07/24/2003
Good evening,
After receiving the reply I was talking with my brother who was ten and eleven during the time we were there and between the two of us we managed to stay up far later than we should recalling many of the things that happened during our stay there. I have also spent the last day or so recalling the times and so far have more than one page of very finely written notes. It was perhaps one of the most interesting times in our lives. It seems there is little recorded about those early days of GAFB and perhaps by getting a few of the early items in print we might be able to spur a few others to knock the dust of those memory cells. I have no doubt that many of the things I will be talking about perhaps are not quite as it exactly happened but to cover all tracks I will follow the words of wisdom of the immortal Bob Hoover and say, " This might not be exactly how it happened , but this is how I remember it ."
Most of the pictures I have found so far are from our trip just shortly before the base proper was purchased by Boeing, it was still called Valley Industrial Park at the time and there was no restrictions to our landing on the field or taking any pictures. We checked.
I can identify many of the buildings but some I cannot. Most of the barracks shots are unnamed except for the one you will see.
Almost all Air Force identification was removed from all the buildings as was any government property. The base was for all purposes , stripped.
We were told at the time that many of the buildings were of a new type of construction that would allow them to be easily moved at will and this was shown to be true with the many blank foundations scattered about.
Many of the buildings showed signs of abuse. The airman's club had a oak parquet floor that was poorly , half stripped up. Many of the squares were broken. It was almost like it was done in haste. Some of the barracks had been used by some kind of welfare organization and were left in a total mess. Carpeting ripped up, trash thrown about. Any damage done to any building did not appear to have been done by the weather but rather by deliberate means.
Most buildings were unlocked as were the houses in both housing areas except for a few key buildings on the base itself that Boeing or someone was using.
All of the buildings even those with damage could have been easily cleaned up and used with little expense or effort being put forth.
The only building being used on the base and still in perfect condition was the bowling alley and the hamburgers were quite excellent too!
The one shot of the theatre shows a few changes that were not there in 62. Front plywood panels were added at some later date no doubt to act as a wind break. We also have a few other shots and will send them along later tonight. One will be of the old ticket window and another will show the concession stand. Do note the simple construction of the concession stand. As simple as it looked, it was all we had and I guess all we needed. Back then, if something was needed, you just didn't call in the civilian contractor, you called the base carpenter. Usually it was a E-2 or E-3. some did good work, some so, so. Rather than relying on civilian contractors as the military does now, most all vocations had a military counterpart and the training was supplied by the military as well. Carpenters, painters, plumbers, cooks, you name it.
As I remember, we were kept supplied with all the currant movies of the time. Every now and them we will be watching something on AMC and I will remember I saw it first up there. This was considered a remote outposting so to keep moral high all things for entertainment were considered a priority.
Admission was a quarter and pop and popcorn were a dime each. There was always the main feature of course but we also has the news reels and the cartoon. As I recall Mr. MaGoo ( could be bad spelling on that one ) was popular at the time so cheer on the poor ol blind guy, we did!
It seems as though the theatre wasn't open every night but could be off on that one.
The last time we were in the old theatre, all the seats were still in place, it was reasonably clean and still very usable. All the projectors had been removed however.
My one main memory of the theatre doesn't concern a movie but rather something out of real life. It was almost the height of the cold war and tensions were very high on all sides. We had just recently had a couple of B-47 "spy" plains shot down by somebody and things were starting to get real hot over the Formosa Straights. It looked like we might go at it with the Chinese and "alerts" were a everyday fact of life. My father, as well as many other kids fathers were on constant stand by and many were on TDY to who knows where. The base had a dependent evacuation plan that required for all dependents to try to get to the gravel pits a few miles north of the base and hopefully be protected from any close blast. We all knew it was a joke as we would only have fifteen minutes at best of any warning and there was no way in the world you could hope to get than many people and that many vehicles that far away from the base in that short of time. I think even though we didn't talk about it much we all fully knew that if things did come to the worst, our fathers would not ever come back to the base and we wouldn't be there anyway.
The theatre hadn't opened yet one evening and we were all standing in line when all of a sudden the sirens started going off and people started running everywhere. Uniformed personal ran, and I do mean ran to their duty station and we kids just stood there not really knowing what to do. About half a dozen AP's drove up in the old blue flight line pickups and the kids that lived the farthest were ordered in the back to be driven to there homes while the rest of us that lived closer to the housing area were told to go straight home and stay there.
We did.
That was only one of several times we were "locked down".
