March, 1972: Diary Entry
	January 15, 1972: MAJ Perham's Going-Away Party
	Return to Index for 1972

We had our going-away party for Major Perham last Saturday, and the very next weekend a major cold front came through Indianapolis, and the temperatures, which had been just below freezing at night, dropped by forty degrees to the lowest temperature I can remember in my adult life. On Saturday, I took my camera and went out to walk around after the three-inch snowfall.

Just in case you don't remember, at left is a map of the northeastern Indianapolis area that will show you where Fort Harrison is (actually, since I am creating this page in 2019, the appropriate verb is "was") and where the Park Harrison apartments are.

At right is an aerial view of my immediate neighborhood. I work in the US Army Finance Center, and so you can see that I can actually walk to work.

On this page, I want to zero in on my apartment complex so you can get some context for the photos that I took today.

Here, I have zoomed in further on the apartment complex. (Of course, this aerial view wasn't available in 1972, and it is only because I am actually creating this particular album page in 2019 that I have access to it- courtesy of Google Maps.)

As you can see, there were two buildings with four sections in the southern one and three sections on the north side. Each section was pretty much the same; there were three units on the below-grade floor, four on the second floor, and two on the top floor (those being the two-bedroom, two-bath units). So, all in all, there were just over sixty apartments here.

Each of the buildings had its own street number; my building, second from the west in the southern building, was 9030. My unit was the northeast corner of the second floor of that building.

Obviously, the aerial view above was taken sometime in the winter (as there are no leaves on the trees), but just as obviously there hadn't been a snowfall- not like the one we just had a couple of days ago.

The night before last it snowed- just a couple of inches, but snow nonetheless. The temperature also dropped- precipitously- so that today, the high temperature will be about 25. This is the entrance to my particular building. If you go in side and up a half flight of stairs, my apartment will be at the far side of the building on the right.

We don't have assigned parking spaces, but there is plenty for all the residents. Today, my Dodge Charger is parked on the far side of the two-row parking area right outside the door to my building.

I have been very pleased with the 1971 Charger that I bought on my return from Korea last year. It is very sporty, I think, drives well, has a good cassette-based sound system, and both the air-conditioning and heat work very well. This is only my second car, and the first one with bucket seats in the front. I splurged a bit on the custom allow wheels, but other than that, and the 383 cu. in. engine, everything else was standard.

The fact that it is less than a year old, I think, contributed to its being able to withstand the brutal Indiana winters. Today was one of the coldest days of this, my first winter here, but, as it turned out, it would be far from the coldest. In a couple of weeks, we will have something of a blizzard, resulting in over a foot of snow and an overnight low temperature of -25 °F.

My balcony overlooks the area between the two buildings; on the other side of the building residents have views of parking areas. Here, my balcony is right in the center of this picture on the second floor.

Taken a little later in the day, from about the same spot, I am looking northeast at the northern tier of buildings. During the day, some youngster has built a snowman- the first I have seen since Korea.

From the Park Harrison Apartments, I walked up Post Road and onto Fort Harrison proper. Unlike other posts I've been on, this one doesn't make you stop and check in when you drive on post. There is a small little guard post just on the other side of the railroad tracks between the mobile home park north of us and the post proper, but I have never seen anyone in it.

This first picture of the Finance Center was taken from the southeast corner of the huge plot of land on which the center sits. That's the corner nearest my apartment. Employees park and enter the building from this side.

This is the official entrance on the north side of the building which, incidentally, is the second-largest US government building; only the Pentagon is larger.

It was getting colder as the day went on, so I eschewed my plan of walking entirely around the Finance Center and just went back to the Park Harrison Apartments the way I had come.

I'm not exactly sure where the water was coming from, but at the corner of my building I noticed this small tree that has been adorned with icicles. You can see that the melting snow on the roof came down the downspout, but was moving slowly enough so that it has frozen.

What was probably happening was that the entire downspout eventually filled up and then the water began overflowing at the top, dripping directly down off the roof. I couldn't see any other place it could be coming from.

In any event, the water has been dripping slowly enough that the wind has blown it into icicles which quickly froze on the tree branches.

So that's what my apartment and the Finance Center looked like in the winter.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	March, 1972: Diary Entry
	January 15, 1972: MAJ Perham's Going-Away Party
	Return to Index for 1972