The following is obviously a love poem. To whom or about whom, I frankly do not remember. Before the service, while I was in college, I had a crush on two guys, first Daylin and then Pat, both of whom were straight. I even visited Pat and his girlfriend on Long Island while I was stationed in Minot. I'd lost touch with Daylin after I entered in the service, though I did visit him and his wife in Ann Arbor, MI, where he was in graduate school; but I still communicated with his brother, Darryl, a classmate of mine in high school. Their family lived in South Gate for years. Last year, I found Daylin on the Internet and sent him an email. Like my sister and I, I learned from him that both their parents are gone, as is their older sister.
It must have been my final year in Minot, in the Fall of 1977; but I decided to take a monster plane trip that would likely be impossible or incredibly expensive these days since many of the airlines I took back then are no longer in existence and few airlines today allow one-way flights.
It must have been my final year in Minot, in the Fall of 1977; but I decided to take a monster plane trip that would likely be impossible or incredibly expensive these days since many of the airlines I took back then are no longer in existence and few airlines today allow one-way flights.
I began my epic journey on a North Central Airlines DC-9-30 from Minot, through Fargo, ND, to Minneapolis. I changed airlines there and took an Ozark Airlines DC-9 to St. Louis where I stayed with a friend who had been a missile officer at Minot but was now stationed there.
I was supposed to take TWA from St. Louis to Indianapolis and then a small commuter airliner to Bloomington, Indiana; but my ticket had the flight departure time wrong and I missed the flight. I waited around the airport with my Air Force buddy until the next flight but had to call Darryl to come pick me up in Indianapolis and drive me to his and his wife's apartment in Bloomington where he was attending graduate school. I next flew from Indianapolis to Pittsburgh on an American Airlines BAC-111 through Columbus, Ohio.
From there, I took a small commuter airliner to Morgantown, WVA, to visit my Air Force friend, Chuck, in Morgantown. He had also taken the early-out program and left the service earlier that year. A couple days later, I took a twin-engine, four seater from Morgantown back to Pittsburgh. As I sat in the airport, I saw flights arrive from Colorado, filled with Air Force Academy cadets. From Pittsburgh, I flew on a Northwest Airlines 727-200 to Philadelphia to stay with David Zito. Even though I had lived all those years in Minot, I was never as cold as I was in Philadelphia that Thanksgiving weekend. Dennis and his wife met up with David and me at their parents' home. Back in Philadelphia, I caught a terrible cold. I was miserable in the airport, waiting for my American Airlines flight to Los Angeles via Dallas, TX. I was even more miserable on the plane, hoping not to infect my fellow passengers with my misery.
I recovered a bit, staying with my mom in Long Beach. A week later, I took United Airlines to Denver. The Frontier flight from Denver to Minot was cancelled, so I caught a Northwest flight back to Minneapolis and finally a North Central flight back to Minot via Fargo. I think the ticket was $728.00.
Getting back to the poem, the term that is the title of the poem refers to the electrical connections between the LCCs, where the crews spent their alerts, and the LFs where the ten-flight, and fifteen-squadron, missiles were kept, no closer physically than three nautical miles from one another or from the LCCs. The many connections and system redundancies allow the crews from at least two LCCs to launch all of the squadron's missiles even if some of the connections are damaged or destroyed.
Interconnectivity
Status lights dim or brighten on my end only.
On the snow-submerged, opposing end,
mystic shafts of untold emotions are driven.
So steel as it functions ages less,
so love that we strangle dismantles within.
My teams determine as they can
priority for repair.
I help them when I must,
for we all maintain the system.
And as we each preserve ourselves,
I preserve missiles as a threat.
As on lines where we talked
that do not always function,
I no longer speak to you. No malfunction.
Love that is my link to friendship
is my frustration when it ends.
Like breaks in the connections
between these active missiles and me,
I know that no commands,
no pleading, will bring results with damage.
I am forever like some wizard
whose wonders never work.
I know as disenchanted lovers disunite--
spells cast now by mortals
are always broken.
I was supposed to take TWA from St. Louis to Indianapolis and then a small commuter airliner to Bloomington, Indiana; but my ticket had the flight departure time wrong and I missed the flight. I waited around the airport with my Air Force buddy until the next flight but had to call Darryl to come pick me up in Indianapolis and drive me to his and his wife's apartment in Bloomington where he was attending graduate school. I next flew from Indianapolis to Pittsburgh on an American Airlines BAC-111 through Columbus, Ohio.
From there, I took a small commuter airliner to Morgantown, WVA, to visit my Air Force friend, Chuck, in Morgantown. He had also taken the early-out program and left the service earlier that year. A couple days later, I took a twin-engine, four seater from Morgantown back to Pittsburgh. As I sat in the airport, I saw flights arrive from Colorado, filled with Air Force Academy cadets. From Pittsburgh, I flew on a Northwest Airlines 727-200 to Philadelphia to stay with David Zito. Even though I had lived all those years in Minot, I was never as cold as I was in Philadelphia that Thanksgiving weekend. Dennis and his wife met up with David and me at their parents' home. Back in Philadelphia, I caught a terrible cold. I was miserable in the airport, waiting for my American Airlines flight to Los Angeles via Dallas, TX. I was even more miserable on the plane, hoping not to infect my fellow passengers with my misery.
I recovered a bit, staying with my mom in Long Beach. A week later, I took United Airlines to Denver. The Frontier flight from Denver to Minot was cancelled, so I caught a Northwest flight back to Minneapolis and finally a North Central flight back to Minot via Fargo. I think the ticket was $728.00.
Getting back to the poem, the term that is the title of the poem refers to the electrical connections between the LCCs, where the crews spent their alerts, and the LFs where the ten-flight, and fifteen-squadron, missiles were kept, no closer physically than three nautical miles from one another or from the LCCs. The many connections and system redundancies allow the crews from at least two LCCs to launch all of the squadron's missiles even if some of the connections are damaged or destroyed.
Interconnectivity
Status lights dim or brighten on my end only.
On the snow-submerged, opposing end,
mystic shafts of untold emotions are driven.
So steel as it functions ages less,
so love that we strangle dismantles within.
My teams determine as they can
priority for repair.
I help them when I must,
for we all maintain the system.
And as we each preserve ourselves,
I preserve missiles as a threat.
As on lines where we talked
that do not always function,
I no longer speak to you. No malfunction.
Love that is my link to friendship
is my frustration when it ends.
Like breaks in the connections
between these active missiles and me,
I know that no commands,
no pleading, will bring results with damage.
I am forever like some wizard
whose wonders never work.
I know as disenchanted lovers disunite--
spells cast now by mortals
are always broken.
No comments:
Post a Comment