Time marches on.
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Yes, that’s a motorized lift chair, an early anniversary present from Donna. No longer will I struggle to get up out of my chair — at least this chair. Take care of your knees, kids! Note the old-man grabber stick leaning against the wall to my left: that sorry milestone was achieved years ago, and similar sticks are strategically positioned about the house. Donna uses them too, so I don’t feel too bad about reaching for one when I drop a Jelly Belly.
Fritzi and Lulu take a dim view of the built-in massager, but I predict they’ll love it when winter finally comes and I switch on the heated seat and backrest.
We wanted to put both recliners along the wall under the propeller, but Fritzi and Lulu use the couch and we worried that without the wall behind it Fritzi might start jumping off the backrest. So against the wall the couch must stay, and my old recliner, now Donna’s, will just have to sit in the middle of the floor. It’s not in the photo, but there’s a ramp the dogs use to get on and off the couch … it sits parallel to the coffee table, if you were wondering why it’s sideways. When we have company we stow the ramp in the hallway and position the coffee table where a normal person would put it.
A couple of years ago the Air Force directed retirees and dependents to get new ID cards. Sometime last spring we went to the pass & ID office at Davis-Monthan AFB, where they issued one to Donna but told me I was good with my old one, that I was in some kind of exemption window. Well, okay, but conflicting guidance soon came my way. Newsletters from the base retirement office kept telling me I’d need a new ID card by the end of the year; so did gate guards and volunteers at the BX pharmacy, where we pick up prescription meds. This week I made another appointment and tried again, successfully. I don’t know if it has an embedded RFID chip, but my new ID has more bar codes, and this time a fingerprint in addition to a photo.
Leaving base I drove past the transient aircraft shelters near the north end of the runway. There I saw the last three F-15 Eagles from Barnes Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts, which is transitioning to the F-35. Pilots from Barnes had flown the last of their Eagles to Davis-Monthan earlier in the week, bound for the Boneyard. I should have stopped to take a photo but didn’t.
Barnes is transitioning to the F-35. As it stands now, ANG units in three states still fly the original single-seat Eagle, my old jet: Oregon, Louisiana, and California. According to recent press releases the Oregon ANG, based at Portland, and the Louisiana ANG, based at New Orleans, will transition to F-15EX Eagle IIs, the two-seat replacement for the single-seat F-15 Eagle. Portland will be the schoolhouse for training new F-15EX pilots, both active duty and guard. The last of the OG* Eagles will continue to fly until 2031: 21 C models upgraded with the latest and greatest radars, sensors, and avionics, assigned to the California ANG at Fresno. These jets were supposed to retire in 2026; delays in building and fielding new EX models are responsible for the slip. The Pentagon says 21 upgraded Eagles will do for air defense of the continental U.S. an additional five years, and as an old Eagle driver I not only agree but am delighted my jet is still on the job. At the rate USAF fighter acquisition and transition programs are going, the Eagle may outlive some of its oldest pilots … it’s not a stretch, as the father of a 59-year-old son and a 23-year-old grandson, to imagine all three of us flying the same aircraft, which puts the Eagle in the same league as the multigenerational B-52.
You know what, though? Everybody talks about fathers/sons/grandsons flying Buffs — which has actually happened — but the same scenario could play out with any number of aircraft still flying for the USAF: KC-135 tankers, C-130 cargo haulers, T-38 trainers, and you can probably think of a few more, like the U-2. We’ve definitely gotten our money’s worth out of those airframes.
*OG=slangy shorthand for original ("original gangster").