The 36-hour Christmas Eve

Both Ann and I grew up immersed in Southwest Nebraska family. Christmas meant the much-anticipated school program, always an evening event, on the last day of school. We did church on Christmas Eve. Opening gifts on Christmas Eve was heresy -- never happened! Santa left gifts for the young believers to find when they arose Christmas morning. Mom got up and started dinner along with breakfast which always included cinnamon rolls with nuts and raisins. The men folks did morning chores as the cows had to be milked, fed and cared for before anything else happened -- always! Chores done, breakfasted together and only then were the wrapped gifts from under the tree opened. One person one gift at a time was the rule.

Ann's family traditionally had roast turkey for Christmas dinner. Plenty for everybody: pretty molded cranberry Jell-O salads, home-made parker house rolls, and always always fresh hot home-made pie. The family stayed home and relaxed. My mom had a more hurried dinner and then went to visit all the neighbors and close by relation to spread cheer but mostly see how they had fared with Santa.

Military life changed our routine in many ways. In my 25-plus years of duty in the Air Force I was fortunate to draw Christmas duty only a few times. Memorable was a Christmas Eve at Sondrestrom Air Base, Greenland where the only outside lighted Christmas Tree was one made of rebar outside the Base Commander's Quarters. At night, 24 hours a day that far north, it looked a lot like the "tree" made from tires in front of Western Tire. At Sondie the awesome northern lights played to the south of us. Then there was the enchanting Christmas day in Alaska flying Santa to the local Indian children living along a frozen Yukon River. Luckily I missed Christmas in Vietnam the three years I served there. Most of my other on duty Christmases were spent in the alert facilities on several SAC bases. There the duty was light and family could come eat with us and spend time together.

Many times we were able to journey back home to spend the special day within the family tradition. In our case, the in-laws and outlaws were separated by about 35 miles of country road. Ann would take one or two of our children and go to be with her folks. The remaining two or three children, their choice, would stay with me at my folks place. End result, we made both families unhappy! An option would have been to have our whole family gather at one or the other residence but we found that they kept track and complained if they perceived that the time spent wasn't exactly equal. No matter that we had spent two days cooped up in a Volkswagen bug traveling with three young children to and from Cape Cod. What worked best was to have one family or the other travel to wherever we were assigned and spend Christmas with us.

The year 1967 was the goofiest of the lot. We lived on Clinton Sherman AFB, Oklahoma. I had been assigned my first crew that summer after returning from an eventful 90-day "Young Tiger" tour in Vietnam. The word came down from headquarters that our Squadron be tasked with a "fighter drag" to SEA (militarese for Southeast Asia). Col. Mac, our beloved Squadron Commander, evidently figured that it was my crew's turn to "volunteer" to be gone for Christmas. Actually it wasn't too bad a choice as it was cold and snowy, Oklahoma sees plenty of ice storms, so warm Hawaii, Guam and Okinawa beckoned.

My little family woke up to Santa Claus presents the morning of Dec. 21. Later that day, my crew flew to Riverside, Calif., to overnight. Next morning we launched, met our 12 F-4 -- freshly overhauled or new -- fighters north of San Francisco and with two other tankers, headed for Hawaii. At Hickam for the first time I saw time palm trees decorated with colored lights. Somehow balmy temperatures and palm trees hung with wreaths two days before Christmas didn't seem right.

After spending the night at Hickam we launched our fuel-heavy tankers to again navigate for the fighters refueling them in-flight and all recovered safely in Guam. From there the fighters would fly to the Philippines and on to Vietnam unrefueled. We ferried our tanker on to Okinawa where we hoped for a hotsy bath and to a couple days on the beach. Then we figured to escort war-weary fighters back to the States.

That was the plan but it didn't work out that way. Arriving in Okinawa some SAC staff weenie lieutenant colonel greeted us with instructions to hurry, throw our gear on a Clinton Sherman AFB "Pony Express" tanker that was waiting to launch back toward the States. "Lucky guys, you'll be home for Christmas" he told us.

We were out of crew rest so couldn't function as aircrew members. Banished to the cargo hold we sat in the canvas troop seats (spelled uncomfortable) for the non-stop trip back to Hickam. There a crew from our home squadron was waiting for the tanker we'd been riding on to be refueled and off we went. The timing worked and we touched down back home in Oklahoma just in time for Christmas Eve services. Shortly after we had left Okinawa on the other side of the International Date Line it became Christmas Eve morning at the stroke of midnight. And it was still Christmas Eve when we reached Oklahoma some 20 hours of flying later, even though we had experienced only one sunrise on a terribly long 36-hour day.

My children were confused. Dad is back for Christmas but Santa Claus already came. That was obviously the end of the myth for them but there is nothing better than being surrounded by your own family at Christmas no matter how tired and confused the traveler or the kids may be.

Merry Christmas and that is the way I see it.