Saturday Bag o’ Photos

I hope you’ll forgive me for posting more wristwatch photos. Here’s the state of my collection as of today, the favorites in the display case and the overflow pieces on individual stands. The little plastic stands were a gift to myself for Father’s Day.

After taking these photos, I realized there’s yet another Timex, but since it’s almost the same as the second from left watch in the lower photo, I didn’t bother reshooting. The favorites in the upper photo are the ones I wear daily (to be clear, one per day in rotation), the overflow watches only occasionally. I still favor mechanical watches, even though they have to be wound and set before wearing; the quartz pieces only need attention after a 30-day month, when the date needs to be advanced.

I have other toys as well. Like these two:

The McDonnell-Douglas F-15 desk model was presented to me by the 555th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Luke AFB in 1978 when I completed flight training in the Eagle. In those days what are now called FTUs (formal training units) were RTUs (replacement training units), and the 555th Triple Nickel was the first F-15 RTU. But back to the desk model: you had to graduate to get one.

During my follow-on assignment to the 32nd TFS in the Netherlands, I was chosen to attend a two-week air-to-air missile theory & employment course at Raytheon’s Lowell Research Institute. In exchange for a fun time in the Boston area and learning all about AIM-7 Sparrows and AIM-9 Sidewinders, I became the 32nd’s missile instructor, sharing my knowledge with squadron mates. As with the F-15 model, every graduate of the Raytheon course was given one of these Sparrow models (the Sparrow, at the time, was the Eagle’s main long-range weapon, a complicated and problematic piece of gear in which a thousand mechanical and electronic subsystems had to work perfectly in order to hit and destroy a target … a “thinking man’s bullet,” as I learned in detail).

A detail I’d almost forgotten … when Major Cliver, my boss in the 32nd TFS, took me aside to tell me I’d been picked to go to the Raytheon course, he said “You’re an engineer, right?” “No,” I said, “I’m an English major.” “Oh shit,” he said, “you have to be one to go to the course. I thought the ‘Eng’ on your form meant something else. Well, never mind, you’re going anyway.” And so I went, joining a group of USAF and Navy pilots and weapon systems officers who were to a man engineering majors for a course taught by engineers, but you know what? As a fighter pilot I was so steeped in engineering language and ways of thinking it was no problem.

This is my most recent photo of the Gang of Three, Fritzi, Lulu, and Mister B.

The most recent photo of all three together, that is. I took it Monday morning, the 20th of May. Fritzi and Lulu jumped up on the bench but Mr. B needed a lift, his leaping days behind him. Sadly, so too are his days of going on morning walks with his younger housemates. His hips are stiff and he’s also getting wobbly back there. He stays home now when I walk the other two. He’s starting to have accidents indoors, but it’s an occasional thing. I walk him out to the back yard a couple of times every evening before bedtime, and he gets through the nights okay. Getting old sucks.