Tuesday was a jelly bean day. Specifically, I took a tour of the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield. This is the jelly bean brand of President Reagan. It must be the one. There are portraits of him in photographs and in jelly bean mosaics. All over. At the entrance and on the walls of the factory.

I can’t have sugar in my diet any more, but I think at one point just breathing the air may have increased my blood sugar levels. OK … I did have a sample jelly bean that was mango flavor. Real fruit flavor from real fruit. Of course it was delicious.

Any of you get to Fairfield, you have to stop for the 40-minute tour. The tour is free, and of course it starts and stops at the gift shop. You can also have a tasting of local wines, and there is a place to get lunch there, too. Oh – at the end of the tour, they give you some samples.

The address is really simple: 1 Jelly Bean Lane, Fairfield, CA.

Thanks to my 36 years in and with the Navy, I’m allowed to use various recreational facilities for military offers. I’m parked at the FAM CAMP or Family Campground on Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield. Very nice, and it has almost all that I love in an RV park: 50-amp power supply, fresh water, and a sewer connection, too. I can pay for Wi-Fi at a nominal price, plus cable TV.

When I signed that first enlistment, they said nothing about things like this. Maybe because all of the camping done by the armed services in 1968 was in hot and humid foxholes in Southeast Asia, or my favorite, underwater camping on a submarine built six years before I was born.

The Navy, Air Force, Army and Coast Guard all have such camps. They are used by folks on leave or changing duty station, plus a lot of us retired folk. Makes for some interesting conversations around camp. If you can call this a camp.

Green lawns at each site and a picnic table on a concrete pad, and everything is maintained and clean. There is a downside to this RV park. Each morning at 0700, I once again wake to a bugle call. They play reveille and then bugle the call to colors just after.

Come 1630 hours, we are serenaded with the national anthem, and at 2100, one more bugle call for the day – taps. Brought back some memories for me. Hadn’t been awakened to the sound of a bugle since 1969. I could have done without it now. Just one question: Why is the United States Air Force, the most modern and youngest of all of the branches of the military, still using a bugle call?

Now this isn’t free. It costs about $20 per night, but you can’t beat the security and conditions. Almost feel right at home. Glad I stopped. Younger son Joel was born here at Travis AFB. That is nearly a 42-year-old story I’ve got to tell you one day. Unlike his older brother, I was in port for Joel’s birth.

In coming back here, I miss a few of the old, familiar things that I still laugh about. I remember seeing the FART buses on I-80 every day. Yes, you read that correctly. The Fairfield Area Rapid Transit buses, aka FART.

At one time, the FART system had about six buses with the hand-brushed name on the side. It was started by folks who commuted to San Francisco every day. Most of those folks worked at AT&T in the city. As that company moved out and the workers retired, the FART buses stopped running in the late 1980s. I had hoped to see them. Always provided a chuckle.

Imagine that. A whole transportation system started by folks who would use it, which paid for itself and in fact made a slight profit when the buses were sold. It served well and was replaced by a public system that costs twice as much to ride half as far. The new system takes riders to Concord, and they can catch BART to the city.

The boss might understand when BART is running late, but wouldn’t it be great to tell your boss you were late because of a slow FART … bus?

What I’m trying to say is that transportation solutions are possible. Folks here did it. All they had was a FART, and the dream was reality.

I think I’ll quit this line of thought while I can.

I’m still trying to think of an acronym for the California High Speed Rail boondoggle that would be as funny. Unfortunately, everything I think of cannot be published in this spot. Do you have any ideas?

Darryl Manzer grew up in the Pico Canyon oil town of Mentryville in the 1960s and attended Hart High School. After a career in the U.S. Navy he returned to live in the Santa Clarita Valley. He can be reached at dmanzer@scvhistory.com. His older commentaries are archived at DManzer.com; his newer commentaries can be accessed [here]. Watch his walking tour of Mentryville [here].