Paloma Mohn

  Sony TC-645 Stereo Tapecorder (1974-80)

  Twenty-two year career ends for LCdr. Mohn By Barry McDonald Editor When he took the lectern at his retirement ceremony July 29, LCdr. Michael A. Mohn told a little story about how he first heard of China Lake. When he was a fairly new enlisted man attending a school in the eastern part of the country, during a discussion, one of his fellow students asked what it meant to be "relieved for cause." The instructor said, "It means you get sent to China Lake to hand out tennis racquets." He admitted that back east they didn't know a lot about what went on at China Lake. Before giving Mohn the floor, Capt. Roger Hull , NAWCWPNS Vice Commander, pointed out that the lieutenant commander was the only surface warfare officer aboard NAWS, China Lake. But he didn't start out that way. Hull noted Mohn enlisted in 1967 as an aviation recruit. "At least he started out right," the vice commander joked. But then at three months into the Navy his career took a tu...

The Night of the 1963 Viking Blue Ford Fairlane In 1985, I had just turned seventeen. We were living in the Radford Terrace Navy housing on Sanders, just north of the Honolulu Airport. My dad was likely away on a deployment at the time; if he had been home, he would have been using the car for work and I wouldn't have dared to take it. I didn’t have a driver's license yet, but was not doing the smartest things back then, Anyway, the adventure that night was in a Viking Blue  1963 Ford Fairlane, My dad kept it parked in front of the house on Anderson Avenue , we lived on Sanders Avenue, under a massive Monkeypod tree to shield it from the sun. The car was a magnet for the tree’s tiny leaves, which would tuck themselves into the trim and stay there until I hit the freeway, where they would all blow off at once. The street was dark and lacked decent lighting; the dense canopy of the tree made the car almost invisible unless there was a full moon. The neighborhood roads were weath...