It was a long time ago.
28 years is a long time, isn’t it?
A sunny afternoon, my work day done.
A folding chaise lounge.
A huge shade tree in the park.
A book worth reading.
Then a sound.
I looked up to the New Mexico sky over
Roswell to see a gun-metal gray Boeing 707 fly over the city, a black German
military cross on its side.
Did that make it from The Luftwaffe? Was it called The Luftwaffe in the late 20th
century?
I stared at it.
You see I was living at my groovy bachelor
pad in Roswell. And while I dug my
duplex, it sat on a sun-blasted piece of real estate. One of my favorite things to do is to relax
under a shade tree and read a book.
Roswell’s Cahoon Park was an ideal location for this pastime…lots of big
ol’ trees to relax under and do some reading.
I heard that jet engine whine, a particular
sound that I recognized but hadn’t heard in a long time: A Boeing 707.
I looked up and there was that plane…converted
for military purposes, no doubt…the only windows were at the cockpit.
“So this is what it would’ve looked like,” I
muttered to myself.
It was a thought that came to me as I
imagined an alternative world where the Nazis won World War II. I reckoned a German military jet in the
American sky would be commonplace in that world.
But this was no alternative world.
So it flew over Roswell, and it was no big
deal.
I found out later that the Germans liked to
train out of the former Walker Air Force Base (closed back in 1965 or so)
because the runway is so huge and the sky is so uncluttered by other air
traffic.
One time I went to an air show at Cannon Air
Force Base in eastern New Mexico where some jets were brought up from Holloman
Air Force Base in Alamogordo…including some German Tornados.
I chatted with two German Air Force guys who
were hangin’ near one Tornado…how they liked living in the American Southwest,
stuff like that. One pilot said he liked
the really real and really hot Mexican foods and jalapenos. He said his country trains people at Holloman
for a number of reasons, particularly the great weather of southern New
Mexico. The pilots get far more time in
the air than in German skies.
People from different countries train and
work in New Mexico…pilots and staff from Singapore were once posted to Cannon, pilots
from Japan Air Lines train in flying 747s over Roswell, Germans are at Holloman
and so on.
It seems New Mexicans know folks coming here
from wherever are good for the economy…they stay at motels, they eat in restaurants,
they shop in the stores and so on.
I really wonder if Arizonans feel the same
way about visitors as New Mexicans do, this based on an incident that happened
in the desert there back when Bill Clinton was president.
Back then I was working at a Talk Radio
station in Phoenix. Practically every
day in the summer of 1994 the radio station phones were lit up generally about
one thing: Heavily conservative Arizona
was abuzz about the possibility of nationalized health insurance and all those
other things that political hand-wringers felt the Clinton presidency would
mean for the United States.
Some hot political talk of the day was United
Nations were going to be brought in to oversee the transitioning of the United
States into a socialist country like a number of European countries. You know this kind of scuttlebutt…the same
talk radio buzz as President Clinton was going to come for everyone’s guns,
that the Clinton Administration would be rounding up conservatives and putting
them in prison camps, that President Barack Obama was going to come for
everyone’s guns, stuff like that.
Anyway, back to the Arizona desert…So a group
of German airmen who were visiting Luke Air Force Base (west of Phoenix) were
doing some survival training. They had
finished and were gathered around their military vehicle along U. S. 60 between
Phoenix and Wickenburg. Along came one
of the top government officials of Wickenburg, driving home after doing
business in Phoenix.
If you don’t know about Wickenburg is about
60 miles northwest of Phoenix, a town of about 7,000 people. It’s the first rural town in that direction
outside the Phoenix suburbs.
His curiosity apparently aroused by the
presence of military men out in the middle of nowhere, the Wickenburg fellow
stopped to ask what the men were doing.
Wickenburg dude was reportedly stunned when
the men, in accented English, spoke of being German, spoke of being on a
military mission, training mission and mentioned the United Nations.
Smiles and handshakes were exchanged
whereupon Mr. Wickenburg hopped in his car and batted-ass for his town to sound
the alarm: OH MY GOD! Clinton had called in the United Nations and
their troops have landed in the United States and Wickenburg, for all its
strategic importance, was the beachhead.
Newspaper articles were written, television
reporters were sent to Wickenburg, radio news stories were done. In spite of the truth revealed in the media
reports, talk radio discussions were filled with questions like why’d the United
Nations choose Arizona as the landing zone for an American invasion, what do we
do if we’re confronted by the invaders and so on.
When the topic came my way I’d remark how
different things were in Arizona compared to New Mexico.
“They’re Germans doing desert training, that’s
it. In New Mexico we’d welcome them
because that means they’d be eating at our restaurants, shopping in our
stores.”
Such musings fell on deaf ears. Or people would argue with me, saying I was a
Clinton supporter, a “Clintonista.”
No.
I was just trying to be “a voice of reason and
moderation in troubled times” as a talk show host in Phoenix used to refer to
himself.
I have positive thoughts for folks from other
countries come to train in our wide open New Mexican skies.
And if I get to chat with them, with a wry
smile I might ask, “Have you been to Arizona?”
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