The Greatest Men I Never Knew

 If the title of this blog sounds kind of familiar then you have probably heard a song with almost the same title by Reba McEntire. This is not about a country music song but the title was rather appropriate for two men that I never really knew.

My father was alive over five decades before I was born. That is a lot of time and to many people, the majority of their life. He worked hard to provide for the family and consequently was very busy with both his job and the chores. He didn't retire until I was out of high school and by then I was the one who was too busy. My dad was quiet and reserved and it wasn't until after his death that I discovered most of his life history. I knew he served in the Army Air Force during World War II as a Munitions Specialist but I did not know a lot of the details, as he did not like to talk about his time in the service. During one of the few times that he did talk about the war I found out that he was technically a Pearl Harbor survivor, but because the mission he was on was "secret" and classified, he was never officially listed in the area and at that time was under orders to never talk about it. Surprisingly my dad told me what happened early on the morning of December 7th, 1941 as he was on one of three troop ships headed to Pearl Harbor. His troop was returning from the Philippine Islands and as part of their mission, once they got close to Oahu they were to "hug the coast" and maintain radio silence until they reached Pearl. They approached Oahu from the west and followed the coastline towards the southern shore. Dad was among a few guys who had went out on the deck in anticipation as they were getting closer to the mouth of the Harbor. It was then that they spotted the Japanese fighter aircraft. He said the planes were flying in the same direction that they were heading and at first some of the guys thought they were American aircraft. As the planes approached the troop ships it became clear to everyone that they were Japanese as they were flying low enough to be seen clearly. My dad was in the last troop ship, the ship in the middle attempted to shoot at the planes with a large caliber gun that was mounted on the deck, and the leading ship was sunk after an explosion happened on board. Panic ensued but their commanding officer refused to break radio silence and immediately ordered the remaining two ships to return to the Philippine Islands. Dad and a few of his shipmates even went to the radio shack and tried to talk the radio operator into disobeying orders and radio Pearl Harbor to tell them about the Japanese aircraft, but he refused and the rest, as they say, is history.  

Dad received a commendation for Meritorious Service and was also a sharp shooter in the military. I discovered his medals for that and more. My dad knew his way around a camera and although he was not an official military photographer, he took hundreds of photos during his time in the service, many of which I discovered in his personal effects. He was a truck driver by trade and went his entire 55 year career, which started in the military, accident free. I learned many things from my father, including how to drive a big rig, but I learned even more after his passing.

My father-in-law, who I will refer to as "RJ", was a different story altogether. I knew he worked in the aerospace industry and was away from home a lot of the time on job assignments. RJ was extraordinarily gifted, had an extremely high IQ, and was considered a mathematical genius. There were stories overheard and snippets of phone conversations over the years that gave me the impression that his "jobs" were not exactly main stream and somewhat secretive. When RJ retired, he moved away from all of his extended family to a remote area in the California desert. We saw him infrequently at most until his age caught up with him and he started needing some help with things. When the dementia could no longer be ignored we had no choice but to move him into a memory care facility. I thought I kind of knew what my father-in-law did for work, but after going through some of his personal files and affects, it became crystal clear that I had no idea about his actual job. My first discovery was that he held a Q level Top Secret security clearance and was one of the lead engineers at North American Aviation on Apollo 1. RJ also worked for the Atomic Energy Commission. He was directly involved in Lockheed's SR71 Blackbird program; specifically in the design of it's flexible fuel bladders. We knew he spent a lot of time in Nevada but did not realize that it was at Groom Lake, otherwise known as Area 51. One of the last black programs RJ was involved with was the design and development of the Stealth Bomber.

RJ's list of credentials is impressive and speaks volumes. The following is just a sampling of what I discovered. Throughout the 60's RJ worked at North American Rockwell; he was a designer on both the Hound Dog Missile and the Minuteman Missile Programs; he was also a Lead Engineer - Space Division, on the Saturn II and Apollo programs, including Apollo 13. Up to the mid-1970's RJ worked for Rockwell International as an Senior Engineer on the space shuttle program. For the rest of that decade he worked at TRW as a Senior Design Engineer on their laser systems and the Galileo Project. In the 80's RJ worked for Rocketdyne, specifically with the design and development of the Space Shuttle's main engine fuel lines; then it was on to Northrop Grumman as a Flight Test Engineer on the F-5G Fighter, the F-20 Tigershark, the F-14 Tomcat, and the A-6 Intruder. Mid- 80's saw RJ at Hughes Aircraft as a Lead Engineer for lasers and gun sights on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle; then finishing up that decade back at Northrop as a Engineering Specialist on the F-18, F-20, and the F-23. Switching to commercial aircraft in the 90's, RJ worked at Boeing as a Systems Test Engineer on the 727, 747, 777, and was a consultant on the E-4B Nightwatch. Like I said, this is just some of what he accomplished. To me my father-in-law seemed like the type of guy that writers like Tom Clancy and W.E.B. Griffin included in their novels.

RJ was very tight lipped and told the family numerous times that he could not talk about his past work due to security reasons. I knew he carried a gun and numerous times I saw him with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. I can only recall one story that he shared, and that was only because he had quite a few more than his usual nightly single martini. I was talking to him about nuclear power sources and the conversation shifted towards nuclear bomb testing. RJ proceeded to tell me about an atmospheric detonation of a atom bomb that he was involved with, sometime in "the early 50's", that took place in the Nevada desert. He said he believed the blast was responsible for a craft crashing not far from the test site. I asked, "an airplane?", to which he responded "no, an unidentified craft." "We didn't know what it was at first." He then told me of a miserable bus ride that he had to take from Nevada into the Arizona desert to inspect the craft. RJ said it was basically a waste of time, as they couldn't really do anything out there anyways, but the Air Force wanted to move the craft to Homey Airport ASAP, and he was on the team that had been sent to look it over. He said he saw the craft years later at Groom Lake where he was part of a unit that was reverse engineering the propulsion system on it. I tried to get some more details out of him but he was going on about the craft's technology and getting really technical about it's roll, pitch, and yaw rates. At that time I did not know that he had been a flight test engineer but I did ask him how he knew about all that on the craft, and did he get to fly in it? He looked at me deadpan, smiled, and said nothing more. 

North Main - Chapter Ten

 The prospect of a new place to street race was exciting to say the least. North Main was getting crazy and lately there were way more spectators than racers. And with more people came more problems. Drinking, fighting, littering, theft (somebody's tools got stolen out of their truck bed), property damage, and general mischief. The same thing was already happening on Market Street. Cruisers were driving in from all over So Cal to cruise Market and it was now taking well over an hour to complete the circuit! A lot of cars ended up overheating and puking their coolant out. One night I was hanging out with Livingston in front of Carl's Jr. and I asked if he wanted to go down to North Main and he said no way, it's too crowded. I mentioned that new area on the other side of town that Jim had told me about. Livingston had heard some talk about it as well and said "that sounds like Galena Street." I told him that I hadn't been down there yet but it was close to Orco Block. He told me it was all industrial around there, well hidden and far away from any houses. "At this point anything would be better than North Main" I said, "it's just too hot with all the cops". Livingston agreed and added that Market Street was not much better. I told him I had been thinking about that lately and might have come up with a new area to cruise. "I'm all ears" he said, and with that we headed into Carl's to talk more about my plan.

Our biggest obstacle was how well known Market Street was. People had been cruising there for years and even the Police were having a tough time deterring cruisers. The latest tactic that they utilized was closing down sections of Market Street and diverting traffic down the side streets. Cruisers were getting fed up but you couldn't tell by the sheer numbers of them that still showed up every weekend. The new area that I had in mind was on the opposite side of town, right by the Tyler Mall, which was a huge shopping mall. Magnolia Avenue ran right in front of the mall and the initial cruise route would basically "start" at the intersection of Hole and Magnolia Avenue, continue down Magnolia, past the mall, and proceed until you reached La Sierra Avenue, where you would u-turn and cruise back. There were also a lot of places to hang out a long the route. There was a Carl's Jr, McDonald's, the mall parking lot, Del Taco, and right across the street was a Gemco with a huge parking area. It seemed ideal, now all we had to do was figure out how to make the switch happen. We thought about telling some of the local car clubs so they could help spread the word but we didn't know if everyone would agree with our plan, as there were a lot of die hard Market Street cruisers. After running out of ideas we decided to ask Livingston's mom. She was a smart lady and was always interested in what we were doing. After telling his mom our plan, she said we needed to tell as many people as possible if we were going to pull this off, specifically the cruisers. She told us flyers would be our best bet. "Like the ones we get in the mail for advertising." she said. We both agreed that it was a great idea but we would need hundreds of copies if we were going to pull this off. Before you could say "Totally Radical", she offered to help us by making the copies at her work! Now all we had to do was come up with a flyer, and that job was tasked to me.

The following Friday I cruised over to Jim's house and we both headed down to the industrial complex by Orco Block to check out the street racing possibilities. We got there a little after 6 PM and all the surrounding businesses were closed. The place looked deserted! We started driving the length of Galena Street and sure enough, about a quarter mile down you could see where someone had painted a white line across the road and there were the telltale burnout marks. Street racers had obviously already discovered this new area, to what extent we did not know, but it looked promising. We also noticed that the entire street was lined with street lights, something that North Main did not have. It didn't take us long to turn around and stage our cars at the "starting" line. Jim's car was an automatic so he did the three finger countdown, holding up his hand so I could see it through his side window. As soon as his third finger popped up, we were off! When we crossed the finish line (a fire hydrant with a reflector tape all over it) it was too close to call. I did let off early because I was still unsure how long the shut down area was. (my Chevelle still had the stock 4 wheel drum brakes) We both agreed the area was nice and we would be back.

After work on Saturday, instead of cruising or racing, I worked on the flyer using my best bubble letter writing. On the top of the flyer it said "Why Cruise Market? Cruise the Mag" and at the bottom was a drawn map of the cruise area which highlighted the many places to park. I dropped it off at Livingston's house and about a week later we got our first stack of copies. The next weekend we hit Market Street hard, passing out all of the fliers that we had. The following weekend found us down at "The Mag" to see the firsthand results of our endeavor. We hung out for a few hours and to our surprise we did not see any cruisers! I don't know what we were expecting but I was hoping to see at least a few cruisers. We realized that this was going to take more time and effort, but that did not dissuade us. The night was still young so Livingston doubled back to his house to pick up more flyers and I told him I would meet him down on Market. I enlisted the help of Jim, his friend Greg, a couple of guys from my neighborhood - Rick and Steve, and I found Chuck when I got down there. Livingston distributed the flyers to our motley crew and off they went in an attempt to give one to everyone down at Market Street that night. We now knew this was not going to happen overnight, but we were determined to see this through. Thinking back, I am not sure exactly how long it took to get cruisers down to The Mag. I believe it was like three or four months before we really noticed anything, and it was actually the summer after we initially started our "Cruise the Mag" campaign that it absolutely exploded in popularity and completely replaced Market Street as Riverside's cruise area. 

North Main was getting more insane every weekend, or so it seemed. Another big bust went down and this time the police impounded at least six trailered cars! They weren't even off the trailers but they took them anyway. The locals that knew about the street racing by Orco Block kept quite about it, and with good reason. We were not about to spread the word about a new location, lest it end up like North Main. Even after the second bust, people were still drawn to North Main. Against my better judgement, I was down there the next weekend and that is when Downing showed up with his Pro Stock Vega. He parked way down the street, past the finish line and away from the action. I was not going to miss his inaugural outing as I had helped him with the final tune on the Vega and I wanted to see how it ran. He didn't waste any time and pulled it off the trailer as soon as he got there. Man this thing was loud! He told me he wanted to make a few runs and then get the heck out of there. It wasn't long before he found a race with a Pro Street Pinto. Downing's Vega was running a 400 cubic inch small block Chevy with Dart aluminum heads. The Pinto had a 460 big block Ford stuffed in it! It was going to be quite a match! Both cars did some burnouts to heat up their tires and then staged at the starting line. The Vega came off the line hard, pulling the front wheels off the pavement until it hit second gear. The Pinto hooked hard, also pulling the front wheels briefly but then it sort of nosed over like it was losing power. The Pinto's engine was roaring but it seemed to be slowing down. Downing's Vega ran like a Pro Stock and pulled away from that Pinto so quickly that I thought maybe the guy gave up or broke something. And then it happened, so quickly that if you were watching and blinked, you would have missed it. As soon as Downing crossed the finish line a El Camino that was parked on the right hand side of the street, right before the finish line, made a left turn to cross over to the other side of North Main. The Pinto, still barreling towards the finish line, hit the Elco square in the drivers door! Everyone that was down at North Main that night heard the skidding, screeching, and the metallic crunching of metal on metal from the impact. Before the cars had even stopped moving the Pinto burst into flames! Chaos ensued as the vast majority of the spectators were running to their cars to get the heck out of there. Downing saw the immediate aftermath as he had just turned around in the Vega. He floored it and drove right up to the accident site, grabbed his fire extinguisher out of the car and emptied it on the flames that were coming out of what was left of the Pintos engine compartment. There were other people trying to get the driver of the car, as the firewall looked like it was pushed back at least two feet. The El Camino was literally bent in a V shape from the impact and the driver ended up on the passenger floorboard. There were a couple of guys trying to get the passenger door to open so they could get him out. There was broken glass everywhere! Lately the cops always seemed to be down at North Main but tonight there was not one to be found. The nearest pay phone was at least a mile away and someone had yelled that they were going to go and call the fire department. There were a few more people with fire extinguishers knocking down the fire so I went up to Downing and urged him to load up the Vega and get the heck out of there before the cops showed up. Technically he was not involved in the accident anyways although he was involved in a street race, so I helped him load up the Vega and we headed straight for the freeway and then to his house. That night, after Downing was at home and the Vega was back in the garage, we were sitting on his porch talking about the accident and what a close call it had been for him. He flat out told me he was never going to street race again. It wasn't worth the risk. From now on he would be doing all of his drag racing at Riverside International Raceway or OCIR. "Probably best" I said, and then in the next breath I was trying to talk him into going down to Orco Block next weekend to catch some street racing. "Maybe as a spectator" he said, "but I'm through with North Main."