It was just too nice outside to be THAT concerned about the financial mess.
Today was one of those beautiful fall days. Not a cloud in the sky, temperature was really nice, the S.O.’s car purred like a cat on the way to work. Had the sunroof open and Ted Nugent on the CD player.
Work sucked today-but then again you cannot have everything.
I’ve taken to trying to get away from the building at lunchtime. Even if it is just for a few minutes. Today I rambled over to the other office complex-the one owned by the Army instead of a heartless DOD organization. The one where they have a pretty nice cafeteria, a mini-mart, a gym, and newspapers for sale. Unlike the heartless DOD organization, the Army still has some incentive to look out for the people who work for it.
And did I mention they have a nice courtyard that is just made for eating outside?
So…. I bought a Shopping Mall USA Times, a hamburger, and a bowl of pretty good bean soup. Carried my tray out side and found a nice little table by a tree and proceeded to read the news in Shopping Mall.
Which was kind of interesting because they have been running all this week, a special series on the Von Braun folks-the 118 Germans who came over from Peenemunde after the war and formed the heart of the US rocket program. Their stories are fascinating. Yesterday they had a story about Dieter Grau , 95 years old and still living here. Grau was a quality assurance director for Shopping Mall’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
Munching through my burger, which was pretty good-if I do say so myself-I read about the early years, going from Fort Bliss, to White Sands, before finally the Army put them here in Shopping Mall.
He had no doubts about coming to the side of the US:
A career in rocketry was not in Grau’s plans when he entered college at the University of Berlin in the 1930s. “I wanted to work for the electrification of railroads,” he said from his assisted living home at the Regency Retirement Village. “Then my father passed away and that changed things.”
Grau said he eventually earned an engineering degree and went to work for Siemens in Germany in the field of automation. Siemens was a prime contractor at the Peenemunde rocket base along the Baltic Sea.
He said he was assigned to a team that would establish the power supply and power distribution system for Peenemunde.
“Then I got drafted into Russia,” he said.
Grau was later ordered back to Peenemunde, where he met von Braun……..
When the war’s end was imminent, Grau said he immediately knew which side he wanted to surrender to.
“I had seen Russia as a soldier. I had no doubt which way to go,” he said.
The rest of the story can be found here.
Lunch finished I took some time to wander around a little bit, nosed into the gym with the idea of getting a locker (No dice-waiting list). Then I jumped in the car and went exploring the south part of this really large Army post.
For such a large post-they really do not have that many Soldiers here-I’m told only about 4000 overall. They do have lots and lots of government civilians and scummy contractors like me though. Because rockets have and had this annoying tendency to blow up from time to time- they put a lot of land between the test stands and the rest of the working part of the base. Nothing on the land except cows, grazing. Does provide some nice straight away roads where you can drive and let the wind blow through the car though. All the way down to the Tennessee River. Where I stopped and got out for a while-just to admire the deep blue of the beautiful fall sky.
Today would have been a good day for a football game.
Or a game of golf.
Sadly, I looked at my watch and knew I had to go back to the salt mines. But I did take solace in the fact that my cubbies were in the playoffs. Maybe, just maybe, this might be the year they win the Pennant.
Some other no name team from Chicago made the playoffs too-but they don’t play real baseball over there. In real baseball the pitcher has to bat.
So with all of those things going right today-I just could not let the news get me down.
Tomorrow, as Scarlett said, is yet another day………….