The American Legion (Domestic, since we don't have a foreign one like the French) was chartered by the U.S. Congress in 1919. It is a community-service organization for military veterans with nearly 3,000,000 members. There are almost 15,000 American Legion Posts, or meeting places, worldwide. Bombay Beach had one. The "Billie J. Dale" American Legion Post 801.
With a sign like the one above we just had to have a beer.
It was quiet in this picture, but several times a week lunches were hosted by the post volunteers. One day we happened to be there for Taco Tuesday. The place was packed with hungry vets.
One of the volunteers, Barbara, made a few phone calls which lead to us getting permission to install a station on the property where the legion hall was located. That was nice since the hall was in a fenced area, and since it would make powering the site easier. It would be a little noisy (seismically speaking), but the security was worth it.
The legion hall was made up of two trailers. Between them, and beneath them was a good spot for a station. Below Susan is beating back the spiders after removing a section of the skirting. It was a good place for a station, but not a great place for people.
We were able to get AC power to the station by running an extension cord under and to the other side of the building. Thankfully I didn't have to crawl under the buildings to run the cord. I was able to push it through with a long piece of plastic pipe.
This station used a 'smart charger' to handle keeping the battery charged. It is the yellow object in the picture below.
Snug as a bug in a rug. When we returned to check on the station a couple of days later we discovered that the container needed to be pushed under the walkway above it a little bit more than the way we left in in the picture above. When they swabbed the walkway deck some of the water collected on top of the container.
2018-03-05