The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir

by Griffin Dunne

That summer, Mom dated a pilot who was also stationed at North Island, and the house we rented was next to the landing strip where F-4s and B-52s took off and landed around the clock. For a boy my age, it was a warmonger’s dream come true. I worshipped the pilot because he would tilt the wings of his fighter jet in greeting when he flew over our house. My best friend in Coronado was a kid whose father was in the catapult crew aboard the carrier USS Coral Sea awaiting orders to go to Vietnam. We’d bicycle on our Stingrays to the naval base, wave to the MPs in their guardhouse, and wander around the Coral without ever being questioned. One night, when the pilot was over for dinner, I asked him a million questions about combat and the sound barrier and if he liked the Monkees song “Last Train to Clarksville,” which was playing on the radio. He turned to my mother and said, “What’s it going to take to get this little runt out of here?” Stunned with humiliation, I went upstairs and had a good cry. My mother dumped him on the spot and back he went to his base, because when it’s over, it’s over.