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11 Oct 07 - DB

Howdy all

Time for the monthly update from Northern Virginia.  Not too much has happened in the last month.  We did run up to Westminster, MD to help our brother-in-law at the Maryland State Wine Festival.  By volunteering to help pour wine we got into the festival for free.  We’ve been helping out at various festivals since we returned from Germany.  Usually, I attract the lunatic fringe (”Do you have any wine that tastes like grape jelly?” or “Why is your dry wine tart, it doesn’t taste anything like my dandelion wine.”), but this time I got lucky.  Just poured lots of wine, although more and more of the customers tend to chug the sample. 

At the end of the month we took a week vacation and headed out to visit some friends of Marcia’s from Mt. Home. They are retired in Phoenix so we hopped on Southwest for a quick jaunt out there (anybody we know fly for Southwest?).  We also got to visit with some friends from Germany while we were there.  After a couple of days in Arizona we flew to Albuquerque, where we met my sister and her husband and then drove up to Santa Fe to see the rest of my family.  It was the first get together of all the sibs and my parents in quite awhile.  We had a great time in Santa Fe; we also were looking at the area because we’re considering it as a possible retirement spot once Marcia decides to retire.  After Santa Fe Marcia and I flew to Dallas to see my oldest daughter, her husband and their two children (that’s right, I’m a grandfather twice over).  We just did a patented Miller “Drive-by” visit (less than 24 hours), but I got to reconnect with Brandon (almost 3 years old) and met Ethan (1 year) for the first time.  Nice thing about being a grandfather was that I got to spin the kids up and then hand them back to their mother.

We flew back to Baltimore on Saturday and drove back to Virginia that night. 

Well those are my highlights for the month.  All is well in Northern Virginia.

I do have one question for you all though;  What happened in the 11th after I retired?  It seems like all the experienced field graders were moved out of the squadron or off base within six months after I departed.

Well take care everyone and keep in touch.

Later
DB

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One Response to “11 Oct 07 - DB”

  1. The Chuck says:
    17. October 2007 at 15:44

    Andy quit his job as Sheriff of Mayberry, then in a surprise special election, Otis was voted in and took office, but as he became bored with the job, he went back to his old ways of and he was so drunk he couldn’t control Barney, who loaded his guy and went around shooting folks for jaywalking and parking more than 10 inches from the curb. Many lives were saved when Barney shot himself in the foot while practicing the quick draw and had to spend some time in the hospital. Some of the folks who used to like Mayberry moved to Mt Pilot and started a new life.

    —————————————–

    I think you left just before the great target-arm coup. It’s all a blur, but I think CFIC was disbanded organizational, then merely functioned as a secondary mission . . . if that, in the sqadron.

    The school house went to block training, just like the fighters, and sorties got shorter, but airplanes broke more.

    They put a few cartoon characters in charge of most of the squadron, you had Majors trying to write paper on Lt Cols, because they were their supervisors . . . I guess the real cartoon characters were at the top. Nobody who was ever in the service, or in any other branch of the service would believe it really happened. Those who were there will never forget it. People were leaving as opportunities presented themselves.

    Prevailing wisdom was to move instructor upgrade to the unit, just like the fighters . . . the only problem was, the squadrons didn’t want it. They talked about putting a CFIC team in each squadron to deal with the instructor upgrade . . . of course we didn’t have 3 CFIC instructor teams at the time, and if we made some fast, and shipped them out, the 11th would be only 35% manned, instead of the 55% at the time.

    The DO at the time “w” was being advised by somebody that the only officers in the bomber world suitable to make any decision was a target-arm . . . all others, regardless of rank or knowledge was so much loose change.

    The squadron commander at the time, the one who officiated at your retirement, expressed those views as if they were his own. They even discussed banning the CFIC patch, because it “intimated” somebody. When I heard that, I couldn’t believe the system had degraded that much. But I was blind to the political process.

    We had a new OG come in and it turned out that he “liked” CFIC and talked nice about us. The squadron CC started to parrot those same words. But CFIC was dead in the water and nobody was at the helm.

    On 15 June 2003 . . . when everyone noticed how broke it was, they pushed for a reorgnization . . . which actually gave me a little power to fix a few things.

    We worked long hours, built something that could not survive an assault of the same energy as last time, howerver, it was less politically intimidating to the target-arms . . .

    . . . so maybe we’ll be okay, my health starting giving out, so I got out, bascially to avoid a MEB . . . which might have been a better thing to do than dealing with the VA since I retired in June 2006 and I still don’t have a rating . . . but no problem, it should be done in 60-90 days — that’s what they say ever time I call . . . every time . . . every time.

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