Hanging Diapers!!!

John and I lived on the Bisbee Douglas International Airport for about ten plus years with our four boys.  The taxi way to the terminal ran by the back end of our yard.

The front yard had a white picket fence and the back yard was wide open without a fence.  I didn't have a drier and I had to hang laundry out on the clothes line in the back yard.

We had been out visiting with John's brothers in Elfrida late that evening and didn't arrive home till late at night.  We noticed the military had tents set up in the empty area across the road from our house and thought nothing of it.

Our fourth sons was a few months old and I had to do a lot diapers every few days.  But nothing smelt as good or looked as good as lines full of snowy white diapers trembling in the light breeze underneath a blazing sun.

I washed a load of diapers the next morning and I was hanging them on the clothes line.  I noticed the military had parked a row of helicopters on the edge of the taxi way next to my clothes line.  As I'm hanging my third line of diapers I see a group of military men heading  toward the helicopters.

I swiftly walked out to meet the group of men standing between them and their helicopters and I ask politely what they are planning to do.

One of the officers politely answers, "We are starting our field operation and need to get the helicopters in the air.

I shake my head, put my hands on my hips, "I don't think so.  I just hung a load of diapers and those helicopters aren't being started until they dry and I take them down."

The young officer's face drops and he shuffles his feet, "Ah, I'll need to go speak to my commanding officer about this."

"You do that.  I am not having dirt and what ever blown all over my clean diapers."

The group of men walked back toward their camp and a few minutes later they return in vehicles and put wheels beneath the helicopters and pulled them farther down the taxi way.

John my husband worked on the airport for the county keeping the roads, runways, tower lights and building fixed.

He came home that evening with a big grin on his face.  "Honey, you are the only woman I know who can boss around the military."

"How did you find out about that?"  I had to grin from ear to ear feeling good, that a five foot three inch woman can make the military do what she wants.

"The manager of the airport told me.  He was laughing so hard he almost didn't get the story out."

The airport manager said, "The commanding officer came in complaining about a woman not letting them start their helicopters.  I reminded him I told them not to park their helicopters behind the house and that as long as the woman had diapers on the line, he could not start the helicopters there.  They either had to wait for the diapers to come down or find another solution."

My husband and his brothers teased me for years.  They said I was the only woman they knew who could lay claim to bossing the army around.

Hey, Heidi Windmiller wishing you a lot of luck in your NaNo novel.