Once when my kids were small (4 & 7) I used to hang out at a bookstore my friend owned. There was a woman named Maryann who also hung out there. She often mentioned "the space brothers". One day she said the space brothers had been giving her light shows in the sky at night. I asked about them and then asked if she could take me to see them. Of course I broght my kids, they went everywhere with me when I wasn't working. It was September so the sun was down by 8 pm. We followed her to a place behind the university facing the hill called "A" mountain (for Aggies - the university was mainly an agricultural school). On the other side of A mountain was the Organ mountains and on the other side of those is the White Sands Missle base where they were testing Reagan's "star wars". None of us knew what that meant, I thought it was a laser system to shoot missles from other countries or something. Anyway, we were looking at the stars and Maryann was explaining what to look for. Eventually she said, pointing to the sky, that looks like one there. We all looked and saw a star where she pointed, it moved then and zipped around the sky. It was soon joined by 2 other "stars" and they zipped around the sky together in a triangle formation for a while, then went 3 separate directions and disappeared. My oldest daughter (on earth to teach gratitude) yelled "Thank you!".
I read "A" Mountain and "Aggies" and thought "Hey, I know where that is!" But then realized that there are lots of schools who call themselves Aggies so it's probably not the "A" Mountain I was thinking about. Them you mentioned White Sands Missile Base and I was like "No, I was right the first time. I know
exactly where that is!!"
I first met my wife at a bar in Juarez Mexico when I was stationed at Ft Bliss (technically it was Biggs Army Airfield) and she had just started her first semester at NMSU. That's how we knew we were destined to share a life together, because of the craziness of how we met. So if we are sharing crazy military stories I have quite a few. Some are even appropriate enough to share here!
At Ft Bliss there is a laundry service that handles the sheets and bedding for all the barracks. They also clean and press uniforms for the soldiers who want to look "squared away" without having to do the work. The guys working at the laundry facility were actually prisoners and this was all part of their work program.
One of the tedious jobs my unit had to do was get rid of weeds around our barracks and company building. We weren't allowed to simply spray Roundup on them as that was considered "dumping hazardous chemicals" if soldiers were doing it. The city workers and private landscapers sprayed it all over El Paso without consequence, it was just the military that wasn't allowed to use it. So instead we had propane torches that we would use to simply burn the weeds. It was incredibly inefficient as we would burn the tops away but leave the roots. For some reason I never understood we also weren't allowed to simply pull them out. So every other week a group of us would go out with propane canisters attached to the torching stick and set fire to weeds in the 100+ degree heat of East Texas.
At one point our Battalion Commander had asked about getting the same prisoners who worked the laundry facility to also come in and burn weeds. That request was denied because once the outside temperature reach a certain point it was considered "cruel and unusual punishment" to make prisoners work outside. I made a comment at the time about "Who do I have to kill to get out of weed detail. Because apparently soldiers are less important than convicts and killing someone would give me that convict level of treatment."
When I was in the Army I drove a Toyota 4x4. If you have ever seen Back to the Future and remember the pickup truck that Marty McFly wanted, and then got by the end of the movie; that's basically what my truck looked like except mine was red instead of black. I used to love driving it all over the desert behind the base, especially after it would rain because I could find patches of mud to drive through. On one such occasion as I was heading back to the barracks I came across a section of road that had washed out and left a small gouge in the ground going all the way across the path. Unfortunately I didn't see it in time to stop and my truck wound up nose down in the ditch with the rear bumper up in the air. The bottom of the ditch was too muddy for the front tires to get enough traction and the rear tires were several feet off the ground; I was pretty stuck. The good news was that this road ran along a chainlink fence which had some sort of government building on the other side. So I just needed to follow the fence until I reached the front gate and could ask for help. What I didn't realize at that time was that this building was the prison where the laundry workers were housed.
So my buddy and I, covered in mud from trying to my truck free, walk up to the guard shack. The guard comes out, very suspicious with his hand resting on the butt of his sidearm. I tell him that my truck is stuck in mud and ask if I can use a phone to call for help. The guard gives us a very stern look and asks if we were aware that this was a prison facility. I apologized and stated that we just saw this was a building and had no clue what it was for. Then, without missing a beat I asked "So does that mean I only get one phone call?" The guard stared at me moment with a completely blank expression, then relaxed, smiled a bit and said he would see what he could do.