War Stories: The Day I Made an Airplane Dissappear

The SKIES of ALEXANDRIA #3

T H E   D A Y   I   M A D E   A N   A I R P L A N E   D I S A P P E A R

Lockdheed C-130 Hercules

I had orders to Deci...   I packed the girls in the car, I threw my duffel bag in the trunk, and off we went to Ramstein Air Base outside of Kaiserslautern.  We called it K-town because no one really wanted to say Kaiserslautern all the time.  In fact, I have been blessed by people who, mistaking the name Kaiserslautern for a garbled sneeze, have been kind enough to show concern for my health and well-being.

 

After good-byes to last the two weeks I would be gone, I waited in the waiting room at the passenger terminal at Base Ops when a tiny, but very official dog led a rather muscular SP into the area.  My buddy poked me in the ribs as if I hadn't noticed.  Sometimes students ask me to tell a story.  Sometimes I let them.  Here's one...  I call it 'The Day I Made an Airplane Disappear.'

 

One of the cool things about being stationed in Germany is that you get to go places from time to time.  It was my turn to go to Deci. Deci is short for Decimomannu Air Base, in the Province of Cagliari on the Island of Sardinia.  The island of Sardinia is the top of an ancient volcano, and the air base is located in what was, a considerable time ago, a sea of boiling lava.  I say this so that you know, Deci is surrounded by short, craggy mountain peaks.  Remember that.

 

At the duly appointed time, I could not contain myself any longer.

 

"Wow," I said to the Security policeman, "that doesn't look like a German Shepheard..."

 

The SP patiently explained that this particular dog, a Toy Poodle-Rat Terrier mix, was the base's top drug-sniffing dog.  This little poodlish girl could get into and out of places no Shepard would dream of entering.  I was now informed.  I cooled my heels longer.  I am an anxious flyer.  I know that when I have control of the airplane, I really enjoy flying.  That's why I also enjoy driving.  It is also why I am a poor passenger.  I would be a passenger on this flight.

 

We were waiting for VIPs to board.  In the Air Force, rank has it's privilege.  One of the privileges of being a Colonel or General is that you board first.  Everyone else waits for you.  Finally, three Colonels, who were also Chaplains, passed by and boarded.  I had never seen a single Chaplain who was a Colonel, and now three were on our flight...

When I did get to board, I was greeted by a very young looking First Lieutenant who would be the pilot, a very old looking Second Lieutenant, who would be the co-pilot.  I asked the First Lieutenant for some clarity.

 

'One of the airlines is on strike, so the co-pilot is getting some Reserve time in.  He actually flies 747s for a living...  I know, it looks odd...'

 

By now, weird things kept happening - the police poodle, the three chaplains, and an odd flight crew.  The next thing is positively weird, I slept on the flight!  I do not sleep on airplanes, ever.  Of course, I reasoned, since we are in a cargo plane, with the seats facing the rear, and instead of an in-flight movie, all I could do was watch a spare jet engine that was along for the ride in the cargo bay bounce around, sleep was a good alternative. Sitting next to the landing gear, I heard the landing gear come up - there are no windows in the cargo bay - and knew in a couple hours, we would be landing.

It was the wheels cycling down that woke me.  Ahh, we must be landing, I thought, and I will soon be standing on Deci.  Normally, in a plane, when the airplane is nose up, you are reclining.  Because we were seated facing the rear, everything would be backward.  This was annoying.  My ears told me we were close to landing when all of a sudden, I was thrown forward and I heard the gear come up.  This was not a good feeling.

 

We landed in Deci.  I had left a beautiful Fall Day in Germany behind and was standing in the warmth of a brilliant Mediterranean sun.  I looked around for a man in a dark suit in the corner explaining to a camera about entering The Twilight Zone, and when I didn't see him, I relaxed, found my room, and enjoyed some sun and catching up with friends I hadn't seen in a while.

 

The next day, one of the Chaplains was taking a tour of the facility and he explained what had happened.  The flight crew had forgot the flaps and we barely missed some of those mountain peaks.  They had to try it again.  Oops. I told him about the dog, and how fortunate we were that no drugs had been found, then expressed my gratitude that I could be on such a flight with three chaplains because God must have been on that flight too.

 

Oh, that part about making an airplane disappear.  Sorry, it's still classified.  You'll just have to take my word...

 

The Amerika Bomber

The Nazis wanted to attack America.  They couldn't.  Under the Nazi military doctrine of Blitzkreig, airpower was to be used to support an attack spearheaded by tanks. The Nazis had a grand vision of world domination without a strategy to achieve it.  Long-range bombers, deemed too expensive and unnecessary to the Blitzkrieg, were not developed. They could have. After all, the Nazis had developed jet-powered fighters and rocket-powered ballistic missiles. But there was some small development of large bombers.

The U.S. Boeing B-29 Super Fortress long-range bomber

 

Large bombers are good for one thing, they fly high over long distances at relatively fast airspeeds to carry destructive power to the enemy's heartland.  The Nazi effort to develop the long-range bomber was carried out under the general code-name Amerika Bomber.

 

The United States, for a variety reasons largely involving the size of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and vast interior distances, had developed long-range bombers.  Hitler, left to contemplate the distance from Berlin to Moscow, or Tokyo, saw a need, but could do little to foster this need as the day-to-day needs of running a dictatorship became to large.  This did not stop Hitler from his desire to see New York City in flames.

 

Messerschmitt Me 264 Amerika Bomber

 

Sänger Silbervogel Amerika Bomber

 

The Nazis had several designs, and iterations of these designs, at their disposal. Some were conventional; others extraordinary. The Messerschmitt Me 264 was characteristic of the conventional. It looked a lot like our own Boeing B-29 Superfortress. The Me 264 saw limited production and was used in spotting Allied convoys in the Atlantic. None-the-less, the Nazis showered money on the unconventional.  Werner von Braun was a Nazi who developed an Amerika Bomber based on rocket technology. Another Nazi scientist, Dr Eugen Sänger, along with his future wife, mathematician Irene Bredt, developed the "Antipodal Bomber" under the code-name Silbervogel [Silver Bird]. After the war was over, engineers would use Sänger's work as a starting point that led to the development of the NASA's Space Shuttle.  On the other side of the world, Josef Stalin was personally interested in Sänger's work. A third design centered on the Horten/Gotha Go 229 Flying Wing. This design was reproduced by a consortium of U.S. aviation companies led by Northrop that produced the B-2 Spirit, the Stealth Bomber.

 

The United States' presence in space and on the global stage began in Nazi Germany.  The Nazis had not the time or resources to make these projects work.  New York City would not burn in World War II.

 

Image from the Hubble Space Telescope (NASA)

 

As victors of World War II, we gained the Nazi's technology.  Von Braun's rocket allowed us to take that "giant leap for mankind" by putting humans on the moon.  One of the gemstones in the Space Shuttle's crown is the Hubble Telescope which showed us, for the first time, just how awesome the universe is.  The Stealth Bomber has kept us safe.

 

We were not the only people to inherit from the Nazis.

 

New York City's World Trade Center, March 2001

 

Sitting in the hospital on that cold January morning in 2000, I had no idea that another man had a vision of New York City in flames.  This other man, Osama bin Laden, had already set a plan in motion...

Flying

When I was a Senior in High School, I (finally) ran out of English courses I liked and had to (grudgingly) take Mrs. Inez McIntire's Folklore class.

Mrs. McIntire was an older lady who was familiar with this corner of Licking County, and for a grade, I had to write a paper on a local landmark and talk about the importance of it. As an Aviation Enthusiast and having done radio navigation while flying an airplane (I first piloted an airplane before I was in Junior High...), I decided to write about the Appleton VOR. To pilots and to me, this is a local landmark rich in history.

 

What a VOR looks like from the ground

At the corner of Northridge Road (CR 21) and Sportsmans Club Road (CR16) - an intersection all too familiar to anyone at my High School with a driver's license - stood a tall 'TV Tower.' In fact, this tower, located on the highest available patch of land in Licking County, was a Microwave Relay that formed the backbone of our Nation's Cold War Defense communications network. (Shhh! Don't tell the Commies!) Located in a nearby grove across the street, hidden by trees and brush stands the Appleton VOR.

 

What a Microwave Tower looks like.

Mrs. McIntire confused the two because she could never see the VOR, only the tower. The tower is obvious for miles around. Despite my offer to take her flying over the VOR, she said she would take my word for it. I do not believe she ever believed me, or the existence of the VOR.

What is a VOR? VORs are located, unobtrusively, across the country, happily sending out a radio signal that specially equipped aircraft can receive and use for aerial navigation. Technically, they are a VHF Omnidirectional Radio Range. Now you understand why everyone believes VOR is a better term - although locals shorten it to 'Appleton Omni.'

What a pilot sees on the instrument panel.

Appleton Omni was established long before GPS (Global Positioning System). The national FAA Radar System (Air Route Traffic Control Centers - ARTCCs) allowed pilots to navigate over long distances using practical, applied trigonometry. They marked Flight Routes (freeways in the sky) and helped pilots find airports. Even better, weather was no longer a factor to the business of aerial navigation. In fact, Appleton Omni was and is still used by civilian pilots to locate Port Columbus and by military and civilian pilots to locate Rickenbacker (then Lockbourne) AFB. To a pilot, Appleton Omni was very important.

So, why am I telling you this? Well, one would never suspect that Appleton Omni would be SO important in my life.

What a VOR looks like on an aeronautical map. Airports are the purple circles.

If you ever wondered what I was daydreaming about in Geometry while Mr. Wren was explaining right triangles to us, I was visioning how to fly the triangle and calculating turn radii to complete the problem. I was also just thinking of flying in general, airborne, the commander of the skies...

The Lockheed C-130 Hercules.

About the same time, I was daydreaming of flying in Geometry class, an Air Force Colonel and C-130 pilot based at Rickenbacker was using Appleton Omni to practice cargo drops. One day, as he was lining up on Appleton Omni, he saw a FOR SALE sign on a pasture. He had his navigator mark the position and later drove out to it, looked at it, and decided to buy it. When he retired, he moved his wife and youngest daughter to that old pasture, which now had a house on it that he built, and they began attending the Alexandria Baptist Church. This is where I met his youngest daughter for the first time and this is where we were married over 33 years ago.

Now I live here, in the house that pilot built. I know Appleton VOR is a couple of miles away, as the plane flies. I occasionally look up to the sky and remember all those years ago, flying over this old pasture. I still see aircraft using Appleton Omni. In fact, Medivac uses it to fly towards the more rural parts of Ohio. Army National Guard helicopters use it to practice maneuvers, which is, by the way, how I know President Obama is making yet another trip to Columbus. Other aircraft use it to navigate to Port Columbus, Lockbourne, and Newark Airport.

So, there you have it. Mrs. McIntire, here is the second part of my paper - there really is some folklore here. Mr. Wren, now you know too. For the rest of you, I hope you found this an interesting insight... you see, that in the inter-connectedness of things, without Appleton VOR, Deb and I would have lived entirely different lives... all because of Appleton Omni.

Licking County Railroads, Part IV - The Panhandle Route

The highest point in Licking County is on Sportsman Club Road, just east of Northridge Road.  One would expect things around there to be named "Summit."  Instead, this area is referred to as Northridge.  Summit Station is actually located a few hundred feet lower in elevation in southwestern Licking County.

As far as the Pennsylvania Rail Road (PRR) is concerned, Summit Station is appropriately named. Anyone traveling to or through Columbus from points east would travel on trains with names like the "Spirit of St Louis" or the "Panhandle Express."  These trains were express sleepers on which travelers would board in the afternoon in New York or Washington, D.C., enjoy cocktails and canapés in the club car, then migrate to the dining car and enjoy five-star cuisine on custom chinaware in an elegant dining car. Guests would then retire to their rooms where they would sleep the night to the gentle rocking action of the train.  The engineer and fireman carefully guided their way towards Licking County through the dark woodlands of Ohio. These were not so much trains as grand hotels on wheels.

Dinner aboard an eastbound The Spirit of St. Louis, 1953.

Entering Licking County in the eastern central hills and rivers north of Zanesville, the train made its way southwest towards Newark, then south of Granville at Union Station to the relatively flat portion of Licking County at Kirkersville Station. As a side note, the people of Kirkersville Station changed the name to Outville because it was far enough away from Kirkersville to be its own village and, honestly, when addressing an envelope, Outville is a lot easier to write than Kirkersville Station.

The Tower at Summit Station, August 1977

After Kirkersville, on a gradual uphill climb, came Pataskala and Columbia Station, then to Summit Station, the highest point on the Panhandle Route.  From there, the train left Licking County practically coasting into Columbus.  Most people slept through this with the gentle rhythm of the train's movement acting like a sedative.  Breakfast was in Indiana.

From a post-war brochure advertising The Spirit of St. Louis

The Panhandle Route was PRR's main route to the west.  Eventually, instead of changing trains, travelers would keep their rooms at St Louis the PRR locomotives and crews were switched out for Union Pacific or Santa Fe power and staff and continue on their way to Los Angeles.

This way of travel was overtaken by the airlines.

The Spirit of St. Louis leaves St. Louis in 1957 (Photo: Fred Ripley)

If you wanted to travel from New York to Los Angeles and chose the PRR, you came through Licking County.  Soon, you would fly over it.  But for a brief moment in the life of the country, you had to go through Licking County on THE PANHANDLE ROUTE.

Licking County Railroads, Part III - The Jewett Car Company

Any railroad is nothing without cars.  Building the cars was a big business in the early 20th Century. Columbus had a nationally known buggy factory.  I know this in part because safely tucked away in a box of papers I inherited from Great-Grandpa Miller is a Bill-Of-Sale for a horse-drawn buggy from the Columbus Buggy Company.

Columbus had a wealth of wood in the surrounding forests and making horse-drawn buggies seemed the perfect business.  In fact, all of central Ohio was in on transportation.  By extension, if you can make horse-drawn buggies, you can also make railroad equipment or automobiles.  Columbus had a railroad car manufacturer as well, the Ralston Steel Car Company.  With the rise in automobile sales, the Columbus Buggy Company tried to make the transition to manufacturing automobiles and failed. The real news for the interurbans was elsewhere.

The Jewett Car Company located itself in Newark, Ohio, for a variety of reasons, all of which ended with 'a good place to do business.'

A Jewett Combine.  This carried both freight and passengers.

A Jewett Freight Car

By 1901, the Jewett Car Company was running at full speed and produced 163 cars for places like Brooklyn, St. Louis, and Cleveland.  Another smaller customer was the Newark and Granville Electric Road. The pictures above show two different examples of Jewett's interurban cars in service on the Lehigh Valley Transit Company's right-of-way.

A Newark & Granville Electric on Broadway in front of the Granville terminal.

The Newark and Granville electric was expanding.  It had become more than a very local, very limited road between Newark and Granville.  From Newark, the tracks now ran south along State Route 79 and the old Ohio-Erie Canal to Hebron, where you could continue to the new resort and amusement park at Buckeye Lake.  Or, you could transfer to the route that ran down the Old National Road into downtown Columbus. Likewise, you could go to Zanesville.  The route to Columbus ran roughly parallel to and at a distance from the Pennsylvania Rail Road's Pan Handle Route.

A Postcard view of the McGuire-Cummings plant in Paris, Illinois

 

What I found most amazing in researching the interurban is that while I grew up around this history, my cousins in Illinois grew up near one of Jewett's competitors, the McGuire-Cummings Manufacturing Company of Paris, Illinois.  McGuire-Cummings was perhaps best known for their snow-removal equipment but offered a full catalog of interurbans for sale.  Very little of McGuire-Cummings remains in Paris.

This interurban car asks the question, "Is Road wear paid for in proportion to use?"  This sums up the position of the interurban companies as the government used tax dollars to maintain America's roadways for automobile and freight traffic at the expense of the interurban. 

The Interurban was never fully appreciated or developed.  Although local manufacturers created valuable skilled jobs, the action would soon switch to Detroit and the automobile. Even though the Interurban provided a valuable service for customers, businesses saw the interurban as a way to draw business from local, small-town merchants to the larger stores of the bigger cities. Gasoline producers favored the automobile, and the government was more than happy to oblige by paving America's highways while Interurbans were funded only by investors, passenger fare, and freight service.  The car shown above is an example of the controversy.  By 1925, the Interurban was yesterday's technology as people flocked to buy a Model T.  To paraphrase a once popular song, 'Good Lord Mr. Ford, what have you done?'

Licking County Railroads, Part II - The Newark-Granville Electric Road

By the end of 1889, arguably the first Interurban came into being. Track-work was completed from downtown Newark to a point east of Granville on the old thoroughfare. This is also where the money ran out. After some fund-raising, the line was completed into Granville where the old Bank of the Alexandrian Society still stands.

as seen in the top photo. Additions and renovations have removed all evidence of its use as a depot. At the Granville terminal of the Newark & Granville Electric Road, freight was loaded on the east side, as seen in the top photo. Additions and renovations have removed all evidence of its use as a depot.

Before long, an extension was built from the depot, down Main Street, to the Toledo and Ohio Central Railroad station in the Raccoon Valley. This was done to transport passengers from outlying areas to the interurban, which offered travel to downtown Newark, Buckeye Lake, Zanesville, and Columbus.

The system survived the first quarter of the Twentieth Century but fell victim to the automobile. This turned out to be a vicious issue in the 1920s and 1930s.

Grandma Irwin, a kind, elderly neighbor, told me how she took her daughters shopping in Columbus by using the interurban. The story has always given me pause to think how different our world would be if the interurban had won. Alas, we can only start with the world we are given.

Licking County Railroads, Part I - The Toledo & Ohio Central Railway

I like riding the bike path.  It allows me to imagine the past.

A long time ago, in the last half of the 19th Century, some businessmen decided that if they could carry the coal from coalfields in southeatern Ohio to Toledo, they could make some money. They went broke. Then, someone else bought the partially completed railroad, and with a fresh infusion of money, moved the railroad further along and after four more bankruptcies and reorganizations, the railroad operated as the Toledo and Ohio Central, or T&OC.

Eventually, the railroad became a subsidiary of the New York Central, and was made largely redundant, but there was a time when it was an important thing...

The railroad entered Licking County in the northwest, swung through Croton, then to Johnstown before a rather steep downhill run into the Raccoon Valley. Two stations were established, Alexandria and Clemons, before levelling out in Granville, then on to Newark.

Today, the original roadbed of the T&OC has been purchased by the T. J. Evans Foundation and is now a bike path.

The Alexandria Depot originally sat on the south side of the tracks at the end of a short road that went north off of Granville Road. The station was about two-thirds of the way between North Liberty Street/Mounts Road and Granville Road on Depot Street. Here, the railroad follows the side of a hill on a gentle downhill curve as it enters the Raccoon Valley flood plain. The T&OC offered residents of Alexandria the ability to travel into Newark; the interurban was a better choice for a journey to Columbus. Long time resident of Alexandria, Edith Irwin, recalled that when she was young, she would take her daughters on the T&OC to Granville where she could take the interurban to Newark, then Hebron where she transferred, and then along the old National Road into Columbus to do their shopping and return home for a late dinner.

A few miles downhill to the East is Clemons Station. There was never much there, even less today. Clemons offered water for thirsty steam engines chugging uphill towards Croton, a twenty-four-hour telegraph, a minor freight and passenger facility, and a bunkhouse for train crews. Sitting at the end of Loudon Street, where the Raccoon Creek has its closet approach to the rail, and water for the engines, Clemons provided an important place for the farmers who lived between Alexandria and Granvile.

Nothing remains of Clemons today, except some concrete footers. Bicyclists zip through the old station, many not even aware of the important role Clemons held in T&OC operations. Today, few residents of Alexandria even know Clemons Station existed.

Alexandria Station is partially gone. The building has been re-sited and restored in downtown Alexandria from its position along the tracks. The railroad no longer runs through Alexandria.

Bucolia, October 1966

Bucolia is not, as near as I can tell, a word. Bucolic means pastoral or rural and conveys a sense of peace to me.  Bucolia is an imagined pastoral place where things are at peace. I like to think I grew up there.

Bucolia is characterized by rhythms and cycles.  Crops are planted and harvested.  Cows are fed and milked. School is defined as the time between Labor Day to Memorial Day.  Everything, every day is ordered, predictable, expected... That is probably why a weekend in October 1966 stands out.

Columbus Union Depot, Track 4 looking west.

For some reason, Aunt Alice needed help. Alice is Mom's sister and Mom was needed in Indiana because Grandma and Grandpa were sick. Early on a rainy Friday morning, Dad drove us to Columbus Union Station just north of downtown. There she took my sister and boarded a train for Terre Haute. That left me and Dad to tough it out for a weekend. Nancy Sinatra was singing "These Boots are Made For Walking" on the radio.

Laurel and Hardy form Thicker Than Water

I was in Mrs. Botche's class and that is probably the most profound thing I remember about the Second Grade. I couldn't tell you what we learned that day.  I was anticipating Friday night.  The PTA had planned an important meeting, and to ensure participation, they held a Pancake Dinner.  So I endured the rigors of Second Grade, spent two hours after school with Dad - he was the Principal - and finally, pancakes.  Even better, after the children ate, they showed Laurel and Hardy movies in the Gym.  Wow!  Life could not have been better.

It had been a long and day.  Saturday's weather was more rain, so playing outside in the leaves was not an option.  Actually, Saturday wasn't that good, even though I wanted it to be.

Sunday morning came, thankfully.  At the time, Dad had a part-time job as Choir Director for a church in Whitehall, which at the time, was a blue-collar suburb of Columbus.  A large portion of people in Whitehall worked for North American Aviation making the T-2 Buckeye, the U.S. Navy's intermediate training aircraft.

Dad had told me we were going to do something after church that would be a treat. We changed from 'Church Clothes' to regular clothes and drove a couple blocks to the Holiday Inn and ate lunch.  Then, back in the car and down Broad Street to the Center of Science and Industry (COSI).

I had no idea what wonders awaited.  This place had everything!  It was the playground of the future.

COSI's Old Building, circa 1990

There was Foucault's Pendulum, Western Electric's Videophone, The Transparent Talking Women, The Street of Yesteryear, and the Planetarium.  Each second at COSI was absolutely golden with new things to see and to learn.

Mom and Chris made it home early in the week and I was happy to see them arrive safely.  Mom had a lot to tell Dad, so I didn't talk a lot as the routine of life returned.

237 West Main Street, Alexandria, Ohio

It was the twilight of the passenger train.  Soon Columbus Union Depot was torn down and the tracks ripped up to make room for the Columbus Convention Center, Nationwide Plaza, a storage yard for Columbus' road salt, and I-670, a freeway to connect Downtown to the Airport.  COSI would eventually move to the site of the former Columbus Central High School.  The Holiday Inn has gone out of business and is now something else. As of a couple years ago, the church in Whitehall could barely fill the pews and is a shadow of itself when new.

In fact, all that is left is Bucolia...   a weekend that could never happen again.

The Roads Must Roll

Northridge High School was rural.  There is nothing wrong with that, but there were far more people interested in Future Farmers of America than in College Preparatory coursework.  One of the things the school did, and rightly so I believe, was to offer their English courses like college courses.  There was a requisite Freshman English, but after that, you could choose classes from Folklore or Mythology, or even English Literature.  This was fantastic!  It also allowed students of different grades to interact.  As a Freshman, I could sit next to a Senior in a Shakespeare class.  This was cool.

One of the first courses I took was Science Fiction.  The first story we read was Heinlein's The Roads Must Roll.  Although we were supposed to learn about what Heinlein called 'functionalism,' the concept that you had a place in society commensurate with your function in society.  The story centered on the maintenance workers who keep the roads rolling.  In Heinlein's future, we have done away with cars, trucks, and railroads, and replaced them with roads that move you along as a pedestrian at speeds up to 100 mph.  It was a future that hasn't happened...   yet.

Although I correctly demonstrated to my teacher - Mrs. Alberta DiLeo, whose husband edited a local science fiction newsletter that featured original works from local authors - that I got it, that is to say, I understood what she wanted me to, I also figured out something else.

You see, somewhere in the mid-1960's, Walter Cronkite had a TV show called The Twenty-First Century that told us what the future would be like.  I always liked the show, and Mrs. Dileo's class made me think about it.

The term today is Retro-Future.

Retro-Future is looking to the past, finding out what they thought the future would look like, and drawing your own conclusions.

Major Matt Mason's Lunar Station is a good example.  So is the 1939 World's Fair.

There is, to anyone who has lived more than a couple of decades, a disconnect between what we foresaw and what we experienced.  Cars were supposed to move at 'unrestricted speeds' along ribbons of highways.  Well, the Germans have that, but no one else.  Cars were supposed to be two-wheeled and gyroscopic-stabilized like the Ford Gyron.  Never happened.  We were to have colonized Mars by now.  You must be dreaming...

What we got was something else that was nothing like we imagined.  We have a device we carry that is capable of accessing the totality of human knowledge that we use to share pictures of cute kittens which we 'Like.'  It is a device beyond the imagination of Gene Rodenberry, whose Star Trek showed us a future of possibilities.  We were also supposed to have underwater cities...

Instead, we have virtual reality and computer animation that allows us to stay warm and happy and isolated from unwanted contact from other humans while we indulge in our own personal worlds.  We were also supposed to have jet-powered trains.

I love Retro-Future, probably because it is a romanticized version of what we could be, a society that is prosperous with a bright future of infinite possibilities.  But...

Like Chief Engineer Larry Gaines in Heinlein's story, we are left to ponder what it all means if we are to truly forge our future.  Otherwise, we might just be living in someone else's world...

Bullwinkle and the Bomb

When I was in First or Second Grade, I made a connection, one which absolutely terrified me.

On Saturday mornings, I got up to watch cartoons.  In those days, the television stations were required to run shows dedicated to the community.  These shows were usually themed around what to do in case of a nuclear attack.  I didn't pay much attention to them because I was waiting for cartoons.

I loved Bugs Bunny, and thought Woody Woodpecker was, well, okay, I guess.  But in my heart of hearts, I thoroughly enjoyed the Rocky and Bullwinkle show.

Rocky and Bullwinkle was more than a flying squirrel and a thick-headed moose.  They also brought Sherman, Peabody, and the Way-Back Machine to the television.  There were Fractured Fairy Tales narrated by the esteemed Edward Everett Horton.  Rocky and Bullwinkle had their nemesis, Boris Badenov with his more intelligent sidekick Natasha.  Rocky and Bullwinkle was a metaphor for the Cold War.

Somewhere along the way, I heard Walter Cronkite talk about the Bomb.  The only thing I could equate it to was the cartoon bomb Boris always seemed to have at his disposal.  Whenever Boris threatened to use the bomb, his plan would backfire and the bomb would explode in Boris' hand or some other benign place.  So why was Walter Cronkite so upset?

Finally, after much consideration, I asked Dad to explain it to me.  He took me to the kitchen window and had me look out.

He asked me, "What do you see?"

"Dark," I replied.

"Do you see the faint glow on the horizon?  That's Columbus."

My mind reeled.  Newark was big, but Columbus, that was BIG!  Columbus had an airport AND a skyscraper. Columbus had a factory where they made airplanes AND an AIR FORCE BASE!!!  COLUMBUS WAS HUGE!

Dad patiently explained that if they, the Russians, those Boris Badenov people, ever dropped a bomb on Columbus, and they would if war came, the bomb would be so big that we would feel it in Alexandria...

I had a hard time going to sleep that night.  Suddenly, I realized the truth behind Bullwinkle and Boris. Suddenly I realized why we had Civilian Defense and CONELRAD and why the AM radio dial in the car had the Emergency Broadcast stations marked and why we hid under our desks in school.  Suddenly, the world was no longer as care-free as I imagined it was.

As I sat there, at the end of the hallway at Doctor's North Hospital, staring at the WBNS-TV tower, I remembered it all over again.  Luci's Toyshop was a much happier place.