Yep, another one already. GEORGE - SUPPLY By Wilton Strickland, LtCol, USAF (Ret)
Not long after I arrived at George, our paint shop foreman asked me to go to the base Laundromat with him to study a problem with the painted floor and offer suggestions for a solution. He had been frustrated for years by not being able to get the paint to adhere properly. "In spite of all we've tried, it bubbles up and just peels off," he said. At the laundry, I immediately noticed that the floor was nearly covered with little "pimple-looking" bubbles. I reached down and popped several of the bubbles and found them filled with water. I stood and said to the painter, "Water vapor is rising through the concrete and condensing under the paint causing it to bubble and peel. The concrete obviously does not have a vapor barrier beneath it and would work better not painted at all, though it may not look so good. This would allow the water vapor to evaporate and never be noticed. Let me think about it overnight. I'll talk to you about again tomorrow." Late that afternoon, I went to the local Sears store for something, and, as I approached the hardware department, I noticed indoor/outdoor carpet on the floor. I suddenly had the solution to the laundry floor problem! The next day, I told the painter, "Remove the paint from the floor and install indoor/outdoor carpet with a short pile. Don't glue it to the floor. Make sure it's porous, of course, the water vapor must be allowed to rise through the carpet and evaporate." We never had another problem with the Laundromat floor. Most of my Air Force time before George was in B-47 aircraft maintenance (crew chief) and B-52 flight operations, both of which had a significantly higher supply priority than civil engineering maintenance parts. Early in my tour at George, I became very frustrated by the sluggishness and inefficiency of the overall Air Force supply system. This was best illustrated when a housewife on base called me and vented her frustration at not having a working kitchen faucet for well over six months. I asked our mechanical section superintendent to investigate the situation. A couple of hours later, he showed me several pieces of paperwork indicating that a part costing less than two dollars had been on order for the offending faucet for several months. He assured me that the plumbers were doing all they could to repair the faucet; it was up to the supply system to provide the part. I told him, "A stack of papers a mile high will not make water run in that lady's sink. Please take this five-dollar bill and stop by a hardware store on your way home tonight, get the appropriate part and see that the faucet is fixed tomorrow." Late the next morning, he reported that the faucet had been repaired and handed me approximately $3 in change from my five-dollar bill. (By the way, if the faucet had been in my home, even on base, I would have taken some personal initiative to find the part and get the faucet fixed myself instead of waiting for "Uncle" to provide everything. Of course "Uncle" had promised to do it, so, indeed, it was our responsibility to do so.) A few months later, our electrical section superintendent came into the office and told me that he had been at the Wing Commander's house trying to repair a dimmer switch for a dining room chandelier. The commander's wife was quite upset that she would be unable to have the chandelier working properly for a dinner party she was having that evening. The superintendent told her that he could replace the switch immediately with a simple on/off switch, but it would probably take six months or more to get the proper dimmer. I told him to follow me home, just around the corner about 3 houses from the commander's home. There, I gave him an appropriate dimmer that my brother, an electrical wholesaler in NC, had given me a couple of years before. When the ordered dimmer arrived by way of the regular supply system several months later, the superintendent came in and laid it on my desk to replace the one I had provided. I could not understand why we could not have a system to allow us to buy hardware and materials from local hardware stores and building supply centers. These vendors would be glad to get the business and would keep a supply of parts and materials readily available or be able to get it much faster than the regular Air Force supply system was doing. I learned later that, by coincidence, such a system was already being planned. The system, called COCESS (Contractor Operated Civil Engineering Supply Store), required a contractor to keep a certain number of parts and materials at a facility on base and readily available for use by civil engineering on short notice. The contractor could also purchase parts and materials from local vendors on short notice. We had this system in operation at George several months later. It greatly improved our unit's efficiency, and relieved a lot of my frustrations about the supply system. COCESS did not completely eliminate my frustrations with Supply, however. When we arrived at George, the all-night service call technicians were using a small aluminum cot that was broken and ragged. I soon told the sergeant in charge of this area to order a new proper, hotel-type, folding bed to replace it. When the new bed came, though, it was another lightweight aluminum cot that soon broke in the same manner as the old one. When I asked the sergeant about the bed, he told me that he had tried to order the heavier duty bed, but Supply sent the same lightweight cot, as usual. A couple of months later, I went to the local Sears store and saw the proper heavy-duty hotel-type folding bed that I had in mind. With proper model and catalog numbers in hand, I went to Supply and asked how I could get the heavy-duty bed that I saw at Sears. The lady there told me that the only way I could get it was by writing a "sole-source letter." I wrote the required letter, and ordered the bed immediately. We received it several days later. Another hassle with Supply concerned a new typewriter for my secretary. In most other offices I visited on base, secretaries had new or fairly new IBM Correcting Selectric II typewriters. My secretary was using a very old unit that often skipped letters or easily jammed. She had to type many reports, including Airman Proficiency Reports (APR), which had to be error-free. When I went to supply to order a new typewriter, the clerk there told me that I would have to take an Olympic unit. When I reminded him that most other offices on base had the latest IBM units, and asked why I had to take an Olympic, he told me that it was because it was "their turn for an order." I told him very succinctly that I would accept nothing less than an IBM Correcting Selectric II. He then told me that the only way I could get such a unit was, again, to write a "sole-source letter." I wrote the letter that night, ordered the typewriter the next day, and received the typewriter in a few days. By the way, I got pretty good at writing "sole-source letters" and equipment "justification letters." Late Saturday afternoon of July 4th weekend, 1977, I was in the living room of our cabin in Wrightwood, a small village in the mountains 35 miles southwest of the base. My "handi-talkie" radio was on the mantle. I just by chance picked it up at the right time, turned it on and overheard one of our plumbers telling the service call controller that he would not be able to fix a water leak in the large 100-man dormitory on base. The building would have no water until the leak could be fixed on Tuesday morning. I quickly got on the radio and asked the controller about the problem. (BTW, one may wonder how I was able to communicate with my service call controller via handi-talkie radio across the 35 miles between us. The controller was at the base on the Mojave Desert at an elevation of 3000 feet; I was on the side of a mountain above the desert at an elevation of 6200 feet, basically, overlooking the desert and the base and significantly closer by line-of-sight than 35 miles.) The controller told me that the plumbers had been trying to fix a leak in a major supply pipe in the building for several hours and could not find the needed parts. A one-inch PVC pipe was cracked and leaking profusely. With two couplings and a short section of pipe, it should have been very simple and easy to fix the break in a few minutes. I told the controller that, with daytime temperatures of 100 degrees and more, we were not going to let that building go without water for another two and a half days until Tuesday morning. We were going to find a way to get the water back on Saturday night. I took my radio and headed toward the base, talking to the controller several times en route. I told the controller that I would be there in about 35 minutes. I also told him to try to find a hardware store open in town; I would swing by there and buy the appropriate parts myself. He called back a few minutes later and told me that he could not find a hardware store open. I told him to call the COCESS representative and ask him to meet me at the COCESS warehouse. I also told him to tell the plumbers to meet me at the warehouse with a short section of the ruptured pipe. I was determined to find the necessary parts to fix the leak, at least temporarily. At the warehouse, after determining that the desired parts were not available, I walked through the plumbing parts bins searching for pieces that I could use to temporarily repair the ruptured pipe. I finally settled on a short section of three-quarter inch PVC pipe. Back at the dormitory, I used a piece of sandpaper to sand the ends of the short section of pipe so that they fit snugly inside the one-inch pipe. I applied glue to the appropriate parts and shoved them together while the two 18-year-old plumbers stood and watched in awe and astonishment. As I got down off the ladder, I told the plumbers, "Turn the water on." A permanent and proper fix was made the following week.
Wilton
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