They say you can never go home again, that no man steps in the same river twice. But you can go back.
It’s been nearly 11 years since last I was in Fallon, as best as I recall. I was CO of the Sh!t Hot World Famous Orange-Tailed Shrikes, with maybe a month or two left in command. The world was more or less at peace, with only the random response option against Iraqi air defense sites to add meaning to the training we were about to undergo. We’d had a long turnaround between deployments, so I had better than my fair share of raw nuggets to get ready for deployment. As we assembled on Day Zero of a three week detachment, I solemnly explained to them that perfect execution was the minimum standard for success, and then turned to leave the details of what that meant to the squadron operations officer.
As a Saint Crispin’s Day competitor, it didn’t much break the signal to noise ratio. But the boys gave the Taliban unholy hell a few months later, so perhaps brevity truly is the soul of wit. Much more likely that I, not for the first time, was graced to stand upon the shoulders of giants.
My first trip out here was as an advanced jet student. I rode in the trunk of a TA-4J Skyhawk flown by a tall and languorous Marine from Georgia. Our three-ship was led by another Marine captain, this one from Texas. His callsign was “Boots” for reasons never explained to we mere students. He was short and stocky, full of energy and aviation wisdom. Kind, too, in their own gruff way. They were the first of our instructors to treat us like future wingmen rather than hopeless cone heads. We were still several months away from getting winged, so we greeted their camaraderie with polite deference. There were still plenty of ways to screw it up. It wasn’t over until they tacked those Wings of Gold on, and – although we didn’t know it yet – until that happened, it really hadn’t started.
February, I think, and high desert cold. The base had not yet grown to be what it is today, a center of naval aviation strike and air warfare training excellence. In those days it was merely a place where novice attack pilots could hurl themselves down the wire to test their hands at manual bombing. The notion of a Strike University was still bubbling up from the fiasco over Lebanon, and TOPGUN was still safely ensconced at NAS Miramar. I remember that it was cold enough in the morning to be forewarned about the risks of slipping on ice-laden wings while performing preflights. I don’t remember anyone drawing the otherwise natural conclusion that perhaps the wings ought to have been de-iced prior to getting airborne. I also remember flying with Boots in my back seat on my safe-for-solo high angle bombing checkride. Coming off target I put a six-g pull on which grabbed his attention. With the nose above the horizon, I briefly unloaded the jet to roll more briskly and spot my bomb hit. As Boots strained also around to see where my practice bomb had hit, I snapped another high g turn on to climb back into the circular dive bombing pattern. Sufficient, in the event, to knock Boots out cold while he was looking over his shoulder to spot my hit for himself.
I think he woke up one or two dive runs later, the windscreen filling up with dirt. I put him back out again just as he was getting oriented. Having spent a good ten minutes or so of my 45 minute flight napping, he apparently drew the conclusion that I was safe to bomb by myself. Safer that way, maybe, for everyone concerned. I was pretty aggressive in those days.
The instructor pilots would bail for Reno when the weekend came, taking the rental cars with them and mostly leaving the students to their own devices. It would be more or less the same a year later, when I came back to Fallon, this time in the FA-18A. Its computed dive bombing software made a mockery of our manual bombing efforts. Put the constantly-computed impact point cross on a target and hit the bomb release pickle in unaccellerated flight, and the bomb would pretty much go where you’d aimed it. Out of twelve practice bombs, it wasn’t unusual to have three or four “shacks”, impacts within 20 feet of the bullseye. Anything outside of 100′ was considered a flyer. Fifty to seventy five foot circular errors probable (defined in those days by throwing out the best hit along with the worst, and averaging the remainder) were commonplace. This, in a weapon delivery whose effects had a 500′ kill radius. Depending, of course, on the type of target. Troops in the open being easier to “effect” than revetted armor.
I drove around the base, just to get my bearings. There are some newer buildings since last I was stationed here, but the layout has not much changed. Drove past the jogging path where I spent too few hours, and the office I sat in when I was the exec at TOPGUN, where I spent far too many. The air park has some new additions, including a MiG-29 Fulcrum come hither from God knows where. The A-6 Intruder has been relegated to the middle of the pack, while an FA-18 painted in Redcock colors has taken its pride of place in front of the main building at the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center. I even drove past the house we lived at on base, 1017 Arizona Court. Someone else’s kids now played in their Halloween costumes on the porch. It was, I think, one of the last places where I felt young, surrounded by my young family. Full of purpose and optimism, unknowingly wearing around me the rude presumption that since everything had always been right, everything always would be. I said a little prayer for those who lived there now: Let them hold on to this, I asked the household gods. Let them hold tight.
The town hasn’t changed all that much. Sure, there are some new commercial real estate properties. We even have a Wal-Mart Supercenter, now. But the Frontier Market still remains, still dedicated to the quaint notion that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms ought to be a convenience store, rather than a government bureaucracy. The air is still crystal clear, the distant mountains startlingly close.
We kept coming back, year after year, cruise after cruise. Fallon is where squadrons went to sharpen their skills, and where air wings went to prepare for combat. The more you sweat in peacetime, the less you bleed in war. Good targets, supersonic ranges, plentiful adversaries, simulated surface-to-air missile sites. All within a 50-100 NM radius of the field. Each time we came back the older heads would ruefully proclaim that it wasn’t like it used to be. Much more serious, a great deal more planning. Fewer trips to Reno over the weekends. They’re probably saying it still.
It’s good to be back. But you never step in the same river twice.
Thanks, and Happy Halloween!
Gad Bless you and yours.
Capt. put out the fookin’ BOOK!
A Wal-Mart Supercenter? The town didn’t even have a bookstore last time I was there.
Pigs in Space?
In ’73 i went back a few places we had been to when my Father was in the Air Force. I was in the Navy then, home ported in Naples, Italia, and took leave to help an AF guy take his car up to Germany to ship it home.
Yep, all you can do is go back. It’s never the same.
You can go back, though it is never the same if truth be told. I’ve always like the phrase “But you never step in the same river twice”. As valid now as it was 2,500 years ago. Funny that.
Thanks Lex,
I have revisited the neighborhood in the suburbs of Boston where I grew up. My Dad retired and sold the house in 1985 to move to Cape Cod.
The street is a circle and likely one of the best places to grow up because there isn’t much traffic. Kids can play freely in the street as neighbors were careful and lived close together. My old backyard seems much smaller now than it did then.
Time waits for no man, and change is the one true constant.
The river changes from day to day as it is never the same twice but years bring great difference.
SK1 – Which ‘burb was it? For me, more or less, Dedham, but there were other stops along the way. Mom is in Sandwich now.
Lived in Canton, which was ” cow country ” back in the day…..lots a farms and tons of woods. There was an abandoned sand & gravel operation near our neighborhood where we could go to and cause mischief w/o parental oversight….the pond there was awesome for all day pond- hockey in the winter…..we would go out there all day & return just as the street lights were coming on….now, it is covered with McMansions for those who have significant $$$$ and like to live within 10 miles of Boston…..
We spent summers on Cape Cod as Dad as owned land down there since 1947….Cape Cod has changed quite a bit too……if you could have seen how pristine and remote it was back in the 1960s & 70s….Cape Cod was a place where working class families ( like ours ) could afford a basic cottage for summers ( no heat as you were only ther in the warmer weather )
Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end…….
Hehe, while I lived off Will Dr in the 80s and recollection goes back to the 70s I would have never called Canton, umm, Cow Country
– But yes, it has changed.
And Doc & Nellies. Sniff.
The Cape too – though not for the better. It was once affordable for working stiffs to spend a week in Dennis with the Family too.
Then came the playground of Summer Homes for NY/CT/NJ. Come to the point that a decent angler can’t get to the water on Fisherman’s Dr anymore, or Bass Rd, or the Cow Yard, etc…
I lived up the other end of Canton near the Blue Hills Regional School….lotsa open space and many nice memories….. Doc & Nellies, ice cream at Cresident Ridge ( a dairy ), pizza at Town Spa…..I could go on for days.
Cape Cod has changed and luckily I still have places where I can get to the beach and enjoy a summer day while visiting my Dad. There is still places to see there but too much of it has become ” out-of-bounds” and reserved for only a few.
SK1 – Yes – know all you mentioned… And know what you mean.
Nostalgia, nostalgia.. “We were Soldiers Once…and Young.”
But fossils just stay fossils…Lex ain’t there yet, but he can see we Trilobites on the horizon–still, for some reason he doesn’t seem eager to join the club just yet, lol.
Nah. More like the shark. 400 million years and still at the top of the food chain.
Regardless of what he sees, he *will* join us one day.
We were neighbors at different times! I lived in 1018 Arizona CT, but got there after you left. Still love Fallon– Take off and just a cuppla minutes later you’re in the mix. (for a helo guy that’s pretty rare.) We used to call Frontier “The Man Mall” cause you could buy booze, guns, and Pron all in the same place. Did you swing by La Fiesta? EXACTLY the same as I remembered it. And of course the Silver State had different faces but the same shenanigans, excpet the pool got filled in by rocks when I wasn’t looking.
You’re right– you can’t really go back, but it was great seeing the new guys working just as hard to sharpen the spear. In the end I guess we don’t really have any need to go back after all.
A few weeks ago I visited my home town of Tuscaloosa Alabama for the first time since April 27th. I drove through what is left of my grandparent’s old neighborhood. Their former house is still standing. Next door is roofless and abandoned. A new house has been built on the first of many vacant lots further down the circle. Neighbors behind are gone along with everything over three inches tall. Shopping centers, whole neighborhoods, it definitely isn’t the same place. It really sank in when I missed a turn on a street I had driven down nearly daily for the better part of fifteen years. None of the landmarks were there anymore. Hard to tell one vacant lot from another. I took some pictures for my sister to see. News is one thing. Seeing it in person and where you used to live, work, and play are totally different. Spent the rest of the drive quietly thinking.
I went to Alabama for my master’s degree, two wonderful years away from the rat race with the family. Passing through there on my way to the mountains for vacation was crushing. The house my family rented there is gone. The neighborhood, gone. Our church, gone. Tears streamed down my face. Watching that twister on TV was gut-wrenching here on the coast.
As someone who logged plenty of flight hours over Katrina-stricken NOLA and Biloxi, it looked just as bad, if not worse.
Harumph, Fallon hasn’t really been “really” Fallon since Ruthie retired from behind the bar! Heck, you even still had a full head of black hair when you were there at TOPGUN!
Salt and pepper these days. He’s gonna join us, He’s gonna join us, He’s gonna join us, He’s gonna join us,….
Used to teach CAS to CVW’s up Fallon way in the 80′s along with Amphib Op integration. Great place to operate. Remember seeing a couple of teens slipping out of the BOQ, apparently had been kicking some quarters into those stairwell beer machines.
FWIW, the whole quote is “No man can step into the same river twice, for the second time it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man.” I think it’s credited to Heraclitus.
Lex, I have apparently not been very attentive to your posts about your past history. I knew you were a damn good aviator, but this is the first time I recall seeing you mention being XO at Top Gun. I’m impressed. Very impressed.
For the rest of it: a nice if somewhat eye-misting little story.
Remember my first Fallon Det in mid 70′s. Old two-story wooden BOQ, water so soft you coudln’t rinse the suds off, dime craps at Mom’s and having my coffee freeze walking from the BOQ to the hangar. Those were the days….
“Having spent a good ten minutes or so of my 45 minute flight napping, he apparently drew the conclusion that I was safe to bomb by myself”
Oh Lex, you jump started my day with a good laugh!!
Lex,
Every time I read your posts such as this one, I have the sensation of having been invited into a place that I would otherwise never have known. I feel nostalgia for the places I’ve served and the folks I met. Having left the Army after 6 years, I wonder what if I’d chosen a different path.
I strive to put your writing into comparison and while I wasn’t a contemporary, I can only go with Ernie Pyle… to whit, “His articles, about the out-of-the-way places he visited and the people who lived there, were written in a folksy style, much like a personal letter to a friend.”
We’ve never met, nor likely will, the world being smallish (my sister went to school with Instapinch whom you know) but not too small. But I’ll never have to. You’re character is all over these pages, and I just want to say thanks for sharing because I feel like a personal friend.
Like MikeyB, Fallon in my brain from my first of many dets in the early 70′s. One weekend whilst others were at Mom’s and Reno a Lcdr bud who took pity on an Ensign still on the base checked out a jeep and took we went exploring the hills (mountains) off the end of I think what was B19. Found lots of old silver mines on what is now gov’t property. Odds and ends left there by souls from long ago, including mining claims in Prince Albert cans. The cans were unrusted and the pencil written claims inside still readable, even though the dates were from the 1800′s. We carefully replaced everything where it probably still resides. The Lcdr was killed in a crash on a night low level just a few months later.
The river keeps flowing, doesn’t it….
I had a great Uncle who was a prospector in SW Colorado. He had a gold mining claim in the San Juans and his claim was in Prince Albert can too. This was the mid 60s.
My father had PCS orders from Adair AFS to Ramstein in Germany and he asked my brotehrs and I if we wanted to go to Yellowstone of see our great Uncle who had a gold mine. You already know what we chose.
Congrats on being back. When you drive past the old RA5C Vigilante at the gate give her a pat for me.
Looking forward to your stories.
Didn’t know there was a Vigi at the gate! Give her a pat for me too. My first Fallon Det was with RVAH-7.
My favorite store in Fallon was the Ammo and Liquor on Williams. I think they may have even had a drive thru.
Excellent stuff. Flashbacks of the Golden Nugget (P.I.S.), The Bird Farm (25c blackjack and drinks), and an H-3 main gearbox change during CVW det, just for fun.
When I was at Fallon with VA-94, they flew A4′s and it was Fallon Naval Air Facility. Kind of a ghost town back then. The CO was Commander Kowalski. We would only spend a few weeks at a time, then back to Lemoore. Guess it’s a little bigger now…
Yesterday you lost one of your more dedicated readers. A good man. William the Coroner passed away in his sleep at home Sunday morning. He was my next door neighbor after my relocation to the wilds of Ohio. A very good man. Sussed me out as a poster to Lex after 7 days and called me on it in our backyards.
I used to live in the Wilds of SE Ohio. What part of that wilderness do you reside in?
Shaker Heights up by Cleveland. A very interesting town.
Pity us poor SWOS who are not allowed to use the great huge enormous mass of the ship to beat up our senior officers, ever. Not even in the dark of night.
Curtis, you know that late night heavy rolls, backing down full, or even green water hitting near the at-sea cabin tends to wake and simultaneously annoy the Skipper. At best, only that certain phone growls. Any visit to the OOD would not be to complement their driving ability. Tends to be a one-way discussion. Guess who is listening?
Yes but when you’re pure at heart you can answer the growler even at 2 in the morning and cheerfully splurt, “Duffy’s Tavern, where the elite meet to eat can I help you?” On the good ones you could announce that “we are at periscope depth.” As they would tell us their sea stories we could put them into our context.
Regrettably, there are people that think a sense of humor is something akin to SADARM. They’re the ones that would never get the Project Manager who gave the name to HELLFIRE. I recall from Once An Eagle what the young officer had to tell Sam Damon about having his sense of humor surgically removed at West Point. The navy has always been 3 leagues ahead of the other services in the humor department. Air Force is the worst, Army a near tie and the Marines were in a closet celebrating the Marine Birthday when God handed out a sense of humor.
“…Air Force is the worst…”
Amen to that, Brother Curtis! The lasting influence of SAC and Curtis LeMay again..
VX,
We need to keep in mind that wonderful clip of “what the captain meant to say.” Even the parental unit remembered that one even before I finished the title. It was dark humor but I expect that was the best one could get out of there/then in the USAF.
Heh, the audio version was part of the (“unofficial” of course) required FNG check-list by the time I got to DaNang. Two other good ones that I’ve lost and aren’t avail (AFAIK) on the net are the “EC-121″ tape (“we cruise @ 120kts, land@120kts taxi@120kts”) and the CAS TACAIR TIC hi-angle strafe “Lead’s off tgt, do you have the FAC in sight, 2?” “Roger that, Talley-Ho on the burning FAC” tape.
My memories of mid-80′s Fallon include heading out at 0-dark thirty in an EW van with an old NAESU rep. We’d pull our jeep trailer and genset east at (too) a high speed on the loneliest highway in America.
At Frenchman’s Flats and go north or south per the POD till the road ran out. Hit the TX switch when SWIN table said there were no Russkie eyes overhead and wait ‘n see if the E2-C would find us. Meantime kick back, try to stay warm, listen to the wisdom and sea stories of the NAESU rep, and hope for a good show from the fast attack guys making runs through our valley.
…and fiddle and futz to keep the well worn genset, alq gear and van operating. Stranded real good one time. Had a fuel tank switch stick way out in the boonies with no help coming by. But that’s another sea story for another day involving a swiss army knife, looooong funnel made from a AAA map and come creative transport of gas from a genset to the van.
For some reason memories of Fallon Dets. rank right up there with the Olongapo memories. I recall the MWR books with tickets for free $1 bets and a free drink at most casinos in Reno. We’d go from place to place getting tanked then stopping at the Nugget in Sparks to catch Buck Owens and the Bucaroos. Occasionally took the side trip to the Mustang Ranch on the way home for a night cap and for to inspect, but not touch, the hired help.
Lex,
Can you clue us in a bit, here? You’re in Fallon “to get warmed up in the TOPGUN adversary course…” Are you a student or an instructor? Or a student learning HOW to be an instructor? Do they KNOW you’re an ex-XO?
Maybe just a line or 2 of expository prose in your next Fallon post?
I bet, a rather large bunch, they know he’s a former XO. That merely provides more incentive for playful abuse.
They might be more respectful, however, given his advanced age
He’s gonna join us….
I presume training for flying adversary roles. Sounds like the basic gig he’s got, si?
From, ‘Someone else’s kids now played in their Halloween costumes on the porch.’ to ‘ ….. Let them hold tight.’ That squeezed my heart. My heart aches for you and your wife.
O/T: My Director has a ten-minute slot in an upcoming forum to discuss how to help Vets successfully reenter the civvie world /job market.
Any pearls from the group?
Thanks,
Attempt to discover their “crossover” skills and match those with the job requirements..