So yeah, life on a navy base is pretty good, thanks. It's not for everyone, obviously, because they don't let everyone in. At the gate, they ask you for your military identification card, your car registration, and the reason you're there in 25 words or less. If any of these aren't good enough, they send you right back onto the road, via a narrow lane protected on either side by jersey walls. There's a war on, and there are secrets here that need to be kept secret.
Inside, people in uniform often stop you and ask for ID, more often if you have facial hair. But a lot of the people at the navy base aren't in uniform at all. A lot of families live here, moms and husbands and wives and brothers and sisters. There are old people, kids too. Everyone walks around the sidewalks with faint smiles on their faces, protected and happy.
There's a supermarket and a department store on the navy base, housed in low-slung boxes of buildings in the heart of the compound. Prices are very reasonable, presumably frozen since the last time the U.S. won a war. A quart of milk costs $1.25, and bread is a quarter. No tax on anything, even the wide-screen teevees. There's a gas station too. The prices there are so good that they're one of those secrets I talked abut earlier.
Morale is important on the navy base. There's a theater that plays second-run movies (war films are popular), there's a gym with top-of-the-line equipment, a teen center, even a bowling alley. Everything, it's all free. There's a teevee channel on the cable system that tells you what's going on around the base on any given day, using a Powerpoint slideshow with clip art and side-wipe transitions and Dave Matthews songs playing in the background.
There's also a sports bar on the navy base, that's where most of the men seem to spend the evenings. It's like the sports bars on the outside, mostly, but the tap beer isn't watered down. "Sports" here means football, and the only set showing the baseball playoffs is way in the back over the pool table. The food? The kitchen likes to puts barbecue sauce on everything, including the nacho plate special.
It's a little strange for the first few days, but you get used to it after a while. Life on a navy base is like life on the outside, only more so.
