In Another Life I Was Either a Contractor on the Panama Canal, or Killed by Luke Skywalker

For the past three or so months, I've been reading "The Path Between the Seas" by David McCullough on and off. It's a chronicle of the building of the Panama Canal from early surveys of the Central American Isthmus, to completing the canal just before WWI. It was a solid read, and McCullough is probably my favorite non-fiction author.

One of the last chapters of the book entitled "Life and Times" was about what life was like for all of the workers living in the American "Canal Zone" during the final ten or so years of construction. I had no idea, when I started reading this book, that I'd feel any sort of kinship with the workers who built the canal.

The canal zone was sort of a weird hybrid of American territory/military outpost/private enterprise. It had its own laws, health services, stores, etc. The outline laid out in my demographics of kaf a couple of posts ago, probably strongly resemble the demographics of the canal zone.

The inflated salaries for educated/skilled westerners in the canal zone and the relative poverty in which the unskilled, imported labor force from various Caribbean islands in the canal zone lived closely resembled the differences between westerners and TCNs (Third Country Nationals) from places like Sri Lanka, India, Nepal here at KAF.

As I read further into the chapter I steadily grew more and more amazed at the similarities that continued to appear. The continuous construction/activity, the relatively frequent employer-dispensed home-leave schedules, the availability of a wide variety of religious services in canal-zone provided chapels (although I didn't read anything about Jewish services in the canal zone, now that would truly blow my mind). There was even a line that spoke of the lower prices of goods available at the commissaries in the zone compared to back in the States. At that I thought to myself, well that's exactly like our PX stores, and then the sentence went on to explain that the commissaries of the zone would go on to become the model for the modern military Post Exchange store! Wow!

A future embodiment of McCullough may be tempted to write the story of Kandahar Airfield. Life seems to be the same story repeated and told in different ways - and not just in non-fiction, and not just in books...

Not to try to make any profound statements about the current military force working hard in Afghanistan, but if life were an analogy for Star Wars, I'd be currently living in the Death Star as an administrator for the Storm Trooper Education Center. One of the thousands of nameless innocents Luke Skywalker killed with his Proton Torpedoes... never forget.

Helicopters!

Recently, Major Kraus, friend of the Education Center offered to have the Ed Center team over to his side of the base for a tour of the Army helicopters and a movie night in their rec room. It was a fantastic experience. Took a whole bunch of pictures. First we walked around the hangar where the skeletons of helicopters sat waiting to be put back together.

Helicopter skeleton.

Explaining things.

You see, after every so many hours of flight time a helicopter needs to be completely taken apart and put back together.

Looks like this one's got some sort of steam-punk rocket booster on the back.

Nope, it's just the engine uncovered.

Chinook helicopters have a lot of trunk space. Great for families.

From the hangar we went to the vast expanses of helicopter fields. Must've been hundreds of them spaced far apart - so it covered a couple square miles.

Looks like a helicopter version of Russian dolls.

We were there right around sunset, so it made for a good picture.

Ohhhhh.... ahhhh...

That little unicorn horn thingy there? That's in case the chopper flies through a place with wires - to cut them.

Wire cutter up close.

Castro reviews the troops' performance... Acceptable.

Fields and fields of helicopters.

Then we watched the sunset from their second story deck. Sandy sunset.

If anyone was on the edge of their seats waiting to find out what movie we watched afterwards - it was Bad Teacher. Just as funny the second time (I saw it in theaters). I guess working at the Education Center has some advantages - you meet people from every part of the base, because someone from any part of the base is trying to get an education - and in doing so you have some sort of a connection with the whole base.

Being a Contractor, or Missing the Rib Burn Off

There's an automatic stigma associated with the idea of the military contractor. I suppose that's due to the fact that the main reason you hear about military contractors in the news is when there's some sort of controversy or scandal relating to them. Within the military that stigma is magnified. It definitely has something to do with the inflated salaries and the idea that contractors are in war zones at-will whereas soldiers are there at command...

I find this stigma directed towards me from time to time, but it's not as bad as I expected. Here is a quote from a veteran contractor I met in Germany while doing training, "My friend is at Kandahar and he says the contractors are realllllyyy looked down on from the 10 Mt Div.  They are treated like scum."

I'm definitely not treated like scum - the email had a lot of other predictions that didn't come true. I will get some looks every once in a while, though - probably less often than I think considering some of those are probably imagined. Maybe having a beard (see future post) puts me a bit under the radar because most people don't assume I'm from the States, but from either Afghanistan or some other Middle Eastern country.

The stigma is definitely reduced at work. The soldiers that come in clearly know we're here to help them, and to help them along in a process that's essentially getting them what they are due - their military benefits.

Most people have an image in their heads of the standard contractor - some early-middle-aged man who's here for the extremely inflated salary that they do not deserve in order to take advantage of the money that's being freely given away for such menial tasks as who even knows what? I don't think I fit that profile.

In other news: today is the Gross Schechter Totally Kosher Rib Burn Off. If you are reading this at the time of this posting, and are within a 1000 mile proximity to Cleveland, Ohio, YOU CAN STILL MAKE IT! I mean it when I say it's my favorite day of the year. This is because a lot of people I like show up to one place and schmooze while eating all of my favorite foods. If this doesn't convince you here are some pictures I pulled from the RBO album from Schechter's website:

Look how happy everyone is eating ribs!

They couldn't be happier!

My dad made it into the album!

I haven't missed a rib burn off since it became an annual event in 1993, when I was 5 years old. In the past, I've taunted friends who were away at college when I was on a quarter system and had no problem making it because school hadn't started by Labor Day. Now my comeuppance has arrived. I went so far as to write a letter to the editor to the Cleveland Jewish News about how much I'd be missing this great event - which they forgot to include in this week's issue - but it's on the website.

Instead of being there, I find myself laboring my normal hours on Labor Day. As a small consolation the DFACs make an effort to make meals special for holidays so that's something to look forward to.

I'll leave you with this song that always makes me think of the Rib Burn Off: