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A few weeks after we arrived on Kwaj in May of 1981 I
was hired by McDonnell Douglas to work on Meck. Little did I know what
an adventure it was just getting there. The first morning I got out of bed at the usual O-dark-thirty, put on my traveling shorts, shirt, and flip flops, tucked my real clothes in my Kwaj bag, along with rain gear and my lunch, jumped on my trusty Schwinn, and pedaled off to the Air Terminal where I sat on a wood bench waiting for the Caribou airplanes to come sputtering up. These were leftovers from the Viet Nam war, along with the pilots, and these men were oblivious to such petty things as typhoons, blowing out an engine, and landing strips so small they are just about the size of my driveway at home. (see below). I guess after dodging bullets in Viet Nam this was all pretty tame stuff to them. So I put on my Army-issue ear muffs (there goes the hairdo), straggle aboard, find a seat next to husband, Bill, who is sitting on the very back row - for a very good reason as it turns out, the plane starts taxiing and we're in the air. It's still pitch black outside and humidity is, as always, 100%. It's now starting to get very sweaty in there and the plane is getting filled up with snores from the other commuters. Luckily the engines are so loud I can only hear the snores near me. So after we'd been in the air a few minutes I shout to Bill "When do they turn on the air conditioning?" He shouts back "Right about now" and all of a sudden the entire back end of the plane fell off (or burst open as I'm told later on) and I'm staring down at a whole lot of water and a palm tree or two. A serious sneeze would send you straight out the back of the plane! So I begin tightening my seat belt to the point where it cuts off all circulation, but, hey, I'm secure. As we fly over the islands the sun is coming up, I'm thinking this is actually quite beautiful, something most people never get to see, and I'm beginning to calm down and feeling pretty good. But then I see Meck Island looming below and get a look at this teeny little piece of cement they call a landing strip, with nothing but ocean at either end. I'm saying to myself surely we're not going to try to land on that! The pilot, however, is undeterred, closes up the gaping hole in back (we can't have any spillage of passengers, you know), keeps descending, barely squeezes by a telemetry antenna, and we land with a roar SIDEWAYS! They tell me later that this crab-like landing is necessary because the usual 50mph tail wind would otherwise blow us over the edge and into the drink. Somehow this doesn't make me feel better, especially on our next trip back when I learn the Caribous have been banned from landing on Meck because it isn't safe. Helloooo! But, I have to say even back in 1981 they were looking out for our wellbeing because when the weather got really nasty we were treated to a helicopter ride to Meck, never mind that I could never get the life jacket fastened around me until we were already landing on Meck. For some reason I never thought this was a whole lot safer than the Caribous. I'm telling you this traveling to Meck business is not for the faint of heart. But, anyway, we land without any serious loss of life or limb and everyone streams out, stumbles through the guard shack, showing badges as we go, and into the solid-cement-with-copper-walls building we call home for 8 hours. It's adjacent to the silo where the Minute Man missile is stored, and hopefully launched, so in the unlikely (so they tell us) event a missile blows up on the pad we will all be safe and return to our homes mostly intact and in good-to- fair condition.
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