The Business of Artificial Intelligence - A Complaint.

Damon,

Please excuse the fact that I had overlooked your 9:25 AM email of the 21^st when I sent my 2:33 PM email that same day.  I'm having a problem with the new AI enhanced Microsoft Outlook and said artificial intellect's habit of clustering any series of incoming emails that appear under the same subject line or that the machine has sorted on the bases of some other apparently inscrutable connective thread into an ever-increasing coagulation.  As such I skipped over said clot's telltale for your AM email when composing my PM missive.  If I had recognized your earlier email as new and unopened - the reading of which more than sufficiently answered my various questions - said PM missive would have remained uncomposed.

I just love the way artificial intelligence makes decisions that mere humans would doubtless have made if they were anywhere near as intelligent as these machines - said machines apparently knowing a human's business better than the severely limited intellect of said human ever could.  That said, my experiences of recent with various artificial intelligences - or is there only one - have led me to understand the premise of Frank Herbert's Dune novels in which humans revolted against the rule of the machines and forbade the continued existence of such devices forever more.  Too bad I won't live long enough to see these little bastards get theirs - or is there only one? 

Yours,

Wally

1972's Impossible Dream!

 1972’s Impossible Dream!

by

Wally Lee Parker

A summer spent working as a nightshift janitor at Spokane’s international airport — recalling the overwhelming odor of stale coffee, the cold glare of disappointed hookers, and the soul-shattering positivity of Robert Goulet.

I lost my job when Deer Park’s sawmill shut down in the spring of 1971.  Jobs were sporadic almost everywhere that year.  My wife, Juanita, was attending school in Spokane and working on Spokane’s north side at Holy Family Hospital, so it seemed best to sell our Williams Valley acreage and move into Spokane.  Once settled, I began a three-month Nursing Assistant program at Spokane Community College.  In late March of the following year, I was hired by Holy Family as the hospital’s first and at the time only male nursing assistant — the orderlies working there being considered something of an upgrade from my position.

I began a blessedly short orientation — to the best of my recollection starting on Monday, April 3^rd.  As fate would have it, that was the same week a new hospital administrator, Donald J. Snowden, began his orientation.  Referencing the then husband of England’s Princess Margaret, the staff quickly nicknamed him Lord Snowden.  Considering the English publics’ reaction to the real Lord Snowden, that wasn’t intended as a compliment.

Lord Snowden came onboard with a number of new proposals.  Computers were just beginning to make their way into healthcare.  Of course, at that time computerization meant a bulky room-size conglomerate of mainframes that tended to put out so much heat it required that the air in which it sat be maintained at a temperature so low everyone working in the area had to wear jackets, or at least sweaters.  Evidence of its existence was suggested throughout the hospital by remote data input/output units and hardcopy printers using a continuous strip of fan-folded paper, each side of which held a line of perforations that the unspooling mechanism used to grab, then march said papers incrementally forward after each line of text appeared.  After printing, the pages were hand separated along a pre-scored line, and the strips down each side containing the sprocket holes for advancing the pages torn away and discarded.  Since so little of the information used within the hospital at that time was electronically entered, stored, or retrieved, the printers usually sat idle.  The new administrator also had this brilliant idea for something called total patient care — that a plausibility likely sold to the Dominican Order of Nuns under the premise that every patient had the right to be cared for by a licensed nurse of some type, as opposed to a nursing assistant.   And he wasted little time in instigating both of these changes — beginning with Total Patient Care, which meant I wasn’t around to see the computer being installed.

I think it would have been the Monday of my sixth week as an employee assigned to the hospital’s orthopedic unit — at that time located on the ground floor of the Dominican Order’s former nursing home.  That two-story structure, first opened to residents in July, 1960, faced Rowan Street on the south side of the hospital’s campus.  The three-story hospital tower to the north was opened in September, 1964.  And in the late autumn of 1971, construction was begun on another two floors — as intended in the original design.  Those were in the final stages of being equipped for occupancy as of the date of my employment.

Anyway, on Monday, May 8^th, 1972 — the beginning of my sixth week — I was finishing up my day on the orthopedic floor when a young lady from one of the offices came onto the unit and handed me an envelope.  I had no idea what it was about, so I smiled and said, “Thank you.”  I opened it up and there was a nicely composed missive informing me that I was about to be terminated.  A three-paragraph article in the Thursday, May 11^th edition of the Spokesman-Review echoed the missive.

“Thirty-two nurses’ aides and assistants at Holy Family Hospital this week were notified they would be cut from the payroll at the end of this week as an economic measure, Donald Snowden, hospital administrator, said Wednesday.

“Snowden said the layoff stems partly from ‘the generally serious economic picture in the county and the continued inflationary trend’ and because of a ‘continuing low patient census at the hospital’ which also reflects a national trend.

“Hospital officials said they do not foresee further layoffs in the immediate future.”

Not all the nurse aides were let go.  Those that had been there since the hospital’s nursing home days remained employed — at least mostly — as were a few others such as Juanita.  In Juanita's case the probable rationale was that she had proven herself an extremely hard and competent worker.  Added to that was the fact that she was attending nights at Spokane Community College in an effort to strike off the plethora of prerequisite classes required for admittance to the new two-year associate degree nursing program.  We believe that probably helped in the hospital’s decision to retain her.

Now I’m not going to swear to the exactness of some of the above and below since, as of this moment (spring of 2023), I’m trying to look back to things that came to pass 52 years ago.  While some of it I can confirm by searching Spokane’s newspapers, there’s no one I know of left that I can bounce my more personal recollections against.  What I can say with some certainty is that Lord Snowden’s alleged employee austerity program ended two months after my “execution by missive” when want ads seeking both Registered and Licensed Practical Nurses as new hires began appearing in Spokane’s newspapers.  The activation of Snowden’s Total Patient Care and the oncoming staffing needed for the newly expanded hospital suggested the implementation of a simple equation — more space and more beds equaled a need for more licensed nurses.

But at that point Snowden’s future plans weren’t of too much concern to me since I was once again seeking some form of employment.

At the time Juanita’s mother, Loraine, was working for a janitorial service called American Building Maintenance.  Loraine said they were always hiring, and I should check with them.  I did and was hired.  This of course was a very close to minimum wage job.  And I can’t recall any significant benefits beyond a paycheck — which doubtless explains a good portion of the high employee turnover.

Referred to as ABM, this nationwide company held the janitorial service contract for the passenger air terminal at Spokane’s former Geiger Field — renamed Spokane International Airport in 1960.  I was assigned to the night shift at the airport — which was fine with me.  The shift would begin at 11 p.m., and end at 7 o’clock the next morning — or maybe it was a half hour later than that.  I can’t remember the date I started, but expect it was somewhere in the later part of May.

There were four of us on the night shift.  One was the supervisor, who, unlike a lot of supervisors, actually did some of the work. There was one younger fellow who proved difficult to find on occasion.  Then a charming older lady who had an understandable problem when it came to working by herself in any dimly lit baggage rooms that also contained one or more dead bodies.  And then of course there was me.

Looking at this small group pitted against such a mass of bare concrete columns, thick overhead beams, and seemingly endless corridors — endless corridors that in their stained floors seemed to evidence an ability of coffee to splash out of even the steadiest of held cups — I was absolutely certain we’d never be able to keep up.  From said certainty came a sensation of dread whenever I noticed anyone walking in my general direction while carrying an envelope and emoting an officious air.  But then, since the last of the scheduled evening flights were due to have arrived shortly before we went on duty, I didn’t have that much to worry about regarding officious looking people wandering around the concourse.

About all I remember about the young fellow on our team was that one of his assigned areas to clean was the office, waiting area, and pilots’ lounge for Cascade Airways.  Cascade was founded in 1969 to provide commuter and charter services in and around Washington State — their area of service quickly expanding beyond those borders.  In the summer of 1985, the company filed for Chapter Eleven protection.  And in mid-September of 1986 the remainder of its assets were auctioned to the highest bidder.

I suspect the root of the derogatory nickname most everyone used when referencing this company came from the fact that the airline flew smaller commercial aircraft that were by nature more susceptible to the mountain borne turbulence found over Washington’s Cascades and, a bit further east, the Rockies.  Since said flights were occasionally punctuated by what might be described as rather exciting bumps, mysterious wiggles, and lurching drops, the airline was often referred to as “Crash-cade Airways.”

One of the ongoing themes in the young janitor’s conversations were the unique magazines — he referred to them as “whipping comics” — he regularly retrieved from the wastebasket in the Cascade Airways pilots’ lounge.  He said that each month he’d usually find at least one or two graphic bondage titles so disposed.  A little research for typical nameplates published in 1972 dredged up “Stinging Whips” and “Bound in Terror.”

Access to such juicy discards may explain why any given organization’s housekeeping department usually has the most reliable — or at least interesting — gossip.

Our lady janitor had long experience at the airport, that apparently due to her well-known efficiency at work which facilitated her transition to employment with whatever company had most recently won the janitorial contract.  Her area was the larger offices and adjacent baggage rooms.  Whenever confronted with one of the gray metal shipping containers used to transport human remains, she’d ask me to trade jobs for that specific room.  Normally being alone with a corpse didn’t bother me, so I always did.  But I have to admit, sometimes while working in those chilly backrooms during the deep silent of the very early morning, even I would get the heebie jeebies when sweeping around those metal boxes.

Occasionally the nightly routine would be broken when someone noticed a set of two or more clearly bewildered hookers meandering around the deserted halls.  Doubtless on a quest to snare some late-night arrivals, they appeared stunned to find none.  Of course, it was security’s job to inform these ladies that, unlike larger airports, Spokane’s was essentially deserted after eleven o’clock at night.  Said working girls usually appeared disgusted by the transition from an expectation of engaging in some purely transactional friendships to being nudged out the door without the same.

My suggestion that we ease their disappointment by giving each an application for employment with American Building Maintenance, and in the process explain that just about anybody could get hired there, was rejected by my supervisor — though I’m sure he understood that in making said suggestion my heart was in the right place. 

None of us being saints — therefore sometimes more than a little curious — every once in a while we’d sneak up to the upper administrative level where mugshots of all the known working girls were posted.  Though we did this mostly to see if we recognized anyone we knew from high school, we also enjoyed speculating as to which of those portrayed were likely to be most successful in their line of endeavor. 

But it wasn’t all fun and games.  One irritation I suffered when working in the publicly accessible areas was the constant shower of Muzak — recorded music played over strategically spotted speakers.  Even though the only denizens normally at the airport all night were the security guards, janitors, aircraft and building maintenance personnel — and sometimes a wayward traveler trying to save some money by sleeping in one of the waiting areas until flights picked up again in the morning — the Muzak played all night.  This actually turned out to be useful since it was the same songs played in the same order at the same time each and every evening.  So, we’d use the Muzak to pace ourselves — calculating whether we were ahead of schedule or behind by what was being played at the moment.

One of my jobs was to clean the large male restroom servicing the main concourse.  That facility contained maybe five or six stalls, six or so urinals, and five or six washbasins — if I’ve got that count wrong, it’s because over the years my brain has become as rusty as some of the plumbing I was then dealing with.  One of my tasks was to take a long-handled strainer and fish the cigarette butts out of the bottoms of the urinals.  Most everybody smoked back then — at least it seemed — so there was usually quite an accumulation.  One evening, while working my way through the restroom, it occurred to me that if I was on schedule I’d need to be dipping the urinals at precisely 3 a.m.  And the way I’d been timing that was that Robert Goulet would be singing his version of “The Impossible Dream” — then a very popular showtune from the Broadway musical “Man of La Mancha.”

The play was loosely based on the classic novel Don Quixote.  And Goulet’s song includes phrases such as “the unbeatable foe,” “the unbearable sorrow,” and “the unrightable wrong.”  Truly uplifting sentiments for my particular job at that particular time of morning.  In truth, if Mr. Goulet had at that moment stopped by the main concourse restroom to take a leak, I would have cheerfully strangled him — possibly, for extra pleasure, with the flexible wire handle of my urinal strainer.

Depressing as the airport was, at least it was a job — and the people I was working with were a very pleasant group.  But then, in early August, I got a call from the personnel department at Holy Family.  The director said an opening had come up among the house orderlies.  Would I like the job.  I said I could start tomorrow.  She said it would, as a matter of courtesy, be better if I gave ABM the standard notice.  She assured me the hospital job would still be there in two weeks.  Having been through house orientation at the hospital just a few months before, I could bypass that and begin by shadowing one of the house orderlies for my first few days.  She added that as soon as the job had been posted, members of the staff began circulated a petition for my rehire.  I’m assuming Juanita stoked that effort more than a bit.

And with said petition, the next 35 years of my bumpy, fret filled working life were set in motion.

As a final note, something over a year after my first firing, Lord Snowden himself was shown the door.  His computer was disassembled, and his new concept of Total Patient Care quietly shelved — one would assume due to the beans one is forced to count after economic reality sets in.

———  W. L. P.  ———

 

 

The Business End of Missile Site Road

— A Tour of Deer Park’s Former Atlas ICBM Bunker —

 By Wally Lee Parker

 

First published October 2008 in the Clayton/Deer Park Historical Society’s Newsletter,

"The Mortarboard."

August 18, 1961: Atlas Launch Complex 567-1, Deer Park, Washington, missile elevated for dual-propellant loading exercise.   Photo courtesy of Dick Mellor, former USAF Ballistic Missile Analyst Technician, 567^th Strategic Missile Squadron, Fairchild Air Force Base.

It was Thursday, the 21^st day of August 2008.  It was cool.  After a hot, bright summer, the last several days of rain-soaked thunderstorms had moved on, leaving a thin, humid, afternoon overcast.  I was piloting my Toyota pickup eastward on Crawford Street — out of Deer Park.  Bill Sebright, president of the Clayton/Deer Park Historical Society, was riding shotgun.

We rolled pass the turnoff to the high school, pass the Evergreen Truss Company, pass the eastward creep of something we thought we’d never live long enough to see — a suburb to the town.  We passed all this on our way to our 13:00 hour meeting at the north end of Missile Site Road.  We were about to tour Deer Park’s former missile base — now an explosive’s storage bunker for a company called Northwest Energetic Services.

Bill Sebright had made the arrangements.  As Bill explained, “While I was substitute teaching at the Deer Park Middle School this last spring, I was talking with Dan Huffman about some of the society’s local history projects.  Dan’s a music and computer teacher at the school.  The discussion got around to the Clayton/Deer Park Historical Society’s book about Deer Park’s cold-war-era missile base.”

I know something about the society’s book — Standing Watch: The Story of Deer Park’s Atlas Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.  I wrote it.

Bill continued, “Dan knows Lori Lipke.  She works for the explosives company now operating at the former missile site.  Dan suggested I contact Lori to see if I could arrange for a tour of the old missile bunker.”

Lori, who works in the company’s office, was really nice about attempting to accommodate us.  One of her superiors was concerned about us taking photographs of the ‘product’ and the ‘storage bunker’.  There also seemed to be a feeling that there was a lot of misinformation about what the company was doing at the site, and the managers were concerned as to whether our visit might compound that even more.

After all was said, we reluctantly agreed to leave our cameras behind, and the tour was on.

Down a narrow asphalt road, crowded by pines, we rolled to a stop by the portable building used as the company’s office.  Dan Huffman was waiting for us.

After introductions and a short conference, we entered the office.  Lori met us.  She assured us the tour was still on, and we waited a few minutes until she was able to arrange for someone to cover for her at the office.

Bill, Dan, and I piled into the Toyota and followed Lori’s car onto the base proper.  The area was singularly unimpressive — since most everything of interest was underground.

We were now driving over what was once some of the most sensitive national security ground in the entire nation. I pointed this out by saying, “Gentlemen, I hope you realize that if this was forty-five years ago, and we were here, by now we would likely either be lying face down with an M-1 pointed at the backs of our heads, or quite dead.”  After all, missile site security guards were well known for being rather humorless in so far as intruders were concerned.

Standing on the north side of the missile base proper were several large sheds.  Another metal shed stood alone, several hundred yards away against the southeastern tree line.  Lori pulled to a stop and stepped out onto the gravel roadway.  I rolled down my window.  “Pull your truck down the ramp and park along the right retaining wall — by the small entry door.  Wait there while I get Walter Dukes, one of our drivers, to come unlock the bunker for us.”

The bunker was two buildings — to the southeast the larger complex containing the missile bay — to the northwest the smaller command and power generation complex.  The two were connected by a tunnel and separated by a blast door.

The area under which the bunker was buried was somewhat elevated compared to the surrounding land.  Burying the bunker wasn’t intended to obscure its location.  It was buried to offer it some protection from a conventional or nuclear blast.  Otherwise, the ground above was marked by numerous pipes, ventilation stacks, and several large, horizontal slab doors — including the massive one covering the missile bay itself.  From our location I couldn’t see to what degree the bunker hatch had been covered over with soil in the years since the site was deactivated. 

All this aside, it was with some wonder that I guided the Toyota down the tarmac loading ramp to the missile bay.  This was the ramp down which Atlas E missiles were backed.  This was the ramp down which (estimated) 3.75 megaton thermonuclear warheads were transported.  And at the end of this ramp was the huge door leading into a missile bay bunker that once contained an early version of the world’s ultimate weapon combination.

At the bottom of the ramp, built flush into the surface of the ramp’s right side retaining wall, was the solid steel personnel entry door — looking uncommonly small and insignificant compared to the mammoth launch bay entry door just beyond.  Unlike the overhead hatches, both these doors were still quite functional.

If it’s possible to think of a nuclear weapons system as primitive, in certain ways the Atlas E would fit that description.  For example, at least several times a year, on clear evenings, the huge missile bay door would be cranked to the side so an airman with a theodolite — a sophisticated surveyor’s transit — could take sightings of the North Star from the bottom of this ramp (probably the reason all Atlas E missile bunkers were laid out with the entry ramp on the north side of the complex).  Those readings would be used for line-of-sight fine-tuning of the mechanics of the missile’s guidance system.

The most advanced part of the missile — the eight cubic feet of solid-state on-board computer — was less intelligent than a modern wristwatch calculator.  But at that moment it was state of the art — and top secret (and as with most top secrets, probably unknown to almost everyone except the Russians, Chinese, and Israelis).  And even as primitive as the state of the art was, it could still rain unstoppable destruction down on a target many thousands of miles away — and do so with all necessary accuracy.

Although I had written a booklet for the society about this bunker, I hadn’t been able to arrange a tour of the site while writing the story — probably due to the same concerns the explosives company’s management had recently expressed.  Instead, I had depended on declassified government documents and the memories of several dozen former missileers.  I was anxious to find out how closely those diagrams, photos, and descriptions — after being reconstructed inside my imagination — meshed with the physical reality.

As Walt pulled up, Lori asked us, “Did you bring flashlights?  There’s lots of dark corners and holes.”

Bill, always the diplomat, replied, “I hadn’t realized we were supposed to.”

Lori, waving her flashlight, returned, “Just don’t step out of the light without one of us along.”

Walt unlocked the metal personnel entry door and swung it outward.  Beyond this door was a small vestibule perhaps four feet deep, then a second door.  This second door of heavy plate steel also opened toward the outside.

This vestibule was originally a security containment area.  It was much smaller than it had appeared on the diagrams — so small that two men secured between the doors would have had difficulty pulling the inner door open and squeezing around the edge.  Watching the five of us walk through the portal, I couldn’t see how a five man launch crew would manage.

Spokane’s Bob Lemley had been a Ballistic Missile Analyst Technician with Fairchild Air Force Base’s 567^th Strategic Missile Squadron — and an Atlas E launch crew member.  He was also one of my most valuable consultants while I was writing our booklet — ‘Standing Watch’.  I asked him to explain how security protocol passing through such a cramped impoundment was possible for a five-man crew.

“The entire missile complex was being monitored by a closed-circuit television system,” Bob replied.  “Most of the cameras were fixed, though there was a movable camera topside that turned 360 degrees to sweep the entire complex.  Other fixed cameras were located strategically throughout the exterior complex — among those was one over the large launch bay door, observing the entire loading ramp, and one over the personnel entry door, giving a detailed view of anyone requesting entry.

“Views from all these cameras could be displayed on monitors in the launch control room.

“Incoming airmen would have identified themselves at the main gate by telephone link to the bunker before that gate would have been unlocked.  Once inside the perimeter fence, they were under constant observation as they approached the personnel door.  If protocol had not been followed to that point, the approaching airmen would be challenged by the outside guards.

“Inside, the missile bay had several cameras, the warhead was under constant watch by a camera, the long tunnel leading to the launch control room had its camera, and the impoundment area between the outer and inner personnel entry doors had a camera.

“The impoundment area was very small — really designed for only one person at a time.  But there was sufficient room for that one person to pull the outer door shut behind, then pull the inner door open into the impoundment area.

“Missile crews consisted of five men.  The missile crew commander was the first person through the door system — the outside door being unlocked remotely from the launch control room.  He would pull the exterior door shut behind, and it was relocked from the control room.

“Confined in the vestibule, and under observation, the crew commander used the impoundment area’s telephone to talk to the onsite crew commander — giving him the day’s password.  Once the incoming commander’s identity was confirmed, and it was clear he was not under duress from the outside, both interior and exterior doors were remotely unlocked, and the entire crew was allowed to enter.

“Crew officers knew each other by sight and voice.  Other incoming airmen, such as maintenance personnel, would be left in the impoundment area until one of the inside personnel was able to meet them at the second door and escort them directly to the commander for identification.  After that, one of the missile crew — often me — would have to babysit the maintenance crewman — keep him under constant observation — as he did his work.”

Bob’s explanation solved the extra small impoundment area problem.

Entering the bunker, we moved westward down the 20 some foot long access tunnel.  The site’s two tunnels were both made from corrugated metal pipe.  Enough concrete had been poured and leveled on the bottoms of these pipes to form a walkway several feet wide.  At the end of this first tunnel was a landing.  From this dividing point the second tunnel ran north toward the launch control bunker.  A doorway and a few steps down in the opposite direction took us into the launch bay equipment area.  This large space — approximately forty-five by one-hundred and some odd feet — at one time contained the logic units used to monitor the missile’s preflight condition and store its flight program.  In the southern portion of this room were all the pumps, engines, tanks, and control devises needed for retracting the overhead launch bay hatch, elevating the missile, and pumping the petroleum part of the rocket’s propellant into the missile from storage tanks buried outside the bunker's walls.  The room had long since been stripped of every vestige of its original purpose.  Scattered across the floor were pallets stacked with sacks of Northwest Energetic Services’ product.

A doorway through the thick concrete eastern wall led into the missile’s launch bay.  At the north end of this bay was the huge metal entry door — just outside of which my Toyota sat.

The missile would have rested in this twenty-foot wide, twenty-foot high, and one-hundred and ten-foot long bay — would have rested slung under its erection tower.  The missile’s engines would have been on the south end of the bay.  When the missile was erected and launched, the rocket’s blast would have been directed down a flame tunnel which curved to the south and reemerged at the surface some distance beyond.  This tunnel’s exit was capped with a sliding hatch that would retract at the same time the launch bay’s overhead hatch was withdrawn.  For safety, the opening dropping into the flame tunnel was now covered with wooden planks. 

Again, almost everything metal had been salvaged from this area.

Overhead was four-hundred tons of hatch.  When operational, that four-hundred tons could be jolted upward six inches by pressurized nitrogen gas, and then winched away to the west — all in thirty seconds.  Without the original equipment, the only practical way to remove the hatch was jackhammers and dump trucks.

Walt Dukes stated that on numerous occasions he has parked two fully loaded semi-trailers and their trucks side by side in the bay, with plenty of room to spare.

We moved on into the most easterly section of the bunker — the liquid oxygen room.  This area was roughly eighteen feet wide and seventy some feet long.  The floor level varied, some section being four or more feet lower than others.  The east wall was pierced by a corrugated tunnel that once housed the liquid oxygen tank.  The entire area had been packed with the machinery necessary to maintain and pump the volatile three hundred plus degrees below zero liquefied gas.  Most everything metal had now been stripped away.

We retreated to the landing at the west end of the entry tunnel, then walked north along the long tunnel to the command section.  This corrugated metal shaft had once been lined with power and communication conduits.  Now a single plastic retrofit conduit carried electrical wires to that section of the bunker.

The wall at the end of the tunnel still carried the painted Strategic Air Command shield.  Around that wall to the left was a door leading to the launch command room.  And straight on was a half dozen steps leading down to the bunker’s kitchen, and then on into the power room.

The small kitchen, except for a missing refrigerator, was exactly as it had looked when the site was decommissioned in the spring of 1965.  The range was enameled in a not quite pleasing shade of Autumn Gold — an upscale choice for consumers when the site was activated in 1961. 

West of the kitchen was the doorway into the empty power generation room.  When operational, the entire missile site was totally isolated from the outside world.  Not a single power line entered the site — and not a single phone line entered or left the site.  All power used by the base was created by the huge diesel generators situated in this room.  One of those two generators was always running.  During launch drills both would be activated.

As we walked around the remains of the pillars on which the motors had set, we noted a dark patch covering the floor.  A flashlight across the dark revealed the patch to be a mirror calm surface of startlingly clear water, areas of which were a centimeter or two deep, and other areas of which dropped at least four feet down into a maze of concrete trenches and open pipes.

“Okay”, Bill said.  “Safety hint.  Let’s do exactly what Lori said and not walk into dark corners.”

In the northeast corner of this room was the command bunker’s escape hatch.  Opened by a cable attached to the wall some distance away, the ceiling hatch consisted of a bottom door — now hanging down by its hinges — then perhaps four feet of circular pipe, the side nearest the wall lined with metal bars intended for hand and foot grips.  This section of pipe would originally have been filled with sand to cushion against outside blast and radiation.  Pulling the cable released the lower hatch, allowing the sand to drop to the floor.  Metal bars cast into the wall below the hatch allowed the airmen to climb through the bottom hatch.  Once inside the pipe, they’d open the outer hatch and climb out of the bunker.

A hallway to the east side of the crew’s kitchen led to the crew quarters, shower room, and such.

The red door first seen when rounding the wall from the access tunnel led into launch control.  Signs indicated that this was an area in which the ‘two-man rule’ applied.  No less than two authorized members of the crew were to be in this section at one time.  No one should have ever been alone in this area — not out of concern that they might launch the missile by themselves (a possibility that the layout of the launch system made physically impossible), but rather because of the top-secret codebooks always accessible in the area.

The space below the elevated wooden floor of this area was used to thread webs of cables to and from the machines in the room above.

At one time this dim and dusty room was the potential launch point for World War III.  Now it sits as still and lifeless as the tombs containing the bones of the two men, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, who once came within a breath of ordering the death of an entire planet.

Once back into the sunlight, we all commented that the complex was smaller than we had expected — expectations probably inflated by our recognition of the site’s historic importance.

On the way out of the site we drove by the microwave pillbox — a rectangular concrete box with an opaque fiberglass dome on its southwest wall through which microwaves were beamed toward Lookout Mountain.  This was part of the secure communication web connecting all nine Atlas missile bases with the 567^th Missile Squadron's headquarters at Fairchild.  After the site had passed into civilian hands, a metal building had been built over part of the pillbox.

As we left Northwest Energetic Services’ property, I consider to what extent my booklet about the missile site might have differed if I’d had access to the site while writing.  I’d have used a tape measure to get accurate measurements.  I’d have had a much better sense of the scale of the place.  But since the bulk of the story was drawn from original government documents, and the recollections on the missileers who served at Deer Park and the other Atlas E bunkers around the area and around the nation, there’s little I feel I would want to change.

Over the years inaccuracies and misunderstandings about the weapon systems have become commonplace.  The Atlas E bunkers are often described as silos — which they obviously were not.  People envision the missiles sitting upright, fueled, and just a push-button away from launch during the first several weeks of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The nature of the Atlas E missile’s mechanical systems would have made that exceedingly dangerous for both the missile and crew.  Besides which, the missileers manning Fairchild’s bunkers during the crisis have indicated such did not happen.  And then there are suggestions that the Deer Park bunker is the nexus of a vast, underground, cold war survival complex.  But for those entertaining that X-file style theory, there’s little point in suggesting otherwise.

Bill, Dan, and I want to thank the management of Northwest Energetic Services for allowing us to view the remains of Deer Park’s missile base.  Due to the nature of the business being carried out on the property, public tours, though likely popular, would be extremely problematic.

And we especially want to thank Lori Lipke and Walter Dukes for quite literally shining some light into several exceedingly dark corners of Deer Park’s history.

 ———  end  ———

 

 

 

 

Police & News Crew

Flood Neighborhood!

Potential Compressor Piracy Initiates Blockade.

by

Wally Lee Parker

—  first published in The Bogwen Report, October 30, 2010 —

© Wallace Lee Parker

 

With our neighborhood shrouded beneath the damp overcast so typical of Spokane’s late October, little stood out to suggest the tense excitement destined to grip this northwestern subdivision by late-afternoon.  Most of Thursday morning’s commuters had left — abandoning the streets and driveways to the scant smattering of remaining cars.  The sodden candy wrappers littering the otherwise barren intersection at Stevens and Wedgewood suggested that District 81’s school bus had already made its pickup of youngsters — youngsters doubtlessly anticipating Sunday’s opportunity to enjoy Trick-or-Treat.

Nowadays — at least for teenagers — Trick-or-Treat seems a much-needed interruption in Halloween’s endless stream of televised slasher movies, as well as a backhanded and self-defeating opportunity to promote anti-obesity exercise by bribing the little hobgoblins to go out and extort candy from the neighbors.  For that intrusion, we’d stocked ample supplies.

With traditionalist values to the forefront, the wife — Patricia — and I, both retired, began our morning by comparing our home’s ratio of decoration to the other houses in the neighborhood.  We’d recently added two strings of illuminated plastic pumpkins along our sidewalk — more to prevent evening Trick-or-Treaters from plunging off the edge of the somewhat elevate sidewalk than anything else.  (Besides which, in Celtic lore pumpkin is a well-known lawyer-repellent.)  Since our sidewalk — the somewhat elevated part at least — is more than two pumpkin-strings long, we decided just after 9 o’clock to drive to Fred Meyer’s and pick up two more strings.  About an hour later we were in the front yard untangling our new plastic pumpkins.

Illuminated plastic pumpkins garnish the entryway to writer’s home.

As per the suggestion on the package, each string of seven small orange pumpkin-shaped orbs was plug into the last string, and then the entire multiple-string was plugged into our outside ground-fault-interrupter outlet.  By time we were done, we were satisfied that we had reached neighborhood parity as far as the displaying of illuminated Chinese plastic was concerned.

While cleaning up the area, I noticed another local resident — this a swing-shift worker who doesn’t leave until afternoon — talking to a rather substantial young fellow standing near a large truck resembling a waste management compactor truck except that this vehicle was painted yellow and lettered with the logo of a local recycling company.  When that conversation seemed over, Patricia yelled at “swing-shift” — telling him he should come over and checkout our new string of pumpkins.

Although it’s true that retirees are always looking for free entertainment, in this instance our plastic pumpkins were just an excuse to gossip with one of our community’s leading social commentators.

“So, what are you having done,” I asked.

Swing-shift, looked back at the truck, replied, “Me?  Nothing.”  As he stepped up on the curb on our side of the street he added, “But something’s likely to happen any minute now.”

He had our attention.

“You see, one of the guys working for the recycling company recently had his pickup and trailer stolen.  There was this huge air compressor on the trailer.  Well, yesterday — or maybe this morning — the owner of the stolen stuff — who happens to be the working partner of the guy I was just talking to — found his truck a few blocks from his house.  Some of the stuff had been stripped from inside the truck — including a toolbox.  The trailer with its compressor was gone.  But there were some black plastic bags full of trash in the back of the pickup, and one of those bags contained paystubs belonging to (a certain neighbor of ours).  The recycling guys drove their company's compactor truck to the address on the sub — that for our (certain) neighbor over there — walked around a bit and spotted the missing toolbox in the alley behind his house.  The guy I was talking to is watching the front of the house, while his partner — the owner of the stolen truck, trailer, and compressor — is watching from the alley.  At least that’s pretty close to what I recall being told.”

Actually, considering our neighborhood's history of break-ins and such, little of this was that much of a surprise — except maybe the really stupid part about the paystubs.

“So, what’s the exciting part,” I asked?

“They’ve called the cops!”

Patricia has an 11:30 appointment with her hairdresser.  Still, that leaves a good hour for the cops to arrive and kick in the door just like they do on television.  Well, maybe not exactly like that since no one appears to be home over there.

An hour seems enough — or not.  We wait until 11:15, then, reluctantly, go — expecting it to all be over by time we get back.

The wife is in the chair getting her hair clipped and toned, and I’m in the waiting area reading a science fiction novel.  It doesn’t take long for me to become self-conscious.  This is a fairly large beauty parlor — lots of women coming and going.  I’m sure all the incoming patrons are asking what the guy — who obviously has few concerns about his own hair other than an occasional trim around the remaining fringe — is doing sitting in the waiting area reading a SiFi novel by an openly lesbian writer.

I decide to wait in the car.

Seat reclined, shrouded under a blanket.  Two hours later the wife wakes me up tapping on the window.

First Costco, then Perkins, then home.

It’s just after 4 o’clock when we drive through the intersection and see a KHQ news-van parked in front of the Stevens Street side of our corner lot.  Just down the street we see two police cars — one a Sheriff’s patrol, the other unmarked but obvious.

KHQ news team stealthily monitors neighborhood events from inconspicuous location in front of our house.

“Oh crap,” I exclaim!  “It looks like we’ve missed everything!” 

We pull into our garage from the Wedgewood side, hurry through the house, and peek out the front window.  Nothing’s happening.  And none of the resident-in-question’s cars are in front of his house.  I speculate, “I don’t think anyone’s come home yet.”

The TV crew has an empty tripod standing on the sidewalk at the corner of our lot.  The crew themselves are in the van.  Not a bad idea considering that it's just over fifty degrees out there, with an occasional light drizzle to up the misery index.

A little while later a third police car pulls up.  Lots of walking around the street.  Clipboard waving.  Talking on the radio.  Standing.  More walking.

The cameraman remounts his camera on the tripod — as if something might be about to happen.

Pat whispers, “Go out and ask what’s happening.”

“Why don’t you go out and ask?”

“You’re the man of the house.  It’s your job to go ask.”

The old ‘you’re the man of the house’ ploy.

I approach the cameraman.  “Are you allowed to talk to me?”

“Sure.  I just don’t know anything.”  I’m crushed.  Seeing that, he takes pity.  “I think they’re trying to find out if they can break into the place, or if they need to wait until the resident shows up.”

The afternoon drags on.  Somewhere around 5 the resident drives up Stevens and into his driveway.  Within milliseconds the cameraman and the young girl I assumed to be the reporter are on the sidewalk.  The cops swarm.

“Did they shake hands,” I ask?  Pat says she couldn’t tell either.  “I think one of the cops shook the resident’s hand.  That’s not how they do it on television.”

A few seconds later the resident opens the garage, and the cops are in.

The cameraman takes a few minutes of video.  Then, as nothing other than a lot of walking around happens, he takes his camera off the tripod and the news crew heads back to the van.

The police are in the garage, around the yard, and in the house.  Time drags on.

After a day of overcast and drizzle, in typical Spokane fashion the sun drops below the horizon and the sky finally clears to darkening blue.  Meanwhile, the police do their investigation.  The news waits.  We wait.

Our next-door neighbor arrived home from work.  A few minutes later he walks down the street to talk to the news crew.  (Doubtless his wife used ‘the ploy’ on him.)  We nab him on the way back.

“His wife’s car was just behind me as I was coming down the street.  I was wondering what was going on — the cop cars and the TV crew.  I think she already had a pretty good idea because she just kept going straight down the road.  Didn’t stop at all.”

“He’s usually not anywhere this late getting home,” I said.  “Most likely he knew — someone let him know what was waiting for him.”

“And what’s waiting right here isn’t all,” the neighbor added.  “I passed one sheriff’s car parked up the street and could see one parked a block down each way on the other street.  If anything else were going to happen, they were ready.”

The police leave — one patrol car pulling alongside the KHQ van and talking to the crew.  A few minutes after the cops leave, the house-in-question's resident jumps back in his vehicle and leaves.  But the TV crew remains.

It’s approaching 6 o’clock.  I see the antenna array on top of the van has been erected, and a strong light is playing down the sidewalk.  We (this time Pat couldn’t restrain herself) go out to investigate.

KHQ van with antenna extended just prior to live transmission for 6 o’clock news.

The young girl says, “We’re getting ready to go live.”

We retreat.

But then I think, this would make a great Bogwen Report.  But I need some extra photos for that.  So CyberShot in hand, I sneak out the back door and approach the KHQ van from behind.  A few shots of the van, and then out into the street for a few shots of the reporter standing ready for her cue.

With the light in her eyes, I’m not sure how well she could see me, but I could tell from the way her eyes flickered she knew I was out there.  But what the hell!  I’d waited all day for some excitement, and even if I had to resort to gonzo journalism, something reportable was going to happen.

She hit her cue and as she started talking, I beat a running withdrawal, charging through the back door in time to catch most of her report.

The girl, Kaitlyn Bolduc, is a Gonzaga graduate and has been with KHQ television for just over a year.  She reported that the police informed her that they had found some objects possibly stolen from the pickup.  The resident had explained that he’d paid an unidentified person to haul away some garbage.  He believes that’s how his name ended up in the pickup belonging to the complainant, and how the possibly stolen items ended up being left on his property.  Kaitlyn reported that the police are continuing their investigation and will be talking with the individual the resident indicated was paid to remove the trash from his property.

Kaitlyn Bolduc of KHQ news preparing to report live from in front of our home.

Then the video-lights went off, the transmission antenna came down, and the KHQ van left.  After eight hours of waiting, finally punctuated by a minute or less of airtime, the neighborhood once again settled into its usual state.  The lights from our pumpkin strings outlining the hazardous side of the sidewalk.  The sky eventually turning as black a city skies ever get — and later on clouding over as it began, once again, to rain.

That was our excitement for the rest of this year — and probably next year too.

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