Civil Air Patrol

 
There are major disruptors in life. Disruptors being events like a death in the family, loss of a job or moving your home. 

Our house in Carol City

The first such disruption in my life (that I remember) was in 1960 when we moved from North Miami, Florida to Carol City, Florida. Those towns were only a few miles apart so geographically, it wasn't far but psychologically for me, it was huge. My family moved into a house that we actually owned and didn't rent, so this was really and truly ours. Of course, I also left all my friends behind and no one had yet invented Facebook or email or even the Internet at that point, so I may as well had moved to the moon. The move also meant a new school and all the angst that accompanies such a change.

It didn't help that the move happened well into the school year, so I was introduced into groups that already knew one another. Fortunately, we did know one family in the area, the Wissers who had been family friends for years so gratefully, there was at least one connection to stability.

One of the oil tanks Deb's Dad built

While all this was happening, my wife's father was finishing up his work in Guayaquil, Ecuador where he was building oil storage tanks. When he moved his family back to the United States, see if you can guess where they ended up. Yes, even though they had moved from Ohio to Ecuador, when they came back, there they were in Carol City!

And then, in one of those bizarre coincidences one reads about in the comics, my future wife and I attended the same school, Carol City Junior High, at the same time - for about three and a half months. I have the mental image of the two of us crossing paths in some hallway or of her pushing me out of the way to get a drink of water from the fountain.

Carol City Junior High

But there was no meeting, no premonition, no nothin'. We did not meet then, not for another eight years, actually, even though we lived on the same street 169th Terrace, we were ten blocks apart and you know... ten blocks is a long way. So I was left to my own devices and they were pretty limited.

Somehow (!) - I don't mean to be vague, I just don't remember - somehow, I was introduced to the Civil Air Patrol. Many people don't even know it exists, but the Civil Air Patrol is quite important in the aviation world. It is the official United States Air Force Auxiliary and does things like search and rescue missions, disaster relief and the training of cadets where such training prepares them for an introduction to the US Air Force.

Unfortunately, all this happened during a period of almost no family photography. Twenty or fewer photographs a year leaves a lot of gaps. I compare this circumstance to what my grandchildren enjoy. They have had at least ten photos of them taken every day of their lives. They have tens of thousands of photographs of each of them along with hours and hours of high definition video. There is no gap in their growth or the sequence of events in their lives. Things are different now.

Civil Air Patrol Seal

But I have no photos of me in uniform, or on the flights I took, or of the events I attended. Oh, well. We met in the evenings at Carol City Junior High and learned the discipline of marching in formation, the basics of aerodynamics, flight theory and military structure. It was only the adult members who participated in search and rescue, but we actually got to fly!

We had training missions in light aircraft like Cessnas and Piper Cubs. But my most memorable flight was in a Douglas DC-3, one of the most famous aircraft ever built. This was a twin-engine airplane first introduced in 1935 that was so stable and so well designed that there are still DC-3 aircraft in active service.

Douglas DC-3

Let that sink in for a moment. They stopped production in 1942 and they are still operating regularly seventy years later. Not just for show, but working, seventy years later. I'm very proud to have had the opportunity to fly on that aircraft.

We also served as guides during air shows especially at Opa-locka Airport which was right next door to Carol City. Then, during the Cuban Missile crisis, we spent days preparing food and other packages for servicemen and other possible survivors of the imminent nuclear war. I wonder what ever happened to all that stuff we put together since the war never took place.

While I was with the CAP, I became First Sergeant, where I learned a little about leadership. Being part of that group was a good experience. One high point was an awards ceremony we had at the McCallister Hotel in downtown Miami. They bused us down there and thrust us into an adult environment, I was about 15 at the time. The waiter comes around and asks us what we want to drink, so naturally I order a scotch and soda expecting to get hit upside the head. But he doesn't even blink and brings it with everyone's cokes and 7-Ups. Of course, all the cadets want a sip and of course no one liked it. It was scotch and soda.

I never joined the Air Force, I went into the Navy instead. You can read about that elsewhere in this blog-thing. But a sure reason (other than my commanding presence) for becoming First Platoon Leader in the Navy Boot Camp was what I had learned about leadership from the Civil Air Patrol. How about that!       
   

Bob Deeter (right) Me (left)

 
Update March 12, 2018 - Regarding the coincidence of my wife Deb and I both attending Carol City Junior High long before we knew one another, I checked to see where our home rooms were. It turns out I was in Room 214 and she was in Room 216. So, it's not an absolute certainty but a pretty good bet that we saw each other. I do remember this one girl tripping me...
 

The Grim Reaper Hovers

I might have mentioned that I was a cadet in the Civil Air Patrol when I went to Carol City Junior High. Of course I mentioned it, I don't just make this stuff up. For students, it's a way to learn about aviation especially if you intend to go into the US Air Force since it is the official Air Force Auxiliary.

None of the people in this photograph is me because, strangely enough, I have no photos of me in uniform. You might think, "Surely there will be some offhand snapshot." But, nooooo.

Actually, it's for the best because this is what I looked like in eighth grade so the fewer photographs, the better. Geez, look at that hair! What's the matter with me?

Naturally, after all this experience and training, I joined the US Navy instead. Of course, the Navy has an excellent flight program, but they thought things would be better for everyone if I served on a Destroyer which is as far from any aircraft as humanly possible.

The Civil Air Patrol really was a great opportunity for exposure to things I had no contact with before. I learned how to march, and what a 'load factor' is (i.e., the ratio of the lift of an aircraft to its weight). You gotta know this stuff or you may not be able to march to your aircraft and get it off the ground.

But I also got to fly in small civilian aircraft like Cessnas and Piper Cubs and the legendary DC-3 (pictured above), which many consider the most perfect aircraft ever built.

This airplane was designed in 1932 and is still in daily retail operation around the world. You got any 1932 automobiles being used as taxis? Many pilots still believe the only replacement for a DC-3 is another DC-3. This respect shows in the other commonly used phrase that the DC-3 is 'a collection of parts flying in loose formation'. And I got to fly in one.

So, because I was a cadet in the Civil Air Patrol, I got to play a small part in the closest thing to nuclear war the world has ever seen - The Cuban Missile Crisis. And it was a crisis. For those who didn't live through it (or who can't remember it), it was particularly nasty for those of us who lived in south Florida. After all, that's about 20 seconds flying time for a missile from Cuba.

Kennedy and Khrushchev (in this photo above, Kennedy is asking Nikita to 'pull his finger') got into a royal pushing and shoving contest because of some missiles that Khrushchev has snuck into Cuba.

For a while there, it was really tense, many people thought there would be nuclear war at any moment. The US rushed boatloads of missiles to Miami and set up acres of launch sites. There was a really big Nike Hercules facility just a couple of miles from where I lived at the time and they didn't even bother to try to hide it.

But, no, they didn't ask the Civil Air Patrol cadets to man the missiles. We were put to work at the Opa Locka Airport putting together civil defense food and emergency packages in case that war happened. I'm not sure what good it would have done us if Miami had been nuked and all our sand had been turned into a kind of root-beer-colored glass. Well, it kept us busy.

Nowadays, I doubt that people realize how close October 1962 came to all of us going pbbtttth. A lot of Congress wanted to go ahead with the big one and called Kennedy 'reluctant'. He was probably just concerned that we hadn't finished those food packages and was buying us some more time.

I'm good with that.

Resume - Part 2

So, when last we met, Rich was eighteen and tired. Now, of course, he's older and perhaps even a bit more tired. If that isn't a complete synopsis, I'm sorry, you'll have to read the previous entry Resume - Part 1. See how clever the whole naming thing is working out? For those of you who were eighteen once, it may come as no surprise to you that my solution to this difficult circumstance was to run away. How's that for integrity and grit? As it happened, my friend Bob Deeter (who was in a very similar situation to my own) and I were driving down 27th. Avenue near the college when he suddenly said, "We should just go ahead and join the Navy."

It had never entered my mind to join the Navy, if I was going into any service, it would have been the Air Force. After all, I did spend a few years in the Civil Air Patrol where I had risen to the rank of First Sergeant and I loved to fly. But I could never be a pilot, <heavy sigh> because my eyes were no good and that kind of put a damper on the whole thing. But I had learned how to march and picked up some tips on leadership and learned how to calculate load factors on aircraft. And a couple of the guys in the squadron were the ones I worked with laying that industrial tile I spoke of earlier (see how all this ties all together?). And at that point I had no idea how many other people in my family had been in the Navy, Uncles and Cousins and Step-Grandfathers, oh, my. My father never spoke about his family, or else I wasn't listening, which is another really strong possibility. I found out about these Navy connections after I started delving into genealogy.

So, having nothing better to do, we joined the Navy. I know, you can almost hear the Village People in your head, can't you? "In the Navy!" But there was no such song when I joined, but there was the Vietnam War and chances were pretty high that we would go there. But this was June and we delayed entry until September so we could have the summer. Vietnam could wait. Bob's dad used his connections to get us jobs at Carlson Construction as laborers. I did spend some time working with carpenters which qualifies as 101 Intro to Carpentry, but most of the time we did demolition. And what a great time we had busting stuff up!

Most of the other laborers were middle-aged black guys who had been doing this stuff for twenty years and knew full well that what didn't get done today would be waiting for us tomorrow. But here come these two puppies bouncing around, "Hey, come on, let's wreck some more stuff!" They adopted us and tried their best not to get us killed. One particular job was EXCELLENT. We were contracted to replace the ceilings in an elementary school with new dropped ceilings. And that's where we came in because we had to remove the forty year old plaster and lath ceilings. The guys were using axes and pipes to break up the old ceiling and then sweep up the pieces. Man, that forty-year old dust was something to behold. So, Bob and I looked at the situation and knew right away we shouldn't push up, but should pull down. So we had the shop make us some sky hooks - a long pipe with a 90 degree angle at the end that we could poke up through the old ceiling. Ours had another piece supporting the angle so it wouldn't bend. Of course, you had to be careful not to hit the ceiling support beam when you pushing the pipe up with all your might because then you had to stand there for a while until your body stopped vibrating the way Bugs Bunny did when he ran into a street lamp. There was a down side, of course, because you were pulling all this stuff right down on top of yourself, but that's what hard hats are for, plus the fact that the work was getting done five times faster.

But I noticed that not only was the plaster strengthened with horse hair, the lath was attached to the beams with wire and not nails. You can almost guess what I did next. I crawled up into the space between the ceiling and the roof, cut the wires and pushed the lath DOWN, much easier and the pieces were bigger. Yeah, this was Miami in the summer, so it was 130 degrees up there, but youth and stupidity are a great combination. But even that wasn't enough. On this one long hallway, I went up and cut ALL the wires and then stomped down on one end and the whole ceiling peeled off like a banana peel and came down in one piece. What fun! As it happened, our supervisor heard the whoomp! (so did people for blocks around) and came to find me jumping down after doing a weeks work in two hours. He gave me a ten cent an hour raise. But this was 1966 and that was a lot!