Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 26, 1993 TAG: 9309260230
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DELTON LENGTH: Long
But the strangest of all may have been the day in 1992 when a Navy jet "twanged the wire," as he puts it, on the power lines near his house.
There's usually not too much reason for folks to be poking around the country road that leads to Pauley's house at the bottom of a deep gorge, just before the river widens into Claytor Lake.
But after a low-flying F-14 out of Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach snapped two Appalachian Power Co. lines strung 200 feet above the water and limped back home with a damaged engine, next thing you know, one military man after another trooped to Pauley's place to get a first-hand account.
"The head man in Norfolk - he was an admiral or whatever you call 'em; he had a double handful of buttons on his chest - he sat right there," Pauley says, pointing to a rickety chair on his humble front porch.
The tale that admiral - "or whatever" - heard is still enough to curl what few hairs remain on Pauley's head.
A neighbor was bush-hogging the weeds beneath the power lines that June day when the Pauleys heard a terrific explosion. At the time, the big news in the county was the theft of some dynamite from a quarry. Rumors were the thief had hidden the pilfered explosives near the river.
"I thought that man hit it with the bushhog and done blowed to pieces," Frances Pauley says.
Instead, she came running out of the house to find one of the power lines dangling in the river and the other one "skittering" toward the ground, showering sparks as it went.
The skies were silent again, but she knew right away what had happened - military jets have been screaming down the river gorge for 20 years or more.
The power line may be well-marked with big orange balls bobbing in the air, but the Pauleys had figured it was just a matter of time before one of the jets came a little too close.
After all, the Pauleys claim they've seen jets fly under the lines.
"We've seen 'em 5 to 6 feet from the water," Walter Pauley insists.
Not just tiny fighters, either. He claims he once saw a jet "about the size of a Piedmont, but covered with camouflage all over" duck under the power lines.
"You could see the fella sitting in it, it was going so slow," Pauley says. "They came right up the river, then he sat on it and took off over that hill."
That sounds hard to believe, but Pauley's a hard man to contradict. He's a fixture on his front porch, a position that's earned him the title of "river philosopher" in these parts of Pulaski County.
It's also a perch that's given him plenty of opportunities to watch the jets scream past over the years.
"Sometimes they come of a morning," Pauley drawls. "Sometimes they come of an evening. Sometimes both."
"We just accept it," his wife says. "A loud boom every now and then."
It's just that some booms are louder than others.
"Can you imagine working down in the garden and hearing 'em come over?" she asks. "You duck - like it's going to help you."
Once, a neighbor didn't believe the Pauleys' tales about the jets. "She thought we were just telling things," Frances Pauley says. "As soon as she said that, here they came. She said she wet her pants."
No wonder. "They were coming so close that the trees were laying down," she claims. "I said that one looks like it's going to hit the hill. All I could do was get ready to die. That sounds ridiculous, but it was so. I have my witness and I'm a Christian."
A view with a thrill
DUBLIN - When David and Shirley Brown retired to an A-frame on a knob high above Claytor Lake, they knew they were getting one of the most spectacular views on the lake.
They just didn't know that view would include as many close-ups of F-15E Strike Eagles flying in formation as it does Canada geese.
From the Browns' deck, Claytor Lake eases around a distant ridge, then shimmers toward them wide and blue before making its final dogleg toward the dam at the foot of their hill.
Sometimes, if you look just right, it looks as if the lake's water is flowing directly toward them.
And sometimes, it looks as if the military jets that use the lake for navigational practice are flying straight for the Browns' house, as well.
"It scares the poop out of you sometime," Shirley Brown says. "Not long ago, I was down on the deck and they were flying so low it almost scared the daylights of me. `My land, will they clear the treetops?' "
Fish tales
DUBLIN - Behind the counter of Lakeside Marina, where many a fish story gets told and retold by a show of hands, Sam Phillips is holding out just one extremity as he tells this tale.
"I've seen 'em dip down in between the mountains," Phillips says, his hand slicing downward through space. "They seem to go right across the back of this building, then they'll make a sharp turn . . . "
His hand chops a right angle above the cash register.
"Then there's a puff of smoke and it looks like they just stomped on their afterburners . . . "
And now his hand streaks almost straight up toward the ceiling, without need for explanation.
"It's wild."
It's also just an ordinary day on Claytor Lake. Military jets doing aerial acrobatics over the Pulaski County impoundment are so common that, Phillips says, "about all you hear about it here is `damn!'"
What else can you say? One moment you're trailing a line for bass, lulled by the gentle waves splashing against the hull, thinking you've just found the most serene spot on Earth - and the next moment, you're suddenly engulfed in a mechanical roar and staring straight up into the bomb bay of a multimillion-dollar killing machine.
The sudden noise is enough to startle those inside as well as out.
"It shakes the wall," Debbie Phillips says.
Adds Sam: "It sends her cat under the bed, cowering."
Can you top this?
PAINT BANK - The fellas holding down the bench outside the Paint Bank Grocery have no lack of things to talk about.
There's always the weather, the sorry state of farming - and the danged military jets that buzz this long and narrow valley where Craig County gives way to Mercer County, W.Va.
"I see 'em just about every day," says William Brookman, as he tinkers on a car parked out front.
The only source of argument is who's seen 'em fly the lowest.
Glen Linton, who's busy repainting the post office nearby, opens the bidding.
"See that sycamore over there?" he says, wagging his finger toward a lush specimen that towers over the two-story house it stands beside. "I got out of the firehouse one night and he was right at the treetops."
Heck, Derrick Arthur can do better than that. An old hotel stands at the edge of town, a silent reminder of Paint Bank's resort past. "He was flying so low, he shook the windows in that white hotel," Arthur says. "He almost took the chimney off about three months ago."
But Brookman's got the record, at least on this day.
"I've seen one go across a field," Brookman says. "He was eyeball to eyeball with me. He couldn't have been 10 feet off the ground. There was a tree up there and he jerked right up over the tree. He was flying so low, he shook the treetops."
Whatever the altitude, suffice it to say the military jets flying over Paint Bank come real close. How close?
"They come over my house at 2 in the morning," says Charlie Brookman, the store owner. "You can smell the fuel burning. You ain't kidding they're close."
Paint Bank sits at ground zero on one of the military's favorite jet training routes in this part of the free world. After climbing over the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies, jets can dip down into a sparsely populated valley just perfect for practicing their low-flying, radar-evading techniques.
The folks who live here claim to know the route almost as well as the pilots. "They'll use the hospital [in Low Moor] for practice runs and then they use the schoolhouse at Boiling Springs and all the bridges along Route 18," Charlie Brookman says. "That's just the game plan."
Folks here seem to like the role their community plays in the nation's defense, except for one tiny detail.
They complain that the jets sometimes scare the farmers on their tractors.
Linton recalls many a time he's been mowing when a mechanical shriek erupts behind him. "For a split second, you don't know what you've torn up," he says. "It makes my hair stand up on end."
The cattle controversy
PAINT BANK - Pop into country stores and ask about the military jets training overhead and the farmers hanging out sooner or later are bound to get around to talking about what the noise does to their livestock.
Problem is, the farmers can't agree among themselves.
"The cattle kind of get used to it," insists Glen Linton. "They don't pay that much attention." Some farmers say their cattle don't even look up anymore when the jets scream overheard; it's only the farmers with their backs turned who think the world is about to end.
If that's so, then Willis Humphries' herd isn't so acclimated. The jets "scare the hell out of my cattle," he says.
"Some people say they make the cows have miscarriages," William Brookman says. "I don't know."
But his dad, Charlie Brookman, claims to know the effect the jets have on poultry. "I know they scare my chickens. They lay double eggs."
And Humphries says he always knows when the jets have been through, even if he somehow misses them. "That old beagle of mine will sit out in the yard, look straight up and howl."
What else can you expect, though, when a dog sees a Tomcat?
Call Uncle Sam
Got a complaint about a low-flying military jey? The Federal Aviation Administration has a hotline for you to call: 1-800-468-4005. The jet will be tracked, the base contacted and the incident investigated.
by CNB