1971 SBNM July 4

Posted on October 30, 2020 by Mike

A very memorable day. Continue reading →

The announcement that the three bases—Kirtland AFB, SBNM, and Manzano Base—were being merged was made on Thursday, July 1.

Capt. Dean must have known that this was coming. He had already scheduled an all-day party for MPCO with free food and free beer at the softball field on the other side of E. Texas St for Sunday, July 4, Independence Day. I don’t remember what time the outing started or ended. It seemed like a very big celebration. Lunch might have been served or supper or both. All the MPs were invited. I don’t remember anyone else being there. One of the patrols must have reported for the day shift, and one must have manned the swing shift that day. This makes me think that the party must have started well before 2:00 and ended well after that time. Capt. Dean clearly wanted everyone to be able to attend.

Sunday turned out to be a beautiful day for a picnic. I don’t actually remember what it was like, but if had not been sunny, warm, and breezy, I certainly would have remembered it.

Since it was Sunday, I probably went to mass. There was only one chapel on the base that was used for all of the Christian services. The base chapel currently has masses on Saturday at 5 p.m. and on Sunday at 9 a.m. If I did not attend on Saturday evening, then I certainly went on Sunday morning. The services themselves were in no way memorable—I don’t remember the priest at all. On the other hand, if, for some reason I had not gone to mass, I would remember it. I was a good Catholic; I never missed mass.

I know that it supposedly came from the Land of Sky Blue Waters, but to me it tasted more like the familiar yellow waters.

At some point I ambled over to the baseball field for the party, which I remember as a rather low-key affair. Everyone was in civilian clothes. Capt. Dean may have given a short speech, but by and large it was unstructured.

I think that there was a softball game, but I don’t remember playing in it. The only thing that I clearly recall was that a very large amount of beer was provided. It was all in twelve-ounce cans, and it was all Hamm’s.

I probably drank a can or two. I definitely did not get drunk. I clearly remember the first time that I got drunk, and it was still a few years in the future. Others certainly drank more than I did, but I don’t think there were any incidents worth mentioning. All my recollections are very vague. I probably hung around with my friends. I am certain that I avoided the officers, the sergeants, and the other lifers.

The rumor mill was certainly running at maximum power. Talk centered on two things. In the first place, it was now pretty well established that draftees were going to be allowed to ETS early. How early? The most commonly heard period was six months. However, no one had yet been assigned a new ETS date. Someone at the party might have asked me how short I was. If so, I would have without hesitation answered 457 days. It would be presumptuous to subtract six months before it was official. The other topic of speculation was the takeover by the Air Force. When would it take effect? Would everybody ship out? Would we all go together? No, of course not. Were there other DNA bases we could go to? It turned out that there were, but not many knew this.

The combination of the two sets of rumors was enticing. If my new ETS was in April, even if orders came in July, I would have less than² nine months at the new posting. Usually overseas hitches were for at least twelve months. So I would get paid for travel time, but I would still be stateside.

Not that kind of roar and much louder.

I think that the gathering lasted until dark or maybe even later. I retired to my room fairly early. Monday was a work day¹. I was probably asleep by 10 p.m., and I slept soundly, at least for a few hours. I was roused from sleep—I did not look at the clock—by a loud roaring sound. It kept up for a few minutes, varying in intensity from softer to exceptionally loud.

By this time I had been on the base for four months, and I had become somewhat inured to strangeness. Also, I am a sound sleeper. When the roaring subsided, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

Time passed. Feeling the need to return some Hamm’s to the Land of Sky Blue Waters, I awoke again. This time I did look at the clock. It was 2:30. I went out in the hall in my underwear and was more than a little surprised to see tire tracks on the linoleum. I have never done much research on the subject of tire tracks, but since the hallway was only a few feet wide, I deduced that someone had probably ridden a motorcycle up and down the hallway. That also explained the roaring.

Just add some helium.

I looked up and down the hallway. Everything seemed to have calmed down. I turned right and walked toward the latrine. Uh-oh. Even without my glasses I could tell that the fluorescent light fixture on the wall by the latrine was hanging limp and dark at an angle approaching 90° from its usual position. Evidently the shenanigans at the post-party had gotten a little out of hand. No one was in the latrine. I took care of business, exited, and walked back to my room. Just before I reached the door I heard a very unusual sound—more startling even than the roar of a motorcycle. It was giggling, high-pitched giggling. So, either some guys had obtained some helium and mixed it with nitrous oxide, or there were girls in one of the rooms.

It was not my business, and it was not my problem. I went into my room and quickly returned to Dreamland. Throughout my life I have enjoyed the ability to get to sleep almost at will and to sleep for as long as I want. I had an alarm clock in the army, but I was almost always already awake when the alarm went off.

My job in the Law Enforcement office, gave me a different schedule from that of everyone else in the second platoon. I had the latrine to myself for the three s’s with which every soldier is expected to start the day. I then went to work. Throughout the morning the banter, if any, was about the previous day’s party, which all four of us—Capt. Huppmann, Sgt. Edison, SP4 Duffy, and myself—had attended. I said nothing about what I had seen and heard in the hallway.

At some point that day the news started to filter through about what had happened in the barracks the previous night. Neither Capt. Huppmann nor Sgt. Edison asked me any questions. I don’t think that they realized that I still lived alongside the guys in the second platoon. To the best of my knowledge neither of them was involved in the official investigation. Neither SP4 Duffy nor I had anything to do with it.

I deliberately avoided learning anything about the interrogations.

I learned more after work on Monday. Everyone on our floor—except for me—had been called in for questioning by the investigators. I never did find out who ran the original inquiry. Eventually it was turn over to experienced detectives who worked for the Army.

Here is all that I learned. It is all second or third or nth hand.

Three guys were pulled from duty and confined to the base for the duration of the investigation—Tom Bedell (a good friend who lived down the hall from me), Bob Willems (my friend from AIT), and Paul Calandra.
Three young girls, children of lifers who lived on the base, were somehow identified as being in the barracks on Sunday night.
Drugs were somehow involved.
The most alarming thing was that the girls were still missing.

During the week there was a lot of discussion, but no additional information. I kept going to work every morning. The three suspects were interrogated each day. I did not share with anyone in the Law Enforcement office anything that I heard in the barracks. I puzzled over why the investigators had not asked to talk with me. It wasn’t until several years later that I figured out what must have happened. The investigators probably requested a list of people who lived on our floor. Instead of using a room-by-room list of the guys in the barracks, someone found a duty roster for the second platoon and left out the people who lived off-base. My name would not have been on the roster, and therefore it was not provided to the detectives.

The next weekend the girls finally returned to their homes. Fearful of being punished by their parents, they had somehow made their way to Taos, not exactly a suburb of Albuquerque, to stay with a guy whom one of them knew. Their reappearance was a big relief to my three friends. The guys were still in a lot of trouble because at least one of the girls was underage, but nobody could any longer consider them murderers.

Bob Willems was given an Article 15 (non-judicial punishment) for either marijuana use or distribution. I know that he was demoted one rank, which would eventually cost him a few hundred dollars. He was also confined to the base for another month or two, and he might have been fined.

Everyone except the lifers considered this an outrageously strict sentence for something that transpired literally every day in the barracks. God only knows how much pot was smoked that night in other rooms. If Capt. Dean or whoever determined the sentence imagined that there would be a deterrent effect, he was wrong. It might have worked if lifers moved into the barracks, but none did.

Bob could have appealed the Article 15, but only if he submitted to a court martial. He accepted the punishment.

On the other hand, Tom and Paul were offered a deal. They could either be court-martialed on both the drugs and statutory rape charges or they could accept “general” (sometimes called “other than honorable”) discharges from the Army and go home. This would eliminate not only the active duty requirement but also the three or four years required in the reserves.

Both guys thought this over for about one second and accepted the discharges. I am quite sure that virtually all draftees and many guys who enlisted in 1970 would have accepted a general discharge on day 1 of their time in the Army. I certainly would have. The only time that anyone has ever asked me about my discharge was when I bought my Honda in 2018. The salesman at the dealership asked me to produce the paper in order to qualify for the veterans’ discount.

In 1971 there were five levels of discharges from the military: honorable, general under honorable conditions, undesirable, bad conduct, and dishonorable. The latter two were part of the penalty after being convicted in a court-martial. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter instituted a program whereby people who received less than honorable discharges could apply to a special board for the purpose of upgrading them to an honorable discharge. I don’t know whether Tom and Paul went through this process, which in any case would not have qualified them for veterans’ benefits.

No one was ever charged with vandalizing the hallway in the barracks.

1. I looked this up. In 1971 the nation celebrated Independence Day on July 4 even though it was a Sunday. July 5 was not a federal holiday that year.

2. I am pretty certain that this is correct usage. Although months are in a sense countable, a month is not a discrete measure of time. If I said 272 days, “fewer than” might be appropriate. If I had said 979,200 seconds, I would definitely have used “fewer than”, even though seconds are technically not discrete either.

1971 SBNM March-June Part 4: The Guys in MPCO

Posted on October 28, 2020 by Mike

The cast of characters. Continue reading →

This entry contains my recollections of guys in MPCO SBNM. A few stories are from after the Air Force’s takeover.

I tried to determine what became of the guys whose names I remembered. In the footnotes I have included current information in 2020 about anyone whom I could locate on the Internet or otherwise.

The Second Platoon: I am not positive that Jim Anderson, who lived with his wife off-base, was in our platoon. I don’t have any recollection of dealing with him on duty. My only recollection of him was the visit that a few of us made to his house. It is described here.

I think that Marshall Anderson, whose home was, I think, in Minnesota, arrived shortly before the Air Force took over. I don’t remember seeing him in the barracks, but almost everyone in the platoon lived there. My only strong recollection of him is from the night on which Sgt. Hungate made me and the other guys on the police desk announce over the radio that the police station was “under duress”. This occurred after the Air Force took over. When it has been posted this episode will be described in some detail at a link here.

Charlie Antonelli¹ arrived a few weeks after our group did. His room was close to mine, but he did not hang around with my close friends. Al Williams, who knew him better than I did, called him Mad Charles. He played a starring role in the Commander Commander incident, which is described here.

Sgt. Lorenzo Bailey was my boss when I worked on the desk for the second platoon. Those days are described here. He lived off-base. By the time that the Air Force took over he was not around. I don’t know where he was assigned.

Peter Baker was also, I think, from Minnesota. He definitely arrived a few weeks after we did and lived in the second platoon. His involvement in the July 4 celebrations will be discussed in the entry for that amazing day.

I think of Roy Banks and Dale Brooks as a matched pair. They both arrived a month or two after we did and lived in the second platoon barracks. When I was back on the police desk with the Air Force we often used one or the other of them for important tasks. They were both competent and reliable.

As I recall, Tom Bedell graduated from Kalamazoo College. He was a very good friend. His invaluable contributions to the Wiffle Ball games are described here. I also remember him as being the most enthusiastic performer in my manic attempts to bring to life an “air-chestra” to play the overture from Rossini’s William Tell. The July 4 incident occurred in his room.

He wrote poetry at MPCO SBNM, and he wanted to become a professional writer. He succeeded. He has published many articles, mostly about golf and beer. I read one in a magazine on a US Airways flight and got in touch with him. In 2020 he lives in Vermont. I follow him (@TomBedell) on Twitter.

Tom Brachna was from the Akron, OH, area, and I think that he lives in Akron in 2020. He arrived at the base a week or two after I did. His room was directly across from mine, and he was also a close friend. I remember him as being a big fan of the Cleveland Browns². He had an intense dislike for the Cincinnati Bengals, the upstart team that adopted nearly the same colors as his beloved Brownies, and the treacherous Paul Brown. We went to at least one bar together, as is described here.

Russ Eakle was already on the base when we arrived. I think that he was the only guy from the group already in the platoon who was still around for the Air Force take over. He was also the only guy who rubbed me the wrong way. I kept my distance from him. His approach to police work is sketched here. He also participated in some memorable events after the Air Force took control.

Sgt. Glenn, our platoon sergeant, lived off-base. He hardly ever showed up in the barracks. In fact I have no memory of him ever being there. His attitude toward work was equally laissez faire. I am not sure when he shipped out or where he went.

Randy Hjelm also lived off-base. I think that he arrived at the base before our group did. Randy’s equipment was always in perfect shape. In fact, his whole appearance was exemplary. However, he always was, or at least appeared to be, stoned. I think that he was from Jacksonville, FL, and still lives there in 2020.

My time workin on the police desk with Randy Kennedy only lasted a few weeks until his ETS. Those days are described here.

Al Williams, Bob Willems, Ned Wilson, and Dave Zimmerman were with me in E-10-4 at Ft. Gordon. Ned lived off-base and worked in traffic. Bob and Dave were in other patrol platoons. I saw Bob all the time but Dave not as much. Bob also played a major role in the July 4 incident. I had many great times with A.J., as much as anyone. I have not kept in touch with any of these guys.

I have less clear memories of the following guys. I remember what they did, but I cannot summon their names.

The details about the guy living in the barracks from KC who told me that he stole a television and that he wanted to go to Vietnam can be found here.
When I started working on the desk I sold my portable radio to a guy from, I think, Minnesota. I offered a fair price. He made an annoying counteroffer. I should have told him to take a hike, but I accepted it.
One guy from one of the southern states had an El Camino. When it wouldn’t start, he enlisted me to push it for him so that he could pop the clutch. This was not one of my finest moments. The same guy refused to use the clutch when he drove one of the MP trucks. He always speed-shifted.
I remember taking a newcomer from Chicago out on patrol and showing him the best places to hide the vehicle if you wanted to read, write some letters, or take a nap.

Headquarters: I did not know any of these people very well:

Captain Dean sponsored the timed mile described here.He also sponsored the first half of the 4th of July celebration.
Lt. Hall’s two unusual encounters with Al Williams are described here and here.
SP4 Orsini’s search for a competent typist is described here.
A guy named Roone was in charge of taking care of the grounds. I don’t think that he was an MP. Everyone called him Mr. Greenjeans. I hardly knew him, but I saw him almost every day.
A guy whose first name (or more likely nickname) was Rowdy was the animal control guy. He also was Doc Malloy’s doubles partner in tennis.
I am not sure that I ever knew the supply sergeant’s name, but he did me a big favor. I had noticed that a spare door with no handles had been gathering dust in the supply area in the basement. The supply sergeant was scheduled to ETS a few weeks after we arrived. On his last day as supply sergeant I asked him if I could have the door. He said “Take the m***** f*****.” I promptly carried it up to my room, and I laid it across two drawers that I had removed from my dresser and balanced on one edge. It made a perfect table for my stereo, books, and other items. The space in the dresser formerly occupied by the drawers was ideal for my records. Everyone was impressed.

Law Enforcement: Everything that I remember about the other three people in the Law Enforcement Office (Capt. Huppmann, Sgt. Edison, and SP4 Duffy) can be found here.

Other Platoons: I was good friends who were assigned to one of the other patrolling platoons. Craig Kolbitz³, from Racine, WI, might have been in the same platoon as Bob Willems. If I had to guess, I would put them both in the first platoon, the one that we ordinarily relieved. They were definitely not in the fourth platoon, whose rooms were on the second floor of our building.

Craig hung around and philosophized with the guys on our floor quite often. I don’t think that he played Wiffle Ball with us, but one time his hometown honey (Mary?) dropped by for a visit and watched one of our games. Afterwards Craig kept telling everyone how much she was taken with Bob Willems. I knew that this was baloney because my sidearm sinker was really working that day, and I was almost untouchable. To any girl’s eyes the rest of the guys would have merely been scenery while I was working my magic on the mound.

Doc Malloy⁴, who lived on the second floor of our wing of the MP barracks, the home of the fourth platoon, was one of the most amazing people I have ever met. His hair was MUCH longer than anyone else’s. He also had TWO jobs on the side. He was so good looking that he was able to find work as a model. He also gave tennis lessons. One of his clients, as I recall, was the wife of the base commander, General Nye!

I have no idea how he made these arrangements. We did not have telephones in the barracks, and, of course, there were no cell phones yet.

How, you may ask, did Doc get away with having long hair as an MP on a military base? The answer is “very carefully.” Doc had his hair cut so that the hair even with and below his ears was fairly short. The hair above his ears hung down and disguised this fact. When he got ready for duty he positioned his white MP hat on a chair upside down with the bill toward him. He then leaned over and with both hand stuffed his long hair into the hat. He then pressed the hair-filled hat onto his head. Sometimes a couple of attempts were required to perfect the look. On duty he NEVER took his hat off, which, as anyone who has been in the military can tell you, meant that he never went inside. Somehow he pulled it off, even after the Air Force took charge.

Doc represented the MP Company in the base tennis tournaments. He easily won the singles competition. The doubles was a little more difficult. Nobody in the company played at anything close to his level. He selected the animal control guy, Rowdy, as his partner because he seemed to be the best at taking instructions, and he had a passable serve. I think that they did win the doubles tournament. I remember that their basic strategy was for Rowdy to get out of the way after the first volley.

Doc’s ideas were two years before Pong!

Doc used to bug me to help him design a game based on tennis, ideally for a computer, but he was amenable to the idea of a board game. At the time I had taken exactly one programming class in a language that was used nowhere outside of Ann Arbor, and we had coded our programs on IBM cards! This was 1971: there were no video games, not even in arcades, and no personal computers. If I wrote something, it would need to be text-based with little back and forth. Playing against another person was inconceivable. Playing against a random number generator might be feasible, but how? Text-based terminals existed, but they were rare and expensive.

I had a fair amount experience at playing board games, but I had never designed one. I had no idea where to start. I was savvy enough to understand that ideas were a dime-a-dozen. Execution is key, and marketing trumps execution. This project was definitely not worth my time. I have often wondered if Doc ever did anything with his idea. Atari released Pong in 1973, but it was available only at arcades and fairs even then.

One other MP deserves a section of his own. Charlie Long⁵ was a legend when our group arrived at MPCO SBNM. Everyone already called him Crazy Charlie Long. He was a dyed-in-the-wiik Texan. My impression was that he was from a small town. He certainly was not from one of the big cities. A member of the fourth platoon, he lived on the second floor on the west wing of the barracks in one of the corner rooms near the parking lot. It was the only room in the whole barracks with a small balcony.

Charlie also had a temper. When he got upset, things tended to get broken. Disclaimer: I personally witnessed only the last of these incidents. So, please mentally insert the word “allegedly” somewhere in every sentence.

Don’t get on the wrong side of Roy or Charlie.

Charlie had a friend in the fourth platoon named Ewald (pronounced EE walled). I am not sure that I ever heard anyone call him by his first name. Ewald had a motorcycle. One day after the fourth platoon had worked the midnight shift, Ewald, who must have had the previous night off, decided to do some rather loud figure-eights on his motorcycle beneath Charlie’s window. After a few minutes of this Charlie emerged on the balcony, leapt over the railing, and wrestled Ewald off of his bike in the same manner that Roy Rogers used to wrestle bad guys off of their horses by leaping from a tree. I never learned the result of this scuffle, but I also never heard of anyone trying that stunt with a motorcycle again.

During slow periods while on patrol Charlie liked to use his .45 to hunt jackrabbits, which were not uncommon out in the undeveloped area in the southern part of the base. I don’t think that he ever hit one. If he did, there probably would not have been much left of it.

An MP truck that he was driving on patrol one day did not meet Charlie’s standards. He got out of the vehicle and punished it by firing several roundss from his pistol into its side. I don’t think that this fixed the problem.

Aside from the time that Al Williams accidentally discharged his .45 at guardmount (described here), I never heard of any other MP ever firing his weapon in the ten months that I was in Albuquerque. I don’t know if Charlie ever got caught; I don’t think so.

Early one morning when I was working the desk with two Air Force guys, Charlie, who had been working the previous shift, stormed into the PMO, loudly vocalized some expletives, and stomped up to the solid wood police desk, which stood at least five feet high. Suddenly Charlie grabbed the edge of the desk with both hands and bit a small chunk out of it. He then spit it out and abruptly departed. The three of us on the other side of the desk looked at one another and then broke out laughing. Maybe we should have detained him for destruction of government property, but it never occurred to us. I should have written “tried to detain him” in the previous sentence.

Although he was also in the notorious fourth platoon, Homer Sandridge⁶, a graduate of the University of Virginia, was the polar opposite of Crazy Charlie. He was very calm about life and fate. Homer and I had a few philosophical discussions the details of which have escaped me. We might have solved the “troubles” in Ireland or the dispute over Kashmir.

I played golf with Don Beeson and Terry Burnett. I also played a little bridge with Terry. The details are here.

Paul Calandra came to Albuquerque a month or more after we did. He was a major player in the July 4 incident. I did not know him well.

Sgt. Suarez, the platoon leader of the third platoon, was a dedicated lifer. He participated in good-natured kidding about the real soldiers as typified by himself and the movie Patton as opposed to the rest of us slackers and the much more popular (in MPCO SBNM) M*A*S*H. When Patton won the Oscar for best picture, he was in his glory.

Sgt. Suarez’s favorite MP was named Kramer. If I ever knew his first name, I have forgotten it. He gave more tickets than anyone, even Russ Eakle. He also missed more duty than anyone because a fairly high percentage of the people that he cited disputed his action in court.

Kramer, like Russ Eakle, longed for more action. One day something occurred that induced Kramer to engage someone in a vehicular chase. Kramer was not able to overtake the offending vehicle before it exited the main gate. Kramer kept up the pursuit on the streets of Albuquerque. I am not sure, but I think that the chase ended in an accident without injuries.

Kramer got in trouble for this. Our policy was never to exceed the speed limit for a chase, and we were NEVER allowed to leave the base in an MP vehicle. What made it worse was that Kramer did not have a civilian driver’s license, and the Albuquerque police officers were not impressed by his MP armband.

If I ever met Jim Jacobson, I don’t remember it. However, when he came across a mention of MPCO SBNM in one of my blog entries, he contacted me by email. I asked him when he had been stationed in Albuquerque and what he did. Here is what he replied: “I worked various security positions till early 1971. Then became a base escort working out of the PMO on Texas next to the MP Co. I worked under Sgt Lezuski (sp) until he was promoted to 1st Sgt of the MP Co under Capt Dean. July 1971 I was promoted to Sgt/E5 and was a patrol supv with AF Sgt Carson and under AF Sgt “Tilly”. Being married and living off base I didn’t get a chance to know new people other than on my flight. Nov 1971 discharged from the service.”

Other guys whom I have only fragmentary memories of:

There was a guy named Ayers who came from a southern state. I think that he lived off-base. He called himself General Ayers, and I like to joke around with him.
The other guys with whom I played golf are described here.
We tried to put together a flag football team to represent the company against other units. The chief organizer was a guy from Florida. We definitely had some practices. We may have even played a game or two before the merger of the bases put the kibosh on it.

1. I have no way to verify it, but I think that Charlie died in 2020, just as I was beginning this project. The obituary is here.

2. The Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996 and became the Ravens. The current Cleveland Browns team first took the field in 1999.

3. I found Craig Kolbitz on the Internet. In 2020 he lives in the Seattle area. He and his wife owned a couple of bars there. He went back to Racine recently to give a speech. It is on Youtube here. Craig came to visit Sue and me once in Rockville in the late seventies or early eighties.

4. Doc Malloy is now considered a legendary tennis instructor on Hilton Head Island. I located him on Facebook, where he has posted lots of photos of himself with nubile young women.

5. I found an obituary in 2020 for a Charlie Long of Kilgore (east of Dallas) TX. The age matches up and the face looks vaguely familiar. You can view it here and here. I have no way to verify whether or not this is Crazy Charlie, but I suspect that it is.

6. In 2020 Homer Sandridge is living in Arnold, MD. I think that he is into sailing.

1971 SBNM March-June Part 3: Activities

Posted on October 25, 2020 by Mike

Off-duty activities with my Army buddies. Continue reading →

Our free time was seldom boring at SBNM. There was always something interesting going on.

Golf: All military personnel could play at the SBNM Golf Course (now called Tijeras Arroyo Golf Course) for only $5 per month. The nine-hole course had just been opened to the military personnel when I arrived.

I never played at the base’s course, and no one whom I knew played there either. The reason was simple. The University of New Mexico Championship Course, which at the time was rated one of the one hundred best courses in America, allowed military personnel to play for the incredible bargain of $10 per month. None of us had much money, but we all thought that it was worth $5 per month to play on a really nice course.

It is easy to see in the diagram at the right that there are not many water hazards on the course. There are also very few trees. In the desert grass or, for that matter, weeds only grow if watered daily. The sprinkler system watered the fairways, the greens, and the rough on this course, but that still left a fair amount of territory between the fairways that the desert had reclaimed. The sand there was much coarser than the sand in the traps. If you just clipped the ball, you could play out of it. If you hit even a fraction of an inch behind the ball, the only certain result was that your clubs would get scratched up.

The biggest hazard of all was the wind. You had to play the wind on every shot. The best players were able to keep the ball low. One day the wind was blowing so hard that balls that had come to a stop on the green were subsequently blown off to the fringe.

Most days I played with either Don Beeson or Terry Burnett or both. I remember that Terry had a Volkswagen; I think that Don also had a car. Don hailed from the state of Washington. I think that Terry was from Ohio. Since they both were in other platoons, scheduling times to play was sometimes a little difficult.

Somehow I got recruited to play on the MP Company team in the SBNM golf league. Don, who was a much better player than I was, may have recruited me. The other two guys whom I remember were Sgt. Sanders, who was, I think, in the headquarters platoon, and a guy from Florida. Both were also better than I was.

Sanders was Black and a lifer. He was a very sociable guy who just loved to play golf in any weather. I think that both Don and the guy from Florida aspired to be professionals. Expectations for me were low. My role was basically to keep the company from forfeiting matches. The merger must have forced the league to be terminated prematurely. I only recall two or three matches. I don’t remember our record, but it could not have been very good. Many of our opponents were really good. I was usually overmatched.

My teammate from Florida had played on golf teams at school and in leagues. He knew a few tricks of gamesmanship that he explained to us. He reportedly once really threw an opponent off his game by mentioning to a teammate how a pro had really improved his grip by focusing on the placement of his right little finger—the only part of the body that has absolutely no role in a golf swing.

I tried to play as often as I could. In theory one could play every day when working shifts if you hurried out to the course at dawn for swing shifts and immediately after day shifts. I played a lot, but I could not keep up that pace. When I started working regular hours in the Law Enforcement Office, I could sometimes play nine holes on weekday evening in addition to any time on weekends.

I don’t recall that we ever called ahead for tee times. We did not have easy access to telephones. Neither do I ever recall anyone at the course ever being upset about us playing in groups of two or three either.

A highlight of many rounds of golf was the break after nine holes at the Lobo Grill. There was never a decision about what to order, but one needed to be ready to respond to the official state question of New Mexico, “Red of Green?”

Wiffle Ball: The other primary participation sport was Wiffle Ball. I don’t know who owned the bat and ball, but as soon as they were introduced, they were an immediate sensation.

The Wiffle Ball field was approximately the red rectangle in the image at left. MW designates where my room was. The buildings at the top did not exist in 1971. I don’t remember the building on the left or any of those trees either.

We used a tee shirt or something similar for home plate (lower left portion of the red rectangle) and first base. We played “pitcher’s hand” for ground balls. The pitches were slow. No one called balls and strikes, and it was not considered unmanly to “take” a pitch because it was too fast. There were no walks, hit batsmen, doubles, or triples, and there were very few home runs—fair ball fly balls beyond the field of play. Strikeouts—swinging strikes only—were also rare, but I got a few with my devilish sinker.

We usually played with one infielder and one or two outfielders. The most valuable defensive fielder, by far, was Tom Bedell. His skills at catching flies and grounders were only average, but he introduced the concept of infield chatter that elevated the play of his teammates. His vocalizations went well beyond the “Hey, batter, batter” that I remembered from 3&2 baseball. He got everyone chattering when he called out “How about some hustle out there? Let’s see some of that old aratchadagga.” I am not sure how may English words were represented by that last collection of sounds.

Of course, the wind was always a factor. If it was out of the east, it could easily scoop up a potential home run in right field and deposit it on the foul side of third base. Any fly ball that was caught was considered a great victory.

Unfortunately, the game eventually met a fate reminiscent of what befell the Arnold Palmer Indoor Golf Game in Allen Rumsey House. One guy from another platoon was just too good. Batting left handed, he hit a home run to right field almost every time that he came to bat. He even hit homers off of my sinker, which indicated that 1) he was digging pitches out of the dirt; and 2) the bat was striking the side of the ball that was half-filled with holes. I honestly don’t know how he did it.

Off-Base: If someone with a car was trying to get a group together to go to an event, I was usually up for it. The most memorable of these outings was the evening of Friday, June 11. Four or five of us got tickets for a concert at the Albuquerque Civic Auditorium featuring two British groups, Mott the Hoople and Jethro Tull. These are my recollections. I might have some details wrong.

I am not sure who comprised our group. I am almost certain that Tom Bedell was there, and I expect that at least two of Tom Brachna, Bob Willems, and Al Williams came. If so, then we were all at least 21, which made us older than most of the others in attendance. We also had military haircuts and no females with us. Anyone would have immediately guessed that we were from the base.

There was open seating. We brought a blanket and sat on the floor. We were not within ear-blasting range of the speakers, but we had a good view of the stage.

Tremendous applause greeted Mott the Hoople when the five of them appeared. I had never heard of them, but they evidently had an enthusiastic following. After they had warmed up for a few minutes, the lights were extinguished in favor of a few spotlights. Aiding the illumination were hundreds of small orange dots throughout the auditorium. These were supplied by attendees who had been waiting for a little privacy to light their joints.

I didn’t rate M the H’s performance very highly, but a large portion of the crowd was really into it. At the end most of the people were on their feet applauding in appreciation.

There was a delay of quite a few minutes while Jethro Tull got set up. I really liked the song “Aqualung”, which had been released in May. I had bought the album of the same name and listened to it often. I did not realize at the time that Jethro Tull actually consisted of Ian Anderson and whoever was with him at the time. I think that the group that we saw included Martin Barre, John Evan, Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond, and Barriemore Barlow.

I thought that Tull’s portion of the concert was by far the best that I had ever attended. I especially appreciated Evan, the keyboard player. With Anderson’s flute and Evan’s piano, the sound seemed much richer than most rock bands produced. My favorite number was “Wind-up”, which they played both in the middle and at the end.

For me the strangest thing was that the reception to J T’s performance was much less enthusiastic than the ovation that M the H received. I also noticed a lot fewer orange dots in the auditorium. When the lights came back on, the explanation was a little clearer. Many of the stoners who came for M the H had fallen asleep.

The gimmick was that you could see through the ghost where her bikini should have been.

I remember the evening that a bunch of us went to the local drive-in for a double feature, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini and Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine. Vincent Price’s portrayal of Dr. Goldfoot did not earn him any accolades, but Goldfoot was a much better movie than Ghost. We had a good time goofing on both flicks.

Al Williams and I went to watch two athletic contests. Both were beyond the end date of this entry, but it seemed silly to make a separate entry for them. Neither involved the Air Force at all.

The first was a high school football game at what was, I think, the only stadium in the city with lights. I don’t remember which teams were playing, but one of them had a Black running back (of which there were not a lot in the Land of Enchantment in 1971) who was shredding the rushing records in New Mexico. I don’t remember his name, but he had even been featured in an item in Sports Illustrated.

He ran over, around, and through the opposition in this game, too, easily reaching the 200-yard mark. However, high school in New Mexico does not have the reputation for producing athletes who achieve greatness at the college and pro level. A few years later, when I still remembered his name, I searched for any mention of this runner. I could find none.

On Thursday, December 23, I rode with A.J. Williams in his Toyota to “the Pit” to watch the finals of the Lobo Classic basketball tournament. The Lobos played St. John’s. It was fun to watch as a disinterested observer; it was not decided until the very end.

I am no expert, but it appeared to me that UNM had better athletes, and they certainly had the home court advantage. Nevertheless, the Redmen prevailed 95-92. Before I researched the game, I would have bet any amount of money that Lou Carnesecca had coached St. John’s that night. In fact, Frank Mulzoff coached the winners. Carnesecca was coaching the New York (now Brooklyn) Nets that year, but he returned to St. John’s in 1973. The St. John’s team that we saw later made it to the semifinals of the NIT.

Al and I also made one wardrobe-enhancing trip. We went to a store in Albuquerque that specialized in cowboy boots. I purchased a rather plain brown pair with squared toes. I wore them whenever I was off-duty. They also lasted me through five or six years of civilian life.

Al had more difficulty finding a pair. He had small feet with extremely high arches. I don’t think that he was able to get his foot into any that he liked. For the first (and only) time in my life someone was envious of my flat feet and narrow heels.

I seem to recall that some guys took a couple of days of leave and drove to the Grand Canyon. I regretted that I decided not to go.

Grub: The meals in the mess hall were actually pretty good. About once a month the mess hall featured tacos at lunch. This was a big attraction.

I don’t remember anyone complaining very much about the food in the mess hall. Still, ours was a group of healthy young men; many of them had a proverbial hollow leg. Some may have had two.

Almost everyone kept something in his room to snack on. The commissary and BX had a wide assortment to choose from. My favorite was an obscure offering called Chicken in a Biscuit. I liked the taste well enough, but I think that the big attraction was the low price.

This Pop ‘n’ Taco in Albuquerque looks very familiar. I think that we went there in 1971.

A.J. Williams often organized late evening runs for tacos. The destination was always Pup ‘n’ Taco, where the tacos cost only $.18 each. I would usually order four or five of them; some guys ordered more than that. I cannot explain why they tasted so good; there are not a lot of ingredients, but they really knew how to assemble them.

I discovered that Albuquerque was the only place outside of California that had Pup ‘n’ Taco restaurants. Taco Bell, whose tacos are certainly adequate, purchased most of the Pup ‘n’ Taco franchises in 1984. Three locations in Albuquerque that the Bell did not want changed their name to Pop ‘n’ Taco and operated for up to three decades. I am sad to say that even those are now closed.

It is hard to believe, but a restaurant named Pancho’s Mexican Buffet provided an endless supply of Mexican food for only $1.25. They did not serve water, and beverages were extra. You filled up your plate the first time by going through a buffet line. If you wanted more, you raised a little Mexican flag at your table, a waitress (I am pretty sure that all the servers were female) came to your table, took each person’s order, and promptly brought them all to your table.

One day some guys in the second platoon decided to test the concept. Four or five of us skipped lunch. That evening we rode in someone’s car to the nearest Pancho’s for supper. We all went through the buffet line, being careful to select as few carbohydrates as possible, and we all used the little flag on the table to order seconds. Some guys got thirds. Everyone had to order at least two iced teas. We all had a great time, confident that Pancho’s made no profit on us.

I remember waking up at about two o’clock in the morning in rather urgent need of a trip to the latrine (bathroom to you). I arrived to find that I had to wait. All of my dining companions were already there. The next morning we all agreed that the joyful experience of supreme Mexican bloating was enough to outweigh a little discomfort in the middle of the night. However, no one ever organized another trip to Pancho’s.

I made more than a dozen business trips to Houston in the late nineties and early twenty-first century. I often passed by a Pancho’s. I was on an expense account, and I could get absolutely delicious Tacos al Carbon at restaurants that were more convenient. I never went to Pancho’s, but I was happy to see that that unique dining experienced had survived.

Unfortunately, the corporate offices shut down all corporation-owned Pancho’s in 2012 and removed all traces of the company’s existence. By 2017 some independently owned franchises in Houston had either closed entirely or converted to Cuban Cafes. I think that there are still some independents open for business, but I don’t know how closely they resemble the originals. I am pretty sure that none remain in Albuquerque. The one that we patronized on San Mateo Blvd. definitely closed in 2017. Unless it drastically changed its approach, I doubt that, that it could have survived the pandemic.

So, if you are looking for cheap and/or delicious tacos in Albuquerque, you are on your own.

Movies: I seem to recall a group of us going to a movie or two in town, but I don’t remember any details. We might have attended a Marx Brothers festival. I think that there was an “art theater” near UNM.

We went to the base theater many times. I even went by myself at least once. It only cost $.35. How could you go wrong?

I have pretty vivid memories of two movies that we saw at the Sandia Base theater. In both cases our little group of white guys in the military was a distinct minority.

The first was The Wizard of Oz. The majority of the audience was children, most of whom had never seen the movie. They may not have even been familiar with it. It might have been a scary experience for them; those flying monkeys certainly scared me the first few times that I saw the film. Some of those kids might have fallen in love with Dorothy or with the music. Some might have thought that the special effects, which in 1971 were already 32 years out-of-date, were inadequate to the task. A few might have just thought that the whole thing was silly.

Everyone in our group, on the other hand, had seen it at least four or five times. We came for the perfections—the perfect casting, the perfect music, the unbelievable aggregation of small people who each performed perfectly. We also came to goof on the imperfections—the lion’s tail, the wrong shoes, the rope that came loose from the balloon, and everything else. I am almost positive that we enjoyed the movie more than any of the kids. I did not notice any of them imitating the scarecrow’s stumbling walk on the way home.

The Wizard of Oz is one of my two favorite movies of all time, and it is best enjoyed in a theater. There is nothing that I would change about it.¹ I even agree with the decision to cut Ray Bolger’s incredible dance. It would be nice to have the last verse of “If I only had a brain”, but the plot had no used for a flying scarecrow.²

The other striking movie was Little Big Man. What an experience this was! Imagine watching a western film in a theater in which the Indians in the audience outnumbered the white people by a considerable amount. It wasn’t so much that this movie was enjoyable. The massacres were too disgusting for that. Viewing it in this setting was, however, a real eye-opening experience. Also, Old Lodge Skins beautifully delivered one of the all-time great lines: “Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

Real cardinals always wear galeri.

There were not many parties. I remember that Tom Bedell and I went over to Jim Anderson’s house one evening. There must have been someone else, too. I don’t think that Tom had access to a car.

In preparation for our arrival. Jim and his wife had filled their bathtub with cans of (if memory serves) Budweiser and ice cubes. I had at most one can. Tom taught everyone a drinking game called Cardinal Puff. I contacted him by email a few years ago to get the precise rules. He could not remember them. The only thing that I remember is the phrase “Once a cardinal, always a cardinal.” One version of the entire litany is described here.

A bunch of us went to a bar a couple of times. I remember that Tom Brachna caught me looking at a waitress’s legs. I was embarrassed.

Bridge: I asked around a lot, but the only person in MPCO SBNM who would admit to me that he played bridge was Terry Burnett. One evening Terry and I were partners at the ANAF Club’s weekly game. They had a handful of tables, but they did not use duplicate scoring. We played for a few minutes at one table and then moved to the other. The winner was the team with the most total points.

This method of scoring makes for a horrible game. If you don’t get the cards, it is almost impossible to win. Also, if someone at any table gets great cards, there is not much that you can do. We only played once.

“I’m just a dandy lion.”

1. On second thought I judge that both the lyrics and the gestures in the lion’s song could use some work. The “sissy” and “dandy lion” references are no longer considered acceptable usage, and the limp wrist gesture also seems out of place. Furthermore, what the heck does “clever as a gizzard” mean?

2. The deleted footage can be viewed here.

1971 SBNM March-June Part 2: Law Enforcement

Posted on October 21, 2020 by Mike

My stint as a clerk-typist and combat duty in the New Mexican War. Continue reading →

Life was quite different when I started working in the Law Enforcement Office on SBNM. I cannot remember the date, probably in April or early May. It was a standard 9-5 job with weekends off. We all wore the summer dress uniform of a khaki-colored shirt and trousers. I wore black dress shoes instead of boots. I left the nightstick, holster, white hat, and MP armband in my room. Essentially I was now a clerk-typist. I filled out forms and reports for the higher-ups, I occasionally typed a letter for one of my bosses, and I sometimes cleaned up reports submitted by the desk clerks.

In some ways my new assignment was a demotion. On the police desk Sgt. Bailey left some decisions up to me. Policemen on television are often depicted as disgruntled during such “restricted duty”. I, on the other hand, was happy to erect some pretty clear boundaries on my remaining active-duty time in the military. Besides, I never wanted to be a cop. I was still in law enforcement, but only on the back end.

For me the biggest adjustment was in my golfing schedule. In my new job I could play on weekends if I could find someone with transportation to play with. I could also play at least nine holes in the evening with someone working days or mids, but they might want to start earlier in order to play eighteen. In short, I played a lot less.

Furthermore, when my platoon was working swings, there were three-day periods when I could not hang out with and dine with my friends in the evenings. By this time, however, I knew quite a few people in other platoons. Several of the guys on the second floor of the west wing, which I think housed the fourth platoon, spent as much of their free time with us as they did with the guys with whom they worked.

Another disadvantage was the elimination of hours of free time on the midnight shift. I always brought a book with me, and I usually could get in several hours of reading. I had become one of the base library’s biggest customers.

The disadvantages were more than counterbalanced by the fact that I was able to adopt a regular sleeping schedule. This alone improved my mood immensely. Furthermore, I have never had difficulty keeping myself entertained.

One other huge advantage only became evident after the Air Force took over in July.

Three people were working in the Law Enforcement Office when I arrived. The boss was Captain Huppmann. He was fairly young, perhaps 30, and very enthusiastic. I think that he made all the decisions concerning law enforcement on the base. The base commander, Major General Nye¹ (Air Force), did not seem to involve himself in the day-to-day police operations. Perhaps he was busy making plans for the merger that was already in the works.

Although Capt. Huppmann was not a bit shy about bringing questions and work directly to the clerks, Sgt. Edison, whose rank was Sergeant First Class (E7), was usually our direct contact. I am not sure to what extent he influenced policy. My impression was that it was very little.

The other clerk was named Duffy. I don’t remember his first name. Rank for us was irrelevant, but I think that he was an SP4 when I arrived. He had enlisted, which meant that he faced three years of active duty. He entered the Army before I did, but I would get out a lot sooner. He was not an MP; his MOS was clerk-typist. He was a bachelor who lived in the headquarters platoon area. He was from Quincy, MA. I liked him a lot. He was competent and easy to work with.

Duffy and I seldom had social conversations with either Capt. Huppmann or Sgt. Edison. For us it was strictly “Yes, sir’ and “No, sir” (or sergeant) when they were around. They both had separate offices and lived off-base. I never wondered whether they were single or married.

Capt. Huppmann was too enthusiastic about his job to be popular with the guys in the patrolling platoons. Most of them considered him a lifer and, therefore, inimical. I don’t remember him doing anything malicious or stupid.

One time the captain came to the clerks’ area to complain about a call with which he had to deal. It was from a wife of an NCO who lived in the suburban-style housing on the base. She claimed that MP patrols circled around her neighborhood checking out the women who were sunbathing in their yards. Capt. Huppmann thought that the woman’s position was ridiculous and refused to reprimand the MPs. I must admit (here, not to Capt. Huppmann) that I had engaged in this practice before I was transferred to the Law Enforcement Office.

My only clear memory of Sgt. Edison was the time that he came into our area to talk with Duffy and me about something that was bothering him. He ventured the opinion that at least two MPs were using drugs. Duffy and I made neutral responses that neither confirmed nor denied what he said.

After Sarge left our work area, Duffy and I looked at each other, rolled our eyes, and smirked. Everyone who lived in the MP barracks knew that at least half of the guys smoked marijuana regularly. You could smell it in any hallway. I don’t know about other drugs, but a guy whose name escapes me once got so stoned that he shaved his head. This was before Michael Jordan made it cool; the Army actually prohibited the practice.

The University of New Mexico campus was a short drive from the base, and all kinds of drugs were prevalent there. I don’t know much about the guys who lived off-base, but one of them, Randy Hjelm, was in the second platoon with me. He had obviously been stoned every time he reported for duty. Sgt. Bailey could not send him to deal with of anything important.

$.90 at the BX at SBNM in 1971.

I don’t remember much about Duffy. He was younger than I was; he probably enlisted shortly after finishing high schools. I liked working with him, but we did not hang out together. He told me once that he purchased a six-pack of Lone Star after work every Friday. I don’t know how he spent Saturdays and Sundays.

The New Mexican War

For some reason most history textbooks have neglected the New Mexican War. Yes, there was another war going on at the same time. Most of our troops and all of our modern weapons were employed in Vietnam. Yes, the soldiers there were forced to wade through disgusting rice paddies to confront an almost invisible enemy.

Nevertheless, the two pitched battles of the New Mexican War of 1971 deserve more attention, if only for the way that they shaped the values of the valiant men of MPCO SBNM. Furthermore the enemy had dared to trespass on property of ~~Sandia Laboratories~~ the United States government.

The Siege of Sandia Base: Wednesday May 4, 1971, was a typical Albuquerque day—warm, cloudless, and dry with a noticeable wind. I was typing something when someone—I don’t remember who—came breathlessly to the Law Enforcement Office and ordered me to draw a weapon and report to the Day Room. Since the person had a clipboard and had checked my name, I had no choice. I stopped by my room to get my holster, my white hat, and my MP armband. I found a few pieces of notebook paper to attach to my own clipboard. I then joined the rest of my platoon and a bunch of other MPs in the Day Room.

A couple of truckloads of MPs were soon transported to the battlefield. When the trucks stopped, we could see that almost two dozen peace-crazed Ghandiists had taken a stand (actually a sit) across a busy street near Sandia Laboratories. Traffic was at a standstill in both directions. The effect was the same as if a huge bomb had exploded in the middle of the street, except that there was no damage at all, and chanting replaced the deafening boom.

The lifers had somehow determined which of them was in charge. That person ordered us to pick up the protesters and to put them in trucks. I don’t remember who gave the order; a soldier in the heat of battle does not concentrate on who gave orders, only on how best to implement them.

As others rushed to pick up and carry away the limp protestors, I, one of the few MPs not wearing fatigues, walked around and checked imaginary notes on my clipboard. I never touched any of the protestors, but I had the same thought as most of the rest of the MPs: “Those guys look a lot like me twelve months ago, and some of them smell like the MP barracks.” Within a few minutes the protestors were loaded in the truck, and the motorists, most of whom were employees of Sandia Labs, continued about their business.

The demonstration was covered on the front page of both the Albuquerque Journal and the Lobo, the University of New Mexico’s newspaper. The latter is available online here. The article in the Journal was very favorable. It cited a few protestors who affimed that they had been treated with dignity and respect by the MPs. They also said that the guys from the Albuquerque Police Department had been a lot rougher with them.

The brass was very pleased with this outcome. A letter of commendation was written for everyone involved, including me and my clipboard. I got to read the letter when the Army let me carry my own personnel folder to my next duty assignment.

It may seem strange that the MPs turned over the protestors to the APD. SBNM had no facilities at all for detaining people. Kirtland AFB had a jail, but it could not have accommodated so many prisoners. Someone must have made arrangements for the transfer. I don’t know the legalities involved. The event occurred on federally owned land, but the whole base is within the city limits.

The Second Battle of Albuquerque: The first battle of Albuquerque occurred in 1970. It is not considered part of the New Mexican War because the enemy in that skirmish was a bunch of students, and students at colleges nearly everywhere revolted in 1970. The National Guard effectively ended that rebellion by gunning down four of them and injured nine others at Kent State while taking no casualties.

The situation in 1971 was much different. It took place in the 60 percent of Albuquerque that is not SBNM. It was described by Aaron G. Fountain this way:

On June 13, 1971, rioting broke out at Roosevelt Park after police attempted to arrest a young man standing in a crowd of several hundred rowdy youth. A small scuffle escalated into a brawl leading officers to fire upon the crowd, wounding at least nine people. Outraged, nearly 500 youth moved into the downtown area where they overturned cars, shattered windows, looted and severely damaged and destroyed buildings. Police attacked rock- and bottle-throwing protesters with tear gas but were overwhelmed. The New Mexico National Guardsmen came into the city to assist officers. After two days of rioting, the city tallied over $3 million in damages. Shocked by the level of carnage, one journalist of the Albuquerque Journal wrote, “It was something you’d think couldn’t happen in Albuquerque, but it did.”²

Despite the sterling record of MPCO SBNM in breaking the siege in May, the APD did not solicit support from our battle-hardened unit. I know for a fact that our officers were closely following the situation and stood ready to aid them. My buddy Al Williams attended an Albuquerque Dodgers game that day. Lt. Hall also was there. When the two met at the refreshment stand, Lt. Hall assured A.J. that “If it gets too bad, we can probably see the smoke from here.”

Google maps shows that even in 2020 the suburbs on the base (bottom) are separated from the Albuquerque residents (top) by only a few hundred feet of scrub land.

In fact, that evening (or at least one evening in that era) a decision was made to deploy troops around the northern perimeter of the base (the Albuquerque side) to serve as a first line of defense in case the insurgents decided to bring the battle to us again. The main gate was closed, and someone went through the barracks ordering off-duty troops to report in uniform to the Day Room. These guys were then armed with rifles³ or .45 pistols and deployed around the perimeter, mostly in suburban SBNM backyards that were separated from suburban Albuquerque back yards by two or three hundred feet of undeveloped land.

An hour or two later the situation evidently calmed down. Trucks were dispatched to pick up the sentries. They missed one guy, who had to walk back to the PMO the next morning after a long cold night guarding someone’s back yard.

I did not participate in this maneuver. I was alone in my room when someone knocked loudly at the door and announced the deployment. I said nothing, turned off the overhead light, and exited through the window. I then ambled over to the base’s theater and paid $.35 to watch a movie the name and contents of which I do not remember.

1. General Nye died in 2019 at the age of 100. So, he would have been around 52 in 1971.

2. This article is from the Latino USA website. It is posted here.

3. The MP Company had no M-16’s. The only rifles in the armory were World War II-era M-1’s that were used for ceremonial purposes such as firing 21-gun salutes at military funerals. Only a few guys had ever fired one.

1971 SBNM March-June Part 1: Police Duty

Posted on October 18, 2020 by Mike

Police work for the Army at SBNM. Continue reading →

I don’t recall much about my first couple of weeks patrolling the base and standing guard duty alongside the other members of the second platoon. I remember that whenever I had to stand guard duty I listened to an FM station on the radio that I had purchased. The good reception was another unexpected benefit of being so close to a major city. When I was at the main gate I made up license numbers to record in the log that no one ever examined. The other two gates got much less traffic. I don’t think that we bothered with logs. The gates may have been locked at night.

The east gate is now called the Eubank Gate. The area around it still looks undeveloped.

Almost no one entered or exited through the east gate for the simple reason that there was nothing beyond the east gate except the scrub land that the natives called (mistakenly, according to Webster) “mesa”. If someone approached from the west you could see them coming when they were still several minutes away.

I have retained a couple of memories of being on patrol with more experienced guys. Once I remarked to my partner that I was disappointed that I had not seen a roadrunner. He quickly responded, “There’s one, and there’s one on the other side of the road.”

As a cartoon aficionado I naturally expected roadrunners to be about the same size as coyotes. They are actually are only about eighteen inches from tail to beak, and a very skinny tail takes up a good portion of that. Furthermore, the ones that hung around our base never had much need to demonstrate their speed.

One guy in our platoon was really short. He was a big Black guy from KC who was scheduled to ETS a few weeks after we arrived. He had already decided to reup, and he requested an assignment in Vietnam. He had already completed one tour there, and he told me that he knew how to make a lot of money there selling drugs. I would say that there was at least a 50-50 chance that he was putting me on, maybe even baiting me. I don’t know why he would have confided to a complete stranger a plan for illegal activity.

He was the only guy in the barracks who had a television in his room. I asked him where he got it. He told me the name of a discount department store near the base. He showed me a clipboard that he had. He claimed that he walked into the store, checked the packing slip on a box for a TV against a piece of paper on his clipboard, picked up the box, put it confidently on his shoulder, and walked out. Once again 50-50, but the clipboard idea could have other applications. I bought one at the BX.

The only other thing that I remember about him is that he really liked Sly and the Family Stone.

“Fix that gig line, soldier.”

The guys that guarded the gates and patrolled the base wore OD fatigues, but the trousers were starched, pressed, and bloused below the knees. The boots and belt buckle had to be polished. In Basic they had made us remove the plastic coating on the brass belt buckle. At SBNM most guys bought a new belt and left the coating on to prevent tarnishing. Some guys even bought patent-leather boots to eliminate the need for shining. They also wore their holsters, armbands, and white MP hats. Indoors the hats were ALWAYS removed. If it was cold, they wore gloves and field jackets. Hands were NEVER allowed in pockets. Of course, if no one was looking, …

I vividly recall one midnight shift that Russ Eakle and I were parked in one of his favorite hiding places near the Officers Club. He had already given a couple of citations for rolling through the stop sign at the end of the club’s driveway. The club was a good distance from any activity. There was seldom any traffic in either direction, and if there had been, the headlights would have been visible a mile away—literally.

Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!

Russ returned to the truck in a bad mood. He said that the officers whom he had ticketed had complained that it was petty for him to issue a ticket. “They should show respect for the badge,” said Russ I made some semi-commiserating noises without mentioning the fact that we did not have badges, just armbands. We then resumed our position again in anticipation of more vehicular crimes. Soon an erratically driven vehicle appeared. The driver was a naval officer with salad on his epaulets. Sitting in the passenger seat was a much younger woman. The car hardly slowed for the stop sign.

Russ turned on the siren and the cherry-top and pulled the vehicle over. He got out of the truck and did his Duke-walk toward the offending vehicle. Russ conversed with the driver for about ten minutes. When he returned to our truck I asked him what he charged the guy with. He said that he let him off with a warning because he had been very polite and respectful.

Try this: “Yes, sir. No, sir. Have you been working out, sir?”

I am quite sure that he was polite and respectful. He was probably afraid that he was going to be written up for driving under the influence, and the police report would probably include the name of the passenger. DUI is a serious offense. Even a ticket for rolling through a stop sign might cause him trouble with his superiors, and he might have a lot of explaining to do to his wife as well.

Russ never did get it. His approach punished people for trivial offenses and allowed those guilty of more serious things to grovel their way out of it. It disgusted me.

I really hated being on patrol, especially with Russ. I did not see how if I could put up with it for the 19+ months that I had left in my hitch. Fortunately I did not need to.

The slide on top is back.

Before we went on duty for the swing shift we lined up in the courtyard behind the PMO for a “guardmount”, an inspection by an officer. Part of the routine was to make sure that nobody’s .45 was already loaded before the clip was inserted. One at a time we would draw our .45 and pull back the slide on the top. The officer would then look inside from the top to make sure there was no bullet in the chamber. He then said “Clear!”, and the guy with the .45 would pull the trigger to return the slide to the forward position.

One time Lt. Hall, second-in-command of the MP Company, was inspecting our patrol. When he had finished examining Al Williams’ pistol, he shouted “Clear!” Al pulled the trigger and his .45 fired. The bullet actually shot the hat off of Lt. Hall’s head! It was mostly the lieutenant’s fault; he apparently didn’t bother to look in A.J.’s .45 very carefully. We all just pretended that nothing happened.

Manzano Base was mostly located underground beneath the mountains in the lower right. Below the mountains is a mileage indicator. The arrow in the top left indicates the main part of SBNM.

One time I was assigned to spend a midnight shift on guard duty at Manzano Base. This assignment was peculiar in two ways. 1) Several miles from anything resembling civilization, it was by far the most desolate and boring assignment. The visible part of the base was surrounded by two high fences, one of which was electrified. By the time that the midnight shift started, no one else was in the facility; at least that was the case on the night that I was there. 2) The entire base was top secret. No one seemed to know what went on there. A top secret clearance was required for the guard that MPCO SBNM supplied at night. The thing was, my clearance had not arrived yet.

The duty itself was not very memorable. In fact, nothing at all happened other than intermittent buzzing sounds from the base. To stay awake I took a few walks around the perimeter of the parking lot gazing at the starlit sky and singing cowboy songs at the top of my voice: “Some boys they go ridin’ the trails just for pleasure …”

I was disappointed that no coyotes joined me. There were lots of roadrunners around here; there must be coyotes, right?

After the shift I went to the mess hall for breakfast. I bought an Albuquerque Journal. On the front page was a story about Manzano Base. It emphasized the secretive nature of the base and the ironclad security. I considered writing a letter to the editor explaining how the reporter had missed his chance because during the night that that issue of the paper went to press Manzano had been guarded by a guy with no clearance at all. I thought better of it.

A group of us was somehow chosen to make a road trip to Santa Fe, the capital and cultural center—it has an opera company!—of New Mexico. A military funeral was being held there, and MPCO SBNM was assigned the task of providing a three-volley salute. This was a very popular duty because it offered a rare opportunity to get off the base, have a free meal at a restaurant, and see a little of Santa Fe. I don’t remember who else was in this group of eight—seven enlisted men to shoot the rifles and a sergeant to tell us when to fire. I am pretty sure that we all wore our regular fatigue uniforms with our MP armbands and white hats.

We took a van. The drive to Santa Fe was a little over sixty miles. During the first half the Sandia mountains were on the right, and the usual desert scenery was on the left. In the second half we began the climb to Santa Fe, which is 7,199 feet above sea level.

General Patton called the M1 Garand “the greatest battle implement ever devised.” Ours probably just needed cleaning.

On the way the sergeant warned us about the M1 rifles, relics from World War II. Because none of us had even seen one of them before, he had to explain how to make them work.

Evidently they were not very reliable. He said that we should not be surprised if the weapon we were holding did not fire. We should just continue with the ceremony. As long as a few of them worked, no one would know the difference.

We arrived at the cemetery only a few minutes before the start of the ceremony. We all lined up a couple of feet apart. The sergeant called the command to take aim. We pointed the rifles into the air at a 45° angle. When he yelled “Fire”, we all pulled our triggers. Four or five rifles worked, including mine. The M1 had a little more kick than an M16. On the second command, only two or three worked. Mine still functioned. The last volley consisted of only one actual shot. It was tempting for the rest of us to yell out “Bang”, but no one did.

We were all very embarrassed. We had no intention of making a mockery of the poor guy’s funeral. We hurried to our van and made a quick getaway. We did not start laughing until we were far enough away that no one could see us.

The only thing that I remember about our lunch on the road was that we all enjoyed it.

My metabolism was not designed for shift work. I had only pulled one all-nighter in four years of college, and that was when a bunch of us were working on the dorm’s homecoming float. I really need at least four or five hours of sleep per night, and it must be at night. By the second night of every midnight shift I was a zombie.

I remember an unfortunate incident at breakfast at the mess hall, which was serve cafeteria-style. They gave me the plate with my omelet, and I placed it on my tray. Then I pushed my tray down to the end and right off onto the floor. I just forgot to grab the other end with my right hand.

On the walk from my room to the PMO on another day I noticed a piece of paper on the bulletin board near the MP Company’s clerical office. It asked if there was anyone in the company who knew how to type. In those days typing was an uncommon skill among guys. Why should they learn how to type? The secretarial pool did that kind of thing. As I recounted here, however, I had taught myself to type in high school, and I was actually pretty proficient at it.

I sought out to the clerk, whose name was Orsini², and informed him that I knew how to type. He was pleased to hear it and arranged for me to take a typing test the next day.

I was confident that I could handle a job in the military that required typing skills. However, I had never taken a typing test. I was not sure how it would be graded, and I was somewhat worried about a bad habit that I had developed. Typing books prescribe that the thumb should be used to press the space bar. I have always used my right forefinger.

Since I did not bring my typewriter to Albuquerque, I could not practice using my thumb on the space bar. Besides, you can type much faster and more accurately if you pay no attention to what your fingers are doing. A separate part of your brain knows where all the keys are. The best idea is to depend on it. So, I boldly resolved take the test using my usual deviant approach and forget about my thumb.

SP4 Orsini sat me down at a typewriter³ that had some paper already loaded in it. On my left side he placed a sheet of paper that had a few paragraphs of text on it. “Aha”, I thought, “I know this trick.” I moved the paper to my right side, glanced down to make sure that my fingers were properly placed, and typed the first couple of lines. I went at a pretty good clip, and I had not made any mistakes when …

Orsini stopped me. “Thanks” he said. “That’s enough.’ The next day I was told that instead of going on patrol or gate duty, I was to report to Lorenzo Bailey, the Desk Sergeant for the second platoon. Evidently Orsini just wanted to make sure that I did not “hunt and peck”.

My new assignment involved a slightly different uniform. I did not carry a nightstick. The holster for my .45 was attached to a webbed belt. During all of the time that I worked on the desk I never inserted the clip in the pistol. I always kept it in my pocket. No one ever noticed that the handle was empty, or, if they did, they did not care.

The desk sergeant and his assistant(s) used the police radio to dispatch patrols to whatever required attention. Since Sgt. Bailey did not type, the assistant(s) were required to type up incident reports as well as the log of all activity for the shift. Sgt. Bailey’s assistant was Randy Kennedy, who had just been promoted to sergeant himself. Bailey (no one ever called him Lorenzo) needed another assistant because Randy was scheduled to ETS (leave the military) in a short time.

For the guys on the desk the three shifts were quite different. The day shift was almost always busy. Some civilian employees assisted us on patrol, but they were not easy to work with. They were all Mexican-Americans; several were named Gallegos, apparently relatives. They always drove the black and white sedans; they never touched the trucks. They could patrol, but we could hardly use them for anything else. I don’t think that they ever relieved anyone at a gate or escorted a “run” from the commissary or BX to the bank. We never sent them on anything that might require judgment, such as a reported crime or a traffic accident.

We had to let everyone have time for lunch. The most challenging aspect was to make sure that there was sufficient coverage during that period.

The swing shift had two busy times. There was a lot of vehicle traffic when the people from Sandia Laboratories went home between 5 and 6. Later there could be incidents at the two bars, the Officers Club and the NCO Club. Domestic disputes, everyone’s least favorite, could occur near the end of the shift.

Usually we only had two people on the desk for the midnight shifts.

The most challenging was when the ‘Officer of the Day” decided to make a nuisance of himself. At night, when the Base Commander was not readily available, an Officer of the Day was in charge of the base. This assignment rotated around all of the unmarried field-grade officers on the base—Army, Navy, and Air Force.

Most officers dreaded this duty, but one guy relished it, a naval officer named, believe it or not, Lieutenant Commander Commander. Yes, Commander was both his title and his last name; I don’t know if Commander was also his first name. However, I do know that both major (in the Army, Air Force, and Marines) and lieutenant commander (in the Navy and Coast Guard) have the same pay-grade, O-4. So, our Commander Commander had the same rank as Bob Newhart’s Major Major.

Commander Commander liked to inspect the gates. He would call the PMO and ask us to send a car to pick him up. This was the last thing that we wanted. Our most responsible guys were seldom assigned to gate duty, and it was best not to think about what amusements the other guys had brought with them to help kill time.

The second time that Commander Commander did this on our shift, we were ready for him. We sent Charlie Antonelli⁴ to escort him. Charlie was the shakiest person I have ever met. He was nervous about everything. He always was dressed and ready for duty more than a half hour early. He would then walk up and down the hall asking people if his gig line was straight and his boots were shiny enough. He was always concerned about any of the dozens of rumors that were circulating, and he constantly sought other people’s opinions about them. Charlie was a nice guy, but it did not take long for this to become annoying.

One other important fact needs emphasis. Charlie’s shakiness contributed to his standing as—by far—the worst driver in the platoon, probably the company, and maybe the whole base. Charlie was never allowed to drive a police vehicle. We always found a partner for him, and the partner always drove.

When we got the call from Commander Commander, we sent Charlie to pick up him up. I don’t remember how we got rid of Charlie’s partner. Maybe we claimed that we had a “special project” for him.

Charlie picked up Commander Commander at the Bachelor Officers Quarters (BOQ), which is where he was staying. Charlie called in on the radio and said that he was en route to the main gate with Commander. About fifteen minutes later Charlie drove his vehicle to the PMO, parked, and came inside. He told us that Commander Commander had told him to pull over to the side of the road. He said that he would walk back to the BOQ. They never even made it to the main gate. We considered it a small victory.

I did not know Randy Kennedy too well. He did not live in the barracks, and he ETSed a short time after our group arrived. However, I became pretty good friends with Sergeant Bailey. He was a lifer, but he was anything but gung ho. I don’t know how long he had been in the service, but at this point it was just a job for him.

I remember that there was an incident that happened just before I started working on the desk. I don’t remember the details of it, but Bailey was worried that he would get in a lot of trouble over it. We were working mids together, and he asked me to type his statement for him. I helped him compose it in a way that emphasized the positive aspects of his involvement. He was very appreciative. He explained that in one of his previous assignments he had been guarding a prisoner and for some reason he used the nightstick on him and caused permanent damage. He had not been punished, but a letter about the incident was in his permanent record. If he had another black mark, he could face some serious discipline. As far as I know, nothing happened to him.

By the way, Bailey was Black, and Kennedy was white. There were quite a few Black guys and some Mexican Americans in the MP Company. I never heard of any racial incidents.

I can remember a few peculiar events when I was working on the desk. Once there was a traffic accident during daylight hours only about a block away from the PMO. We had no patrol vehicles available. So, I abandoned my typewriter and walked over to handle the accident. I brought the forms with me on my clipboard, but it was a very minor incident, and the two parties agreed not to report it. Since it was our policy to give a ticket whenever there was an accident. I was pleased with this resolution.

The only time that I ever gave a ticket was the day that someone way above my pay-grade decided to set up a speed trap on Wyoming St., the main drag. So many cars were caught that they directed them over to the parking lot near the PMO, and they enlisted everyone they could find to write tickets. They only did this once.

During the day the PMO received quite a few telephone calls. Bailey answered most of them, but occasionally he was busy with something. I was required to identify myself: “Provost Marshall’s Office, Private (later specialist) Wavada speaking.” In the pursuit of plausible deniability, I practiced saying this until I could say it as fast as I could say a Hail Mary. My debate training helped. No one ever asked me to repeat my name.

Once I was called upon to investigate a reported crime. A lady called the PMO to report that someone had broken into her house. Sgt. Bailey asked me to drive one of the spare vehicles to her house and fill out a report. She told me that nothing was missing, but sh wanted to show me the door through which the intruder had allegedly entered by breaking a glass panel. There was indeed a broken pane, but the glass was on the outside of the door. It seemed unlikely to me that the miscreant had caused this as he made his escape. He certainly did not enter that way.

The guys on patrol often forgot that anyone with a police-band radio could listen to their transmissions. We had cut to short many conversations that had drifted into taboo topics with “10-21”, which told them to call us on a telephone. It was frustrating when the patrol responded with “What does 10-21 mean? I left my ten series card in my room.”

I was considered very good at typing up incidents using the various forms, especially the traffic accident reports. No brag; just fact. I had two skills that got my work noticed. 1) I could write clear, grammatical declarative sentences with accurate spelling. 2) I had perfected the skill of fitting n+1 letters into n spaces. This latter skill was invaluable. The reports had to be typed, and there could be no scratch-outs. So, if you left a letter out of a word, you had to start over. It was, however, possible to Wite-Out the erroneous word. Then I was sometimes able to key in the corrected version by partially depressing the backspace key while typing each letter so that the spaces between letters were reduced, but the word was still legible.

At some point in May I was removed from my duty as a desk clerk for the second platoon, Instead I started working in the Law Enforcement Office. I still lived in the same room amidst the guys in the second platoon. I don’t remember who replaced me on the police desk, but I do remember that Sgt. Bailey was not happy with this development.

By the time that I assumed my new role I had been promoted to Private First Class. This had nothing to do with my performance. Because such a long time with no new personnel had passed before the five of us arrived, MPCO SBNM had a supply of approved promotions ready to give to the first people who had enough “time in grade”. Because Ned Wilson and I had been promoted at the end of AIT, we both got promoted to PFC before the other guys in our group.

Ned and I also got promoted to SP4 as soon as we were eligible. The number of available SP4 promotions was smaller. I don’t remember exactly when that was, but the rest of the guys had to wait some time before they achieved it. I calculated that I earned several hundred dollars extra, and I owed it all to the lie that I told my platoon sergeant before the “white glove” inspection in AIT.

I never met anyone at either of my two permanent duty assignments who had been promoted as fast as Ned and I were. I only know about the MPs at SBNM, but at Seneca Army Depot I had access to all the personnel files.

1. The Manzano facility was integrated into Kirtland AFB in 1971. Its function has changed, and it is no longer classified. An account of its history can be read here.

2. I did not know it at the time, but the Orsini family in Italy has produced three popes and at least ten cardinals.

3. All the typewriters that I encountered in the Army were manual models. The IBM Selectric had been around for a decade, but I never saw one until in my Army career.

4. I have no way to verify it, but I think that Charlie died in 2020, just as I was beginning this project. The obituary is here.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Monthly Archives: October 2020