The Eastern Test Range is string of island tracking stations from Cape Canaveral to Ascension Island 5,000 miles from the Cape. I worked for two years on the first downrange tracking station and then traveled from the Cape to each of the tracking stations as far south as Antigua during the next few years.
Many of the downrange people transferred through each of the islands for a period of time. Therefore, I knew people who had worked at each of the islands all the way to Ascension Island. The following story is not one I knew from personal experience; I only heard it from other people. It was a common story told by all of the people who had been stationed on Ascension Island.
On Ascension Island, the men of the tracking site picked up a donkey for a mascot. Someone taught the donkey to love beer. The movie was an outdoor movie, as it was on all of the islands. The donkey would lie down next to the front row and nudge the person sitting on the end of the bench to get a beer. Whoever sat there would get a beer and hold it for the donkey to drink. This was an every night ritual. Normally, the donkey did not get enough beer to get drunk until a beach party.
During a beach party, which was common on all of the islands, the donkey drank enough to get drunk. That afternoon, the donkey began wobbling around so decided to lie down. After lying down, apparently the ground began to spin. If you have been drunk, you know the feeling.
The donkey would apparently feel the spinning and jerk upright. It would look around to see why it was spinning. Then the donkey would lay its head down again. A few minutes later, it would jerk upright again. The donkey did not understand what was happening.
A new man came to Ascension Island as the base medic. After a few weeks, he decided that having the donkey on the base was not a sanitary or healthy situation. He loaded the donkey into the back of a pickup, tied it so it could not jump out and took the donkey to another part of the island.
When he came back about an hour or so later, he saw a gallows had been built just inside the gate with an effigy of him hanging on the gallows. The entire crew of over 100 men were standing waiting by the gallows. He turned around, was gone for another hour or so and returned with the donkey. As far as I know, the donkey lived on the base for many years.
I have heard in recent years that there were several more donkeys over the years that became the base mascots and all loved beer.
Copyright © Jerry Blackerby 2009