This is from the dashcam during my drive around Chanute yesterday.
What you're seeing here is the side of Dyess Hall, one of three gigantic hangar/classroom facilities on Chanute Air Force Base. This one is where the NDI/JOAP laboratory and school facility was located from its establishment in the early 1950s to 1993, when it was relocated to Millington NAS near Memphis after Chanute AFB was closed.
I was assigned here, first as a student and then as an instructor, from early 1980 to early 1986 in what was my first duty assignment in the Air Force after basic training in Texas. My formative years in the AF were spent here, serving on a staff of about 50 instructors, all great people.
You go through this door, then there's another set of doors, and beyond that was the instructor office, and hallways led to the classrooms, the practice lab areas for penetrant, mag particle, ultrasonics, eddy current, radiography, and the spectroscopic oil analysis program (SOAP, later called JOAP) areas where we taught and the students practiced those techniques, offices, student areas, and beyond, a very large central hallway that we called the 'bowling alley' ran the entire width of the building. The bowling alley served as the student break area.
You're seeing this entry and in fact the entire base, under the worst possible circumstances--after having been abandoned for many years by pretty much everyone. In fact, this building is for sale, according to signs posted, but I understand from one of my RV neighbors that it has been purchased by some company in California. During my day, this area was kept spotless and beautiful by the large cadre of students who constantly rotated through for their training.
Of course, I did my turn as a student here too. In fact, my very first day of classes--that would been on Monday, March 17, 1980, at about 5:30 in the morning, I was marched as a part of a 30-student group from the 3344th Student Squadron building half-a-mile away on troopwalks plowed of knee-deep snow and icy, and was stood about where that pile of lumber is to the left of the doors to await permission to enter the building! Man, it was COLD!
