Page 72 - Winterling's Chasing the Wind

My work schedule was 12 hours on and 12 hours off for 4 days, then I got two days off.
Time was going fast, and I didn’t get tired because I loved the work analyzing maps,
reading weather reports and briefing flight crews.
One morning I thought I was going to work at 8, but didn’t wake up until 20 minutes
after. When I called the weather station to inform them, I found out that I was
scheduled off for that day. That was a pleasant surprise!

Since we had received about 80 inches of snow since November, I decided to see if I
could build an igloo. After all, this is Alaska and Eskimos live in igloos. I inspected the
snow and discovered there was a lot of frozen moisture in the snow. I found that I could
cut it into large blocks with a butcher knife. Ultimately, I built the igloo a little over
waist high. I paused for a while to take a photo of it, and I’m glad I did because 40 years
afterward, I got an e-mail from a friend, Don Grosenbach, who wanted to ask me a
question. He said he had a dream that I built an igloo at Shemya, but he didn’t know if
it was just a dream, or did I really make one? He was happy to learn that it was real, and
not just a fantasy.

We didn’t get newspapers at Shemya and it was hard to keep up with the news, so I
bought a subscription to Time magazine. I had just learned that the Russian leader,
Joseph Stalin, had died and I hoped the world situation would become more peaceful.
We had some MATS (Military Air Transport Service) planes that were returning some
troops home from Korea. Upon seeing Shemya, many of the guys told me that they
would rather spend a year in Korea than be assigned to a place like this.

On March 20, I learned that we got a new base commander. They said he is very tough,
and he wants to get the base all fixed up. He even wanted to place loudspeakers on top
of the building to play bugle calls for reveille, mess (meals), and retreat (sunset). I told
my buddies, “Welcome back to the real world!”

Around the first day of spring, we had a lot of nice sunny days, and even though the
temperature was near 30 degrees, the wind was light and I felt comfortable outside
without a shirt on. A few days later, a Pacific storm blew in with blizzard conditions.

When I got off duty, I got in the Air Force Chevy pickup truck and tried to drive away
from the operations building. I could barely see through all the snow and had to stop
every ten feet to find the place to turn away from the runway.
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