Thanks, Dad (Memorial Day)

Dad spent most of WWII at an Air Force Base in Hobbs, New Mexico. He was an auto mechanic before the War, and he trained to be an airline mechanic. B-17s, the famous "Flying Fortresses," were what he worked on.

He toured a B-17 in the 1990s when it visited the Santa Barbara Airport and told me about it, but I was living 300 miles away. Last week, a B-17 paid a return call and I was there. I crawled through the plane and marveled at how little space there was for the crew. Dad, at 6'3", would have been cramped no matter where he sat, despite his very thin build. And flight crew flew in the most primitive location: on wooden drop-down boards in the uninsulated fusilage.

It would have been hot as all git-out on the ground (Hobbs is very close to Texas!), miserably cold in the air, crowded with nervous air crew, and scary to think you'd have to go into actual battle that way! The only way out was by parachute through the back door. A man over six feet tall could not stand up all the way. My Dad, the farm kid, might well wonder what he was doing there. I wouldn't blame him if he were scared. I would be.

Fortunately for me, Dad never saw battle. He was on a ship in Seattle Harbor when the War in the Pacific ended. But he trained, for real, and that took courage and guts. He brought his things home when the war ended, stored his trunk in the garage, and threw a tarp over it. Like so many others, he was busy with living. He never talked about his experiences in the Air Force.

Because of a million other men like him, plain guys doing their patriotic duty, the world was a safer place. Thanks, Dad. You and the B-17s.

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