Poetry, Part Twenty-four

Obviously, it was difficult not to think in apocalyptic terms while serving as a combat crew member. We had so much time to reflect. With 36-hour and 24-hour alerts, we had time. With the average driving distance to a launch control facility being significant and the Air Force requiring that we not exceed the 55 MPH driving speed, we had time. Most crews had to double up to save gas and conserve crew vehicles (Chevy Suburbans) by dropping off one crew at one LCF and then driving on to the other LCF where they served their alerts. So even the long drives provided even more time to think.

We attended classes each month that focused upon our top secret mission (Emergency War Order, or EWO), and we were tested after each class. We had trainer rides scheduled periodically, and evaluations that often were no notice. So, it was not as if we weren't having to retain what we were taught at all times.

When I wasn't on alert or in class, or working out at the gym, or playing badminton, or participating on a missile squadron or wing sports team (flag football, basketball, or volleyball--I didn't play softball), I would be back in my room in the Bachelor Officer's Quarters (BOQ). Living there with me were other missile officers or bomber or tanker pilots or navigators or security police. We found it all too easy to talk shop, even on our days off.

I also read or watched some TV (Betamax VCRs and cable TV would not arrive until my last year in Minot, and there were only two network television channels anyway). I listened to music frequently. After a few months living on the base, I stopped eating at the Officer's Club and began to cook my own meals in the kitchen that I shared with another officer. I shopped at the Base Exchange or the Base Commissary. Each of us officers did have our own bathroom and a one-room, one-closet combination living room/bedroom (there were other, older quarters that had more space or rooms, but the officers living there had to share even bathrooms--though, after a time, the brass mandated that officers, at least, must each have his, or her, own bathroom). We had single beds and large oak furniture in my two-story BOQ, and a pair of shared washers and dryers in a laundry room on the second floor that everyone shared.

My BOQ room looked out across a large field toward the main gate less than half a mile away. With the long, cold winters, even with several friends and acquaintances and co-workers living nearby, duty at Minot could be very lonely for many of us, gay or straight, whether we had companions or were single.

Minot AFB

Darkness.
Without pairs of rolling lights from the main gate,
I would lose one way out to blindness.

If the only connection between Point Loma
and this base is mine, I am
no less free than I have been.

And since I never hear about those dead,
or ever know a living thought
saving my own,
I have no communicating as others.
Worthlessly still I arrange
contact on paper,
trying to continue through any interruption.

One and then another day's distractions
prevent succeeding grief's reaction.
No scale or grid of suffering
(enough to realize what hurts--
that any pain is well enough).

I know as much will remain
as sufficient to remember what was lost.
Of cities pushed from civilization
as they no longer link to provide.

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