The Ex Files
David Halberstam
My father was stationed in El Paso at Biggs Field, which would later become a huge air base. You could see all these planes that were lined up, the bombers that were going to be used. I loved El Paso; it was so different from growing up in New York. I remember one time when I got in trouble not long after we had moved there. I was probably in the third or fourth grade, and I got on a trolley car with one of my pals from school. There was a movie theater right next to the Paso del Norte Hotel downtown, and we went to see Sergeant York. I remember the scene from the movie where Gary Cooper tells you that if you have a line of turkeys—’cause he’s an outdoorsman—you shoot the last one first so the others don’t know that they’ve been shot. But I really got in trouble when I got home. It was late, and here we were in this strange city and I hadn’t told anybody I was going to the movie.
David Halberstam spent part of his childhood in El Paso and Austin while his father was in the military. He won a Pulitzer prize in 1964 for his coverage of the Vietnam War and has written sixteen books. His latest, Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made (Random House), will be in bookstores this month.
David Halberstam
My father was stationed in El Paso at Biggs Field, which would later become a huge air base. You could see all these planes that were lined up, the bombers that were going to be used. I loved El Paso; it was so different from growing up in New York. I remember one time when I got in trouble not long after we had moved there. I was probably in the third or fourth grade, and I got on a trolley car with one of my pals from school. There was a movie theater right next to the Paso del Norte Hotel downtown, and we went to see Sergeant York. I remember the scene from the movie where Gary Cooper tells you that if you have a line of turkeys—’cause he’s an outdoorsman—you shoot the last one first so the others don’t know that they’ve been shot. But I really got in trouble when I got home. It was late, and here we were in this strange city and I hadn’t told anybody I was going to the movie.
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