Whenever I find myself near a military installation, I get an odd feeling that I cannot properly describe, but if pressed I would prbably say it feels something along the lines of ‘nostalgic longing’ - there’s something about the neat ordered rows of huts, the manicured landscaping, the fences and utilitarian road layouts that just gives me a weird gut feeling like I am wishing for something, but don’t know what it is.
I don’t wish I was in there and I don’t wish I’d served in the forces, the nearest thing I can liken it to is the feeling that you might get when, after many years, you return to an old childhood haunt and find your favourite climbing tree, the initials of some long-forgotten childhood sweetheart of yours still visible, scratched into the bark.
You are picking up the ghostly auras of long gone servicemen. They are the men who fought Hitler, the Kaiser, Napoleon, Louis XIV. They drift back to the places they knew best in life and are searching for a receptive person to share their fading memories before they are swept away by the winds of time. Your receptiveness has attracted them to you and they are probably following you now, waiting for you to open your mind to them, even as you read this inane prattling.
I spent a lot of time at NAS Miramas (now MCAS Miramar) when I was a kid. I lived in base housing when we were in Japan. I was pretty young, but it must have been after we moved out of our house in Hayama (sp.) and before we shipped back to the States. And I worked at Edwards AFB for four years. So I feel a little nostalgic as well.
I suppose it could be linked to my own experiences; we lived in Cyprus for a few years when I was very small; my dad was in the RAF at the time and although we lived off-base, I suppose we must have visited some people in the houses near the base sometimes; we were evacuated hurriedly when the Turks invaded.
My assosiations from military instalations comes from my time as a conscript in the air force. Huts were put in a random pattern with old an new at different angels to eachother. The roads were mostly dirt tracks with old disused roads crossing them. Landscaping was nonexistent, the base was mostly wilderness with old roads, foxholes, trenches and concrete instalations. On every hill there was a fireing base for some long forgotten airdefence system with concrete stuctures we reused for a difffernet purpose. It was a base that expected to be attacked. I have seen your kind of base and I didn’t like it, it didn’t look like the poeple there ever expected to be at war.
Also, they are alway kept clean and tidy, and have that “Norman Rockwell” vibe. You never see punks skateboarding around or homeless dudes begging change on a base.
I thought this thread was going to be about the many pawn shops, strip joints & (bad) check cashing places that always seem to be right outside the front gate of any installation, regardless of service.
But yeah, while you’re still on base it looks nice
Slainte, who was Active Duty AF for 4 years and still works on an AF base to this day.
I grew up on or near an Air Force base. I know exactly where you’re coming from. To this day, I still can’t see prefab housing and plane-on-a-stick sculptures without getting a tear in my eye.
Seriously, I took a couple of friends on a tour of my base after it closed down and they looked a bit mystified when I started to get a little teary.
