Veterans Day Special - Tacos El Diablo El Paso del Northe Style. Delicious blend of spices and herbs, hot sauce, 3 kinds of cheese, seasoned ground beef, a garden fresh tomato and a corn taco shell. Mouth watering. Havent made them in a long time but in honor of Veterans Day from a recipe I found in one of my late wifes cook book I thought I would try them and treat myself in honor of Veterans Day. Glad I did they were as Tony the Tiger might say Greeeaat! Add some good union made beer (Bud Light) and you have a very delicious meal. For dessert some homemade brownies chewingly delicious also. Today reminds me of Veterans Day 1963. I had only been in the Transit Barracks at Biggs Field for just over a week and was still awaiting assignment to a regular barracks. The morning dawned cold and blustery and this being a holiday several of us decided we would forego the base theater movie reruns and catch a bus into El Paso to see what might be playing there. When we disembarked the downtown bus at Alligator Park in the middle of El Paso (they had real alligators caged at the park who always seemed to be just a tad angry and always especially hungry) we walked the two plus blocks to the El Paso Theater and bought a ticket to see a newly released Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb starring Peter Sellers in at least 4 roles as I recall, along with George C. Scott as General Buck Turgeson, Sterling Hayden as the mad Air Force Colonel bent on starting World War III and a host of other great character actors. It was a black comedy perfect fare for a group of young Airmen newly arrived at a base housing the 95th Bombardment Wing (Heavy) and commanded by Colonel Johnson who turned out to be an old World War II buddy of actor James Stewart (who would spend his two weeks Reserve time in 1964 with me and another 2,000 or so airmen at Biggs Field, but thats another story) and at the time the oldest squad of B-52s in the Air Force. Biggs Field was so close to the border that every time the B-52s launched off on one of their reflex operations to Guam the Mexican Air Force would scramble its aging fleet of Korean War F-86s in a hilarious effort aimed at harassing the much faster B-52s which almost always ended up in Mexican air space as they rose into the sky doing so to avoid what had happened a few years early to a B-52 that had crashed on takeoff into the mountains just to the west of Biggs Field. The U. S. Air Force 2754 Tactical Fighter Wing also housed at Biggs Field would then scramble its F-105s and chase the Mexican F-86s back to their base in a high flight game of tag youre it. Fortunately there never was any real danger of an incident. The Mexicans would send a written protest to the American Embassy in Mexico City which would then forward it to our State Department where it would be filed away. The movie was hilarious to a group of airmen who were actually engaged in the art of helping our Air Force defend against the Cold War enemy that we all knew who they were but never got close enough to see. For me it was even funnier as I had just been reassigned to Biggs Field from Kindley Air Base in Bermuda where I had just a short year before participated in the Cuban Missile Crisis which was very scary until the Soviet Fleet finally turned around just a little over 200 miles short of our base in Bermuda ending the crisis on a sane note. I found the movie to be wildly funny in a inside sort of way because technically it was correct as to its handling of the Air Force part of the movie but it was hilarious in that we as people who worked every day in our positions at the base knew that while there were a few crack pots among the military high command there was little danger that anyone would be able to do what the Colonel played by Sterling Hayden would be able to do and having worked closely with a number of the B-52 pilots at our base since I was in the manning section I also knew that they were a very sane and go about business type of gung-ho airmen who would never do anything as stupid as trying to ride a bomb down on top of the Soviet Union. But the movie certainly lightened our mood for Veterans Day and afterwards we adjourned to the Gigis on Dyer Street for a couple cold ones before heading back to base. Bob Bearden
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 01:58:48 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015