The little house on 4th Army Road at Fort Ord was a perfect solution to our family's needs when we moved there in 1974.  It is the concrete house I described in my story about my tree-climbing son, Humbordt.  By the time we left there three years later, we had amassed a lot of friends, had had some great adventures, and most importantly, we had had a respite to re-group and get back on an even footing.  It was a great move for the family but also an important move for my professional status.  And it was a place and time when MamaCharlie and I came to accept and embrace the fact that I was going to be a professional soldier and the next time I got out of the Army it would be many years in the future and there would be retirement pay and benefits attached. 
We loved the Monterey Bay area;  it was full of fun (and cheap) places for young families...Dennis the Menace Park in Monterey had a great playground and a lagoon with rental paddle boats and canoes...Fisherman's Wharf...Cannery Row (before the new aquarium drew in all the upscale touristy crap)...the beautiful beaches at Pacific Grove, Seaside, Marina, and Carmel...the rolling green hills between the coast and the valley...Laguna Seca Raceway...oh man...I could go on and on...anyway, we made the best use of all the great places that were available.  The PX and commissary were close at hand and outside the gate, fresh food and crafty goods were to be had in abundance.   
We had two babies there.  Toothache was born a few months after we got there and MamieLady followed in a year and a half.  The hospital at Fort Ord took great care of us and our littlies.  In fact, with a few notable exceptions,all the facilities on post treated us well.  
Anyway, we had a house and MamaCharlie put her magic touches on it as best as we could afford and turned it into a home.  As she always has.
We had the good fortune to be stationed back there two more times...each time it was like coming home.  The last time we were there was only a few months, we were returning from Germany and would retire shortly.  The week that I retired, I got a haircut in the same barber shop where I got my first haircut in the Army...28 years earlier.  I did some of my out-processing in the same building where I had done some of my in-processing.  It was a poignant experience, ending an era of my life in the same places it had begun...and I had lots of time to contemplate what all had transpired in the times between.
On our last stay there, we spent some time in temporary housing on a hill overlooking Martinez Hall (the administrative center of the post) and what we used to call "CDEC Hill"...a section of WWII vintage buildings covering the whole hill.  Our view also included Monterey Bay, the straight, sharp horizon of the Pacific Ocean, and the ice plant-covered hills in between.  We could see many of the beach rifle ranges and most days were filled with the popping of gunfire in the distance.  The temp quarters we were in were surrounded by pine trees and it always smelled (pleasantly) of the ocean and the trees.  
I started out with the intention of writing another story about Humbordt and Hyperborean Wanderer and some of their adventures as little dudes.  I probably will do that soon.  Something took over my brain, though, as I started writing, a kind of draw to that simpler time and that beautiful place.  I just sort of let it ramble on out and the other stuff just faded away.  It happens like that sometimes.  I wrote a similar piece about the little shack where we lived in Texas.  I called it "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar"...an obscure salute to a science fiction writer's story about his aging and returning to his favorite watering hole to find it boarded up and scheduled for demolition, but when he went inside he found all his old friends and laughter and booze.  The story goes on but you can probably see where it is headed.  The title is one that stuck in my mind and when I am feeling that melancholy that accompanies aging, or when something I don't want to change is changing, I tell MamaCharlie that they are tearing down Tim Riley's bar and she knows what I mean.  That was the exact feeling I had the day we left Fort Ord for the last time.  It was scheduled to be closed.  Many of the quarters would be turned over to California for low-rent housing.  It turns out that they left the hospital, PX, and commissary open to service the Defense Language Institute over at the Presidio of Monterey, but everything else got closed up, turned over to some other agency, or destroyed.  Some of the old housing was kept for  married DLI students to house their families...in fact, HBW and Life Happens lived one street over from our old house when they got married.  HBW commented that it looked smaller than he remembered.
Fort Ord is gone.  We don't have to worry about Stilwell Hall slipping into the ocean anymore.  We don't have to double-time in formation wearing boots and T-shirts up and down the beach range road (there were some killer hills on that road) anymore.  No more long marches with seventy-pound packs and full "battle-rattle" (as the kids today call it) up and down the hills of east post and Sandstone Ridge.  No more fog-generated mold on the walls and every nook and cranny of the kitchen and bathroom.  No more of the sand fleas, meningitis outbreaks, sand in your private places, poison oak, or fainting on the parade field...no more of any of the other complaints soldiers have made about the place for nearly 100 years.  "It is", as the dolphin said in "Day of the Dolphin"..."not".  I really miss it.