by Jerry Blackerby
I grew up reading about Flash Gordon and dreaming of other worlds. In 1950, I saw the movie, “Destination Moon” and dreamed of the day we could really travel to the moon.
In 1957, the space race began with Russia’s launch of Sputnik I on October 4 and Sputnik II on November 3. One evening our newscaster on Channel 7 in Lawton, Oklahoma announced that we could see Sputnik I as it passed overhead. I rushed outside and saw it for myself.
The U.S. orbited the first Vanguard Satellite, about the size of a grapefruit on January 31, 1958. A string of islands with tracking radars and other electronic equipment extended from Cape Canaveral to Ascension Island. RCA provided technical personnel for these missile-tracking stations.
I was working as a contract instructor for RCA at Fort Sill when we lost our contract at the end of June, 1958. I accepted a transfer to the RCA Missile Test Project in Florida to go downrange to a missile-tracking station.
Four of us transferred from Fort Sill to Florida. We flew to Orlando on Saturday and proceeded by bus to the Cape Canaveral area on Sunday. We found the Starlite motel on Cocoa Beach with a few vacant rooms and checked in. The Starlite Motel was the first major motel constructed in Cocoa Beach in 1956 and was home for engineers who relocated with the space program. The next morning, we went to Patrick AFB for indoctrination. The speaker informed us that we would be attending classes at the Tech Lab building at Patrick AFB for nearly 30 days before being assigned to a downrange tracking station.
The basic room rate for two to a room at the Starlite motel was $12 or $14 a day. We were drawing $12 a day per diem. The third day, we were able to move into little one-room cabanas around the swimming pool for $4 a day. The cabanas were not air-conditioned or heated, but did have a good airflow through them. They were about 6 feet wide and 12 feet long including a tiny bathroom with a shower. Each cabana had a single bed, a small chest of drawers, and a place to hang clothes at the end of the bed. The room rent plus tax took a little over $4 of the $12/day we were getting. That left us nearly $8 to eat and take care of laundry expenses, etc.
The rooms were too hot to stay in until near midnight. Two of us spent most evenings in the lobby or cocktail lounge. The manager of the Starlite knew our financial situation and would come into the lounge and introduce us to various people that were on large expense accounts. We would get drinks from them and the manager would come by and move us to some other group. We spent many nights floating between tables without spending our own money.
One man we met was on a very loose expense account and hosted several parties. He invited us to some of his parties. The night before I left for downrange, I scheduled a taxi cab to pick me up the next morning. The cab never arrived and the clerk called our partying friend. He had just returned from a party and drove me to Patrick AFB for my flight.
I traveled to the first downrange tracking station, Grand Bahama Island during August of 1958. We lovingly called the island GBI. I was on a contract with RCA to support the Air Force in tracking the early missile launches. The base at GBI had about 300 men, mostly civilian contractors, and 3 or 4 military men. The only women were native housekeepers except for seven wives that lived in various trailers or houses off base. My wife and two small children were in Dallas.
Although we were civilians, we lived in barracks on GBI. The first barracks for newcomers had four men to a room and a large open toilet/bath facility. No modesty there; almost like the military at that time. The next level of barracks had two‑man rooms with one large toilet/bath facility, which had doors on the stalls so there was a little privacy. The rest of the barracks were two‑man rooms with a bath between two rooms. These were nice rooms. There were also Quonset huts laid out similar to 1950s military barracks (large room) and the toilet/bath facility in another Quonset hut. The Quonset huts were used for people downrange for just a few days. Several years later, during a trip to GBI, I spent a couple of weeks in one of those Quonset huts.
I missed Billie very much. I found that a few men had their wives on the island. I located a place about a mile from the base on the beach. It was a one-room camping trailer with a two-room cabana attached. The cabana was built with 2x4 framing and plywood, setting on the ground. The cabana had glass windows on two walls in the living room and a door. The other wall had a screen window with a wooden shutter the length of the room. The kitchen had two exterior walls with screen windows and a wooden shutter the length of the walls. This place was under a large almond tree, about 100 yards from the high tide mark. Another trailer was between our trailer and the beach. A small dirt airstrip was on the inland side of us. We used the airstrip as a road to the trailer. Later, two more trailers were brought in to our area. One of the two trailers was our manager.
We had a small butane stove and butane refrigerator. A hand pump was in the kitchen over the sink. The sink drained about 20 feet out from the kitchen. An outdoor toilet was about 50 feet in another direction. We did not have any electricity, only kerosene lamps. We bought Aladdin lamps that put out a lot of light and heat.
I bought the place and started making plans to get Billie and the kids. I had to get permission to bring her downrange, since there was not any medical facilities for families. My manager said that she would have to come for a visit to see if she could live under the rustic conditions that she would have to live. According to my manager, one man had brought his wife downrange and when she realized she had to live with kerosene lamps, a hand pump for water, and an outhouse, she and her husband left. I told them that my wife was a sharecropper’s daughter from Oklahoma and had only had electricity for about two years in the house they lived in when we married. I could not afford to bring her down there for a short visit and then wait for approval before bringing her permanently. If they did not give me approval to bring her, I would quit and go back to Texas. Management gave me their approval the day before I left to get Billie.
The earliest I could get a few days leave was in October. I flew to West Palm Beach in a Cessna 172, owned by our manager. I caught a bus from there to Dallas. Billie and her cousin picked me up at the bus station in Dallas. My son, Bill, was happy to see me, but my daughter, Terry, was not sure who I was. Terry was only about 14 months old at that time. I woke up the next morning with Terry sitting on the bed next to me stuffing cigarette butts from an ashtray into my mouth. Billie did not smoke at that time and Terry had seen me sticking cigarettes in my mouth all evening, so she thought that is where they belonged.
After a few days, we loaded our belongings into a 1950 Nash Rambler and headed for West Palm Beach. We took our time and spent two nights on the road. We did not get on the road very early, so stopped at Shreveport the first night. The second night, we were in the southwest corner of Georgia. We drove to West Palm Beach on the third day and found a motel near the airport. I took the car to Miami, arranged for shipping to Grand Bahama Island, and rode a bus back to West Palm Beach.
Before leaving GBI, I arranged for a charter pilot to pick us up at West Palm Beach. He lived on GBI and owned an old “twin” Beech. The Navy designation would have been an SNB; the Air Force designation was C-45. I arranged for a limousine to pick us up for the trip to the airport. My charter pilot friend was waiting for us. His plane was in for service, so he was flying a leased twin Beech. There were no seats in the back of the leased airplane. He had strapped one chair on the floor. He told me that I could ride the copilot’s seat and Billie could ride in the chair. He said for me to hold one child during takeoff and Billie could hold the other. We loaded all of our boxes of personal belongings in the airplane. I held Bill and we took off. After we were airborne, with all the boxes, he told me I could put my son in the passenger compartment with Billie. I told her she could unfasten her seat belt. She said, "What seat belt?" There wasn't even a seatbelt on the chair he had strapped in the back.
We flew very low over the ocean and skimmed the tree tops on GBI. As we skimmed the tree tops, Bill looked at Billie and said, "This is sure a bumpy road." When I asked the pilot about being so low, he told me that there was a missile launch and we weren't supposed to be flying into the area so he was staying under the radar. Scary ‑ one type of missile searched for planes in the area and dives on them. Thank goodness, it wasn't that type of missile. No one saw us.
We landed on the dirt runway next to our place on the beach and unloaded less than 100 yards from the house. Billie looked around and really felt lost about then. The house was not visible because of the palmetto trees and scrub brush. The pilot told us to stand back as he turned the plane around because of the dust. We stepped back off the edge of the runway. I kept waiting for him to taxi to the other end and take off into the wind towards us. Billie looked up and said, “Isn’t that him up there?” Sure enough, he had taken off downwind and was now flying a few hundred feet above the ocean headed back to the other end of the island.
I took Billie and the two kids around the bushes to our new home. We moved the boxes in and tried to settle into our new place. It was primitive, but we both had lived in similar or worse places as we grew up.
On Saturday and Sunday evenings guests could eat at the mess hall on the missile-tracking base. I could eat any meal there, but had to pay for Billie eating at the mess hall although the kids ate free. Our first day on GBI was Saturday, so we walked the mile to the base for dinner that evening. After dinner, we went to the club and watched the outdoor movie before walking home. Each night we had a movie shown on an outdoor screen next to the club.
The house was overrun with mice and palmetto bugs (big roaches or water bugs). We set two mouse traps that first night. Within minutes, both had snapped. I waited a few minutes and took them outside. I then reset the traps. For the next hour, I emptied the traps every few minutes. I finally gave up and went to sleep after emptying the traps about ten times. It took us about a week to really get the mice all caught and make the place livable.
We landed on Saturday and I went to work before daylight on Monday. Our car had not arrived, so I walked the mile to the base. We had so many missile launches and delays that I didn’t get back home until Wednesday afternoon. What a way to break Billie into downrange life. Sometimes we went to work and would go around the clock for many hours. The longest stretch I remember working was 60 straight hours. I did catnap in my chair at times and we either had box lunches or took turns going to the mess hall to eat.
The nearest grocery store and gas station was 30 miles away at Freeport. This was before the gambling casino was built. There wasn't much at Freeport then. Westend was 50 or 60 miles away, but there was a hotel at Westend (later bought by Jack Tar) where we went sometimes for an evening out. We had a native woman, nicknamed CC, that baby sat with our kids a lot of evenings. We paid her about 35 cents an hour for that. CC later wanted to come back to the states with us. She considered the kids like her grandkids. She said all we had to do was to provide a place to sleep, food to eat, clothes, and a little whiskey. She said she would live with us and wouldn't use any money. I did not feel that we could bring a person that was not a relative to live with us, work for us, and not pay her and I could not afford to pay her.
We called one of the men Zero. He had a lot of education but no common sense. We considered him a zero-brain. One time, he and another man were pulling a large cable from a cable trench. One was outside the building and Zero was inside. The cable seemed to hang up, so they decided to cut it. Each pulled alternately on their end and "knew" they had the same cable. Zero used large cutters to cut the cable - sparks flew and the cable cutter was welded to the cable. The cable Zero had pulled was not the same cable. It was looped on the other cable, so when each pulled, they thought they had the same cable. Zero worked with me after that. When we left the control center to go to the mess hall for lunch, Zero would jump on a bicycle and ride. He would then be at the front of the line. By the time we went through the line, he would be nearly through eating. One time, he looked at a pie I had picked up and asked me if it was any good. I told him I did not know; I would taste it when I finished my main course. He got very upset that I would not taste it immediately so he would know whether to get one or not.
Billie was the eighth wife at the base of about 300 men and 8 women. Amazingly, most of the men were very nice and courteous around the women. They enjoyed having the few women and children there because they missed their families. Most wives would not live under the conditions that Billie accepted. It was hard to keep a car running, so we walked the mile between the base and our place many a night. Billie got pregnant while we were there, so many a night after a movie, I walked home carrying both Bill and Terry; asleep on my shoulders.
A pack of wild dogs (strays) hung out around the dump area, which was right along the trail we walked to get home. I kept a set of clubs at the house and out by the main road. Whichever way I was going, I would carry a club through the area where the dogs were. Many a time, I waded into the pack of growling and snarling dogs waving a club and screaming. I had those dogs really buffaloed. They thought I was the "big dog". They didn't know how scared I really was. Luckily, they always ran from me and never bit me. If I had turned my back and run, the dogs would have attacked me.
One morning, I rounded the palmetto bushes near where our manager, Dave, kept his airplane. I met several snarling dogs. The door to Dave's plane was open and dogs were inside tearing up the upholstery. I screamed and waded into the snarling dogs. None of them touched me. Dave and his wife, Jane, came running out of their trailer. I told Dave to come look. Jane ran back to put on a robe. Dave came on in his underwear. He was nearly sick about the damage done to the plane. Jane came out asking how bad I was hurt. They thought the way I was screaming, I had to be hurt. I had found that a loud scream would scare the dogs. Thank goodness!
Guns were illegal, so I kept a set of clubs and a hunting bow and arrow set. Billie and I practiced and became fairly proficient with the bow and arrows.
The local people prowled around contractors’ houses at night and "stole" whatever they could find out. We demonstrated our skill with the bow and arrow set to the old gentleman that worked for us around the place every few weeks and a couple of other locals that came with him one day. The locals tried the bow and could not pull it. They looked on in amazement as Billie pumped arrow after arrow into the bulls eye about 20 yards away.
One of them asked me what I used the arrows for and I showed them the broadhead hunting arrows. I told them about Billie being part Indian. I told them that I worked at night and if anyone ever came around when I was not there, Billie would put an arrow right through them. I showed them that either of us could hit the target easily. The word spread rapidly among the locals and we never had any prowlers around our place.
Later, a friend and I began keeping 50-gallon barrels of gasoline near my place. The closest service station was 30 miles. We would take three or four barrels to the station and fill them. Then we stored the barrels near my place. We and others could fill our cars with gasoline without driving the 30 miles to a service station. The friend smuggled a shotgun onto the island and took it into a local bar. He showed everyone in the bar. He then told them that they knew how good my wife was with the bow and arrow. He said that if anyone came around, she would have the shotgun and she was better with it. Again, we never had any prowlers.
During a certain season, hermit crabs crawled up on the beach. They even crawled over to our place and under the plywood floor. Our next door neighbor, Jay, would sometimes chase a hermit crab into the front door of our place as he came in. Jay did this when we were in the other room and couldn’t see it come in. Later, we would discover the crab crawling out from under the sofa. Once we heard something under the floor and thought it was a crab. The next morning I got up and found a hole about two inches in diameter in the floor where a rat had gnawed a hole into the house. I sealed the hole after checking the house for the rat and not finding it. A few days later, I discovered where the rat had gnawed a hole through the wall under a cabinet to get out. I had actually sealed that rat in the house with us.
When a supply ship would dock near us, huge wharf rats would show up. The ship captain did not use rat guards on the lines from the ship because he wanted the rats to get off his ship. He wasn't worried about rats getting on and there weren't any authorities nearby to stop him. We saw several that were the size of dogs.
We also had sand fleas. At least most people called them sand fleas, but they could fly. They were so small that they could come through the screen wire. Their bite was more like a flea. Most of the time they stayed on the sandy beach near the ocean, but now and then they would come to the house which was about 100 yards from high tide mark.
We had lizards all around, outside the house. One had a cut off tail, so was recognizable. He lived under a flat stone on the entryway walk. We killed Palmetto Bugs all the time. Each morning Billie would sweep our place. That lizard with the cut off tail would come out from under the stone and wait for her to sweep them out to him. He had a feast each day from what she swept out.
One morning I went out the door and looked toward the ocean, surprised to see a supply ship almost in our front yard. The ship captain had come in the night before and did not wait until daylight. He apparently saw a light near our place and thought it was the dock area. He ran aground about 100 yards out. That evening at high tide, he was able to back off.
Once two field rats had a nest under the large almond tree, which was next to our house. The rats would creep around near Bill and Terry when they were playing in the sand outside. This scared me, so I had to get rid of the rats. It was a long holiday weekend and the only place to get any rat poison was from the base medic and he was not on base. I set a small bowl containing some apricot brandy that I did not care for near the hole where the rats lived. The rats really went after that brandy. They then crawled back into their nest to sleep off the drunk. I set a large tub of water next to the hole. I then poured gasoline down the hole and tossed a match into the hole. The gasoline flared through the rat tunnel and I poured the tub of water down the hole to put out the fire. We never saw those rats again.
Copyright © Jerry Blackerby 2005, 2006