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Show Missile zooms toward Surf on its way into space. me i mm rm Mt Rims 0 YT Photos and Text by JAMES JOSEPH A marine helps Mrs. John Martinez with her children as they hurry away from their a housewife in tiny Surf, Worriedly, the horizbn. It's not rain she fears as she readies to hang out the family wash; it's missiles. Due north of Surf loom the missile launch pads of Air Force Base, the West Coast's Cape Canaveral. She smiles, noting that the towering gantries plainly visible from her bedroom window are empty. "Today," she sighs with relief, "we won't have to run." There have been other days more than 160 of them since 1958 and, during last October, nine days running when Surf's 40 residents fled for their lives, leaving wash on the line, suppers unfinished, and beds unmade. Tiny Surf a railroad community lying in direct line of fire of every missile lobbed into polar orbit southward over the Pacific Missile Range lives closer to the missile age than any town in the world. The thunderous roar of missiles overhead is as common as the raucous cry of sea birds, but iq deserted Surf evacuated before every firingthere is none to hear save assistant trainmaster Bob Wolfe and a telegrapher, who, moments before a missile is launched, barricade themselves in a hillside bunker. Familiar to Surf's main street is the military cadence of security police with their urgent door pounding and hurried warning: "Evacuation, ma'am in Van-denbe- rg white-helmet- f I ! during evacuation. Surf, Calif., becomes a ghost town when missiles thunder overhead from the nearby launch pads of the West Coast's Cape Canaveral ed exactly one hour!" "We try to give a day's warning," says a security officer at the Navy's Port Arguello Missile Facility, which supervises down-rang- e ground safety, "but many of unlike Canaveral's are under the launchings strictest security. Sometimes we're not notified ourselves until a few hours before a firing." "We haven't really unpacked for more than three years now," says Mrs. John Martinez, whose telegrapher husband usually stays at his key, along with trainmaster Wolfe. "The kids and I just head for buses the Navy has ready. For the kids, it's more fun than a circus." As guests of the U. S. Navy, Surfs families are treated to a picnic if it's a daytime launching. n For night "shots," Surfs families get what one girl calls 'the- - royal motel treatment a big splashy pool to swim in, breakfast in bed if we want it, and even the morning paper delivered to our door." Despite such free holidays, not all Surf wives look forward to being routed from their homes on a moment's notice. "But," says one resignedly, "we've come to expect the unusual having the.whole town. run. for. its life." Van-denber- : home half-doze- , to' n 1. 'A g's Bv S - hi ' r -- i .... ; 13-year-- old A housewife boards a bus the Navy sends .to take Surf residents out of missile 4 Family Wftkly, September t, 1963 range. This is the shelter where Trainmaster Bob Wolfe ( above ) s lays during missile firing. |