A while ago I wrote a blog about how refreshing and rejuvenating it was to spend a day at Spring Creek especially when my grandpa took us. He would fall asleep and put no pressure on us to hurry up so he could get back home. There was another place my grandpa would take me that was a bit more exhilarating.Our home was and is about 7 miles from the Claiborne Bombing Range which was primarily used by England AFB as a training ground. Being that close afford us the amazing opportunity to watch F-100s, T-37s and the occasional F-4 (all designations for planes in the Air Force inventory) rolling over my house as they made their bomb/strafing runs on the bombing range. Later it would be A-7s and A-10s. Today it is F-16s and B-52s from Barksdale AFB. I saw my first F-117 Stealth Fighter flying a pattern over Clairborne.
The bombing range was like a magnet to the boys who grew up around it. Watching the airplanes was a draw. And, insanely enough, so was the ordinance they dropped, especially the unexploded bombs and expended bullets we would find. Occasionally we would hear of someone maimed or killed by picking up a bomb and taking it home with them. We knew better than that, but it did not prevent us from going to the bombing range and doing some pretty dumb stuff.
My grandfather would occasionally drive us through the range. There were old trucks and tanks that were used as targets and they were cool to look at. And the whole place had a certain eeriness to it - sort of like a Western ghost town - that would draw us. The road that ran through the range was a public road. It did not dead-in at the range. So, folks would use that road to get places. There was a flag system, as I recall, that would alert locals to the road being opened or closed because of the range being used. Air Force personnel would actually be present on the range as observers. Once, my grandfather was driving a group of us boys through the range in the back of his GMC pickup. He was a slow mover, not overly ambitious, and not too excitable. As we are crunching along on the gravel road a certain sound began to grow. It would have been the same feeling you get if you are paddling on a river and around a bend you hear something that sounds an awful lot like a waterfall. We found ourselves on the range road with jets appearing overhead. I doubt we were in any true danger, but at the time we felt like there was some young Air Force pilot who was bored shooting at old wrecked tanks and became animated by the thought that the Air Force would provide him a moving target that would be more of a challenge to his skills! We felt as if a large red target was painted on the roof of that truck. It was if someone had poured a bucket of angry bees down the pants leg of my grandpa. He stomped the gas and set us to bouncing around in the back of the pickup truck like popcorn popping. We roared down the road slinging gravel and throwing dust. When we emerged on the other side of the range, we laughed the laughter of those who, in our minds, had faced death and defied it. The truth is, the real laughter was probably taking place in the cockpit of those jets. Those pilots had just witnessed a GMC pickup light its afterburner. They could probably see us boys flopping around in the bed of the truck.
The only real danger to us at that point was Grandpa and his ejecting us out of the truck. I don't think we told my parents when we got home.Most of what I have feared most in my life has never happened. And, there is much to fear in life. The more people you love, the greater your fear becomes. The more stuff you have, the greater your fear becomes. The older you get, the greater your fear can become.
The bombing range was like a magnet to the boys who grew up around it. Watching the airplanes was a draw. And, insanely enough, so was the ordinance they dropped, especially the unexploded bombs and expended bullets we would find. Occasionally we would hear of someone maimed or killed by picking up a bomb and taking it home with them. We knew better than that, but it did not prevent us from going to the bombing range and doing some pretty dumb stuff.
My grandfather would occasionally drive us through the range. There were old trucks and tanks that were used as targets and they were cool to look at. And the whole place had a certain eeriness to it - sort of like a Western ghost town - that would draw us. The road that ran through the range was a public road. It did not dead-in at the range. So, folks would use that road to get places. There was a flag system, as I recall, that would alert locals to the road being opened or closed because of the range being used. Air Force personnel would actually be present on the range as observers. Once, my grandfather was driving a group of us boys through the range in the back of his GMC pickup. He was a slow mover, not overly ambitious, and not too excitable. As we are crunching along on the gravel road a certain sound began to grow. It would have been the same feeling you get if you are paddling on a river and around a bend you hear something that sounds an awful lot like a waterfall. We found ourselves on the range road with jets appearing overhead. I doubt we were in any true danger, but at the time we felt like there was some young Air Force pilot who was bored shooting at old wrecked tanks and became animated by the thought that the Air Force would provide him a moving target that would be more of a challenge to his skills! We felt as if a large red target was painted on the roof of that truck. It was if someone had poured a bucket of angry bees down the pants leg of my grandpa. He stomped the gas and set us to bouncing around in the back of the pickup truck like popcorn popping. We roared down the road slinging gravel and throwing dust. When we emerged on the other side of the range, we laughed the laughter of those who, in our minds, had faced death and defied it. The truth is, the real laughter was probably taking place in the cockpit of those jets. Those pilots had just witnessed a GMC pickup light its afterburner. They could probably see us boys flopping around in the bed of the truck.
The only real danger to us at that point was Grandpa and his ejecting us out of the truck. I don't think we told my parents when we got home.Most of what I have feared most in my life has never happened. And, there is much to fear in life. The more people you love, the greater your fear becomes. The more stuff you have, the greater your fear becomes. The older you get, the greater your fear can become.
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