The SandGram

Dear Gang,

I have received requests before to talk about the “Bing” and what we have here. First of all, I live and work in a tower, not a pretty tower but never the less we call it home. On top of this old control tower there were tons of busted air conditioning units, scrap wood and basically left over junk from when the Iraqi’s had this joint. When my boss showed up here last year, that is where they would smoke cigars at night and drink near-beer.

Of course being the creative, improve your spaces, Bob Villa has nothing on them type guys, they decided to build a bar. Not any bar, but an all ranks social hangout where you could enjoy great company, have a pleasant view of the base and get away from the doldrums of everyday life here. To start they had to chunk all of this crap off the top of a 100 foot building down into an abandoned parking lot in the back with a big metal dumpster there. It all had to come down, that took a day. Then there was a big pile of wood left over from when the Army vacated, so they dug through that to find the right pieces to form a roof, but with the high winds, it would fly off like a sail, so next came a frame around the roof. They attached cammie netting, built benches and a bar, but what to name it???

The crew here watched all 5 seasons of “The Soprano’s” on DVD and decieded to name it “The Bada Bing”, the strip club on the show. There is a kid downstairs who is an incredible artist and he freehanded the painting of the Bing girl and boom we have a bar. This place complete with music and a T.V. became the hangout on the base. My Aunt in L.A. thought that we were getting drunk everynight here when she saw all this pictures of me with a “Becks” in my hand. Little did she realize they weren’t real beer…

When I arrived in Oct on this base as the AirBoss, I thought about what great digs these were but it needed some fun stuff to go along with it. So I designed coins and shirts that folks could buy to remember it by. We have had many famous guests up there to include Ollie North (although he refused to have any pictures next to the girl on the wall), some MWR cheerleaders and some gals called the Perfect Angels.

Now Marines across this A.O. all have a place to hang out but I can say without a doubt in my Military mind that ours is the best!! One base has a place called “Club 9” where they smoke cigars and chip in to drink near-beer. It’s Club 9 because they put it in building 9 and it’s about 4×4 tiny closet room so after about an hour in there, your underwear reeks of stale cigar smoke. Another base I was stationed on, would go on top of one of the buildings and watch helicopters fly by to land from there.

I can tell you that as a “Staff guy”, I am to old to kick in doors, so I contribute in different ways to the war effort here. When I go back to the states, some of the fondest memories I will carry with me are up at the “Bing” watching a College football game on Saturday nights with the sounds of generators chugging along on one side of us and choppers flying by with the “Womp, Woomp, Woooomp” as the blades pound the air into submission.

I can guarantee you that there are Marines and Army Soldiers improving their spaces and making a nice little “slice of heaven”. Those of you who have served will probably have flashbacks of the great place that you hung out too. A place where you blew off steam and deals were brokered. This is what makes guys so tight. When the next AssClown on TV says that morale sucks over here, look him in the eye and ask him if he ever smoked a Cee-Gar at the Bing!! You all take care and keep up the fantastic support WE see from here!!! OOOHHHH RRRhhhaaaa

S/F
Taco

This entry was posted on January 24, 2006 at 6:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.