Chapter 14

Day Fourteen: Saturday

The next morning everybody slept late. Later I realized how important it was to our sense of community to occasionally take time off and let our hair down. For the present, all I thought was that we were a day behind schedule. There were plenty of empty seats when we finally made our way to the breakfast table as people were still sleeping. Sheila and Jim were awake and there was plenty of strong black coffee for those of us who were up. As I took my first drink of coffee I remembered that one of the things we needed to do was stockpile essential items such as tea and coffee and find the best methods of preservation for those essentials. Eventually unless some type of world trade resumed, which seemed unlikely, we would end up drinking substitutes, such as chicory, to get our daily fix of caffeine. I made myself a mental note to form a long range planning committee to find solutions for these and other problems. I hated committees, but knew smaller groups were more efficient at setting priorities than whole communities.

I didn't make any changes in the daily work roster Sheila brought by for me to initial. I knew the blackball committee was driving north today and making contact with the other survivors from their community. I saw that Kari, Julie, Carrie Barker, and Mike Eagan were assigned to my search team for the day. Yesterday I polled everyone to find out who really wanted to fly and be a part of the search team. I knew a lot of people didn't enjoy flying in small planes and I only wanted those on the search team who enjoyed that type of flying and would stick with it a while. I gave Sheila that list and told her to rotate those on it as my search crew. Most of the names on that list were no surprise, but some were new people that I hadn't spent much time with. The list included Kari, Laura, Lana, Julie, Carrie and Billy Barker, Ron Simmons, Mike Eagan, Trisha Willoby, Kim Parkinson and Norma Harrison. It looked like our future corps of aviators would contain more women than men. I explained to Sheila that Kari and I would be on the list every day and that Kari would give her the other three names. I told Kari to put one person who hadn't flown on the list each day until each completed a familiarization flight.

Everyone was told that others would probably be added to the list later. They were also told that with the number we had on the list it was unlikely that anyone would be flying more than once a week at present. I planned flight training starting with ground school so that each of them that wanted to could become aviators. We would use many of the materials from the naval flight program that were readily available on the base. As operations officer Kari was working on finding the syllabus and securing copies for all of those who wanted to learn.

Another thing that we discussed in detail at the party was the need for a militia. Tom and Bill Jenkins, who was recovering from his gunshot wound, were asked to form a training program that everyone fifteen and older would be required to attend. Fifteen was an arbitrary age based upon the people we had. We agreed to adjust that age cut off to allow someone who was very responsible and more physically mature to join at an even earlier age. I told both men that I thought we could adjust the training so that some would receive training only on certain weapons. Everyone I spoke to agreed that everyone needed some training but our main security force would only be made up of those that could qualify on our basic weapons.

Tom brought up the suggestion that we needed heavier weapons in case there was an all out attack by a superior force. We agreed that as soon as the blackball committee finished its work and the livestock fencing was complete, and the livestock brought to the base, we would visit the local National Guard Armories to see what was available. I knew if we couldn't find what we needed there that some very sophisticated weaponry was stored in certain bunkers at Eglin.

Tom suggested, and everyone agreed, that Fred Johnson should be put in charge of the actual farming operations. Fred was a well respected organic farmer and knew how to get the best crops from the soil without using chemicals and man-made fertilizers. The farmers discussed this and agreed that in a couple of years all of the existing non-organic fertilizers and pesticides would either be gone or dangerous due to shelf life issues. They said that we might as well start out right and began preparing for that now.

Looking back on things it surprised me how much planning was accomplished in such an informal manner on my wedding day. One thing that I remembered from the military that was essential to base life was the plan of the day. The POD was basically a couple-of-pages broadsheet that told what section had the watch, who the duty personnel were, and any significant events that were to happen during the day. It was almost a newspaper but without the gossip. As we grew I thought we needed something like this to replace our informal and sometimes lengthy meetings over breakfast.

I was eating when I thought of the idea and I casually mentioned it to see what everyone thought of it. Sheila was standing nearby and asked, "This plan, would it be more like a newspaper, or more like a 'honey do' list?" I realized as she asked that an example would be better than an explanation, so I asked her to wait as I walked over to the administrative office and pulled the old POD for the weekend of the collapse off the bulletin board. I returned to the table and passed it around as I finished eating. Everyone thought it would be a good idea. Tom had seen something similar in the Army as had others who had been in the services. Questions were asked about how many copies, when it would be published, and lastly who would be responsible. I thought a copy for each room would be plenty and we all agreed that it should come out in the late evening to help keep the confusion to a minimum.

At that point all we needed was someone to do the job. I asked for a volunteer and Kim spoke up and said that she would do it as she had nothing to do. She knew what a POD was as her dad had often brought a copy home from the base. I asked for someone to work with her and was surprised when Norma Harrison spoke up and said she had been on the school newspaper in high school. I met with the two of them briefly and told them they could get with Sheila each day to get the duty list for the next day. I told them that they would need to check with Kari in her capacity as operations officer and then any of the other adults for items of interest. They both understood that there was to be no gossip, but announcements such as wedding anniversaries and birthdays were okay.

Norma asked if she should bring the final copy to me for approval before printing. Knowing that I would often be flying I asked her to do that only if she encountered something unusual. I didn't know it at the, time but that morning we gave birth to what would become the New Times, the first newspaper published after the collapse. As our numbers grew the New Times would prove vital to keeping us all informed and connected.

After that extended breakfast everyone went to work. The blackball committee headed north, the farmers headed to the fields, the search group headed to the flight line and the rest to various other jobs. It was as organized as I could expect of a non-military group.

Since I normally adhered to the military and FAA requirement of twelve hours bottle-to-throttle we actually spent the early morning performing maintenance and outfitting and training the new flyers. Kari performed the ground training and did as good a job as I could have done. We spent the rest of the time working on the big chart and planning our next search flights. We agreed to search the other area bases next. I thought those were logical places for survivors to migrate towards as each large base had resources such as self-contained electricity generation and other items of infrastructure that were beyond those of the nearby civilian communities.

The gulf coast area encompassed many military bases, the two largest of which were NAS Pensacola and Eglin Reservation. Eglin Reservation began thirty miles to the southeast of Whiting and encompassed an area the size of two good size counties. This reservation was mostly undeveloped areas that were used as bombing ranges and military training. It also included two Air Force bases, Eglin and Hurlburt. Southeast of Eglin Reservation was another large military reservation which contained Tyndall AFB.

Thirty miles to the southwest of Whiting you would have found NAS Pensacola which was a large training base with an airfield called Sherman Field. NAS Pensacola was the summer home of the Blue Angels and five training squadrons. In addition, it was the home of all Navy aviation maintenance training and the largest naval medical research facility on the east coast.

Beyond those nearby bases there were many smaller bases such as Whiting, Panama City Naval Base, and even smaller Coast Guard Stations in several coastal areas. Mobile, Alabama, sixty miles to the west contained a large Coast Guard Air Station, and fifty miles to the west of that there was a Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) base in Gulfport, Mississippi. These larger bases had resources and supplies that we could draw upon as needed and those resources would also attract other local survivors. I also knew that I could land on the runways of the large bases. In the back of my mind I was also hoping to find another good military pilot who had survived the collapse.

After planning our afternoon flights, we went back to the officer's club for a hot lunch. We were all hot and sweaty from all of the outside work. The day was like most mid-fall days in this area with a relative humidity of 90% and an air temperature above 90 degrees. These 90/90 days sapped your energy. As I walked through the courtyard to my room for a shower, I saw some of the men talking. Tom stopped me to tell me that they had finished the fencing this morning and were going to move some animals this afternoon. I knew the blackball committee was in Piney Woods as Carrie and Mike were monitoring their progress from the MCP. They had a lot of area to cover today. I saw Kim and Norma huddled together at a table with papers spread out around them obviously discussing the first edition of the New Times. Kari and Julie followed me into our rooms where the air conditioning gave us some welcomed relief from the heat.

We all ended up peeling off our clothes and although the bathtub type shower was not really large enough for the three of us, we had fun making it work. We were so close that it was hard to bathe and impossible not to play so we dried off and almost tumbled onto the bed. Our lunch time became play time and we ended up having to take another quick shower before we departed for the flight line.

At the flight line I quickly briefed Mike Eagan, who was to be my only familiarization flight of the day. Mike was near six feet tall and very muscular. I found out that he worked out with weights and loved anything outdoors. He started a running conversation as soon as we cleared the field. I banked to the right and made a 270 degree turn over the field and headed west. Again we flew the first part of the flight high and fast as it was over area we had already searched. As soon as I leveled off heading west Mike said, "Thanks for giving me a second chance in spite of what I did. I knew what Pastor Sam did was wrong, and so did my dad, but we couldn't do anything to stop him. At first my dad hoped he might be able to influence Pastor Sam and tone down some of what he was doing but that never worked."

I almost cut his apology off but I decided that maybe he needed to get it off his chest. As he paused I said, "Mike, we all make mistakes. I've sure made enough and I'll probably make some more. What's important is to not repeat our mistakes."

Mike said, "The worse thing is how he treated those girls. I dated Sarah before all of that started. Sarah was, and is, a beautiful young woman who always made me feel like I was someone really special. She never said anything bad about anyone and she was always talking about how beautiful or smart some of the other girls were. We never did much more than kiss but I always felt that those kisses were special and held promises of things to come. It almost destroyed me seeing her abused the way she was and I'm so ashamed that I didn't do anything about it that now that I can't even look her in the eyes. I want to apologize to her, but any apology now just seems so trivial compared to what she went though that it seems like too little, too late."

I wasn't sure what Mike wanted, advice or forgiveness. I couldn't think of any significant counsel and it wasn't my pardon that he needed. He sounded so forlorn that I felt I needed to say something though. I thought for a moment and then said, "Mike, I don't know much about how Sarah and the others feel right now but we can all see that they're still hurting. I imagine they each feel betrayed by just about everyone, especially their own families. They say 'time heals all wounds.' That's not always true but it works most times. If you need to apologize do it now. I don't think it would hurt them to hear how you feel and it might help you sort out your own feelings about yourself. Tell Sarah what you told me and let her decide how she feels about it."

About that time we were over north central Escambia County and I was ready to start our search. This area was just west of where we had made our earlier pass over the core of the county and I was hopeful that because the area was so rural that we might find someone. The flight over lower Escambia County and NAS Pensacola would be later in the day. Again we saw much the same pattern that I remembered from earlier searches. The farms and homes we flew over seemed eerily deserted. Cars and pick up trucks were off the roads but there were no fires to speak of. We flew over as many houses and roadways as we could but I realized it was going to take multiple search patterns over this and all of the other areas before we could be satisfied that we had not missed someone.

The most exciting thing we saw was a weakened cow being ravaged by another pack of wild dogs. There must have been at least a dozen dogs, mostly larger animals, reduced to this circumstance by hunger. This group was obviously not used to working together as a pack, because the cow, despite its weakened condition, led them on a merry chase for several minutes. I called Kari and asked her to remind Tom to keep an eye out for wild dogs while rounding up the farm animals.

We flew all the way south into Pensacola itself then headed north flying just west of the area we had covered. This path took us almost to the edge of the Escambia River over very sparsely populated territory including areas heavily covered by small trees and underbrush. I knew the river bottom land had little use other than as cover for wild pigs and small animals. We saw nothing unusual and mid-afternoon we flew back to Whiting where we landed safely. We taxied back to the flight line to find Carrie and Kari waiting for us on the ramp. We chocked the tires and walked back to the MCP and marked the search map. Kari handed me a chilled bottle of Gatorade and we spent a few moments relaxing while we debriefed.

Kari surprised me afterwards with a copy of the aviator's training syllabus. This syllabus represented a stack of books about a foot thick. She asked me to mark out the sections not needed and make any changes so that she could make the corrections to the master and print copies for all the students. Her rough calculation was that almost everyone on the flight list was interested, although Billy and Carrie realized that they would probably be too small to actually fly the aircraft. Teaching nine people to fly would be a daunting task with only one instructor pilot. The benefits from such an undertaking would be worth it down the road, however, when we would need cargo flights to bring in materials to help sustain the base.

I leafed through the stack of both hardbound and softbound workbooks that Kari had matched up to those on the Standard Naval Aviator Syllabus (SNAS) and found that several of the textbooks were generic works on aeronautics that needed no changes. Two of the books dealt with shipboard flying and were not needed at all. I discarded those and marked them off the syllabus. I marked up the five page syllabus showing the books and chapters to read, the order to follow in reading the material, and the flights that needed to accompany the later chapters. There was really no reason to reprint any of the workbooks as long as the student followed the syllabus. I marked out whole sections and reordered some to my own preference. What Kari didn't realize was that all instructors had done this since the beginning of Naval Aviation. In about 30 minutes I had it all ready for her. Explaining what I had done, and why, to a curious Kari took another 15 minutes. She was delighted that she could now get materials together and could begin her own training.

I explained to her that I knew she had had some ground training. I wasn't sure about the rest of our students but my first step would be an interview with each student to determine what they already knew and remark their individual training syllabus to eliminate any unneeded areas and perhaps add subjects such as math that they might be deficient in. My experience with student aviators taught me that their diverse educational and cultural backgrounds always included some areas of weakness that needed reteaching.