Memories of Red Cliff
1958-1961
At the time of this assignment, it was the middle of 1958 and I was a Staff Sergeant in the US Air force. I was qualified and trained as a Radar maintenance repairman and I was stationed at the 686th AC&W Radar Squadron located near Roswell, New Mexico. It all started when I received the call from the orderly room informing me that I had received an assignment. When I walked into the orderly room, everybody had a big grin on their face and I began to wonder what was up. It didn’t take long to find out. I was being reassigned from the hot desert to what I felt was the North Pole. I was told that I needed to be there in October and it was now June. Well that left me with the knowledge that I was headed for what could become a very cold Winter.
At the time I received my assignment, I was single and was given an unaccompanied tour of two years. During the time of the tour, I managed to get married and receive an extended "accompanied with family" tour. All of this went for nothing as in the final days, we were asked to stay and finish closing down the site before we left. I stayed longer than most as I helped physically tear down the antennas and towers before I left. If I remember correctly, there were only about a dozen of us left when we finished tearing down the equipment.
We were supported by Pepperrell AFB which was located in the city of St. John’s, about 10 miles away. They had an NCO club that was filled with those old things called slot machines. We managed to put a few coins into them when we came down off of the hill. All of the entertainment appeared at the host base NCO or Officer’s club. Each had an excellent dining room where you could buy a steak dinner for less than $10. A 40 oz bottle of liquor was about $5, cigarettes were a dollar a carton and the rationed gas was fourteen cents a gallon. So much for the good old days.
Actually, I found that the weather was very good overall in St. John’s. It is conditioned by the Gulf Stream going by the island on its way to Europe. I rarely saw the temperature fall below 32 degrees (F) while I was there. Although, I did manage to be there when a couple of those 100 year storms go through. This happened during the winter of 1959-1960 and I have found people in St. John’s that still remember those storms today.
We did most of our eating at the dining hall, or as we called it in those days, "The Mess Hall". I still remember the long flight of stairs going down the side of the mountain from the barracks to the dining hall completely exposed to the weather. Not too bad until it was raining or snowing, then the parka’s came out before you went to eat.
After I married a young lady from St. John’s, we rented a place in the city, which meant that I had to get up earlier and drive to work. Work, one of those four letter words that have to be taken care of occasionally. As I worked a rotating shift in maintenance, there were not too many people to share rides with. There was a bus provided by the military that drove to and from the site for each and every shift. The only drawback was that one of the riders had to be the driver for each run. We had to take the normal military vehicle training before they would give us a license to drive the bus.
About the middle of 1960, they decided to close Pepperrell AFB and leave us doing our job but now to be supported by Harmon AFB located on the Western side of the island. This meant that we had to build up all of our support areas very quickly. I was asked to become the exchange manager and get it up and running. I managed it until the day we closed the doors and shipped the remaining merchandise back to Harmon AFB, just before the last few troops were scheduled to leave. For this last year we created a motor pool, a movie theater, and a chapel among other areas. We enlarged the NCO and Officer’s clubs. We even hired a barber to cut hair on site.
When all of the closing down was finished, I received orders to go to Wyoming. I was being reassigned to a site in the North East corner of the state called Sundance. The town had a population of about 162 and the sidewalks were rolled up around 6 PM every evening. The site was the 737th AC&W Radar Squadron and it was to become the first (and only) radar site to have a nuclear power reactor for power. It also had two of the newest and best radars that the Air Force owned. It was to be a good assignment. At the conclusion of that assignment, I cross trained out of Radar and into Computer Maintenance on the AN/FSQ-7 SAGE System. I remained with computer maintenance until late in my career when I started working with Seismic Research.
All in all, this was one of the better assignments that I had in those early years of my career. I finished my career as a Major Air Command level Senior Enlisted Advisor and sat on the committee that advised the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. I retired after 30 years in February of 1985.