A Few Additional Tales of the South Pacific—Part 1
In 1975 my little world was about 30 miles wide and 50 miles long. Much of what I cared about: physics, rock climbing, and hiking a small chunk of the Front Range of the Rockies, fit neatly within its boundaries. I lived in the capital city of this cocoon: Boulder, Colorado.
And then one spring day a friend (Jeannie, who you met in The Angel of Shavano) mentioned a project was starting up at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR, pronounced ’N-car’), requiring people with a technical background and the willingness to travel.
Whatever.
But the idea began to grow on me. I’d never been interested in travel and knew little about the real world; but the NCAR facility, perched as it was on a mesa on the edge of the Front Range, was about as dramatic-looking a place as I’d ever seen. It also didn’t hurt that NCAR had been used as the fictional facility in the 1973 movie Sleeper that was cryogenically preserving the only remaining body part of the evil ‘Leader’—his nose—with several scenes shot around and inside NCAR.
National Center for Atmospheric Research (© NCAR)
I applied for the position of Field Electronics Technician, and they called me in for an interview. Not imagining anything could ever come of it, I went. Everyone I encountered was smart and engaging.
When I was asked about the depth of my knowledge in atmospheric sciences I admitted I knew nothing about the field. “That’s all right,” my interviewer responded (paraphrasing), “this test’s about problem-solving, taking a set of information, deciding what’s important and what isn’t, and using it to come up with a reasonable approach toward a solution.”
There’s a test?
As I walked into a huge room filled with electronic instrumentation, the interviewer asked if I knew how to use an HP 35. I quickly glanced around to see if I recognized anything—no. I had to ask what it was—turned out to be a scientific calculator (which cost about $200 back then—more than my beat-up Volvo 544 had cost). As a slide-rule-carrying physics student, I’d used calculators and knew some programming languages but was seeing a scientific pocket calculator for the first time.
The test was interesting but I had no idea how I did.
NCAR facility (barely) visible at lower right side of photo.
Some time later I received a letter thanking me for participating and noting that if I did not get a telephone call from them at such-and-such a time on such-and-such a day I could assume I was not chosen. And, the letter informed me, if I didn’t answer the phone when they did call, they’d move on to the next candidate.
Having now seen NCAR up close, I was extremely interested in working for them, and was kicking myself for not having sufficiently prepared.
Decision day came. Then the hour. The minute. I started winning staring contest after staring contest with the telephone, but still no call. Maybe they’re running a little late, I said, just hang in there. Five minutes. Ten minutes.
A half hour. I’m collapsing in on myself—it can’t be over. But another half hour passes. I’m crushed. Devastated. Depressed. It is so over.
I light up a fat joint (this was the 70s folks) and smoke it, and am in the process of discovering what heartbreak looks like inside out when the damn phone rings.
Of course I can’t answer it, not like this.
It rings again.
Blinking fast isn’t helping.
The phone rings a third time: I pick it up. ‘Hullo?’ I manage to say into the echo chamber that’s suddenly encased me.
“Hi, is the Dean?”
“Uh, yes it—is.”
I hear, “Sorry, we’ve gotten a late start—congratulations! You’ve been chosen to—” immediately followed by hundreds of other words as I scribble random snippets of possibly when or where or how I arrange something to insure something else. ‘Say as little as possible’ I say to myself, which is suddenly hilariously circular.
“…you’ll be going to American Samoa, so you’ll need to…”
That afternoon I walked over to the Map Room in the campus library. I knew of course where American Samoa was, but ‘just wanted to make sure,’ so I found a large atlas and thumbed my way over to the Caribbean. Twenty or so little islands later, I realized I had no idea whatsoever where American Samoa was.
With the help of the Atlas’ index, and then tracing vertically and horizontally from page-edge numbers and letters on a two-page world map, my fingers shockingly converged on an island on the opposite side of the planet from what I’d expected.
Several weeks of training later, I boarded a plane for Hawaii, where I’d arranged to spend a few days on the way to my assignment. My final day on Oahu I had many hours to kill before my 10 pm flight to Pago Pago, and so I hitch-hiked out past Diamond Head to photograph surfers (where those photos are now I have no idea). Probably because I looked pretty much like Walt Whitman on a bad hair day, I walked the entire way.
After a few hours on the beach I realized the sun was down and started hitchhiking the direct route back towards Honolulu along Diamond Head Road, which back then was a bit remote. It was getting dark and my luck hitchhiking had not improved; finally a car stopped—a beat-up 2-door American model with three huge Hawaiians in it. The guy riding shotgun hopped out and pulled the seat-back forward so I could get in the back. We started out. Not a friendly group—no-one spoke till a few minutes later one of them commented that the f’ing Howlies had ruined the Island, to grunts of agreement.
Okay, whatever.
A minute later a dirt road appeared in the car’s headlights—the driver braked—“Do it here?” The guy riding shotgun said “Nah, let’s go up in the mountains.” The driver sped up and we continued in silence.
Being in the back, I had no easy exit. I started chatting with the guys, but they didn’t respond to anything I said, or so much as look at me. Diamond Head Road wound around to Waikiki Beach where my hotel was, but we bore right at one point and got onto a highway heading West—very soon we approached an exit for downtown Honolulu which I recognized, as I’d wandered through it that afternoon. I said, “Hey guys, I’ll get out here.”
They chuckled at the apparent absurdity of my comment.
I continued to chat about anything and everything as the lights of Honolulu faded, and a while later the suburban lights faded as well. We entered a world of barely-visible, near-vertical, jungle-clad mountains.
I was very nervous but knew pleading wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Incongruously I suddenly realized how late it had gotten and in a moment of frustration said I was going to miss my flight to Samoa and mentioned the National Center for Atmospheric Research. For the first time since I’d gotten in the car, they seemed interested in something I said.
They exchanged comments in Hawaiian. Then the guy riding shotgun turned to me: “You work for the government?”
I knew in a flash I had to answer this right, without hesitation. Say no and get killed, or say yes and get tortured and killed? But this was the only thing about me that mattered to them so I said yes. In reality I didn’t work for the government. NCAR’s a private organization funded by universities and the National Science Foundation.
For effect I added I was working on a joint project with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and NCAR (true), and mentioned the satellite we were using (Nimbus 6). I then lied, said I was the project manager in Samoa and that my team would be meeting me when I landed (as if anybody would be meeting me when I landed at 4 am).
They didn’t respond to any of this—but what followed was an extended, intense debate in Hawaiian—clearly they were in disagreement about what to do with me. Then they went silent. But we continued driving—eventually we emerged from the blackness of the mountains, worked our way through the Honolulu suburbs, and then entered Honolulu proper—earlier, when I was chatting up my life story I’d mentioned what hotel I was staying in. Suddenly we were in front of the hotel—the shotgun Hawaiian jumped out, pulled the seat forward, grabbed me forcefully and spun me across the sidewalk onto the hotel lawn. As I got up they were careening out into traffic.
I felt an intense rush. My flight was leaving in 40 minutes—I collected my bags from the concierge and grabbed a taxi, with my only thought being to catch my plane and get the hell out of Hawaii.
As I flew South over the black Pacific I had six hours to think about how stupid, and how lucky, I’d been. And, I realized what I absolutely should have done was get the car’s license plate and call the police. Missing my flight might have saved lives over the ensuing years.
I got no rest on the flight; close to 4 am I noticed the plane slow and change course; I looked out my window and saw far below a faint necklace of village lights outlining the otherwise invisible island of Tutuila, about 17 miles long and 3 miles wide at its widest. Multiple unseen black peaks broke the necklace of lights; those blackened segments migrated as the plane circled from above, and the effect was that the necklace of lights seemed to sliding along the perimeter of the island—I couldn’t look away.
We approached from the northeast, passed to the south of the island, and swung west a mile or three south of it, then turned north, and then back to the east as we descended.
On approach I’d been thinking to myself that being in Samoa was going to be a magical experience. But something on our final descent triggered the realization that an item in my luggage just might land me in Tafuna Prison within the hour.
To be continued…