Considered Opinions

Mount Umunhum
and Winnemucca too

Having just moved to the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1969 we all noticed a bussing noise in our radios and it didn’t take long to track it down to the cold-war era SAGE radar station^[i]I learned recently that my friend Rick Bressler was stationed there just a few years earlier atop Mt Umunhum, about 4 miles away. As I recall, the buzzing lasted for a fraction of a second, every 45 seconds or so, as the giant antenna rotated in our direction. I always wondered why it wasn’t an even 60-second period but I am sure the engineers had a good reason.

It didn’t take long for my curiosity to get the best of me so I piled the family into my old white Chevy pickup^[ii]… probably a late 1950s vintage with bald tires and lots of dents and set out to see what was going on up there. I didn’t take long to get there – just down Summit Road to Highland Way and Mt Bachi Road to the top of the mountain range. It however took much longer to get back down.

Within a few hundred yards from the spot, we could already see the chainlink fences that would ensure that we could not get to the actual radar station. But rather than turn around, I made another in a long series of great decisions – this time to explore a narrow, winding trail leading off to the north. As the road got narrower and rockier I thought about heading back but there was no room to turn around. Then we spotted a Volkswagon bus 100 yards ahead and were sure it was safe to continue. As we approached the bus, we could see it had no wheels or engine and likely had been abandoned there decades earlier, on the edge of a sheer drop-off.

We could almost see home, across the canyon, a mere 4 miles away but it was more than three times that distance back the way we had come. We started walking around 11:00 am, carrying both kids, and trying to avoid the rattlesnakes as we made our way back up the trail we had come down, then back along the dirt road toward the Summit Road area. When we reached La Tienda^[iii]… rebuilt after the Loma Prieta earthquake and renamed Summit Store in the late afternoon an understanding local fellow gave us a ride back home, where I could start figuring out how to come up with the money to get that old truck towed out.

Mt Umunhum was my first experience with SAGE radar stations, but not my last.

In the mid-1970s I designed an LCD wristwatch and we needed watch cases, something that I had no idea how to make. Manufactures in Hong Kong were not yet capable of delivering stainless steel ones (only plated brass) and I didn’t have the resources to go there anyway. So I called my old friend, Charlie Ellenberger from Fairchild, who had recently received a government grant to open a machine shop on an Indian reservation near Winnemucca, Nevada, and he agreed to make some prototypes of my design. I visited there for the first time with Bob Robson, co-founder of Microma, and Dan Worsham, Founder and President of Pacific Western Systems ^[iv]… early Silicon wafer processing company, long since vanished, both of whom were long-time drinking buddies of Charlie’s.

Charlie collected revolvers – mostly Colt 45s, so it didn’t take us long to come to a consensus that we should all pile into his truck for a trip up to the abandoned radar station on top of Winnemucca Mountain to shoot some rats and rattlesnakes. No sooner had we gotten out of the truck than I stepped on a board with a nail that went through my foot and came out of the top of my shoe. A tetanus shot and some whisky seemed to be in order so it was off to town for us.

The doctor was a crusty old fellow – the sort of guy you might expect to meet in a town of 8,000 people in the middle of the Nevada desert. He wore a heavy wool sport coat, thoroughly soiled with whatever remains after countless patients with similar stories as ours. When I handed him a $20, he pulled from his coat pocket, a roll “big enough to choke a horse”, as my mother would have said. You see, he was the only doctor in town, or at least the only one who did the routine inspection of all the prostitutes in town.

Next came the whisky and I don’t remember a thing about the rest of the day.

By: Jim
Written: March 19, 2022
Published: March 19, 2022
Revised:
Reader feedback always appreciated^[v]thoughtful commentary perhaps more so than shallow thoughts