The Adventures of Duncan Hunter
It is not an unfair analysis that like me, Duncan Hunter was largely a typical boy with typical 1950s parents. When you're a kid you don't know what is abnormal unless you see something that is clearly outside your world of normal. Living in Germany in the 1960s I came aware of airplanes and cars. Our next door neighbor drove a light blue Corvette Stingray. 1963 "split-window." It was the most beautiful car I had ever seen, and it was next door! I obviously smeared the man's windows when I tried to look inside. All the time. No garage, it sat outside. I saw the German cars, some French cars. By comparison, there was no comparison to the Corvette. Then a 1964 black Jaguar XKE showed up on the base, then a red 1965 Mustang. A 1959 Mercedes SL and a 1963 Porsche 356 were very nice. But for me, it was over. The Jag and the Corvette were the cars. Sleek and fast. V-8 and V-12 noisemakers. In addition to building airplane models, I started building car models of my favorite cars.
On Sundays I'd get a dime to buy a comic. More adventures with Superman and Spiderman. There is no doubt I had one of the original Spiderman comics in my possession. And then, with the Hardy Boys, the adventure and mystery bug was firmly planted in my head. I knew the Corvette owner was a pilot. So was the Jag's owner. Seemed to be part of a club that only the adults understood.
At Ramstein, I was allowed to run free. Few places were off limits as I rode my bike all over the heavily forested air base. With freedom came a sense of the adventurousness I found in the books that my mother and I would get when we visited the library. That adventurousness nearly killed me one day when I tried to walk across a frozen pond. When I found myself at the bottom of the pond, I was more surprised than panicked. I distinctly remember that the hole in the ice high above my head shone like a yellow beacon. Like I would push off from the bottom of the base swimming pool, I pushed off from the bottom of the pond and I shot straight up through that hole like a submarine’s emergency blow and breaching the surface. It’s one of the few memories that is still very clear in my old mind. I busted ice with my elbows and clawed my way across the ice to get out of the freezing water. I was hypothermic; shivering uncontrollably, and I didn’t really know I close I came to dying. But I lived through it. A new car to discover, a new jet to identify, and living through a near-death experience was the essence of adventure for a kid. My experiences are where Duncan Hunter get's his sense of adventure.
Maverick out!
It is not an unfair analysis that like me, Duncan Hunter was largely a typical boy with typical 1950s parents. When you're a kid you don't know what is abnormal unless you see something that is clearly outside your world of normal. Living in Germany in the 1960s I came aware of airplanes and cars. Our next door neighbor drove a light blue Corvette Stingray. 1963 "split-window." It was the most beautiful car I had ever seen, and it was next door! I obviously smeared the man's windows when I tried to look inside. All the time. No garage, it sat outside. I saw the German cars, some French cars. By comparison, there was no comparison to the Corvette. Then a 1964 black Jaguar XKE showed up on the base, then a red 1965 Mustang. A 1959 Mercedes SL and a 1963 Porsche 356 were very nice. But for me, it was over. The Jag and the Corvette were the cars. Sleek and fast. V-8 and V-12 noisemakers. In addition to building airplane models, I started building car models of my favorite cars.
On Sundays I'd get a dime to buy a comic. More adventures with Superman and Spiderman. There is no doubt I had one of the original Spiderman comics in my possession. And then, with the Hardy Boys, the adventure and mystery bug was firmly planted in my head. I knew the Corvette owner was a pilot. So was the Jag's owner. Seemed to be part of a club that only the adults understood.
At Ramstein, I was allowed to run free. Few places were off limits as I rode my bike all over the heavily forested air base. With freedom came a sense of the adventurousness I found in the books that my mother and I would get when we visited the library. That adventurousness nearly killed me one day when I tried to walk across a frozen pond. When I found myself at the bottom of the pond, I was more surprised than panicked. I distinctly remember that the hole in the ice high above my head shone like a yellow beacon. Like I would push off from the bottom of the base swimming pool, I pushed off from the bottom of the pond and I shot straight up through that hole like a submarine’s emergency blow and breaching the surface. It’s one of the few memories that is still very clear in my old mind. I busted ice with my elbows and clawed my way across the ice to get out of the freezing water. I was hypothermic; shivering uncontrollably, and I didn’t really know I close I came to dying. But I lived through it. A new car to discover, a new jet to identify, and living through a near-death experience was the essence of adventure for a kid. My experiences are where Duncan Hunter get's his sense of adventure.
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