More Duncan Hunter Adventures

It wasn’t long after my Dilbert-dunking episode that I was back on my bicycle, avoiding the pond, exploring the woods and the trees that enveloped the air base.  One day, deep in the woods, I came across a hill to race down, only to have the ground fall out from under me.  A thick pile of leaves broke my fall.  Stunned I was still alive, I found myself staring, upside down, into the maw of a cave. 

After somewhat cavalierly escaping death from the frozen pond, for some internal reason now I was scared shitless.  I flipped around, still flat on my back, when I noticed high above the cave’s opening, drilled into the rock face the intricate design of an eagle with elongated wings clutching a wreath.  Inside the wreath, a swastika.  I had seen Nazi bunkers before along the autobahn but the cave was unlike anything I had seen before.  I had no idea what I tumbled into and after the ass-chewing I received after escaping the pond, I wasn’t about to find out the hard way.  I dragged my bike out between the two concrete rocks, pedaled out of there as fast as my high top Converse shoes could spin that bicycle crank.  I never shared my little-kid adventure with the Nazi bunker with anyone until I incorporated it into my book, No Need to Know.  I had so many more "less lethal" but "wild adventures" that I didn't know what "normal" was.

We moved back to the "States."  My friends in Texas and Colorado had never experienced anything remotely or tangentially to those, what I called "my wild adventures" in Germany.  No one ever believed me; it was best to just keep my mouth shut and do my thing.  They grew up in the suburbs with a park with a swing set and a park bench nearby.  I looked at the world I was now living in much more differently.  No more forests to ride through, no more fighter jets to excite me, no more free ranging fun and adventures except those I "manufactured" living in the suburbs of Denver.  How I didn’t get caught doing incredibly stupid and risky things and got hauled off to jail are still some of the greatest mysteries of the universe.  My mother was grateful I turned my pent up energies to work.  My greatest passion remained the bent winged jets.  With no air base nearby,  I couldn’t see them.  I delivered newspapers, made pizzas for Shakey’s Pizza Parlor, shoveled snow, cut grass, and worked in the yards of my neighbors.  While my friends were stealing money from their folks to smoke dope, I was buying audio equipment, records, models, Hardy Boys books, and nice clothes.  I had crushes on the best looking girls in school.  Of course they didn’t know I existed.  When I signed up to join the Marines, my father said, "They'll kill you."

They didn't.  I got my pilot wings.  The ultimate adventure.  One of the best decisions of my life. 

Maverick out!