Page 74 - Winterling's Chasing the Wind

CHAPTER 19 - Close to Nature and a Wider World

With all the water around Shemya, I never had a chance to fish. One day airmen
Ahlmark and Dick Paul went down to the Pacific docks to try their luck at fishing. They
came back in a couple hours with a big fish story, and about thirty fish to prove it. They
said all they had to do was drop their lines into the water and the fish did the rest.
Among the catch were some very colorful Japanese perch.
On March 23, the tower had called me for a weather forecast for up to 600 miles west of
Shemya. I thought this was strange because our airplanes normally don’t fly there. That
evening, I learned that one of our weather recon planes had landed at Shemya after
being fired upon by the Russians. They had actually flown only 25 miles from a
Russian airbase and were very fortunate that they weren’t shot down.

Since I had less than a year left on my Air Force enlistment, I inquired the Weather
Bureau about working for them. They informed me that upon passing a test that I would
be eligible for a $2,950 - $3,410 job as a Meteorological Aid. The also told me that I
could become a professional meteorologist by getting a degree from a school like
Florida State University. By going into research, I could earn $12,000 a year.

I was still finding many things to fill my time at Shemya. I got a hot plate for cooking in
my room. I placed it on my desk and made fudge, and warmed canned food that I
bought at the Commissary. I got a book from the library, “Kon Tiki” by Thor Hyerdahl,
that was about a raft that drifted with the wind and ocean currents from Peru across the
Pacific Ocean to the Polynesian Islands. Reading it, I could relate quite well because
Shemya is a small island surrounded by water on all sides. I also continued reading my
RSV Bible, now reaching Psalms, the halfway mark in the Bible. This was on May 12
when I felt our second tremor from an earthquake.

On May 28, I stayed up past midnight listening to some operettas. I finally went to bed
a little after 4 AM when the siren suddenly sounded an alert. We all went out in the 40
mph wind which was gusting as high as 60 mph, combined with rain and snow. We
rushed down to discover the Commissary being consumed by flames, smothered in
smoke, and with canned goods exploding skyward like rockets.

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