Edwards Air Force base has, since its inception, been important in its value as a testing and training area for emerging aircraft. The High Desert location has something like 360 flyable days a year. It is only about an hour north of Los Angeles and has well established rail access and power supply. It also has miles and miles of flat miles and miles.
When my parents returned from Okinawa in 1947, it was back to Edwards, the main base this time. They were housed in a small travel trailer in a small area that was arraigned for base housing. They were happy to get it. So much labor and supplies had been diverted to the war effort that it created a housing shortage. My mom was also happy to be closer to her family again as she settled into growing a baby.
I imagine those first years after the war as a hopeful time. But also, it was a time putting the world back together after the loss and devastation. Images and newsreels had allowed them all to share the horrors found when the concentration camps were liberated. People were also still reeling from the sheer power of destruction released from the atom. So it was natural for people, as people do, to confirm the persistence of life. It was the beginning of the Baby Boom.
My mom went into labor on December 1st. That was a full month before term. Edwards was a large base in square miles and function, but small in population and facilities. The nearest communities offered little more. My grandma cooked meals for patients, when there were any, for the hospital in Palmdale. It was run by the family doctor and only had 4 beds. There was no choice, my dad would have to drive my mom to Pasadena.
The main route was through the Tejon Pass. The 14 freeway that now makes that a viable commute wasn’t built until the 1960’s. Then the way through was steeper and more challenging. In many places it was only two lanes. But that night, it was closed for some road repair.
The other way was up over the Angeles Crest Highway. My grandma knew the man who first envisioned it. Everyone agreed that it would be helpful to have a road up through those mountains and down the other side, but engineers had deemed it impossible. One determined man who was a surveyor, and his friend who was a skilled outdoors man, hiked in with a pack mule. They camped and surveyed to make that route happen. That mountain road still provides a twisting way from the Antelope Valley to the back door into Pasadena.
I’m my mom’s memory, it was a dark and stormy night. It was made more terrifying by being in premature labor with her first born. Even now and on a sunny day, that drive is marked by steep hills on one side while the other side drops down and down. That night it must have felt death defying.
Sam was born in the small hours of December 2, 1948. The hospital in Pasadena had once been a grand hotel, but was converted for military medical use during the war. The delivery room had once been the bridal suite. That is the second half of the earlier story of how he was conceived in a psych ward and born in a bridal suite.
Well, anyone who knows about military life, knows SNAFU, situation normal, all f’d up. When my dad put in for increased pay for another dependent, the paper work went sideways. Instead of adding a second dependent, they put him down to base pay with no dependents. It took several months to get his proper pay reinstated. My mom had run into problems trying to breastfeed. I think it may have partly been a bonding problem. She was told to try not to handle her baby more than she had to because he was so tiny.
They were scrounging those months. They bought a case of condensed milk at the commissary when my dad got paid on the first of the month, which is what was used as the base of homemade baby formula at the time. They bought cheap mutton roasts and shared in the bounties of my grandma’s home canned garden produce. And they hunted rabbits.
My dad and his buddy would take off across the desert at night in an open jeep, one driving as the other literally rode shotgun. As panicked jackrabbits were picked up by the headlights, they were picked off.
By the time my dad’s pay got straightened out, they had become sick of tough meat that had the flavor stewed out to be made edible. My dad never ate another stewed bite of either mutton or rabbit in his life, as far as I remember.
As the roads have improved and the Los Angeles sprawl has spread, the wide desert has filled up. As a result, the commuter times are not much better.
Years later, my husband worked for several years at the aerospace company that was building B-1 planes in Palmdale. As they worked, they were very carefully not observing the experimental stealth plane that was being developed and tested next door.
The last time I visited the area, much of what I remember from the first half of my life was unrecognizable. But if you stand on a rise, you can still look out on the shifting light across the distant buttes. It is a harsh land, but holds a unique beauty. You just have to be quiet and watch a while. Life stirs, the seasons move by, and the night sky still is a canopy of stars. It invites you to lift up your eyes to the surrounding mountains and dream of peace.
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