My tail gunner, Master Sergeant Ken, was an inveterate scrounger, a liberator of surplus government property. Actually, most of what Ken "appropriated" was legally obtained from the military surplus system, the so-called salvage yard on that Spokane area base. But the magnitude of his acquisitions still amazes me as I look back.

Ken built a lakefront cabin in Canada, up on Kootenay Lake north of the Washington-Idaho border. Now any good cabin needs a kitchen, right? Well that one had a special kind of kitchen, a complete B-36 galley. That was the airborne kitchen unit used to feed a flight crew of 23 men back in the late 50's.

And those unique cabin windows, those bulging hemispheres of Plexiglas, well they too came from retired B-36's. They were the side blisters used by scanners and gunners keeping watch on the engines and wings. Those huge three-foot or larger diameter hemispheric bowls of clear plastic made great cabin windows. They were interesting conversation pieces too. And a couple spares, those of lesser optical qualities, served nicely in the front yard as garden cold frames or miniature greenhouses for plants that couldn't tolerate the Canadian frosts.

But the most unique acquisition which Ken made to complete his lakefront retreat was a very special kind of boat. It was a drop boat formerly carried under the belly of a B-29 search and rescue plane. That all-metal heavy-duty craft was pretty big. It was over 20 feet long and of wide beam, though its gunnel shape was a bit unusual as it had to conform to the underside of the bomber that carried it. It featured a number of water-tight storage compartments for emergency provisions. They also served as flotation chambers and made Ken's craft really safe. A pair aircraft landing gear ( struts, wheels and tires ) acquired from scrapped T-6 Texan trainers served as wheel trucks for towing that boat to and from the lake. And, oh yes, that boat came complete with a low-time engine too. It was a yacht ready-to-go.