Your post is bringing back very fond memories to this old guy who thinks he is still the very young age of 29. I remember those warm June days and cool nights in Albuquerque, especially the cool nights when I would board my bike and ride over to the mess hall for an early breakfast before riding it out to the Goat farm on Sandia Base, near the old Monzano Base, to work. It was often very cool that early in the morning; but the rapidly rising sun was already warming things up very fast. At noon, when it wasn’t my week to drive the personnel truck, I would ride my bike an additional two miles out to the cafeteria at the Sandia Corp (SFPR–Sandia Fission Pulse Reactor) facility to eat lunch with the AF and civilian “mad Scientist”, dreaming of the days that lay ahead when I would become one of them and wishing that My Dad had been rich, like some of my supervisors, so I could have gotten an M.S. and Ph.D. before the military, of which case, I could have been one of them too. Dr. Wright (James D.), who was my immediate supervisor, had gotten a deferment for his required ROTC active duty obligation while he remained at the University of Idaho in Pocatello to work on his Masters and Ph.D. in chemistry. Oh how I wished I could have done that, but it was out of the question for me. Anyway, here I was lunching with them. I may as well make the best of it. After all, this was much better than slogging through the jungles of South Viet Nam with a backpack and a rifle where no one cared, especially the anti-war demonstrators and draft dodgers back home. I dreamed of all the things that must have gone on here during WWII during the bomb development period in Las Alamos and the use of this base as a transition point for supplies and material for whatever was going on at Las Alamos and also to develop the means to store, maintain and deliver the weapons developed at Las Alamos. Of course, none of these fancy laboratory facilities were there then, but I dreamed nevertheless. Now, back to the weather. It was the cool, dry, refreshing, and enchanted New Mexico weather that produced the environment that enabled all those brains to function that enabled all of it, and just in the nick of time to save my father’s life while he sat on an invasion craft in the Japanese Sea off the coast of Kobe, Japan awaiting orders to hit the beach. It was amazing how it all came together so that little ole me would have a father whom I would know and with whom I would have such great respect. This was my military experience. Although I saw no action and did not slog through the swamps of Viet Nam, it served to fulfill my obligation to my country of which all of those military recruiting visitors to PCHS were so diligent of telling me about, and it gave me a lifetime experience that I have used to forge a career all the way to the twilight of my working life. Although Mom, Dad, PCHS, and the University of Alabama gave me the educational foundation, this place enabled me to forge a career and a life for myself. Thanks New Mexico! Thanks USAF and KARB. And many thanks to the Goat Farm of long ago that does not exist today.

Thanks for the news! I guess that is one of the reasons that they closed Monzano Base and moved the nuclear weapons to another depository more protected from the fire danger. That heat appears to be headed to Arkansas as well but, as usual, with much more humidity and heat index.