Chan Chan

It has been a while since I have been able to listen to it. I ordered it from Amazon in what seems like another life...the CD came, and we feel in love with it. Each afternoon, when there was nothing to do, we'd drive out to the flightline and wait for the fighters to taxi by. My smile was genuine, awash in the hot fumes of jet fuel. Chan Chan would be blaring in the background, it seemed like this was the soundtrack of our new lives.

The last day, before I was scheduled to leave our camp for the last time, Chan Chan was playing. It was not that far of a drive to the flightline, but by the time we got there, a terrible dust storm had blown in. I was driving, and though I had heard of the legendary dust storms, I could not have imagined how bad they got. Along the road, I came up against an impenetrable wall ofsand. I started to brake, and then saw the tank in front of me, on the road, stopped. Hitting the brakes, we slid until we were literally feet from plowing into the tank. There was nowhere to pull off the road, so we had to turn around and head back the other way, cutting across lanes that we could no longer see through. Scary stuff. Pulled off and shook for ten minutes. Dave touched my arm, and told me to take it easy. Yeah, sure. Dying wasn't on the schedule for today.

Chan Chan always reminds me of that dust storm, of that day, of all the afternoons watching the fighter jets take off. Seems like those were simpler days, happier days. But I suppose it always seems like that in retrospect...