God’s Way (** Universal Studios amended September 30, 2010**) (Draft 2,August first, 1997. American Air Museum in Britain, June 11,2001)
Unlike the Korean war tags we never were awarded, the stringed I.D. dangling around our necks ‘The American Air Museum in Britain’ ….Official Opening By Her Majesty The Queen August first,1997’,the good wife and ourselves sidestepped the barricade unto the Duxford RAF air strip that memorable yesterday outside Cambridge, U.K……
The Pakistani clerk at our London bed & breakfast digs , 50 miles away, had said earlier…”Sir, if The photos you took , make me seem like a Prince Charming ,don’t mail them back . My brother is on his holiday. Our sister’s apartment He works across the street., Kuwait embassy Save your money”, scribbling her phone number, a 718 area code… Brooklyn..
Developing the view press &click snapshots back on Coney Island Avenue, we dialed the number, an Omar Shariff voice, in its lilting musical tones, answered “You got my brother’s pictures….can you deliver them , ipso facto Major. We’re flying back to perfidious Albion from JFK, this afternoon.”
“Where are you, Omar?”
“You know Brooklyn’s Flatbush ? 815 East 14th Street, apartment One H.”
“Do I know? It’s God’s Way,” we said. ”It’s a six floor elevator apartment house. on Avenue H. Two blocks from the Avenue H station. .The local subway. stop. .A day dreaming punk from Santa Monica, California., we were raised there .Attending Public School 217, Midwood High School. The best man at our wedding. Doctor Howie,” the pianist, CPA ” lived in the same apartment, as your sister. How’s that for being in the flow of the game .The moment, sir?”
Our odyssey begins a month earlier, Fort Hamilton Army Library. Bay Ridge, dating historically 1825 Not that far from Flatbush , Keith Lewis, Jr .an internet pro, E mailed Sandra
Brooks, Mildenhall R.A.F.,Beck Row Village,29 miles from Cambridge,UK. About standby billeting for a once Air Force Ready Reservist with 23 years longevity, and his good wife ?
When the electronic mailbox was sorted out for the fourth time, Sandra Brooks who wasn’t from Brooklyn wrote “Major, call USAF-RAF Lakenheath direct.”
“Sergeant Gideon,” answered the NCO in charge of lodging. “Com’ on ahead, Major. .We’re expecting Lady Fenton, the good wife. Our motor pool is on orders for her Majesty’s honor guard, Transportation Squadron, 48thFighter Wing.”
We thought back all of our yesterdays. 47 years ago, June 29,1950…..a Second Lieutenant, out of UCLA’s ROTC, in the role of a Supply Officer on temporary duty to the Officers Club..448th Reserve B 25 Light Bomb Wing, Long Beach, California, adjoining Signal Hill’s rasping oil drills.
President Harry Truman, a no nonsense Commander in Chief, activated the 452nd B 25 Light Bomb Wing, on being briefed about the North Koreans invading South Korea, crossing the demilitarized zone.Colonel Cochrane, the Long Beach base’s full time operational officer for Colonel Keeney, the 448th,Colonel Sweetzer, later Brigadier General,452nd….”Lieutenant, you’re on verbal orders .Report Hamilton Air Force Base, the 2567th Processing Squadron, San Rafael, California. Travis Air Force Base, Japan, Korea. That’s your fate, my boy.”
Deferred until February ’51, for graduate school in teaching, Colonel Paul McGuire called during the Cuban crisis, Khrushchev steaming missiles toward Castro’s Cuba ”Be my Group Intelligence Officer, Canoga Park, California . We’ll cut orders, giving you jurisdiction from Santa Barbara to Long Beach, sending you Intelligence School, Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas…Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Pentagon. Defense Intelligence Agency, Western
European Desk, Arlington….How’s that sound?”
“How can we resist you , sir?”
For another 12 years…two week tours at a stretch , several in the California desert, two, the AF Academy, teaching Space. in schools, we found ourselves August 1st,1997,strolling toward the ecliptic designed American Air Museum in Britain, the skies opening up, the raindrops descending. She ran for cover in the makeshift hangar where 2000 Yanks, many of them in their tattered khakis, mothballed blues, besprinkled ribbons, medals Milling around the dining tables , with wives children grandchildren widowers widows girl friends, sweethearts, lovers, mistresses, next of kin testing the grub:: sandwiches, English biscuits, warmed over hotmeals, fish & chips tarts pastries tea and coffee.
Reminiscing of some 6 decades spilling the air ,the BBC audio taping “in yer face”, London’s Imperial War Museum Greg Smith clicking snapping away…pilots, copilots, crew chiefs navigators, bombardiers, tail gunners , maintenance crews flight officers air controllers radar techs, Intelligence officers supply operations medics, flight surgeons legal eagles armaments anti aircraft crews reconnaissance, nurses, WAFS, mess personnel, chaplains, M.P.s , grave diggers.
Meanwhile the Major “nuisance” in his good wife’s stead. fled for the Air Museum’s cover, those earlier raindrops pelting the air strip like big chunks of hail out of the ice age. inside the hangar’s door the swooping P38’s, ‘47’s,flying fortresses, step ladders into the cockpits, nary a B 25, A10…..scaffolding for a Remembrance reality scene & ceremony, Fall 2002
“Charlton Heston” he called the echo resounding in the cavernous space, ,the actor stumbling at the Museum’s door, hearing his credits. ”It sure is wet,” he said, looking into & through the Major, a limo pulling alongside the entrance, ”Where did we meet?”
Those yesterdays trailing back 30 years, UCLA’s reality scene of a bon voyage for Jules
Stein’s departed soul. Henry Mancini playing out his theme from “Romeo et Juliet”, the solemn airs sounding through the campus. .Dr. Stein, a bandleader turned ophthalmologist had
bought **Universal Studios** where Mr.Heston had starred, “Airport ‘75”.
**(amended September 30,2010)
Joyce Selznick’s acting school,:the likes of Bernie Schwartz (Tony Curtis before “The Defiant ones, Trapeze, Sweet smell of success Spartacus Houdini Some Like it hot ( Joe E.Brown’s “we can’t all be perfect”) Gia Scala blue eyed Italian starlet from Bluffside Drive,North Hollywood, chaperoned by her mother...and.Piper Laurie.
The limo driver cried “Charlton, her Majesty’s jet , from Edinboro Castle, Scotland is taxying
Hurray, water cress sandwiches without venison is worth writing home. Rank knows no chow hounds, sir.”
Insides the dining hangar for the 2000 Yanks, the War Museum’s pro, Greg Smith, continued his viewing. Snapping, shuttering. For the benediction, the well groomed museum staff, distaff &male, set up chairs and benches on the strip, the skies closing, raindrops ceasing..
Her Majesty, Prince Philip, former Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher, Duke of Kent, a Field Marshall, Charlton Heston.
Greg Smith clicking away like into a dot.com on a web site’s home page. Her Majesty in her yellow ponchos tucked under the canopy outside the Museum hangar. Her USAF color guard in their protocol, the band playing the strains & some Sousa that bonded the American Anglo Saxon peoples in the Battle of Britain.
“Do you know the Greg Smith singers, playing the UCLA Spring sing?” asked the Major .”Any relation?”, the Fly Over into the graying mists. 3 F’16’s ,wingtips fingerprinting through the skies, a Flying Fortress… sailing through the ocean of humanity…
The resonating voice of “Airport ‘75”Charlton Heston, leaping into the Bard’s “Henry V”., the
loudspeakers in sync….”My soul shall thine keep company to Heaven; tarry sweet soul for mine. Then fly abreast.…As if an Angel dropt from the clouds….O for a muse of fire that would ascend. the brightest Heaven of invention.. A Kingdom for a stage, Princes to act.
Monarchs to behold the swelling scene….”
On the USAF bus ‘s return ,,passing Madingley American Military Cemetery, through the
Brandon Suffolk countryside toward Lakenheath, the Honor Guard stripped of their protocol, cajoled the latrine officer from Cleveland’s Shaker Heights, laughing about her moment..
On the ‘morrow, Greg Smith called from London’s Imperial War Museum. ”Major, before departing for Heathrow. call Andy at Duxford’s darkroom. He’s processing all our negatives.
You & Lady Fenton might be lucky.”
Walking through the lush Lakenheath grass toward the post office’s phone, he stumbled, his blue eyes sighting a buried tableau. ’To Andy, his was the ultimate sacrifice. Transportation
Squadron.,48th Fighter Wing Sweeping into a plaque….
‘To the airmen of many nations who flew with the R.A.F. during the Battle of Britain. And soared into the Heavens that others might live...”If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say “This was their finest hour.” Sir Winston Churchill,, Prime Minister….
Saturday, July 12,1997,Lakenheath RAF, England
Saturday, July 6,2002,Brooklyn
American Air Museum in Britain, August 1,1997 revisited September 22,2010
President Obama’s “Crisis in Education”
Chapter 51 revisited September 27 2010
Classroom teaching was not a racket.... President Obama’s “Crisis in Education” NBC’s “Today” ;
It was throwing yourself into a ocean of floating bodies andd derelicts and reckage and you had to eat ttime and float and keep breathing so you don't panic and drown.
They would eat you alive, almost as sure as lflesh is grass And God eats grass.
The world outside the classroom had their own standard of success, but inside bungalows sixteen and three A, Mister Farnham and Missus Gates knew the buck and the gimmick and the phony and the promoter and the gigolo and the star and the starlet and the model and the movie agents were a shade lower than the street-walkers and bitches of Paris who sold their bodies without the flimflam of a pretentious illusion.
Sure Mister Farnham was partial and prejudiced; he didn't go into this battle for nickels and dimes, yet at times like now the challenge of doing the impossible
seemed beyond his comprehension. He wanted to tell Missus Gates that it was possible Joe Sablow could learn to read - but he also knew little Joe's capacity. An overload capacity is like a tightrope walker, treading the rope as a hurricane bears down.
Let Morris Pitchford tell Missus Gates what the score was. That little Joe needed professional help; that the teacher had become de-sensitized by so many housekeeping chores that a boy's brain couldn't be studied when thirty-five other brains were demanding equal time. Little Joe need the University reading clinic, not Mister Leon Farnham.
Why should the classroom teacher - the heart and belly of the entire operation - waste his time over Joe Sablow's third grade reading. The principal was the public relations genius, the great white father, the butter and egg man; let him say a mouthful of nothing to Missus Gates. Why the hell should Mister Leon Farnham be a good humor man, bartender and wet nurse to the parents of his students. He had been hired to teach.
Missus Gates waited with the over consuming patience of desperation. Her foster son couldn't read at a pace faster than an eight year old. What if little Joe Sablow
grows up and can only get a job in the post office pidgeon-holing letters. What if the neighbors and relatives ask how little Joe's earning a living. Should she say, "He's working in civil service." or "He's a mail clerk in the Post Office."
How could little Joe concentrate in such noisy classes, where boys and girls got up whenever they wanted to. How could little Joe ever learn to talk in words
outside the vernacular of his adolescence. "Read good," "nice kids," "read find," "cute girl," "cool guy."
Maybe it was Mister Leon Farnham's fault thought Missus Gates. Maybe I should report him to the principal and the Board of Education and get him fired. I can too,
you know. I'm a taxpayer. What business does Mister Farnham have not improving my husband's first wife's real son's reading ability. I'll stir up the PTA about this
and we'll see who's running this three ring circus.
"I'm a taxpayer and damn it all, if they spend my Tony's money for beautiful looking schools, and lousy teachers can't stop the kids from tearing up the walls and making a mess of the rooms and the blackboards, then all the audio visual material, PTA meetings, teas, cookie drives, are a waste," she said.
"No, Missus Gates," said Mister Leon Farnham, looking directly into the window of Missus Gate's brown eyes. "It's no ones fault but your own for letting things get
out of hand. The French Revolution didn't come while Madame De Farge knit. You forgot to plant the seeds of tradition. You forgot to let roots grow in a desert.
Education is quicksand in your son's case, he's sunken deep into the waste of the disposal. Missus Gates, little Joe is in the cemetery and if you don't take him to a
reading clinic, he'll be buried alive.
You don't want little Joe to die at thirteen and be buried at seventy. You want him to live and breathe and taste the flavors that pour out of people's minds when they struggle for their identity and learn who they are. An effort which transcends their own prisons of flesh and perhaps carves out a universal design, for future generations to learn and live by. If these people who come after us perpetuate
the design, perhaps the earth as we know it, will become a better place to live and work in.
Missus Gates, this life is damn short, it's loaded with bull and propaganda 'cause people want to distort the facts when their self-interest
is on the stake. Call the University reading clinic, get
an analysis of the boy's sickness and plan a program at
home where you read aloud to him.
V
Let little Joe discover the stories of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, the poetry ofEdward Lear, David Copperfield, Robinson Crusoe, Alice in
Wonderland, Treasure Island and the Mother Goose Rhymes.
"MissusGates read to your self .....,Shakespeare's
`Macbeth'and the Midsummer Night' s Dream and Little
Women and Gulliver Travels and Moby Dick 'If
sicknessandsometimesdeathiscontagious thensois
optimismandenthusiasm ndloveandspiritand
traditionarecontagious. (“hear here”)
You wouldn't be here at school today if you weren't a woman of good will. Look around and you see the apathy of most parents; they aren't here,
yet their children are the ones who need the most help. I
wouldn't be here either, if I didn't believe in the
struggle and trying to win. There is a lot that needs
wanting; how can I overcome my moments of emptiness and
despair and tiredness and exhaustion and brain pounding.
VII
I see myself, a vision in solitude, kneeling by the water
dikes, packing bag upon bag of cement, hoping beyond all
hope to stop the dikes from flooding. And throw back the
raging sea. If you and I throw in the sponge and become
disillusioned by apathy - where less than five per cent of
the parents show up in a school of over two thousand
students - we'll all drown together and little Joe will
drown with us."
Missus Gates looked at the clock, urging the bell to
ring and the period to end. She couldn't remember the
torrents of thoughts, but she did remember seeing a tongue
dart back and forth in the crevice of Mister Leon
Farnham's face. She, somehow, felt that the tongue and
the brain of Mister Farnham were somehow tied up together.
Sure - a lot of the stuff he had said was repetitious
and boring and had been said before, but, maybe, as one
grows older, there isn't much to be said about life,
except to add insight into what was once thought, was
known, and make it knowable. Otherwise, it's all a waste
of time.
Mister Farnham made himself clear; he hit the points,
perhaps a little too emotional at times, but he, like
Missus Gates, was a person of good will; otherwise he
wouldn't be in the classroom, but would be out hustling
cars or conning a customer into buying something he didn't
need or throwing him a pitch about some lots in Salton Sea
in the Imperial Valley, which for a couple of pennies a
day or three hundred down and thirty a month and "they're
drilling for water, don't worry about it, the main thing
is you'll make money.
Today's foreclosures are tomorrow's bargains."
VIII
Missus Gates was impressed with an impression that
Mister Leon Farnham was a windbag, perhaps a person with
an inferiority complex who had to live in two world's -
the world of the adolescent and the world of the everyday
eat 'em alive.
A man torn in half by turmoil and distress. A man schooled and educated. A man with enthusiasm and some internal flame which ignited his
ego centricity. Maybe he was crazy? Why else should he
stick his neck out. For growth? Development? Whose
development? And what direction would it go? The way of
Jefferson? Napoleon? Lenin? Hitler? Modern
Republicanism? De Gaulle? Mao Tse Tung? Khrushchev,
"Ike"? Peaceful coexistence? Ronnie ("the Gipper")
Reagan? Brezhnev? Andropov? Gorbachev? Perstroika?
Glasnost? The Ayatollah? Obama and his open mindedness?
"Get you half brother Charlie," said Missus Gates to
her real four year old son. "We have to go to his next
class; it's his last period and then we can go home. Nice
meeting you, Mr. Farnham, it was nice talking to you."
3000 miles on the other side of the Continent.... the Big Apple, September 27, 2010
****************************************************************
Classroom teaching was not a racket.... President Obama’s “Crisis in Education” NBC’s “Today” ;
It was throwing yourself into a ocean of floating bodies andd derelicts and reckage and you had to eat ttime and float and keep breathing so you don't panic and drown.
They would eat you alive, almost as sure as lflesh is grass And God eats grass.
I
The world outside the classroom had their own standard of success, but inside bungalows sixteen and three A, Mister Farnham and Missus Gates knew the buck and the gimmick and the phony and the promoter and the gigolo and the star and the starlet and the model and the movie agents were a shade lower than the street-walkers and bitches of Paris who sold their bodies without the flimflam of a pretentious illusion.
Sure Mister Farnham was partial and prejudiced; he didn't go into this battle for nickels and dimes, yet at times like now the challenge of doing the impossible
seemed beyond his comprehension. He wanted to tell Missus Gates that it was possible Joe Sablow could learn to read - but he also knew little Joe's capacity. An overload capacity is like a tightrope walker, treading the rope as a hurricane bears down.
II
Let Morris Pitchford tell Missus Gates what the score was. That little Joe needed professional help; that the teacher had become de-sensitized by so many housekeeping chores that a boy's brain couldn't be studied when thirty-five other brains were demanding equal time. Little Joe need the University reading clinic, not Mister Leon Farnham.
Why should the classroom teacher - the heart and belly of the entire operation - waste his time over Joe Sablow's third grade reading. The principal was the public relations genius, the great white father, the butter and egg man; let him say a mouthful of nothing to Missus Gates. Why the hell should Mister Leon Farnham be a good humor man, bartender and wet nurse to the parents of his students. He had been hired to teach.
III
Missus Gates waited with the over consuming patience of desperation. Her foster son couldn't read at a pace faster than an eight year old. What if little Joe Sablow
grows up and can only get a job in the post office pidgeon-holing letters. What if the neighbors and relatives ask how little Joe's earning a living. Should she say, "He's working in civil service." or "He's a mail clerk in the Post Office."
How could little Joe concentrate in such noisy classes, where boys and girls got up whenever they wanted to. How could little Joe ever learn to talk in words
outside the vernacular of his adolescence. "Read good," "nice kids," "read find," "cute girl," "cool guy."
Maybe it was Mister Leon Farnham's fault thought Missus Gates. Maybe I should report him to the principal and the Board of Education and get him fired. I can too,
you know. I'm a taxpayer. What business does Mister Farnham have not improving my husband's first wife's real son's reading ability. I'll stir up the PTA about this
and we'll see who's running this three ring circus.
"I'm a taxpayer and damn it all, if they spend my Tony's money for beautiful looking schools, and lousy teachers can't stop the kids from tearing up the walls and making a mess of the rooms and the blackboards, then all the audio visual material, PTA meetings, teas, cookie drives, are a waste," she said.
"No, Missus Gates," said Mister Leon Farnham, looking directly into the window of Missus Gate's brown eyes. "It's no ones fault but your own for letting things get
out of hand. The French Revolution didn't come while Madame De Farge knit. You forgot to plant the seeds of tradition. You forgot to let roots grow in a desert.
Education is quicksand in your son's case, he's sunken deep into the waste of the disposal. Missus Gates, little Joe is in the cemetery and if you don't take him to a
reading clinic, he'll be buried alive.
IV
You don't want little Joe to die at thirteen and be buried at seventy. You want him to live and breathe and taste the flavors that pour out of people's minds when they struggle for their identity and learn who they are. An effort which transcends their own prisons of flesh and perhaps carves out a universal design, for future generations to learn and live by. If these people who come after us perpetuate
the design, perhaps the earth as we know it, will become a better place to live and work in.
Missus Gates, this life is damn short, it's loaded with bull and propaganda 'cause people want to distort the facts when their self-interest
is on the stake. Call the University reading clinic, get
an analysis of the boy's sickness and plan a program at
home where you read aloud to him.
V
Let little Joe discover the stories of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, the poetry ofEdward Lear, David Copperfield, Robinson Crusoe, Alice in
Wonderland, Treasure Island and the Mother Goose Rhymes.
"MissusGates read to your self .....,Shakespeare's
`Macbeth'and the Midsummer Night' s Dream and Little
Women and Gulliver Travels and Moby Dick 'If
sicknessandsometimesdeathiscontagious thensois
optimismandenthusiasm ndloveandspiritand
traditionarecontagious. (“hear here”)
You wouldn't be here at school today if you weren't a woman of good will. Look around and you see the apathy of most parents; they aren't here,
yet their children are the ones who need the most help. I
wouldn't be here either, if I didn't believe in the
struggle and trying to win. There is a lot that needs
wanting; how can I overcome my moments of emptiness and
despair and tiredness and exhaustion and brain pounding.
VII
I see myself, a vision in solitude, kneeling by the water
dikes, packing bag upon bag of cement, hoping beyond all
hope to stop the dikes from flooding. And throw back the
raging sea. If you and I throw in the sponge and become
disillusioned by apathy - where less than five per cent of
the parents show up in a school of over two thousand
students - we'll all drown together and little Joe will
drown with us."
Missus Gates looked at the clock, urging the bell to
ring and the period to end. She couldn't remember the
torrents of thoughts, but she did remember seeing a tongue
dart back and forth in the crevice of Mister Leon
Farnham's face. She, somehow, felt that the tongue and
the brain of Mister Farnham were somehow tied up together.
Sure - a lot of the stuff he had said was repetitious
and boring and had been said before, but, maybe, as one
grows older, there isn't much to be said about life,
except to add insight into what was once thought, was
known, and make it knowable. Otherwise, it's all a waste
of time.
Mister Farnham made himself clear; he hit the points,
perhaps a little too emotional at times, but he, like
Missus Gates, was a person of good will; otherwise he
wouldn't be in the classroom, but would be out hustling
cars or conning a customer into buying something he didn't
need or throwing him a pitch about some lots in Salton Sea
in the Imperial Valley, which for a couple of pennies a
day or three hundred down and thirty a month and "they're
drilling for water, don't worry about it, the main thing
is you'll make money.
Today's foreclosures are tomorrow's bargains."
VIII
Missus Gates was impressed with an impression that
Mister Leon Farnham was a windbag, perhaps a person with
an inferiority complex who had to live in two world's -
the world of the adolescent and the world of the everyday
eat 'em alive.
A man torn in half by turmoil and distress. A man schooled and educated. A man with enthusiasm and some internal flame which ignited his
ego centricity. Maybe he was crazy? Why else should he
stick his neck out. For growth? Development? Whose
development? And what direction would it go? The way of
Jefferson? Napoleon? Lenin? Hitler? Modern
Republicanism? De Gaulle? Mao Tse Tung? Khrushchev,
"Ike"? Peaceful coexistence? Ronnie ("the Gipper")
Reagan? Brezhnev? Andropov? Gorbachev? Perstroika?
Glasnost? The Ayatollah? Obama and his open mindedness?
"Get you half brother Charlie," said Missus Gates to
her real four year old son. "We have to go to his next
class; it's his last period and then we can go home. Nice
meeting you, Mr. Farnham, it was nice talking to you."
3000 miles on the other side of the Continent.... the Big Apple, September 27, 2010
****************************************************************
God's Way
August first, 1997. American Air Museum in Britain,
Unlike the Korean War tags we never were awarded, the stringed I.D. dangling around our necks ‘’The American Air Museum in Britain ….Official Opening by Her Majesty The Queen August first,1997, the good wife and ourselves sidestepped the barricade unto the Duxford RAF air strip that memorable yesterday outside Cambridge, U.K……
The Pakistani clerk at our London bed & breakfast digs , 50 miles away, had said earlier…”Sir, if The photos you took , make me seem like a Prince Charming ,don’t mail them back .My brother is on his holiday. Our sister’s apartment He works across the street., Kuwait embassy Save your
money”, scribbling her phone number, a 718 area code… Brooklyn..
Developing the view press &click snapshots back on Coney Island Avenue, we dialed the number, an Omar Shariff voice, in its lilting musical tones, answered “You got my brother’s pictures….can you deliver them , ipso facto Major. We’re flying back to perfidious Albion .from JFK, this afternoon.”
“Where are you, Omar?”
“You know Brooklyn’s Flatbush ? 815 East 14th Street, apartment One H.”
“Do I know? It’s God’s Way,” A six floor elevator apartment house on Avenue H across the way from Art Carney and his folks.....Above Bohacks, ”Ed Norton”(of the “Honeymooners”)whistling his cue to his Jackie Gleason in diisguise (Straus)..... waiting at his sixth floor kitchen window.. .
Two blocks from the Avenue H station. .The local subway. stop. .A day dreaming punk from Santa Monica, California., we were raised there .Attending Public School 217, Midwood High School. The best man at our wedding. Doctor Howie,” the pianist, CPA ” lived in the same apartment, as your sister. How’s that for being in the flow of the game .The moment, sir?”
Our odyssey begins a month earlier, Fort Hamilton Army Library. Bay Ridge, dating historically 1825 Not that far from Flatbush , Keith Lewis, Jr .an internet pro, E mailed Sandra Brooks, Mildenhall R.A.F.,Beck Row Village,29 miles from Cambridge, UK. About standby billeting for a once Air Force Ready Reservist with 23 years longevity, and his good wife ?
When the electronic mailbox was sorted out for the fourth time, Sandra Brooks who wasn’t from Brooklyn wrote “Major, call USAF-RAF Lakenheath direct.”
“Sergeant Gideon,” answered the NCO in charge of lodging. “Com’ on ahead, Major. .We’re expecting Lady Fenton, the good wife. Our motor pool is on orders for her Majesty’s honor guard, Transportation Squadron,48thFighter Wing.”
We thought back all of our yesterdays. 47 years ago, June 29,1950…..a Second Lieutenant, out of UCLA’s ROTC, in the role of a Supply Officer on temporary duty to the Officers Club..448th Reserve B 25 Light Bomb Wing, Long Beach, California, adjoining Signal Hill’s rasping oil drills.
President Harry Truman, a no nonsense Commander in Chief, activated the 452nd B 25 Light Bomb Wing, on being briefed about the North Koreans invading South Korea, crossing the demilitarized zone.Colonel Cochrane, the Long Beach base’s full time operational officer for Colonel Keeney, the 448th,Colonel Sweetzer, later Brigadier General,452nd….”Lieutenant, you’re on verbal orders .Report Hamilton Air Force Base, the 2567th Processing Squadron, San Rafael, California. Travis Air Force Base, Japan, Korea. That’s your fate, my boy.”
Deferred until February ’51, for graduate school in teaching, Colonel Paul McGuire called ,during the Cuban crisis, Khrushchev steaming missiles toward Castro’s Cuba ”Be my Group Intelligence Officer, Canoga Park, California . We’ll cut orders, giving you jurisdiction from Santa Barbara to Long Beach, sending you Intelligence School, Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas…Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Pentagon. Defense Intelligence Agency, Western
European Desk, Arlington….How’s that sound?”
“How can we resist you , sir?”
For another 12 years…two week tours at a stretch , several in the California desert, two ,the AFAcademy, teaching Space. in schools, we found ourselves August 1st,1997,strolling toward the cliptic designed American Air Museum in Britain, the skies opening up, the raindrops descending. She ran for cover in the makeshift hangar where 2000 Yanks, many of them in their tattered khakis, moth balled blues, besprinkled ribbons, medals Milling around the dining tables , with wives children grandchildren widowers widows girl friends, sweethearts, lovers, mistresses, next of kin testing the grub:: sandwiches, English biscuits, warmed
over hot meals, fish & chips tarts pastries tea and coffee.
Reminiscing of some 6 decades spilling the air ,the BBC audio taping “in yer
face”, London’s Imperial War Museum Greg Smith clicking snapping away…pilots, copilots, crew chiefs navigators, bombardiers, tail gunners , maintenance crews flight officers air controllers radar techs, Intelligence officers supply operations medics, flight surgeons legal eagles armaments anti aircraft crews reconnaissance, nurses, WAFS, mess personnel ,chaplains ,M.P.s , grave diggers.
Meanwhile the Major “nuisance” in his good wife’s stead. fled for the Air Museum’s cover, those earlier raindrops pelting the air strip like big chunks of hail out of the ice age inside the hangar’s door the swooping P38’s, ‘47’s, flying fortresses, step ladders into the cockpits, nary a B 25, A10..scaffolding for a Remembrance reality scene & ceremony, Fall 2002
“Charlton Heston” he called the echo resounding in the cavernous space, ,the actor stumbling at the Museum’s door, hearing his credits. ”It sure is wet,” he said, looking into & through the Major, a limo pulling alongside the entrance, ”Where did we meet?”
Those yesterdays trailing back 30 years, UCLA’s reality scene of a bon voyage for Jules Stein’s departed soul. Henry Mancini playing out his theme from “Romeo et Juliet”, the solemn airs sounding through the campus. .Dr. Stein, a bandleader turned ophthalmologist had bought Universal Studios where Mr .Heston had starred, “Airport ‘75”.
The limo driver cried “Charlton, her Majesty’s jet , from Edinboro Castle, Scotland is taxing .Hurray, water cress sandwiches without venison is worth writing home. Rank knows no chow hounds, sir.”
Insides the dining hangar for the 2000 Yanks, the War Museum’s pro, Greg Smith, continued his viewing. Snapping, shuttering. For the benediction, the well groomed museum staff, distaff &male, set up chairs and benches on the strip, the skies closing, raindrops ceasing..
Her Majesty, Prince Philip, former Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher, Duke of Kent, a Field Marshall, Charlton Heston.
Greg Smith clicking away like into a dot.com on a web site’s home page. Her Majesty in her yellow ponchos tucked under the canopy outside the Museum hangar. Her USAF color guard in their protocol, the band playing the strains & some Sousa that bonded the American Anglo Saxon peoples in the Battle of Britain.
“Do you know the Greg Smith singers, playing the UCLA Spring sing?” asked the Major .”Any relation?”, the Fly Over into the graying mists. 3 F’16’s ,wingtips fingerprinting through the skies, a Flying Fortress… sailing through the ocean of humanity…
The resonating voice of “Airport ‘75” Charlton Heston, leaping into the Bard’s “Henry V”., the loudspeakers in sync….”My soul shall thine keep company to Heaven; tarry sweet soul for mine. Then fly abreast.…As if an Angel dropt from the clouds….O for a muse of fire that would ascend. the brightest Heaven of invention.. A Kingdom for a stage, Princes to act. Monarchs to behold the swelling scene….”
On the USAF bus ‘s return, passing Madingley American Military Cemetery, through the Brandon Suffolk countryside toward Lakenheath, the Honor Guard stripped of their protocol, cajoled the latrine officer from Cleveland’s Shaker Heights, laughing about her moment’s moment..
On the ‘morrow, Greg Smith called from London’s Imperial War Museum. ”Major, before departing for Heathrow. call Andy at Duxford’s darkroom. He’s processing all our negatives. You & Lady Fenton might be lucky.”
Walking through the lush Lakenheath grass toward the post office’s phone, he stumbled, his blue eyes sighting a buried tableau. To Andy... his was the ultimate sacrifice. Transportation Squadron.,48th Fighter Wing ….
‘To the airmen of many nations who flew with the R.A.F. during the Battle of
Britain. And soared into the Heavens that others might live...”If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say “This was their finest hour.” Sir Winston Churchill,, Prime Minister, his mother born in Brooklyn Heights.….
Saturday, July 12,1997 Lakenheath RAF Base, England
Unlike the Korean War tags we never were awarded, the stringed I.D. dangling around our necks ‘’The American Air Museum in Britain ….Official Opening by Her Majesty The Queen August first,1997, the good wife and ourselves sidestepped the barricade unto the Duxford RAF air strip that memorable yesterday outside Cambridge, U.K……
The Pakistani clerk at our London bed & breakfast digs , 50 miles away, had said earlier…”Sir, if The photos you took , make me seem like a Prince Charming ,don’t mail them back .My brother is on his holiday. Our sister’s apartment He works across the street., Kuwait embassy Save your
money”, scribbling her phone number, a 718 area code… Brooklyn..
Developing the view press &click snapshots back on Coney Island Avenue, we dialed the number, an Omar Shariff voice, in its lilting musical tones, answered “You got my brother’s pictures….can you deliver them , ipso facto Major. We’re flying back to perfidious Albion .from JFK, this afternoon.”
“Where are you, Omar?”
“You know Brooklyn’s Flatbush ? 815 East 14th Street, apartment One H.”
“Do I know? It’s God’s Way,” A six floor elevator apartment house on Avenue H across the way from Art Carney and his folks.....Above Bohacks, ”Ed Norton”(of the “Honeymooners”)whistling his cue to his Jackie Gleason in diisguise (Straus)..... waiting at his sixth floor kitchen window.. .
Two blocks from the Avenue H station. .The local subway. stop. .A day dreaming punk from Santa Monica, California., we were raised there .Attending Public School 217, Midwood High School. The best man at our wedding. Doctor Howie,” the pianist, CPA ” lived in the same apartment, as your sister. How’s that for being in the flow of the game .The moment, sir?”
Our odyssey begins a month earlier, Fort Hamilton Army Library. Bay Ridge, dating historically 1825 Not that far from Flatbush , Keith Lewis, Jr .an internet pro, E mailed Sandra Brooks, Mildenhall R.A.F.,Beck Row Village,29 miles from Cambridge, UK. About standby billeting for a once Air Force Ready Reservist with 23 years longevity, and his good wife ?
When the electronic mailbox was sorted out for the fourth time, Sandra Brooks who wasn’t from Brooklyn wrote “Major, call USAF-RAF Lakenheath direct.”
“Sergeant Gideon,” answered the NCO in charge of lodging. “Com’ on ahead, Major. .We’re expecting Lady Fenton, the good wife. Our motor pool is on orders for her Majesty’s honor guard, Transportation Squadron,48thFighter Wing.”
We thought back all of our yesterdays. 47 years ago, June 29,1950…..a Second Lieutenant, out of UCLA’s ROTC, in the role of a Supply Officer on temporary duty to the Officers Club..448th Reserve B 25 Light Bomb Wing, Long Beach, California, adjoining Signal Hill’s rasping oil drills.
President Harry Truman, a no nonsense Commander in Chief, activated the 452nd B 25 Light Bomb Wing, on being briefed about the North Koreans invading South Korea, crossing the demilitarized zone.Colonel Cochrane, the Long Beach base’s full time operational officer for Colonel Keeney, the 448th,Colonel Sweetzer, later Brigadier General,452nd….”Lieutenant, you’re on verbal orders .Report Hamilton Air Force Base, the 2567th Processing Squadron, San Rafael, California. Travis Air Force Base, Japan, Korea. That’s your fate, my boy.”
Deferred until February ’51, for graduate school in teaching, Colonel Paul McGuire called ,during the Cuban crisis, Khrushchev steaming missiles toward Castro’s Cuba ”Be my Group Intelligence Officer, Canoga Park, California . We’ll cut orders, giving you jurisdiction from Santa Barbara to Long Beach, sending you Intelligence School, Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas…Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Pentagon. Defense Intelligence Agency, Western
European Desk, Arlington….How’s that sound?”
“How can we resist you , sir?”
For another 12 years…two week tours at a stretch , several in the California desert, two ,the AFAcademy, teaching Space. in schools, we found ourselves August 1st,1997,strolling toward the cliptic designed American Air Museum in Britain, the skies opening up, the raindrops descending. She ran for cover in the makeshift hangar where 2000 Yanks, many of them in their tattered khakis, moth balled blues, besprinkled ribbons, medals Milling around the dining tables , with wives children grandchildren widowers widows girl friends, sweethearts, lovers, mistresses, next of kin testing the grub:: sandwiches, English biscuits, warmed
over hot meals, fish & chips tarts pastries tea and coffee.
Reminiscing of some 6 decades spilling the air ,the BBC audio taping “in yer
face”, London’s Imperial War Museum Greg Smith clicking snapping away…pilots, copilots, crew chiefs navigators, bombardiers, tail gunners , maintenance crews flight officers air controllers radar techs, Intelligence officers supply operations medics, flight surgeons legal eagles armaments anti aircraft crews reconnaissance, nurses, WAFS, mess personnel ,chaplains ,M.P.s , grave diggers.
Meanwhile the Major “nuisance” in his good wife’s stead. fled for the Air Museum’s cover, those earlier raindrops pelting the air strip like big chunks of hail out of the ice age inside the hangar’s door the swooping P38’s, ‘47’s, flying fortresses, step ladders into the cockpits, nary a B 25, A10..scaffolding for a Remembrance reality scene & ceremony, Fall 2002
“Charlton Heston” he called the echo resounding in the cavernous space, ,the actor stumbling at the Museum’s door, hearing his credits. ”It sure is wet,” he said, looking into & through the Major, a limo pulling alongside the entrance, ”Where did we meet?”
Those yesterdays trailing back 30 years, UCLA’s reality scene of a bon voyage for Jules Stein’s departed soul. Henry Mancini playing out his theme from “Romeo et Juliet”, the solemn airs sounding through the campus. .Dr. Stein, a bandleader turned ophthalmologist had bought Universal Studios where Mr .Heston had starred, “Airport ‘75”.
The limo driver cried “Charlton, her Majesty’s jet , from Edinboro Castle, Scotland is taxing .Hurray, water cress sandwiches without venison is worth writing home. Rank knows no chow hounds, sir.”
Insides the dining hangar for the 2000 Yanks, the War Museum’s pro, Greg Smith, continued his viewing. Snapping, shuttering. For the benediction, the well groomed museum staff, distaff &male, set up chairs and benches on the strip, the skies closing, raindrops ceasing..
Her Majesty, Prince Philip, former Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher, Duke of Kent, a Field Marshall, Charlton Heston.
Greg Smith clicking away like into a dot.com on a web site’s home page. Her Majesty in her yellow ponchos tucked under the canopy outside the Museum hangar. Her USAF color guard in their protocol, the band playing the strains & some Sousa that bonded the American Anglo Saxon peoples in the Battle of Britain.
“Do you know the Greg Smith singers, playing the UCLA Spring sing?” asked the Major .”Any relation?”, the Fly Over into the graying mists. 3 F’16’s ,wingtips fingerprinting through the skies, a Flying Fortress… sailing through the ocean of humanity…
The resonating voice of “Airport ‘75” Charlton Heston, leaping into the Bard’s “Henry V”., the loudspeakers in sync….”My soul shall thine keep company to Heaven; tarry sweet soul for mine. Then fly abreast.…As if an Angel dropt from the clouds….O for a muse of fire that would ascend. the brightest Heaven of invention.. A Kingdom for a stage, Princes to act. Monarchs to behold the swelling scene….”
On the USAF bus ‘s return, passing Madingley American Military Cemetery, through the Brandon Suffolk countryside toward Lakenheath, the Honor Guard stripped of their protocol, cajoled the latrine officer from Cleveland’s Shaker Heights, laughing about her moment’s moment..
On the ‘morrow, Greg Smith called from London’s Imperial War Museum. ”Major, before departing for Heathrow. call Andy at Duxford’s darkroom. He’s processing all our negatives. You & Lady Fenton might be lucky.”
Walking through the lush Lakenheath grass toward the post office’s phone, he stumbled, his blue eyes sighting a buried tableau. To Andy... his was the ultimate sacrifice. Transportation Squadron.,48th Fighter Wing ….
‘To the airmen of many nations who flew with the R.A.F. during the Battle of
Britain. And soared into the Heavens that others might live...”If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say “This was their finest hour.” Sir Winston Churchill,, Prime Minister, his mother born in Brooklyn Heights.….
Saturday, July 12,1997 Lakenheath RAF Base, England
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