Idle American Teens In Bermuda: The Shuttle Bus

Even though my fiction project about Bermuda is likely to end after a few more stories (with most of them still floating out in the editorial ether), I found out a bit of something interested from my sister.  She’s ao  veritable expert on being a 17 year old bored American teen in Bermuda in the 1980’s, partly because that’s what she was when she lived there.  Recently, I asked her about some of the shenanigans teens routinely found themselves embroiled in.  I got the usual response of “drinking, partying, and dancing at The 40 Thieves in Hamilton.”   In then, she said something so mundane, I found it shocking — almost.  “To kill time during the day, we used to get on the shuttle bus and stay on it for hours.”

The shuttle bus ran from the Front Gate to the opposite end of the base, which would be Clearwater Beach and NASA’s Cooper Island Tracking Facility.  To state the obvious: it takes an enormous case of boredom to go:

“What do you want to go do? Go to the Beach?”

“No.”

“Go Fishing?”

“No.”

“Go to the bowling alley?”

“No.”

“Go shop around at the NEX?”

“No.”

“Throw rocks at seagulls?”

“No.”

“Ride around the base for three hours on the shuttle bus?”

“Wow!  What a brilliant idea!”

From Fat Boys to Metallica

It’s strange how one goes from casually listening to music to cultivating one’s interests.  Part of me likes to think that’s the process of becoming a teenager.  Typically, those are painful years where one’s personality and identity are often under constant self scrutiny and evolution.  For me, my teenage years started, earnestly, in Bermuda.  Much of the aforementioned pain didn’t come until after my family moved to Belgium, but the whole shaping of teenage identity got a foothold as I entered and completed 7th Grade.

That was also the year I started listening to heavy metal.  Let me back up a moment, first.  Being a child of the 1980’s, one of the big fads to hit — years late, of course — the military community was break dancing, especially with such vaunted cinematic exercises like Breakin’ 2: The Electric Bugaloo.   A lot of kids on Naval Air Station Bermuda were wearing head bands, big sneakers, and fat, multi-colored shoelaces.  A large number tried getting good at doing back spins and a bunch of other maneuvers.  Failing at that, a lot just simply did “The Robot” all the time and called that “Break Dancing.”  I was one of those pathetic white kids, who, rhythmically challenged, harbored that breakin’ delusion.

Paul, my older brother, certainly thought so, as he teased the shit out of me.   At the time, he styled himself more of a metalhead, and he had begun growing his hair out which would be, for the longest time, a point of contention between him and my mother.    Still, being a metal kid, my brother saw fit to do the most honorable thing possible, and that’ s pick on his twerpy younger brother who had yet to learn how uncool it was to be in the Boy Scouts.

One time, while he was “playfully” beating me up, I yelled, “It’s not you doing this time, it’s that Ozzy Osbourne!”  Where that came from, I don’t know, but in retrospect, there was always talk in the 1980’s about how metal was the tool of Satan — an aura that Ozzy and others readily exploited for shock value.

Strange thing is: in a matter of months, I had ditched my silly breakin’ uniform and started inheriting my brother’s cassettes, has he moved from metal into thrash.  (Around this time, he had bought Slayer’s “Reign in Blood” at the Navy Exchange.  So, I myself had gone from listening to The Fat Boys rapping about food to Metallica and “Master of Puppets.”  But then, that’s getting farther into my life in Belgium, and my time in 8th grade …

(And as an act of revenge, the photo is of my older brother) 

Some Info on NASA in Bermuda

NASA had a definite presence in Bermuda for decades, as the Naval Airstation Bermuda was also home to the Cooper Island Tracking Facility.  In a sense, housing NASA on a naval base made a lot of sense.  Although part of a different agency, NASA personnel from the states were federal employees, which entitled them to some base privileges like cheaper groceries at the commissary as well as other goods at the Navy Exchange, which could be described as a small, all purpose department store.  As for Cooper Island’s official objectives, NASAbermuda.com has more information:

… an integral part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN), the Bermuda station played a vital role in the United States’ Apollo lunar program and other flight missions. The Cooper’s Island station was located on the southeastern tip of Bermuda about 600 miles out in the Atlantic from the U.S. east coast. Radar dishes and helical antennae were used to track anything from spacecraft to sparrows. Because of its location in relation to Cape Kennedy Florida, the Bermuda station had a dual purpose role for the Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN). At the time of launch, the primary mission of the station was to provide trajectory data to the computing facilities at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Computations based on data obtained during the final portion of powered flight was used to confirm the orbital “Go-No Go” decision.  Bermuda normally acquired the spacecraft at approximately T + 3 minutes.

The station was usually able to supply a minimum of 60 seconds of valid radar data prior to engine cutoff and orbital insertion. For subsequent passes of the space craft, Bermuda served as a normal tracking station with command capabilities.In addition to supporting manned missions, the Bermuda station commanded, tracked and acquired valuable data from a host of unmanned scientific and application satellites launched from Cape Kennedy and NASA’sWallops Island launch facility in Virginia.In between flight missions, the Bermuda station’s sophisticated instrumentation was employed by scientists to conduct research ranging from the migratory habits of birds to astronomy.

 

There’s other good information to be had there.  NASA, on the other hand, has put up some general information on the site.   Also there’s other interesting things to be found searching NASA’a own cluster of pages.  For example, here’s a ground-to-craft communication transcription between a Mercury mission and several tracking stations, Bermuda included.

Naval Air Station Bermuda Closes

Findarticles.com has the US Navy’s full press release regarding the closure of Naval Air Station Bermuda’s closure in the 1990’s:

BERMUDA (NNS) — Naval Air Station Bermuda officially marked the end of more than a half century of American military presence on the island with a ceremony June 2.

Navy personnel turned over all air operations to the Government of Bermuda on June 1, including weather forecasting, air traffic control, electronic maintenance and fire fighting. American military personnel have operated and maintained the island’s only airfield since 1941.

NAS Bermuda remains open until August 31. The official decommissioning ceremony was scheduled in early June because of the rapid drawdown of military personnel after the turnover of air operations. (This story appeared on Navy Wire Service as NWSA691)

Chaffee Elementary

Attended the 5th and 6th grades here.  My mom also began her teaching career at this school.    Notice the boxy nature of the buildings.  The US Navy, in it’s infinite wisdom, didn’t use buildings that met Bermudian climate realities.  So, when it would rain — and it could rain hard there — the water collected onto the roof and stayed there.  Just about each one of these buildings would leak, as did the highschool and other structures aboard the Naval Air Station