’d taken care of Ricky during little Frank’s birth.
The baby’s birth apparently had been pretty non-eventful, as Sharon and the baby were discharged on the second day. Dad drove everyone home—and I guess that’s when the real trouble started.
***
It was during the first week of August, or about a week before Frank Jr’s birth, that I recall receiving Sharon’s most upsetting and depressing letter. She wrote that she was feeling miserable, not only because of the size and total discomfort of her belly, but the Houston heat and humidity was almost intolerable. Since she’d lived in Nevada her whole life with its outrageously low humidity, the brutal Houston summers were something completely alien to her. Worse, except for a few small fans, my parents had no type of cooling in their tiny lease-to-buy frame house on Griggs Road on Houston’s southwest side.
It was not located in the best of neighborhoods, largely industrial and black, so Sharon did not feel safe leaving the house and taking the long evening walks that the doctor had recommended. Almost every day, she wrote, she found herself with nothing to do but watch my parents’ small black and white TV—that is, whenever my mother wasn’t catching up on her soap operas.
She was all but barred from entering the kitchen to cook anything, as mom had declared it her royal domain. And whenever she did ask for something to eat my mom would give her a cold stare-down and tell her to wait until she was ready to cook.
Whenever my parents attended church, which was just about every evening and twice on Sunday, she was expected to accompany them. When she declined because she either didn’t feel well enough to sit on the flat hard pews, or just didn’t want to have to sit through a three-hour service conducted in Spanish, my parents would stomp out and give her the silent treatment when they returned.
She said that on top of everything else, Ricky had come down again with a severe case of diaper rash, probably also due to the heat, and had not been in the best of moods for weeks.
But mostly, she complained grievously about my folks—particularly my mother. Her nit-picking on Sharon’s alleged lack of housewife skills had not let up, and in fact was getting worse by the day.
I had no idea what was true, what may be exaggerated, or what was misinterpreted. For every letter I got from Sharon complaining about how she was being mistreated, I got a similar one from my mother pleading her case. It was literally driving me to drinking again and I couldn’t wait until the baby was born so Sharon could begin to look for her own house.
***
On August 20th, my twenty-first birthday, I worked a day shift. The day before, I’d made sure that I was caught up with my Laundry Detail and that the Rec Room could stand to have me skip a cleaning day. Leaving the Radar Tracking Room that day, I took the hallway first to the mail room to check for any letters from home, then finding none headed directly to the Officers’ Club.
Among the many traditions on Tatalina Air Force Station, the most favored one was “The Birthday Bash”. On that day you were allowed to order your favorite drink, and continue to order until you either passed out or could no longer sit on your stool. The best part of the tradition was that you were allowed to drink to your heart’s content, free of charge. On the following day you were officially excused from your work shift, and in fact, no one really looked for you to come to work for about three days afterwards.
Usually, the only residents of the station to actually partake of this tradition were the younger and/or lower ranking troops—and those who may be celebrating a certain milestone birthday. Turning twenty-one was definitely on that particular list, so I was double qualified.
As I entered the club, word had already spread that it was my twenty-first birthday, and the patrons already in the club stopped whatever they were doing to give me a standing ovation.
Although I’d not been a regular for quite a while, the bartenders had no trouble remembering my drink of choice.
“Jack Daniels Black Label with a water chaser coming up!” The sergeant said as I pulled myself up to the bar. He slammed down a brand new sealed bottle and a shot glass directly in front of me.
“Happy birthday, airman. There’s another bottle of Jack right under here,” he said, pointing to a spot under the bar, “So whenever you polish off the one in front of you, there’s another one waiting.” He spun on his heel to retrieve a pitcher of cold water and a tall glass.
The first two shots were a little hard to take as I seemed to have lost my past familiarity with the taste of that particular Tennessee whiskey. But after the third drink, the next few went down as smooth as silk.
At first, a small group of fans had gathered around me, congratulating me, wishing me well and slapping me on the back. Since I was still limping a bit from the sprain I had suffered the previous month, the event that had caused my injury was played out in great detail by the little audience. There was lots of bragging about who out-drank who during the volleyball tournament, and who had finally ended up bedding one of the Eskimo girls. I was still sober enough to feel a little shudder of revulsion go through me as I envisioned what that must’ve looked like—and smelled like.
As the hours wore on and I continued to work on the bottle of Jack, my audience began to slowly dwindle. Soon I was left alone with just the whiskey, the bartender, and the crooning jukebox to keep me company.
As I drank, my mood went from jovial and celebratory all the way down to just plain morose. I couldn’t help but wonder if my wife had given birth yet to our second child, and if she had, I wondered if it was a boy. My most pressing thought however had to do with what she’d named the baby if she had given birth to a boy. Had she followed through and named the baby after me as we’d agreed? After all, it had been her idea from the very beginning… and that was exactly what had bothered me to this day.
***
A few weeks before our first son, Ricky, was born, I had suggested that we name him after my brother—or at least the version of what everyone ended up calling him: Ricky. My parents had officially named him Ricardo Marcos, but no one seemed to like ‘Marcos’, so Ricky it was.
I liked that name and thought that since my brother and I had never known each other very well, a namesake in his honor would somehow bring us closer together. Sharon had finally agreed—but, with one condition: That we give him the middle name, ‘Mitchell’.
At the time I thought that she had just liked how the two names, when said together, naturally rolled off the tongue, but one Saturday afternoon just before leaving Winnemucca for Houston, one of Sharon’s friends whom I barely knew dropped by the gas station where I was working one of my last shifts, and said she had something to tell me.
After we got the niceties out of the way she got down to business.
“You don’t know, do you?” she asked as she sat down on the metal chair behind Phil’s desk.
“Sorry? I don’t know what?” I asked, hopping up on my stool by the register.
“That your wife’s ex-boyfriend was named Mitchell, right?”
“Mitchell? No.” I said, truthfully. “I never knew she had a boyfriend before me. But now that I think about it, I guess she must have had one.”
“Oh yeah!” she said, a bit emphatically.
“So what does that have to do with anything?”
“OK look, this is really none of my business, but you’re such a square guy…and, well me and a couple of the girls, you know, just wondered if you…” She paused, and appeared to be biting her lower lip. “OK, this is all wrong! I shouldn’t have come and I shouldn’t have said anything.” She bolted out of the chair and pushed by me on her way to the door.
I really didn’t know what to say to her and I was confused as to what she’d told me; confused about why she’d even dropped by, being as I hardly knew her.
“Look!” I half shouted. “What my wife did before she met me is not my concern. So, you’re right…maybe you shouldn’t have come by to tell me whatever you thought you should.”
As she was stepping through the door she stopped abruptly and turned to face me. “Yeah, you’re right! But…you need to know that he’s still around. And he still carrying a torch for her—to this day! And you’re a fucking idiot!”
And with that, she turned back and walked very quickly back to her car that she’d parked at one of the gas islands.
I was left confused and a little bit angry. Although I didn’t know this girl very well, why would she take the time to come to my gas station and pass on this apparently incendiary information? What did she have to gain by either telling me what she thought might be the truth, or for that matter tell me a lie?
A sudden rush of noontime customers drove the questions out of my head for the time being.
When I got home that afternoon, and after dinner, I screwed up the courage to bring up the subject. I didn’t want to tell her that one of her so-called friends had paid me a visit and had accused her of still having feelings for an old beau. Instead, I tried to bring up the subject as casually as possible.
“You know; we’ve never talked about your old ex-boyfriend. What was his name? Mitchell?” I said, trying to sound as neutral as possible while I wiped our little kitchen table down.
“What?” Sharon said, not turning around from the dishes she was washing in the sink.
“Mitchell! Your old boyfriend. He was named Mitchell, wasn’t he?” I said, a little louder.
She turned around slowly, the dishcloth dripping suds on the edge of the sink and on to the floor. “No, you’re right…I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it. Why?”
“No reason,” I lied. “I was just wondering, that’s all.”
“Wondering why we’ve never talked about him? Or wondering…what?”
She turned to stare at me, pushing her glasses up to her forehead with her soapy hand.
“Aw, nothing. Forget about it. It’s nothing.”
She stared at me a few more seconds, as I continued to clean the table in ever tightening circles. Finally, she turned back to the sink and continued to wash the dinner dishes, with maybe just a little added energy.
I stood at the table for a minute or so wondering what I should say next…if anything. Finally, I just decided to apologize. “Look, I’m sorry. It was just a curiosity that I’ve had for a little while. And you know…” I walked up behind her and put my hands on her shoulders. “It’s nothing. I’m really sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable.”
“Forget it!” She said with great annoyance, shrugging her shoulders to signal that she didn’t want my hands on her.
I didn’t know what else to say, so I just didn’t say anything. I stepped back and walked back to the living room.
She finished the dishes, a little noisier than usual, and as she walked quickly by me she said, “I’m going into the bedroom now. Ricky needs to get changed and gotten ready for bed.” She went into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her.
I stayed out in the front room for some time wondering why she had gotten so annoyed, but not wanting to try to talk to her again and aggravate the situation.
When I decided to finally enter the bedroom, I quietly opened the door and entered the dark room. As my eyes adjusted I saw that she was crammed up against the wall, knees drawn up tight with the blanket over her head.
After washing my face and brushing my teeth I decided not to ever bring up the subject again.
***
On the way home on a cold January day, after our doctor had confirmed her second pregnancy, Sharon turned to me as I was driving.
“I’ve been thinking,” she started. “I’d like to name this baby after you.”
“After me?” I asked, slightly surprised that we would be discussing this right at this time. “Yes. ‘Frank DeLeón, Junior’. That’s what I want to name our baby…I mean, if it’s a boy.”
Although I guess I should’ve been flattered, the fact was that I’d never really liked my name. I didn’t think it had any class, was a bit dull, and without a middle name it just felt incomplete.
“Oh, I don’t know.” I said, pensively. “We’ve got a lot of time yet…and besides we need to consider that the baby may be a girl. Besides, there are a lot of better sounding names out there than ‘Frank’”.
“No!” She said emphatically. “I know this is going to be a boy. I just know it!” She rubbed her belly with both of her hands. “Besides, I know that you’ll feel better having one of our children named after you.”
“I never thought that, Sharon.” I responded. “What gave you that idea?”
“Oh, you know,” she’d told me apathetically, “the way you made a big case when I wanted to name Ricky…you know…his middle name…so I just thought…”
***
Sitting in the dark and mostly empty club thousands of miles away, I drunkenly wondered whether I’d ever really accepted her casual explanation about using her ex-boyfriend’s name for our son’s middle name. The booze floating around my brain wouldn’t let me remember. Fuck it, I finally thought, who cares? Nobody, that’s who. Nobody cares and nobody gives a fuck.
I lay my head down on the bar and closed my eyes, pretty near to tears.
“Hey cowboy!” The bartender said. “Don’t quit on me now, you’re more than half-way there. Drink up!”
I jerked my head up and focused on the bartender. “Yeah, you’re right. More than halfway done and no one gives a fuck!”
He looked at me curiously, probably trying to figure out what I was trying to say. All I could do was try to keep him in focus.
In a few seconds the self-deprecating thoughts that had been running through my head just disappeared, and I noticed that I really needed to work on that bottle of Jack.
So while I celebrated my twenty-first birthday by trying to drink myself into unconsciousness, many thousands of miles away and completely unbeknownst to me, my second-born son, Frank DeLeón, Jr., was celebrating just his seventh day of life.
It took me three days to recover from that vicious hangover, and I suffered mightily. Once I recovered, it would be many months before I took another drink. And Jack Daniels whiskey, heretofore my go-to drink of choice, would never ever pass my lips again.
***
On November 22, a little after ten in the morning, the two main entrance doors to the Radar Tracking Room flew open and a breathless and wide-eyed Airman Anthony Fagan burst in holding aloft a half torn sheet of yellow teletype paper.
The normal quietly humming atmosphere in the dark cavernous room came to a sudden and shocking halt as all heads turned and eyes focused on the petite black airman, standing mouth agape, the yellow paper high over his head.
“MY GOD, EVERYBODY!” The words delivered in a high falsetto voice. “THE PRESIDENT’S SHOT! LORD JESUS, SOMEBODY WENT AND SHOT HIM! THE PRESIDENT’S BEEN SHOT!!”
For a frozen few seconds no one moved, as the words pierced and hung in the dark, quiet air.
From the back of the gigantic plotting board an echoing baritone voice sounded.
“Fucking Fagan.”
Mesmerized along with everyone else, when I heard those two words my mind started turning again.
In a lower but still hysterical tone, Fagan reiterated, “Noooo, really man! Really, I swear to almighty God—President Kennedy’s been shot! It’s right here!” Fagan waved the half-torn sheet of yellow paper over his head. “Honest! It just came over the API News teletype.”
“AIRMAN FAGAN! CEASE AND DESIST IMMEDIATELY!” This particular voice coming from the shift commander, a recently arrived second lieutenant.
One of the shift sergeants, who’d been sitting next to me verifying tracked targets on the plotting board, shot up from his seat and began walking rapidly to the end of the dais then turned and made a bee-line in the direction of where Fagan was standing.
“You fucker!” The sergeant spit out as he took a couple of giant steps. “This is the last straw. Your ass is going up for a court martial! This shit is not funny!”
Although seemingly impossible, Fagan’s face took on an even more terrified look.
“Look sarge, look!” Fagan offered the shaking yellow sheet to the sergeant who was not interested in the paper but seemed very interested in reaching for Fagan’s neck.
Then…the electrified atmosphere was shattered with the shrill, but muted, trilling of a telephone.
The Red Phone in its plastic box sitting on the dais just to my left, rang.
And, just to be clear on this, the Red Phone had never rung before—not unless it was during our weekly designated test period. And that had just occurred the day before.
The Red Phone was part of our crypto (ultra-secret) communications network, and once triggered by our Command in Fairbanks it meant that we were either in the process of arming and launching nuclear missiles in a preemptive attack, or that someone, somewhere, was in the process of arming and launching nuclear missiles at us.
The entire room froze and every eye turned towards the Red Phone ringing softly in its ridiculous square Plexiglas box.
As assistant to the Shift Commander on this particular day, it was my responsibility to answer the phone, first using our facility’s secret call sign (‘petroleum’), then challenging the caller with our crypto safe phrase. In return, the caller would then respond with the proper reply, then issue a counter-challenge. Of course all this was necessary to ensure that everyone knew who they were to talking to. Once all that protocol was complete, an encrypted message would be relayed by the caller and copied verbatim by the receiver for immediate decoding by the Shift Commander. Typically, the call was terminated when the receiver issued his operating initials.
“SERGEANT! AS YOU WERE! RETURN TO YOUR STATION!” The Shift Commander yelled just before the running sergeant reached a flinching Fagan.
“Sir!” The sergeant stopped cold in his tracks and retreated back to his chair.
“Airman DeLeón, will you please answer the phone?”
“Sir!” I responded without knowing why. But I did pick up the phone.
The challenge/answer both ways complete, I began to copy the encrypted message as it was dictated to me. It took no more than a minute, as I copied six sets of encoded numbers and letters—but to me it seemed like an eternity.
I completed the message, gave my operating initials, and wondered what the message said as I handed the paper to the lieutenant. The two officers in charge then retreated to the crypto room to unlock the safe and retrieve the decoder in order to decipher the message.
Although tracked aircraft were still flying, the radar operators had not been sending position coordinates to the plotters since Fagan’s outburst—and it seemed as if all the targets on the board were frozen in time.
The crypto room door opened, and the two now pale-faced officers walked out and took their seats on the dais. The shift commander activated the internal speaker system so that everyone in the room could hear clearly.
Ramrod straight, he picked up the small microphone and spoke quietly into it.
“Gentlemen. It is my solemn duty to inform you that at approximately 1830 hours Zulu (GMT, which is 12:30pm Central Standard Time), President Kennedy was shot and injured by an unknown assailant or assailants while in his motorcade enroute from Dallas Love Field in Dallas, Texas. His condition is presently unknown.
“CENTCOM (Central Command) has declared our defense status DEFCON TWO, and our defense status board will now reflect that status until further notice.
“To the best of my knowledge we are not presently at war, but all of our armed forces have been ordered to prepare for a preemptive strike. We can only assume that the strike will come from Russia. All airborne bomber squadrons have been deployed to their ‘go points’ to await further orders and all fighter squadrons have launched all their combat status aircraft.
“As of this moment all non-combat activities will cease at Tatalina, and all personnel will report to their combat stations to await further instructions. We will now resume our air defense responsibilities and await further orders.
“Sergeant”, he said quietly to the non-com who had just recently wanted to murder Fagan, “notify the base commander and sound the alarm.” The sergeant pulled out a small flat drawer from the dais and pushed the button. I immediately heard the muted sound of klaxons reverberating throughout the station as the sergeant closed the drawer and began to dial Major Rusk.
I felt my heart sink, and at that precise moment I truly believed that one of the first missile launches from Russia would probably have our name on it. We were a part of a critical radar network making up the first line of radar surveillance defense (called the DEW LINE) for the rest of the US. So, in order for the enemy bombers to successfully reach and deliver their payloads to the lower forty-eight, they would first have to take us out.
I remember an overwhelming feeling of sadness overtaking me as I assumed that with only three months remaining on my tour of duty, my assignment would probably be extended for the duration of what I assumed would be a civilization-ending nuclear conflict, and I would never see my wife or my two children ever again.
“Gentlemen,” the lieutenant said loudly into the speaker, “we have a job to do, so let’s do it!”
The Water Tower
The rest of my shift that day was tense and nerve-wracking. Any unidentified track originating from the western edge of our airspace was scrutinized, more intensively than normal, and when its identification finally changed from ‘unknown’ to ‘friendly’, you could almost hear a collective sigh of relief coming from everyone in the control room.
Although I continued to man the dais for the next few hours, the responsibility to answer the red phone for the rest of the shift was delegated to one of the higher-ranking sergeants. After a while I was relieved from that position and reassigned as one of the Track Board plotters. The dais was now being manned by officers and non-commissioned officers.
Working behind the large Plexiglas board, I and the other three plotters listened intently as plot coordinates were transmitted over our headsets on new and established targets by the radar trackers. The normal and casual chitchat that was common among the plotters as target positions and directions of flight were received was eerily non-existent—the silence broken only by the occasional screeching of our colored grease pencils as we wrote our tracks’ pertinent flight information backwards on the board.
When the alert had gone out and our defense status had been elevated, our normal Radar Tracking Room staffing had been immediately increased. Shifts that were due to work later that day were brought in early. The chow hall was immediately closed and the kitchen staff assigned to sentry and surveillance duties. Until the alert level was lowered every man was to take his meals on position, where ever that was. Subsequently, our hidden stores of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), some of which had prepared as far back as the early 1950’s, were opened and the beige boxes containing one full meal (including dessert), in tin cans, were distributed to the men during the designated meal hours. It was an almost surreal experience given food to eat which had been prepared and packaged when I was eight years old.
One of the most macabre moments that I ever experienced during my year-long tour of duty occurred during our MRE meal time right after President Kennedy’s death, and while still on our weeklong elevated defense alert. As the men opened their MREs and rummaged through the contents, whoops of glee could be heard as some would find their favorite canned meal, such as, ‘beef-roast w/brown gravy’; steak-salisbury; and, ‘ham-baked w/pineapple ring’, along with, ‘pie-cherry’, for dessert.
Other voices would rise in disgust and disappointment as their boxes yielded unpopular meals such as, ‘Turkey-roast’; ‘Salad-tuna’; ‘Hash-corned beef’; and the most maligned and unwanted dessert of all: “Cake-fruit’.
Bidding wars would break out, with calls for trading one or more portions of MREs for something more palatable to the bidder.
“Shit! I got two fruit cakes that I’ll trade for anything!”
“Who wants a Salisbury steak? I’ll take two turkeys or a hash!”
As for me, who just happened to love fruit cake, I would usually end up with six or more tins of the holiday goodie after trading off my ‘pudding-bread’, ‘cake-pound, or ‘roll-cinnamon’.
The other bizarre event that occurred during that remarkably stressful week was when my shift sergeant handed out guard duty assignments.
Thinking that, absent an all-out airborne attack, those shifty Russians might try to invade our radar station by ground, we prepared for a land attack. To raise our already stressed-out tensions, we had received unconfirmed intelligence that some groups of unknown origin had been spotted north and west of McGrath by some local hunters. Just to be on the safe side, Major Rusk had ordered that sentries be posted at strategic points around the perimeter of the station. Because of the now bitterly cold weather, sentry duty would be limited to three-hour shifts. As far as I was concerned, that would be more than enough time for me freeze to death in the near zero temperatures and the thirty knot wind out of the north.
When it came time for me to get my sentry assignment, I was rattled to see that it said, “Water Tower”. I never knew we had a water tower, had never seen it, and wondered why someone would want to store water in a tower in the frozen Alaskan wilderness. Besides, I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be frozen by now anyway? What advantage would a frozen water tower be to a bunch of invading Russian soldiers anyway?
Regardless, I was told to report to the motor pool building wearing my parka, and where I’d be issued a pair of ‘fat boy’ pants (heavily insulated trousers worn over insulated fatigue pants), mukluks (imagine fat mittens for your booted feet), and a pair of humongous hand mittens connected to each other by a leather strap worn around the neck (so as not to lose them). I was issued a World War Two Vintage M-1 carbine, and a clip of ten live cartridges. Once properly outfitted, I was driven out by snow cat to the water tower.
After the snow cat left, I discovered that I could barely stand, much less walk, and very much less able to lock, load or even find the trigger on my M-1. If we did indeed get overrun by the Russian army looking to attack, dismantle, and haul off our frozen water tower, I was surely a dead man. Besides not being able to see three feet in front of me because of the heavily-furred hood on my parka, once I sat on the frozen tundra it took me at least a minute to get back up. Further, with giant mittens lashed to my leather-gloved hands I couldn’t even hold the rifle properly without having it slide down through my heavily mittened hands.
The weather on the little hill on which I was perched was horrid. After a few minutes, the light but driving snow started finding its way through the tube-like fur tunnel in front of my parka’s hood, causing my eyes to water and glaze over, severely limiting my vision. No amount of blinking would alleviate the problem, so the only way to clear my eyes was to remove my huge mittens, find and pull, with my thickly gloved hand, the teeny zipper tab hidden away somewhere in the front of the fur tube—thereby widening the opening so I could stick my hand in—and vigorously rub my eyes.
The rubbing irritated my eyes, causing them to water—which started the whole process all over again. When I was not dealing with the vision issue, I was trying to figure out exactly where I was in relation to the radar station. The snow, swirling up off the ground, obstructed my view of the water tower (when I could see at all), and several times, after re-zipping my parka, I spun around in circles in the almost complete whiteout wondering where the tower was—and worse, speculating from which direction the Russians would be coming.
I hoped that the invading force, should they decide to attack and plunder our frozen water tower, would be a patient lot—first allowing me to find my unloaded rifle, laying somewhere on the ground under a layer of snow; then allowing me to remove my mittens so I could stick my hand into my pocket and extract the rifle’s magazine clip; then having the forbearance to let me insert the clip into the rifle and slam a live round into the chamber; then allowing me to unzip the furry hood on my parka so I could raise the rifle and sight in on my target; then letting me remove my right hand glove so I could insert my trigger finger into the trigger guard; and finally wait around to watch me aim and pull the trigger in order to shoot them dead.
I played this scenario over and over in my mind during the three hours I spent out in the frozen tundra, but could never figure out a way to speed up the shooting process. I finally decided that my best option would be to immediately raise my hands and surrender to the screaming horde. Then, in order to stimulate some good will from my captors, I’d maybe offer them a tin or two of the five, or so, ‘cake-fruit’ tins that I’d stashed in my fatigue pants’ pocket earlier. I wondered if Russians even liked fruit cake. Our MREs didn’t have any ‘Caviar-Russian’.
***
Being a good and loyal airman, I persevered and did my duty. When I was finally relieved three hours later, I thought that maybe being shot to death by the Russian Army would have been easier to take than the three horrible hours I spent on that hill half blind, almost crazy with fear, and freezing my ass off.
Fortunately, it was later determined by CENTCOM that the Russians had been as surprised as we were regarding President Kennedy’s assassination and thought that we were going to attack them. Subsequently, our alert level was lowered back to normal and within hours we were all back to living our dreary little Tatalina lives.
As I returned to my normal routine I hoped that my final three months would pass quickly. I was now in better shape financially, physically, and mentally—and with every passing day looked forward to the day when I’d finally be reunited, and allowed to resume my life, with my wife and my two children.
As I ironed in a sharp pleat onto a steaming fatigue shirt I wondered what our lives together would be like once I was back in the lower forty-eight. A few days earlier I’d submitted my next duty station request on what the Air Force unofficially called a “dream sheet”, and I had asked for assignment to any California air base. I hoped that maybe we’d end up somewhere in northern California so that Sharon could feel a little better about being closer to home.
As usual, the Air Force had other thoughts in mind about my future.
To be continued…