“Home of the free, because of the Brave”

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In Idaho, the Mythical Land of my birth, there is a place called Mountain Home, which has a nearby Air Force base. The Air Force sent us elsewhere soon after my birth, so I never got to know the town or the base. For some strange reason, I thought Mountain Home might be in the mountains.

“Nope--desert.”” said my sister, who is older and has some memories of the place, including a youthful escape attempt across the burning sands.

So, I revised my ideas of the place: it became a vast American Sahara in my mind, with white sands and terrible storms. And camels.

I drove slowly into the town of Mountain Home. It was utterly flat. I could still see the mountains I’d driven through an hour before, but they were spectral in the haze and very far away.

But it wasn’t quite desert, either. The town was very green and tree-lined, and had a 1950s feel to it.

Patriotic slogans abounded on billboards and fast food marquees. But at 3pm on a Saturday, all the real restaurants were closed, so I drove past the McD and Burger King, and drove out to the base, about 10 miles out of town. The land stretched out endlessly, sand and low scrub. A long line of rusting railroad cars sat silent on railroad tracks, looking like they’d been there a while.

The base looked fresh and new, with a big shiny metal gate, and multiple lanes for approaching traffic, ordered to crawl in a 15 mph. I parked and went into the very air-conditioned Visitor’s Center and was told by a very polite desk clerk that even if I had been born here in 1962, I was not setting foot on the base without a sponsor. Can’t be too careful these days.

On the way back to town, I stopped to photograph the railroad cars, wondering if the Air Force was still watching my suspicious behavior. The wind whistled down from the distant mountains and warmed up, racing across the plain. The railroad cars settled a fraction of an inch deeper onto the rusting tracks.

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Photos

Mountain Home
Not too close to mountains

Comments

[dave warren]

AFB cradle gone
I had to laugh at the AFB stict rules not allowing you inside. I, too, born on an Air Force base in 1962 , Tachikawa AFB, in Japan. I went back to see where I was born and the entire base was gone! The whole area re-developed into tall apartment buildings.