From the LRAFB "Guide to . . .", a cartoon map.* The single photo view at the top of this page is marked with a <. Points of interest are marked in blue on the map, orange, orange here. The line drawing was scanned and sent by Joe Hnat. It shows our barracks location, and a few others, more explicitly. In the linked big view it is rotated to correspond more closely with the view of the Guide map, making them both roughly North-to-top.

From the top:

I may have been confused by the driveways in front of the 70th Wing Headquarters building when I put the 70 RTS new building on the side of the maintenance area, rather than on 2nd Street. The headquarters is where I spent one night as a guard, locked in a 9' x 9' room with the door to a top Top Secret safe, an Army cot and mattress, and a .45 Automatic. No radio, no TV, no light switch. Several .45-size holes in the walls

Any road, that was the place all the equipment loaded with that big old forklift went to. I picked up the forklift at the Transportation Area, where I passed the licensing test ("See that forklift?" "Yes." "That's the one.") and drove it a couple-three miles to the old, off-base photo lab building. In 30-degree weather. It had the steering wheels under the seat, and the seat faced the wrong way, so you could drive it "forward" if you didn't mind going very, very slow. Rear-wheel steering, aside from being awkward, can be dangerously sudden at any speed. So I drove to the Lab looking over my shoulder. When I got there I couldn't turn around, almost couldn't get down off the thing. Having the Lab in the same building as the remainder of the squadron eliminated the Weapons-Carrier Taxi-driver detail.

When I spent a few weeks as a shelf-stocker in the Commissary (Bldg. 1036, I think, near the bottom right) the Warehouse was where we got the goods. We met at the store at 2AM, made a list of needs, piled in a truck and headed out, making a stop at the base-housing (north of the golf course) home of the near-retirement Mess Sergeant in charge of the detail. He would go in his kitchen, where we could see him chug a can of beer. Back in the truck he'd chug another on the way to the warehouse. He'd nurse one or two while we picked the goods and packed the truck, then we'd stop by home and he'd resupply for the trip to the store and our shelf-filling time.

The shift was supposed to last from 2AM to 10AM, but if we hustled and got the shelf-stocking and floor-cleaning done before the day crew came on at 7AM or so, we could leave and they wouldn't have a chance to find something else for us to do. Of course it all depended on someone giving the Sarge a ride home.

I drew in the approximate location of the barracks (OK, "dormitory") building I lived in. It was second or third in a row of four or five there in that corner. Opposite its lower right side was the chow hall, one of several in the area. When I find some more pictures it may come clearer how all this fit together. It was from the back stoop of the barracks that I watched the 101st Airborne on their daily 5:30 AM jog around the base. Within their ranks I saw fellow Torrance High alumnus Bill Ohlert.

When I arrived at LRAFB it was the second day of a forty-day stretch without sun, second day of a four-day ice storm. Harsh, for a Southern California boy. Not only was the weather harsh, the ground between the barracks and the commercial-entertainment area was composed of sharp-cornered fragments of broken rock. Crossing that uneven ground to go to the Airmen's club, BX, bank, theater, was daunting. The walk around on roads was long, long enough that we walked the rocks.

The map shows a golf course. I can't imagine calling the territory in that area a golf course, even by the time I got through spending a few days picking rocks out of the supposed fairways. Seems to me the underlying terrain was like the rock-hazard between the barracks and commercial area, just a little more pulverized.

A photo made in 1957 by Joe Hnat, whose fame in these days will be made clear on LRAFB Page 3. He found this site in May, 2005, a mere 48 years later, and sent the picture, wondering if that was my MG TD. Turns out this one was present on the base before mine. Joe left early-out to begin college in the first part of September, 1957. I brought my MG to the base just after he left. This one has red wheels, I think, and no luggage rack.

Joe says the chow hall in the picture is not the one close to our barracks/workplace, but the only one when he came to the newly hatched base in 1955. They had to walk across fields to get to it, and the one near the barracks was opened later. I thought perhaps our barracks was one of those that can be seen above and to the left in the photo. Joe remembers it as the middle one of a set of three. I remember it as being on higher ground than the commercial center, so it may be up there somewhere.

Joe has some more photos he will scan, and they may find their way here. If they are like this one, they match my memory of the place: saturated colors and spare architecture (and landscaping).

They did materialize, those additonal photos Joseph Hnat mentioned, and I have made a Page of his records of places and people from 1956 and 1957, Little Rock Air Force Base and surrounds, and will try to dig up the ones from Sidi Slimane Air Base, Morocco. There are** others from Ramey Air Force Base, Puerto Rico.

Included in the photos and notes are the Base Exchange Area, the Chapel, Our Barracks, Barracks Rooms with and without personnel, Lake Conway, Arkansas State Capitol, Arkansas River from the VA Hospital, Ole Swinning Hole, Hooches Inside and Out (North Africa). Personnel pictured include two or three Unknown Airmen, Robert L. Persing, Joseph A. Hnat, William Argerie, Donald Born, Charles R. Smith, Virgil "Bud" Eustis, Airman Thomas, Airman Tully, Airman Williams, Frank J. Pitcavage, Kenneth Pierce, Blair Dellinger, William Rusnak, Marilyn Monroe, Herb Surom, and an unidentified Airman who was mistakenly assigned the name "Clifford Weems", probably the only mistake I could correct, as I have the clearest of memories of the Airman of that name, and it was not the fellow depicted.

https://0398ca9.netsolhost.com/!%20L%20R%20A%20F%20B%20By%20Joe%20Hnat_.htm in case you missed the link ...

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*Did you ever use a Leroy Lettering set? You have an open-air pen consisting of a tiny reservoir to top up with an eyedropper of ink and a pin to meter the fluid. It is embedded in one end of a three-legged frame like a miniature Ouija puck. Another leg is for stability, and the third is a pin you set in a template shaped like a letter. You hold the pen where it is to write, and the template follower guides the shape of the letter. Not that easy, but with practice you can do good, fast work. I am picturing the Airman who made this map. Leroy Lettering was drudgery. Scowl.

** Names of those pictured in the Ramey AFB photos include: Robert Wanless, Loren Stohlmann, "Chief", Dean Lunquist, "Chango", John Callahan, Donald Cerosky, Gerald Burling, Charles R. Smith, Joseph Hnat, William Northway, Jack Bixler, William Rusnak, Kinsey, Everett Schultze, Joseph 'Jo-Jo' Datillo, Edward Farr, Francis Donnelly, and John Benanti (just in case they happen to Google themselves).