"ciao"
"CIA officer"
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: July 31, 2006
Right after I read over this crew list from STS-72, I remembered something from the Wainwright. We had a new Fire Controlman report to our division to work in the Fire Control Radar center. I can't remember his name, but I think he had been stationed on the flag ship in the Med that was, I think the Belknap, which was the lead ship the Wainwright belonged to. Apparently because he had been stationed in the Med, unlike the rest of us having been stationed stateside, he used to always say "Ciao." We had a debate in Missile Plot one day about the correct spelling of "ciao." I told them it was spelled "ciao" but someone else said it was spelled as it was pronounced "chow." I decided that this guy from the Belknap would know the correct answer and called over to 55-bravo to ask, but he didn't know. Anyway, maybe this memory is a result of knowing this astronaut named Leroy Chiao. Hell, maybe that was my alias for this flight, now that I think about it. As I wrote, in 2004 I think it was, "Leroy" was one of my nicknames on the Wainwright, as was "Homer" and "Birddog."
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: July 31, 2006
In "Generations," they filmed that orbital skydiving with Kirk but then cut it from the movie that was released. I am wondering if that was planned because of STS-1 in 1981. From what I've read, the shuttle crew discussed abandoning the shuttle but they did not do that obviously. Maybe that is why the orbital skydiving scene was filmed but not included with the release.
For the past several hours, I have been examining my memory for anything that could represent me falling out of the Columbia as it landed during STS-1, assuming that something such as that did occur to me.
There was that time in France where I walked off the wrong side of the train because I was drunk and didn't even realize I had fallen until I was face down in the dirt.
Another time, somewhere overseas, not sure where, maybe Le Havre, France, Mogge and I were returning to the Wainwright late one night. I was running along the top of some kind of concrete roof and then suddenly found I had run of the end of it. Even though I was very drunk, I hit the concrete hard enough to still register in my mind and I knew I was going to feel it the next day.
The first day of football practice in Ashdown after we moved down there and I was starting the 9th grade. School started in September I guess, but two-a-day summer practice started before the school year started. I was so out of shape that I couldn't get out of the bed the next morning for the second day of practice. Denzil was leaving that morning well before sunrise and he asked me I was going to practice. He was going to work at the gravel pit and Micheal was going to work with him as he was still on summer vacation. I didn't go into practice that day but did go back the third day and they worked me even harder for missing a day.
Then there was this time that I thought about a few hours ago and keep coming back to several times this morning. This was several years earlier than that Ashdown football practice day. We were still living in De Queen at Randy Romine's house. I think mom was looking for a place of her own, planning to leave Randy as she did several times. We were looking at some house I guess she was planning to rent. As we went through the house, I reached up and pulled on the cord to the stair-ladder that went into the attic. I look at something similar to that in this building and I start thinking about the landing gear cover on the space shuttle. I am wondering if that is the memory of me doing something to get the buckled cover off so that the gear can come down. That stair-ladder makes me think of a retracting landing gear. And, to add more weight to this theory, that next day in my memory, mom had to take me to the hospital because I pulled some muscles in my back when I reached up and pulled the ladder down. I am wondering if reality had me actually on the other side of that retractable structure and pushing it open, instead of in my memory where I pulled it down. And the part about me not being able to move from the couch represents that I fell through and hit the ground hard. I keep thinking about that video clip on the news the other day with the motorcyclist hitting the ground hard after his stunt went bad.
There is also that memory I have written about before where I climbed up on Randy Romine's 100 foot HAM radio antenna. One time I went up there with my first model rocket, the one that was fashioned as R2D2 from Star Wars. Then it dawned on me a few hours later: Of course! R2D2 is shaped a lot like the external fuel tank and the solid-rocket boosters for the space shuttle.
So then I started thinking that my real memories are locked into my symbolic memories of the same time. In other words, what happened to Kerry Burgess in 1981, for instance, has clues to what really happened to me in 1981. That isn't consistent though. But as I wrote earlier, I can usually find some kind of connection point to tie certain details together, the pattern doesn't always have to be consistent. For example, one thing can happen to Kerry Burgess in 1981 that represents something that really happened to me in 1981, but that date pattern doesn't always have to be consistent. Something could happen to Kerry Burgess in 1995, for instance, that happened to me in reality in 1983. But that 1995 and 1983 detail will have something else that connects them. So anyway, I started thinking about where Kerry Burgess lived in 1981. We were in a house on De Quincy street in De Queen. It was the last place we lived in before moving to start school in Ashdown sometime in the summer of 1981. Then I remembered reading about those problems they had on Columbia in April 1981 with the toilets and I remember a problem with the toilet in that house on De Quincy. There was another time I was lifting weights with barbells and one of the weights slipped off the slide and broke the window in my bedroom. We were living in that house I think when mom told us to watch the eruption of Mt. St. Helens on tv. I remember knocking out the lights when I tried to turn the house wiring into a tv antenna another time. Was it 4/15/80 or 4/15/81 when I remember that snow storm I wrote about yesterday? Maybe it was '81 because I realized that 4/15 would be the day after STS-1 returned. Not sure what the snow storm means? A ticker-tape parade? What about mom paying taxes? I remember that day our pet dog, a pekingnese named Susie, slipped out the door and I chased her around the block in the snow. I actually miss that little dog.
So then I started thinking: how fast is the shuttle moving when it lands?
Then I looked it up. According to this information on the atmospheric free flight, it landed at 213 mph. How the hell could I have survived falling something like 75 feet to the ground at over 200 mph?
If I did fall out, I must have been high enough to open my parachute. That is, if that even happened to me. It drives me crazy not knowing. I don't know what I don't know.
In "Generations," Kirk disappears from the Deflector room and then the movie jumps ahead, predictably now, 78 years into the future. When we see Kirk again, he is chopping wood. What could that mean to me? Assuming that I fell out of the shuttle as it landed, what does the scene with Kirk chopping wood represent?
Then I started thinking again about what I was writing, or maybe speaking out loud, about my experiences in 1985 with flying through DFW on my way home to Hicks Road. My luggage got lost every time I flew through there. Then I started thinking about that in terms of STS-1. I was luggage on that flight and I didn't make it back with the ship.
I started remembering this white Cadillac that Randy Romine drove. I am thinking that our white vehicles represent the space shuttle. I remember standing up through the sun roof one day as he was backing out of the driveway.
In the theme of falling out of the shuttle, there is that scene in "First Contact" where Data jumps down several stories to where Lilly is shooting at them.
This could be about that theory I wrote about earlier. There is that failed launch of my F-14 Tomcat that left me hanging by my parachute from the superstructure of the aircraft carrier. In my artificial and symbolic memory, I was sitting on a topside deck on the superstructure under the fire-control radar of the Taylor and I was reading a book and the Captain and some other crew were running up or at least, they seemed to be in a hurry and I wondered what the commotion was about. They saw me sitting there reading a book and that seemed to be why they were there. The reality is probably that I almost got cooked by the aircraft carriers radar and this artificial memory could be of that event. It always reminds me of something vague, real or artificial, that I never can remember.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: July 31, 2006
I started thinking again about that time on the Wainwright when I was topside up on the superstructure helping Larry Johnson work on one of his WDS antennas. I pulled off the fiberglass, canopy-shaped cover, and it almost pulled me over the side when the wind caught it. I wonder if that represents falling out of the shuttle as the WDS contained a lot of parts that remind me of the heat tiles on the shuttle.
