I hate to see this happen. I wish I had a dollar for every hour I spent at Rhein-Main, first as a U.S. Army dependent and later as an Air Force enlisted man.
The most memorable week I spent there was when I was TDY (temporary duty to you feather merchants) to attend radiation-control school. I was designated by my unit in Ramstein AFB to be the guy who determines who has had too much radiation to go outside after the Rooskies set off The Big One. I learned to count roentgens with the best of them.
While there I met a former Peace Corps volunteer who was making his way around the world working in military snack bars as a busboy. After Frankfurt his next stop was Izmir, Turkey, and the Air Force Base there. He lived in the YMCA in downtown Frankfurt (it’s the CVJM in German) and had some Middle Eastern roommates who smoked hashish all the time. A far cry from Barney Fife’s “corner room at the Y” in Raleigh.
As for the hotel on the base, I had stayed there three times during my childhood so I knew the place like the back of my hand. That came in handy when, on the morning after my first night back in Germany in 1968, my buddies and I were extremely hungover from visiting too many beer halls. After the bumpy ride in the shuttle from the enlisted barracks let’s just say it was a good thing I remembered, from my last stay there in 1963, exactly how to get to the restrooms quickly. In our state we had no time to ask directions.
Anyway, I hate to see the old place bulldozed after 60 years. But it looks like that World War II exit strategy is working.
