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The Slice: They were there for our boys in uniform

I thought we were done with the theme of “What would you do if someone rang your doorbell at midnight?”

But then Republic’s Bryan Bremner shared a recollection.

“Not really what I would do, but what my parents did. I would like to think that I would do the same.”

Here’s Bryan’s story.

“I grew up on a cattle ranch in northern Ferry County in the late 1940s and 1950s. There was an Air Force radar base about 15 miles north of us, close to the Canadian border. The Air Force would fly new people into Fairchild, give them a truck, loaded with supplies or something I suppose, give them a map and tell them to drive to the radar station near us. In the summer, no problem. At night, in the middle of winter – problem! For those young men from the South, who had flown in from Georgia or Florida, with no idea what winter clothes meant, they were in trouble.

“We lived about 200 yards from the intersection of what is now Highway 21 and the West Curlew Lake Road.”

There was a tricky curve to negotiate. When the road was icy, it was easy for those unfamiliar with it to slide off and plunge down into the frigid creek some eight feet below. This became a repeated experience for the radar station crews.

The creek was only about a foot deep where the trucks broke through the ice. But on a freezing winter night it was enough to soak the servicemen with bone-chilling water.

“When they crawled up the bank they could see our house. By the time they got to the door, they were really, really cold. They never had any really warm clothes or coats.

“My parents always invited them in, put more wood on the stove and probably made them coffee and offered towels to dry off with. Then they would call the Air Force base to tell them that we had another truck in the creek.”

As far as Bryan can recall, there were never any injuries. “Because they were driving slowly, just not slowly enough.”

Eventually, these mishaps stopped happening.

“Evidently the Air Force began giving better driving instructions and the state redid the intersection because our midnight visitors stopped coming after a few years.”

Today’s Slice question: If you had a one-sentence message for every 13-year-old in the Inland Northwest, what would it be?

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Today’s roundtable discussion topic: Asthma and marijuana.

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