Hitching to Bogalusa for a Flying Job

Christine was wearing her rucksack; her diaper bag was slung over one shoulder and her purse, as large as a lawyer’s briefcase, hung by a strap from the other shoulder and our baby was in her arms when she stepped down from the bus in Punta Gorda. 

 

I relieved her of the diaper bag, hooked it over the strap on my ruck where my ice axe ought to be, but wasn’t.  Awkwardly, I kissed her cheek, taking care not to wake the baby.

 

“Well, I’m here,” she said, “what now?”

 

“I called Sanford.  He’s got a job for me in Bogalusa, Louisiana, if we can get there by tomorrow morning.”

 

“What kind of job?”

 

“Flying pipeline patrol.  Remember the little airfield we stopped at south of Houston—before we wrecked the blue van?”

 

“Is that the place that looked like a swamp under those power lines?”

 

“Yeah.  I forgot about those power lines.  But that’s the place.  Sanford’s guy in Louisiana just up and quit.  I’ve got the job if we can get there.”

 

“How in the hell are we going to get there with no money, honey?”

 

“We’ll hitch hike to Gainsville for starters.  Sanford has a man flying the Florida Gas Pipeline which runs from Boca Raton to Baton Rouge.  If we can get a ride to Gainsville, he’ll pick us up and fly us to Bogalusa.  No sweat.  Are you game?”

 

“Do I have a choice?”

 

“Let’s see. . .you could call your folks collect and ask them to wire you some money for bus fare back to Fort Myers. . . .”

 

“No way, Jose.  As long as we don’t have to live in Baton Rouge or New Orleans, I’m game.  Where’s Bogalusa anyway?”

 

“On the east side of the state, just across the Pearl River from Mississippi.  Sanford said it’s a company town, owned by a paper company.  I picture something like Valsetz, Oregon, but flatter.  You remember Valsetz?”

 

“Oh God.  That ghost town in the Oregon coast range, where we almost got smashed by a log truck?”

 

“Yeah.  Let’s get going.”  Just ahead was a large car dealership. 

 

The Kenosha Auto Transport truck was loading used cars on his double deck trailer.  We stood on the sidewalk watching until he was loaded and then asked him if he was going north.

 

I told the driver our predicament and he looked at Chris and the baby with a long face.  It took him a few minutes to make up his mind.  He opened the passenger door of his sleeper cab and helped her climb up into the bunk.  The baby woke up just long enough to nurse and have her diaper changed; as soon as the truck was in motion she went back to sleep.  I stuffed the crappy diaper into a plastic bag and tied it up; it lay on the floor of the cab until we hit the rest area near the onramp to I-75 where I could dispose of it.  While we all went to the head, and the driver bought a coke for Chris and a coffee for me at the vending machines before we remounted and got on the freeway.

 

Al, our driver, was as taciturn as any cowboy I’ve ever met.  But Chris managed to get him to talk about his home in Wisconsin.  She has aunts and cousins scattered throughout the mid-west as well as New England; we’ve visited most of them in our two years of traveling together.

 

As if speaking to me, Chris said: “You remember my cousin, Tony, the kid who gave us that hairy ride in his speedboat in Milwaukee?” 

 

“His older brother, Bobby, lives in St. Paul.”

 

“Where in St. Paul?” Al asked.

 

“I’d have to get in my pack for my address book.  I don’t know off the top of my head.  But he’s an engineer and works for a sub-contractor making parts for Sikorsky.  My dad used to work for Sikorsky in Connecticut before he moved us to Florida.”

 

“I’m going to buy a lot in Coral Gables,” Al announced, “Damned if I want to freeze my tail off after I retire.”

 

“I’ll give you my brother-in-law’s address and phone number.  He’s got several lots in Coral Gables and he’s a general contractor too.  He and my father are partners on a couple of houses that they’re building on spec right now.  You really have to know someone down there, or you wind up buying land that’s prone to flooding when a hurricane goes by and they get the storm surge.”

 

“Hey, that’s cool.  Give me his number.  I’ll be hauling another load of new cars down that way in a week or two.”

 

Al went out of his way to drop us off at the general aviation area on the Gainsville airport.  We had to wait two hours for Sanford’s pilot to land his Cessna 172 and meet us.

 

To be continued. . .

 

 

Setting the Anchor

Setting the Anchor

One of his more embarrassing moments: He drops the hook and watches the chain and line pay out, while his mind is on the naked nymph poised on the lazaretto preparing to dive into the crystalline water of the lagoon and noting those firm buttocks and a deep dimple above each, and then turning back to his business just in time to see that the bitter end of the anchor rope isn’t tied to the cleat. Down goes the line and anchor into the deep lagoon and the boat is beginning to drift astern due to the rapidly ebbing tide towards the girl frolicking in the water.

If the 40-foot ketch, drifting at only one knot, should strike her head, it could brain her. If it doesn’t kill her instantly she’ll probably drown before the idiot who forgot to tie the anchor line to the cleat can run that far, dodging the stays, the booms and the clutter in the cockpit to throw her a life preserver or even shout a warning. Now a gust of offshore wind riffles the surface as it moves toward the boat. At the top of his lungs he screams: HELP!

The girl turns, expecting to see her companion is some sort of trouble, sees the hull bearing down on her. She surface dives and swims deep. She sees the barnacle-encrusted keel pass over her with a meter of clearance. She swims up to grasp the chain stays of the bowsprit and climbs back aboard. She watches her lover as he leans over the lifeline at the stern, but says nothing.

She opens the hatch to the chain locker, removes the spare anchor, checks its shackle is secured, ties the bitter end of the line to the deck cleat and heaves the anchor overboard.

The flukes of the spare anchor hook a coral head and when the line has paid out, the boat comes to an instant halt. The idiot leaning over the stern is thrown into the water. She ambles aft like an apparition to laugh at the fool.

A Sea Story

 George Warner handled a three quarter inch drill motor as if it were a .38 revolver. He was auguring one inch holes through the sternposts of the catamaran hulls to mount gudgeons for his rudders. I would use two hands for a job like that. Then you see the size of George’s muscular forearms and hands and quit worrying about him spraining a wrist.

I had moored my old wooden cabin cruiser, long ago converted for commercial fishing, at the Point Laura Marina’s live-aboard dock. The “Zeke” was tethered to their electricity and water while I waited for their hoist to be repaired. She was overdue to be hauled so I could scrape and paint her bottom.

Meanwhile, I was building an eight foot pram dinghy to replace my tender that someone stole. My work space was adjacent to George’s. We shared the same electrical service. The flood light on the top of our power pole lit both spaces and we often worked on our boats at night, when it was cooler.

Neither George nor I were sociable types, but after a few weeks of working beside each other, we’d started talking. We shared a few beers at the end of a night’s work, and gradually came to realize how much we had in common.

George was formerly a Navy diver and explosive ordinance disposal man; I’d been a Marine scout swimmer and demolition man. Neither of us likes to hear anything go bang if we haven’t personally lit the fuze. It was the prolonged celebration of Independence Day, with all the crazy fireworks that brought George and I closer together.

I put a case of beer and a quart of Jack Daniels aboard the Zeke; before casting off her lines, I invited George to take a short cruise with me. Kids in the adjacent campground were already shooting off bottle rockets, so he grabbed a windbreaker and hopped aboard.
 

We went out through Biscayne Bay, rather than chance grounding in the pass; the Zeke draws close to five feet of water. George was amused by my taking the long way round.

He began to educate me about catamarans. The gist of his lecture was that multihull vessels are designed to bob over the waves like corks, instead of plowing through them the way the Zeke did.

“When she’s finished, I’ll be able to take my cat across the barrier reef down in Roatán at low tide and beach her,” George said.

“Roatán,” I said, “Isn’t that down off the coast of Belize?”

“It’s between Belize and Honduras. Honduras claims it. That’s part of my problem right now.”

“What’s the problem, George?” I said, scanning the horizon. The sea was calm. A container ship was bucking the Gulf Stream heading south a mile or two away.

“You’ve heard about the Contras?” George asked.

I nodded, as I poured shots of Jack into Dixie cups from my seat on the pilot’s chair. George sat in the other chair on the opposite side of the hatchway. He took the cup, made a toasting gesture and slugged it down. I sipped mine; I wanted to keep a clear head. The Coast Guard patrolled the area regularly, and I wanted to be sober if they boarded the Zeke.

“I don’t use much of the hard stuff anymore. I’m better off sticking to beer or pot. They tell me I have a tendency to get aggressive when I drink.” He said.  George let out a short, derisive snort and picked up the can of Bud to chase the bourbon.
 

“That’s funny as hell, George. An asshole in G-3 wrote the same damn thing on my final fitness report when I resigned from the Corps. . . .Welcome aboard,” I said. We clanked our beer cans together.

“So, what’s the problem with the Contras, other than the fact that they are trying to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua? Personally, I think we should keep our fucking noses out of other peoples’ business, but we never have. Have we?”

“There’s some weird shit going on down there. I’m not talking about mining harbors, or the covert stuff in El Salvador. I mean that in spite of the Bolin Amendment, we’re still running guns into Nicaragua. Guys I know who flew for Air America in Nam and Laos are refueling on Roatán. Those C-54s are not loaded with black beans and rice. The merks and Contras are also using Roatán for R & R. One of the Samosan Colonels running the Contras has been trying to get the Honduran government to expropriate my property down there.”

 “Where’s your property, George?”

“I’ve got ten acres of hillside at the head of First Bight. I built a small house on it. . .okay, so it’s only a shack. . .and a dock for the shrimp boat I used to have. My girlfriend, Juanita, is living in the house and keeping an eye on my gear while I’m up here.”

“Juanita is Honduran?

“Honduran and Mexican. Dual citizenship. She came up to the States a few years ago, but she got caught working without a green card and deported. She chose Honduras. It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got plenty of time, George. I plan to stay out here until the 7th,  or whenever they stop playing with the fireworks.”

“Juanita signed on to cook for my crew on my boat.  the boat was registered in the States, so that’s also part of my problem, Mack. We put in at Fort Myers to offload our catch. Juanita and I went to town to do some shopping. Someone ratted her out to INS and she was deported. You sure you want to hear this?”

“If you’d rather not talk about it, George. . . .”

“I sold my boat to a guy at the Mid-Island Marine on Estero Island. Apparently he used it to smuggle dope from Columbia or Panama. Then, it turns out that the guy who bought it was not a U.S. citizen. I suppose I should have sold it through a broker; he’d have known that you can’t sell a U.S. registered vessel to a foreigner.

“So the DEA impounded the boat and they suspect me of having something to do with the smuggling. My fucking passport has been lifted and I’ve had feds tailing me everywhere I go. They haven’t charged me with anything—they call me a person of interest,. That’s what galls my ass. I don’t know what the fuck to do about it.”

“George, it sounds to me like they’re trying to make a conspiracy case but can’t find hard evidence to make the connection.” I said. “Do you have an attorney?”

“Sort of. I hired an attorney in Naples to draw up the sales contract. . .aw shit! What a dumb assed thing that was. The guy I sold the boat to recommended the fucking attorney. They were probably in cahoots for Christ’s sake.”

“Take it easy, George. I’ve got an old buddy in Miami who used to be a VIP at the State Department. He might know what to do.” I said, scratching my head for ideas.

 

“Why don’t we use my tape recorder? I don’t trust my memory for much these days. You tell the whole story, all the pertinent names, dates and such that you can think of. When we get back to the hill, I’ll run it over to my friend and get his advice. If nothing else, he knows plenty of good lawyers. If you’d like, you can come with me to visit Herb. Herb was once my boss, when I was detached to State. He ran their security operations.”

George tipped up his can of beer and drained it. “I’m glad I came out here with you, Mack. This sounds like the way to go. So far, all I’ve been doing is chasing my tail. I couldn’t think straight. Where’s that recorder you mentioned?”

“It’s in a rack on the back of the chart table. It is one of those pocket sized micro-cassette jobs. There’s a bunch of fresh tapes in the rack beside the recorder. Help yourself.

“I’m going to wet a line. . . see if I can catch a Grouper for our supper.” I said, shifting my bony ass off the chair.

  I unlatched one of the overhead racks and took down a rod with a Penn 600 reel.  I tested the 90# twine; it was still good.  I sat on the transom and rigged it.  Georg’s husky voice came from the cabin; he was really getting into the story telling mood.  Some people have trouble telling their story if they know I’m a writer.  The tape recorder lets them pace, while pacing their tale.

End Part 1.  To be continued.

“Bad Evan Parker Joins 1st Amphib Recon”

One of the U.S. Marine Officers, a decorated veteran of the Korean War, who participated in the Malayan campaign with the British Marine Commandos was assigned to Able Detachment, 1^st Provisional Amphibious Recon Company at Camp Pendelton, CA.  in the spring of 1955 was Captain Evan L. Parker Jr.  Parker was a  U.S. Naval Academy Graduate, six feet tall,  built like a professional wrestler and handsome enough to pose for posters.   I’ll never forget his first day in our outfit.

Captain Evan L. Parker held reveille at 0500 on a Monday morning, two full hours before weekend liberty officially ended, so some of our troops were still on the road coming back to the barracks from L.A. and T-Town.  Those of us who fell out in the Company Street had been back on base for an hour or two; most of us had returned just in time to change from civvies into dungarees and boots when Parker began bellowing.  Most of us were still drunk or at least hung over.  We straggled out of the barracks, bitching and grumbling into the dim glow from the street light.

Some of the senior noncoms who lived off base arrived in their cars in time to witness the comedy as sixty-odd men in ragged formation began doing Jumping Jack exercises.  Parker ordered us to drop and give him fifty pushups, while he went to have a chat with the Sergeants.

I couldn’t hear what the Captain was saying to the NCOs, but when he finished his spiel they all double timed into the barracks to change into dungarees and boots.

Parker had us duck walking around the barracks parking lot when the noncoms came out to join in the calesthenics.  Only one of them, Jimmie Howard, who had been working out with the base football team for a few weeks was able to keep up with Parker’s exercise routine without tossing his cookies. 

When the troops were dismissed, there was a mad dash for the water fountains in the day room.  Those of us who couldn’t wait drank the tepid water from our canteens.  Most of us were too parched and exhausted to talk,

We were accustomed to straggle over to the chow hall for breakfast, or do without.  While we were showering, however, Sergeant Howard informed us that we would have another formation in half an hour and be inspected before we went to chow.

When we fell out the second time, we were clad in crisply starched utilities and shined boots.  Captain Parker marched through our ranks, now and then pausing to tell a man to square away his cover or button his fly.  Satisfied with our appearance, he formed us into two columns and we double timed to the chow hall.

Later that morning, after our stragglers returned from weekend liberty, we were mustered in the Company Street again.  The sun was just then rising above the hills behind our barracks buildings.  Parker informed us that we were to make up a light marching pack containing two changes of socks, our camouflage dungarees, an extra set of skivvies and our swim suits.

We inflated our 12-man rubber boats, got into formation as boat teams, and carried the boats on our heads as we double timed from our mainside barracks to Camp Del Mar beach, only 13 miles away.

The 12-Man LCR (Landing Craft Rubber) weighed more than 400 pounds.  With our weapons and paddles stowed in those boats, the wreight increased to more than 500 pounds.  By the time we reached the beach at Del Mar we were each a quarter inch shorter.

Parker gave us a half-hour break to rest up and shed our dungarees and don our swim suits, while he paced off half a mile of beach and placed markers in the sand.  We would swim half a mile out through the surf, swim  parallel to the beach until abreast of the second marker and then swim in through the surf to the beach.  For a few of us the swim was a snap, and we stood in a group on the beach afterwards smoking until Parker jogged up to us and told us to act as life guards.  Nobody had to be rescued, but the poorest swimmers dragged ashore half an hour after the rest of the men.  We jogged back to the area designated as our “camp,” and prepared to do some boat drills.

Boat drill consisted of launching our boats in the surf, bucking the breakers and paddling out past the surf zone.  There we capsized our boats to empty the water out of them, righted them and paddled back through the surf to the beach.  This exercise would have been enjoyable had it not been for the replacements who’d joined the outfit since our return from Hawaii.  When eight husky men dip their paddles simultaneously and pull with their backs a rubber boat will litterally leap forward with each stroke.  If only one man fails to pull his weight, however, every man can feel it and the coxwain has to compensate using his paddle as a rudder.  Upon returning to the beach the slackers would be placed on one boat and forced to dig a trench in the sand with their paddles until they got the hang of it.  When they went out for their second drill, they usually put their backs into it. 

We stayed at the beach until Friday afternoon.  By the time we got back to our barracks, Captain Parker had earned himself a nick name: “Bad Evan Parker.”

“Bad Evan” had earned the nick name by offering to wrestle anyone who cared to try him.  A couple of the lieutenants grappled with Parker, but only one came close to pinning him.  By the end of that first week, Parker had earned the respect of every man in the outfit, albeit grudgingly.

During the following six years, I would encounter Bad Evan several times and after I earned a commission we became friends and neighbors.  Evan and I lived off the base.  We were both recently married.  Our wives would watch us, amused and astonished, as we performed our morning ritual of calesthenics, which included doing up-and-arms-shoulders with a log weighing 150 pounds.  Evan’s wife, a school teacher, would have coffee with my wife before going to work; I often wondered what they thought of our morning routine, which included a five-mile jog through the wooded countryside before breakfast in the pre-dawn darkness of that winter of 1958 at Quantico.

In 1962, Bad Evan was assigned to the Military Assistance and Advisory Group, Vietnam.  The following is his commentary on his experience as an advisor.  What is not mentioned in this report is the conduct of the ARVN troops and their officers when in contact with the Viet Cong during his first tour of duty in country.

“As the Vietnamese Marines were organized along the lines of their US counterparts, there was no apparent difference in their “concept” of how to engage and dispose of an opposing force; there was a lot of difference in how that concept played out in actual practice. There was no apparent continuity of training, no apparent lines of support/ supply within the RVN Marines. The supply function came to them already “packaged” from the ARVN; until the succeeding years there was no outside fire support except as arranged on an ad-hoc basis between the Marines and the nearby ARVN fire support unit and then it was a negotiated deal as the ARVN really wanted no part of helping any unit other than themselves. Much of these kinds of circumstances grew from the manner in which the RVNMC was employed. In the previous year, the RVN Marines had pulled an upset to an incipient coup by an ARVN unit which had entered the Presidential Palace grounds and was preparing to enter the building. One of the RVNMC battalion commanders had been an ARVN paratroop unit commander and had recently transferred to the RVN Marines. He organized a convoy of Marines and bluffed his way into the Presidential Palace grounds with several truckloads of Marines and then turned their weapons toward the ARVN paratroopers; that was enough to shut down the so-called coup. From that moment on the RVN Marine Corps was President Diem’s “fair-haired” crowd, and as a consequence at least one Marine battalion was held in Saigon for immediate deployment as the presidential fire-brigade. Hence, the arrangement of the aforementioned derelict boatyard as this unit’s “barracks.” Needless to say it was difficult, if not virtually impossible, to do much of any sort of training other than that of a simple individual style.

“The fact that both the MAAG command as a whole and the advisory detachment in particular had little-to-no extant written (or any other) policies relating to what advisor missions/ tasks/ methods of operation/ reports et al., was a serious impediment at the outset. Once I understood that stance as a fact of life, I made my own way, so to speak. (Later, I was berated by the MAAG commander for entering the MAAG headquarters compound on my return from a 6-week operation in the field wearing my pistol on the pistol belt. I was told that ‘advisors were not to wear arms in such a manner both in the field and particularly in the MAAG compound.’) Having recently been the obvious target on a number of occasions for what may have been disgruntled Viet Cong snipers, such a berating seems downright ludicrous. My regard for the MAAG in general was lowered, even more than it already was. An inability to speak and understand the Vietnamese language played a key hurdle, initially, until I was able to ‘pick up’ key words and phrases, and was able by inference and observation of the context of certain situations to make assumptions about what was happening. There were at the time several (3) Vietnamese Marine lieutenants in the battalion who were recent Basic School graduates, and they were a valuable source of information for me. The battalion commander had not had any advisors assigned before me, and he seemed reluctant at the outset to see that I was informed (or even told after the fact) about prospective operations. The RVN Marine battalion commander was then the most senior captain in their corps, and had been a warrant officer with the French Expeditionary Forces, and he had a wealth of combat experience; however, it seemed to me that he had but a small appreciation for the utility that 600 reasonably well trained infantry troops could give him. In short, while he may have been an exemplary company commander, he was out of his depth as a battalion commander. When engaged in a fire-fight, which he was reluctant to do, each of the companies appeared to act as a separate entity. It was in fact, every man for himself. (On one such instance, one of the company commanders turned tail and headed ‘for the nearest exit.’ When I confirmed my eyesight with one of the Vietnamese lieutenants, I was advised that the prudent thing to do was to swallow it and not bring it to the CO’s attention. I took that advice as the ‘most prudent course.’ At that time a number (about 30) of Armalite weapons were issued to this battalion. I was curious about the Marines’ abilities related to marksmanship and the new weapons’ maintenance, namely, care and cleaning. As we were then at the Saigon billeting area for this unit, which happened to be a derelict French small boat repair yard, I arranged some rudimentary cleaning and marksmanship training. All to no avail as I was soon told that I was “interfering” with the unit’s training and operations. So much for being an effective advisor.”

Source: USMC COVAN STUDY. Conducted in 1968, while Lt. Col. Evan L. Parker Jr. was commanding the 3^rd Battalion, 1^st Marine Regiment in Vietnam.

http://www.irism.com/pubs/covan4.asp

 

 

Retirement Day

Mack sat in the porch swing, bracing his feet on the weathered boards to keep the swing still, massaging his temples with his stubby, callused fingertips.

 

His wife, Edna, pushed open the screen door with her rump as both of her hands were full; she carried a folding metal TV table in her left and two mugs of coffee in her right.  Mack, still seated, took the table from her and set it up so it straddled his legs.  Edna placed the coffee mugs on it and reached into the breast pocket of her work shirt and withdrew a packet of B.C. Headache powder.

 

Mack took the B.C. out of her hand, unfolded the paper and sprinkled the sugary powder onto his tongue.  He washed it down with a swig of hot coffee.

 

Unlike his friends and the men he worked with, Edna addressed her husband as “Claude.”  When she called his name from another room, or from inside the house when he was outdoors, he was reminded of his mother shouting at him, reminding him of some chore he’d left undone and he felt a twinge of guilt.

 

“Scoot over, sugar.  My feet are all swole up this morning and these shoes are killing me.”

 

Mack moved to the end of the swing.  The chains suspending it from the porch ceiling were against his left shoulder, reminding him of the arthritis pain in that joint.  Edna carefully lowered her bulk onto the swing seat.  To their son watching from behind the screen door, his parents made him think of the nursery rhyme Jack Spratt.

 

“Charles Lee!” Edna shouted.  “Fetch us that pitcher of cream from the safe in the kitchen, honey!”

 

“Just a second, Ma.” Charles hollered back.

 

Charles Lee, an emaciated man of thirty-one, came out of the house wearing his prison guard’s uniform carrying the small stainless cream pitcher.  Edna took the creamer from him and held out her hand to take his clip-on black necktie.

 

“Bend down here, Son.”  She said.

 

“I’m sorry I won’t be here to help celebrate your birthday, Pa,” Charles said, “But I need the overtime.  What with the alimony and child support payments I just can’t make it on forty hours a week.”

 

“That’s okay, Son,” Claude said.  “I know how it is.  Besides, Bill and Burl both called from Chattanooga to say they’ll be here around noon.  Just give me a kiss and skedaddle.”

 

Being careful not to upset the TV tray, Charles Lee bent down and gave his father a kiss on the cheek.  When he stood erect again, Charles tucked his shirt into the waistband of his trousers.  “Are my creases straight?” he asked.

 

“You look as squared away as any Lieutenant I ever saw in the Army, Charles.”  Mack smiled and the wrinkles fanning out from his dark eyes deepened.

 

Charles Lee walked carefully from the porch to his new Chevy parked under the pines beside the red clay drive way.  He opened the door and then waived at his parents.

 

“This damned headache ain’t going away.  I reckon you ought to drive me to Sparta, Edna.  If I don’t get some relief. . .”

 

“You need some help down to the car?” Edna asked.

 

“I don’t think so.  Just get your purse and the keys.  The pain is something terrible.”

 

Edna drove their new 1970 Chevrolet the ten miles into town.  But by then Mack was bent double in the passenger seat vomiting coffee all over the floor mat.  So she drove straight to the emergency room at the hospital.

 

A pair of husky men in whites came out and helped Claude into a wheel chair and pushed it into the ER.

 

The young intern took a quick look at Claude’s eyes, put his stethoscope over his heart and nodded to Edna.  “This one’s a keeper,” he said, as if talking about fish.

 

Edna drove home to get her husband’s denture cup, Poly-grip and a pair of pajamas.

 

By the time she made the twenty-mile round trip, Mack was already dead.  After a time sitting in the waiting room, Edna got up and went to the nursing station.

 

“May I use your phone?” She asked, “I don’t have any change for the pay phone.”

 

Edna stood with the phone in her hand.  She didn’t know who to call.  Her daughter would be at work in Nashville; Charles Lee would be on the highway heading to work and Bill and Burl were probably both on the road with their families coming up over Spencer Mountain from Chattanooga.  So she searched through her wallet for the card with the business agent’s number.

 

The office girl who answered the phone in the Local of the IBEW told Edna that she would inform the men in Mack’s crew.  “Lordy!” the girl said.  “Mack was supposed to start his retirement today.”  Then she instructed Edna to bring the death certificate to the Local so she could get started on Mack’s insurance and annuity.  “Is there anything I can help you with?” the girl asked.

 

“No thank you, dear.  Mister Hunter will take care of the funeral arrangements.”

 

Then Edna called me at my home in Oregon.

 

“I’ll fly into Nashville, Edna.  Please have Charlie meet me at the airport.” I said.

 

End

 

By Ron McKinney © Sunday, September 07, 2008

 

Sometimes I Get Angry

I hate to get cut off while posting to this website.  I tend to get very angry.

Gypsy Pilot

 A Gypsy Pilot will fly anything with fixed wings, anyplace at any time, for a fee. It’s a tough row to hoe, and nobody I know ever got rich or even stayed solvent for long, doing this kind of flying. But it sure was a blast while it lasted.

I’d had a salaried job demonstrating new Beechcraft Bonanzas and Debonairs to prospective buyers all over Oregon and Eastern Washington; it had been fun for a while, but then it began to feel like riding a carousel horse. I logged a lot of hours in good airplanes, landed in countless farmers fields (wheat ranchers were our prime prospects) and at every airport on the sectional charts, but in the end I was getting nowhere fast. So I put out the word to fixed base operators that I would be happy to deliver airplanes for them, or take their buyers to the factories in Wichita, Kansas or Kerrville, Texas to pick up their new planes.

Ron Scott, the FBO and Mooney Aircraft distributor at Albany, Oregon called me one day. He reached me at Milt Ruberg’s airport in Springfield, OR, where I was consoling Milt for the loss of his son to cancer. Ron Scott said: “I’ve got three men who have to get to Kerrville to take delivery of their new Mooney Super 21s. Could you fly them down there?”

 “Be glad to do it, Ron,” I said, “If I can get Milt to fly me up to your place; he recently lost his son, and is in a funk. Maybe I’ll talk him into flying up in his Boeing Stearman. Some oil smoke and wind in his face might get his head straight.” I looked at Milt. The old man had half a grin on his leathery kisser as he nodded.

We’ll give you a call on the Unicom frequency, Ron,” I said. Milt was already shrugging on his leather jacket as I hung up the phone.

 

This is the best notion anybody has had, Mack,” Milt said as he did a low altitude barrel roll with the Stearman over Coburg, Oregon. As we approached Albany, Milt’s voice came through my head set:

 

“Thanks, Mack. Any time I can help you out buddy, just call me.” Milt greased the wheels on the macadam runway at Albany in a perfect three point full stall landing. He waved a gloved hand at Ron as I climbed out of the front cockpit. I barely had time to get out of the way of his empennage, when Milt hit full throttle and took off.

 

Ron and I watched Milt put on a show of aerobatics before he headed south for Springfield. Sadly, Milt’s name, his airport and his son’s name are all Xes in my address book now.

We walked into Ron’s office. He poured two cups of coffee and sweetened them with old bourbon. We toasted all the men like Milt that we knew or had known. Then we got down to business.

 

You’ll have to let these guys each fly a leg of the trip to Kerrville. None of them has much experience with the Mooney’s manual landing gear retraction and lowering mechanism, so let them get some practice landings along the way,” Ron said, as he wrote the men’s names down on my knee board.

One man was the FBO at the McMinnville airport, another lived in St. Helens and would meet us at the Hillsboro airport, and the third man wanted to be picked up at Portland International Airport at the Flightcraft office—my former employer; seeing me chauffeuring in a Mooney would not make my old boss happy, but so it goes.

 

As we walked out to one of Ron’s older Mark 21 aircraft, he pulled a wad of bills from his pocket and peeled off three C notes. “If this doesn’t do it, call me and I’ll wire you more cash,” Ron said. Then he added: “I’ll pay you your fee when you get back, if that’s okay with you.” I had agreed to do the job for twenty-five bucks an hour based on the time on the tachometer. I didn’t believe in charging for time I was on the ground due to crappy weather, or a hangover. 

I’ll lead them back here over the Mountains as far as Phoenix or Tucson. From there they should be able to get home by themselves. A buddy of mine is recuperating from crash injuries at the Grand Canyon and I plan to stop there for a visit before coming back. Will that be okay with you?”

Sure,” Ron said, “The weather should be better down there. But be sure to instruct these guys about the rotor zones on the lee side of the mountains before you cross the Cascades with them; I don’t think they’ve had much mountain flying experience, except for the guy from McMinnville.”

“Can any of them fly formation?” I asked.

“I doubt it. They’re not former military pilots, so you’ll have to teach them after you all leave Kerrville.”

That old Mooney Mark 21 was a tight fit for four full grown men. The guy from McMinnville flew the plane from his field to pick up the other two passengers; he was an experienced flight instructor and had no problems with the throw-over bar that retracted and lowered the landing gear. I sat in the right hand seat, sweating just as I always do when I’m not controlling the airplane I’m in.

The guy from St. Helens had to get used to more than the landing gear; he’d never flown a high performance, low wing plane before. He got the gear down okay, but tried to land twenty feet above the runway at Boise, Idaho. I told him to take a “wave off,” but he didn’t comprehend. “Go around again!” I shouted into his right ear. Then I had him make three touch and go landings before making a final and swapping seats with the man from Oregon City whom we’d picked up at Portland International. 

Oregon City guy did fine until we landed in Salt Lake City. He would have landed gear up, if I hadn’t reminded him. He too had to make several touch and go practice landings before we could all go in for lunch. After lunch, I put Oregon City back in the command pilot’s seat and gave him the Omni heading for Colorado Springs.

The damned fool tried to take off and climb directly over the mountains east of Salt Lake City. I could hear McMinnville in the back seat groaning as the mountain loomed ahead of us. I was determined to let the guy make his own decision, right up until the last minute. With four men and our overnight bags in the plane, it was operating at full gross weight. I explained that the Mark 21 didn’t have as much power as the Super 21 he had bought from Ron. He gave me a blank stare and continued on course, climbing at less than 100 feet per minute. When it was obvious that we couldn’t clear the mountain, I told him to execute a climbing 360º turn and get more altitude before trying to cross it.

While he was climbing, I lectured all three men on the danger of rotor zones on the lee side of mountains: “They can smash you right into the damned ground. So keep at least two thousand feet above the tops of mountains. Winds are lifted by the mountains and break like an ocean wave when the go over the top. On the windward side you get plenty of free lift, but when the wave breaks, it’s like being in an elevator with a broken cable; downdrafts of thousands of feet per minute lurk on the leeward side of the hill.”

When we landed in Kerrville that night, I was exhausted, even though I’d flown the plane for only an hour during the trip.A rep from the Mooney factory drove us to a motel and put all of us up for the night.

 

Before the three men went up with a check pilot from the Mooney factory, I briefed them all on the basics of flying formation, using a couple of model airplanes in the instructor’s lounge. I asked the check pilot if he would show these guys how to intercept my airplane as I circled over the field. He said that it was against company policy, but if I just happened to be circling up there within ten miles of their airport, he’d demonstrate the intercept maneuver.

 “How tight do you want these guys to fly on your wing?” he asked. I told him to feel them out. Wingtip separation and step-down would be up to him. “Just don’t bump into me, okay?” McMinnville slid in on my port wing very smoothly, but then he got sucked. That is, he took off too much power and fell behind. After a bit of throttle jockeying he managed to hold a good position at a 45º angle, in a left echelon and twenty feet lower than my wing. Crossing him from left to right, under my fuselage was a bit nerve wracking for me and the check pilot, but after a few tries McMinnville got it. The guy from Oregon City would have nothing to do with formation flying; he said he’d take his time and fly VFR back to Oregon by himself via Wyoming and Idaho. The St. Helens dude tried like hell to maintain a formation after completing a rendezvous, but would not, or could not move in closer than 100 feet between our wingtips. That would have to do, as the check pilot couldn’t spend more time with us without catching hell from his boss.

Oregon City took off heading for Wichita, Kansas, but put the airplane down at Midland-Odessa airport and called it a day, the Rep from Mooney reported. McMinnville took off first in his new Super 21 and orbited west of Kerrville, where St. Helens joined him in a very loose formation. I joined them and took the lead, moved them into position off each wing like goslings. Their airplanes could out run mine easily, so I set the pace for them.It was a beautiful day. Clear all the way to Santa Fe, but beyond that there was a squall line. Both men were in a hurry to get home, but neither was instrument rated, or at least not current. They agreed to follow me through a notch in the mountains west of Deming where the bottoms of the thunder bumpers were less than five thousand feet above the summits and lightning was striking the peaks on both sides of the pass.

We had to circle east of the pass to gain altitude, but just enough to keep our heads out of the clouds. Then we headed for the tunnel of light over the pass. Half way through that eerie green tunnel we met two Air Force fighter jets coming at us head on. Whether those two jet jockeys had us in sight or on their radar is doubtful. They screamed over our planes close enough to bounce us around in their wake.

We landed at Tucson International and had a drink together before they went on their way. I noted as we bumped our shot glasses together that all of our hands were trembling.

After a night in Tucson, I flew up to the South Rim and landed. When I called his number, I got the word that Elling was recuperating at the North Rim Lodge. I asked the FBO about the small air strip on the north side of the canyon. He told me that it was on a side hill with several humps and dips in it. “But it ain’t that bad,” he said.

I topped off my fuel tanks at the South Rim airport.  I planned to look over the strip on the north side and land on it, if it looked okay. I figured I’d have to hike to the lodge where Elling was holed up.

Hot air is less dense than cold air. The higher the airport, the lower the density.  The power an engine can put out, the lift of the airfoils and the thrust of the propeller are all directly proportional to the air density. Landing at an airport  8,000 feet above sea level when the temperature is 90 degrees is like landing on the top of Mount Whitney; the density altitude is around 14,000 feet. You have to land hotter, which takes a longer roll out than you’d need at sea level, or on a colder day. This dirt landing strip is draped across three fingers on the side of a hill.  It was long enough, but only because it was tilted upwards from the north end to the south. The whole landscape tilts upwards from 7,000 feet to almost 9,000 feet there on the high plateau north of the Grand Canyon..

I landed okay, but the roll out was like riding swells on a surfboard. Heavy braking got me stopped short of some scrub junipers at the south end of the dirt strip. A jeep driver from the lodge picked me up and delivered me to Elling Halvorson’s retreat.

My reunion with Elling was interesting. His crash injuries had been extensive and life threatening, but he had mended more rapidly than I’d expected.  Elling’s experience had transformed him; he’d been “born again,” The main topic of our conversation was his religious experience, and his new corporation for taking tourists on helicopter rides in the Canyon.

I’ve never been able to sit long for sermons. I cut the meeting short, saying that I had to make it to Las Vegas before dark. I concocted something about navigation lights, as I recall.

I got a ride out to the strip. The driver returned to the lodge. I debated with myself about having the driver return with containers so I could drain most of the Avgas from the Mooney; without the weight of gasoline, I knew I could take off and land at the South Rim. On the other hand, if I could get off the ground with full tanks, I could spend the night in Vegas.  Of course there was also the option of spending the night at the lodge and leaving in the cool of the morning, but that would have been out of character, as writers say.  I chose the riskier option; I would attempt to take off with full fuel tanks and fly to Vegas.  I was young and foolish back then.

Maybe the heat and altitude affected my critical faculties, or maybe I just wasn’t using my head.  The wind was dead calm. I could have taken off to the north and it would have been all down hill. But no, I sat at the north end, revved the engine and released the brakes. As soon as the wheels broke ground, I raised the landing gear. I climbed until the plane would climb no more, and then found that I had only fifteen or twenty feet between my butt and the deck. The landscape was climbing as fast as I was.  At the far end of a long meadow there were tall ponderosa pines that I knew I couldn’t clear.

It’s beginning to look like I’ll have to ditch the plane.  I  have barely enough altitude to bank the wings a few degrees without dragging a wingtip on deck. I am munching the seat cushion with my puckering strings.

Ah, there’s a glimmer of light reflected from water in a brook flowing west through a break in the forest. I gently bank right and fly between the trees, following the water. It cascades over the rim of the canyon.  I follow it in a steep dive, gaining surplus airspeed, before zooming upwards. I felt like I just made my point on a craps table.

I know it’s my lucky day, as I point the nose of the old Mark 21 toward Vegas, trim the plane and light a Winston. A cigarette never tasted so good before or since.

One of my instruments wasn’t working properly.  It was the gage that should be telling me whether I’m on course to my destination or off in restricted airspace somewhere.

 Those two Air Force interceptors buzzing around looking for me gave me the clue that I had wandered into Nellis Air Force Base’s Restricted air space. Ground Control Intercept radar obviously picked up my blip on their scopes.  I dove for the deck, turned south and wove through the canyons until I came out over Lake Mead.  The interceptors either lost me, or lost interest after I left their area.  Over the Lake I climbed up to traffic pattern altitude and landed at Thunderbird Airport in Las Vegas.

A Tech Guy from the electronics shop checked the instrument. He said he would fix it in the morning, and then gave me a ride into town..

He parked at the Travel Lodge Motel. That’s when  I realized that four singles were all the cash I had left. I had blown the money on fuel, meals, and motel rooms for all four of us. I used my Mobile credit card to rent a room for the night, and then bought  Tech Guy a drink at the bar.

While he sipped his drink, I took the dime and quarter change and put them into two slots. I pulled the handles at the same time and hit a jackpot on both machines. There was a flood of dimes and quarters. After converting the change to bills, Tech Guy suggested that we take a look at the new casino across the road which had “Grand Opening” signs fluttering behind some fantastic, illuminated fountains.

The place was called “Caesar’s Palace,” and it looked like one. Inside the dealers and waitresses were clones May Britt, blond hair, long legs and short vestal virgin white togas, enticing the few suckers present, including me.

I sat across from a lonely blackjack dealer with emerald eyes the size of quarters and bumped heads with her until my stacks of silver dollars were about to topple. My Tech friend had gone home, so I dined alone in splendor. After paying for the meal, I returned to the Travel Inn, showered and hit the sack.

The next morning, when Tech Guy picked me up, I counted my winnings; it was close to three hundred bucks. That’s not a lot of dough, unless you were down to your last buck when you made it. Then it feels like a fortune, heavy yet comfortable in the pockets.

It took Tech Guy only minutes to fix my gage. The instrument worked fine all the way back to Albany.

Ron paid me off, and then flew me down to Springfield, were I was living in a boarding house near the University of Oregon campus. That night I went to the “Down Under” night club in Eugene and listened to Monty Fisher and his band “Amazing Grace” play some fine mountain blues.

I was enjoying my new career as Gypsy Pilot.  I would not make the same mistakes in the future; I would make different mistakes. End 

Why’d we leave Oklahoma, Ma?

 

“It’s a long story,” She said the first time I asked.

For many years that question was stuck in the back of my mind, unanswered.  I’d asked each of Ma’s sisters the question; they’d shooed me out of their kitchens, told me to go milk their cow or feed the chickens.  All of the sisters knew the answer, but none would tell me.  After a while I quit asking, assuming there was something about our leaving they’d sooner forget.

I finally got my answer in 1990, while pumping Enfamil from a syringe into the nasal tubes going into Ma’s stomach; the tumor in her throat prevented her from swallowing, yet she was still able to talk.

“First off, your father quit the Army.  He got discharged over at Fort Sill.  Times were hard.  So we hitched to North Carolina, up in the mountains where his people live.  No jobs there either, but Claude and his brother, Jim, went up with the CCC to make trails and build a cabin on what they called ‘The Appalachian Trail.”  Meanwhile, Jim’s wife Virgie and I hiked round to cabins in some very remote places to teach grownups to read and write; I loved Virgie and it was fun to go off with her and meet those people.  But I was pregnant with you, and it got to be a chore.  Sissy stayed down at Granny Laura’s cabin all that time.

“Your Granny was the sorriest cook I’ve ever known.  That woman put a handful of hog lard in everything she cooked.  I nearly gagged on her cooking.  So one day, while she was up at the corn crib, I cooked up a mess of butter beans with a ham hock.  You know how I love butter beans the way I cook ‘em.  Well, that old biddy came in and scooped a handful of rancid lard in my pot of beans.  That was the last straw, son.  I took you kids and hitch hiked back to Marlow, back to Papa Calhoun’s.

“The hard times were there in Oklahoma too.  But on top of that there was the drought.  Papa Calhoun was down with dust pneumonia, and Momma Calhoun was beside herself, worrying about Papa—his sons. . .well, they were kind of nasty towards Momma, but that’s another story.

“You were born, just like Sissy.  Doc Barnes delivered you too.  I couldn’t pay him.  I didn’t have a red cent to my name.  I still owed him a dollar for delivering Sissy, so he refused to make out a birth certificate on you until he got his money.  Funny how Doc Barnes had changed in so short a time; it was the Depression, I’m sure; it affected everybody, even the nicest folks.  Doc Barnes died and never collected what I owed him, in case you’re wondering why you have no birth certificate, honey.

“Well, your father came traipsing in, about a month after you were born.  He’d been to Detroit looking for work, hadn’t found any, so he rode the freight trains back to Marlow.  He had a bit of money, not much.

“We chewed grit in every mouthful of food we ate.  Dirt storms were terrible.  Dust sifted through hairline cracks round the windows and doors; it covered everything.  You can’t even imagine it, honey.

“A man from Kansas had been out buying up cars at the auctions from farmers going broke.  He had ten cars.  He had them hooked together in pairs with tow chains and he was looking for people to drive them out to Los Angeles for him.  Your daddy paid him ten dollars so we could drive a pair of his cars in a convoy.  Claude drove the tow car; I steered the one being towed.  You and Sissy rode with me.  Most of the way the roads were dirt and the dust wasn’t much better than what we’d left.  But it was kind of fun in a way.

“We’d all pull off the road in some pasture at night and just like the Pioneers we’d circle those cars and build a bonfire in the center of the circle to cook on.  God knows we ate a lot of rabbits and prairie chickens on that trip.  You were still nursing, but Sissy had to eat what we had.  That’s probably why she hated bologna sandwiches when she started carrying her lunch to school; light bread and bologna is mostly what we ate when we were on the road.

“Your father got a Mexican to drive the towed car when we got to my sister Sylvia’s house in Redlands, because that’s where we got out.

“That fellow who owned those cars tried to charge Mack for something, and I reckon he got nasty about it.  Mack slugged him and nearly killed the man.  So the first thing we did, after he got back to Redlands, was to climb into Dale Wright’s hay truck and skedaddle up to Tracy.

“Truth is, the Santa Anna winds blowing across the desert ain’t much better than the dirt storms we left behind.”

 

 

The Channel Swimmer

There was this sand spit, see.  Then there was a channel and beyond it an island where big kids went to make out.  I wasn’t interested in watching older kids make out; I wanted to prove to myself that I had as much guts as those big kids who swam that channel to get to the island to make out.  What I had to do was swim across that channel.

All I knew about swimming was from watching Johnny Weissmuller swim in those Tarzan movies.  I stayed in the Tower Theater all one Saturday, watching the same movie three times, paying close attention to Tarzan when he swam, going like a bat out of hell to rescue Boy or Jane.

When it came time to try swimming across that channel, I backed away from the water, maybe a hundred yards on that sand spit, which was hard and flat as a street, not sandy like the beach; my feet hardly left any prints on it.  And then I ran full blast towards the water.  I must have been going sixty when I got to the water’s edge and flung myself forward, arms outstretched my skinny body flat as a board.  I hit the water belly first with a smacking sound and shot forward like a speeding bullet.  I didn’t even slow down a bit.  My arms were churning, just like Tarzans and my feet were kicking like mad.  I was going too fast to worry about how deep that channel was, or what might be down there in it; I was still flailing my arms when my hands dug into the sand on the island.  I popped out onto the dry sand.

I was so happy I just ran all around that island.  Big kids, who were making out in the sand dunes, naked as plucked chickens, got mad and cussed me out.  I didn’t care.  I just ran like the wind as I came back to the edge of the channel.  I didn’t even have to think for a second about it.  I just dove in and swam back to that sand spit.  God!  It felt fantastic.  I felt bigger than Tarzan and twice as strong.

Monday, when I went back to school, nobody messed with me.  They could see that I’d changed.  I wasn’t the new kid who was younger and smaller.  I was a force to be reckoned with.  The same guys who had tormented me for weeks now wanted to be my best friend.

 

I told my new friend Roy about the island and that channel.  I even offered to teach Roy how to swim, but his mom wouldn’t let him swim in the bay.  So we talked our moms into getting us memberships at the YMCA, where I taught him to swim in the tank.  Roy and I swam every day after school, and when we were good enough we both signed up for the Red Cross life saving course. Right after Christmas I had to move again, so I never got to see Roy swim across that channel, but I’ll bet he did.

The End.

Integrity

”It beats me, Captain.  There was a lot of vocabulary on that GED test, especially on the 2 yr College Equivalency Test.  And God knows most of the Flight Aptitude Rating Test was vocabulary, Sir.  But I’m damned if I’ve ever heard the word integrity before.  What’s it mean?” I asked.

Captain Baker shook his head and thought about it for a minute before he spoke: “Well, Mack, I don’t suppose many enlisted men could define it.  It’s not something they make you learn by rote in Recruit Training, not like the Rifleman’s Creed, or the UCMJ.”  Baker scratched his prematurely balding head hard enough to make me wonder if he too had caught pediculosis from wrestling on the mats in the gym.  Baker slurped his coffee, apparently trying to think up an example; he had a habit of using metaphors, similes and symbols when he tutored me.

“The Corps places a lot of emphasis on this business of integrity, Mack.  The surest way for an Officer to ruin his chances of rising is to write a check with insufficient funds in his bank account.  It’s even worse for an Officer to buy things on credit and be unable to keep up the installment payments; God help him if his CO gets a collection call.  A friend of mine, a very sharp Captain, got passed over for his majority after his ex-wife wrote to the CO complaining that the Captain hadn’t made his alimony payments for two months.  All of those are considered a lack of integrity, Mack.”

Just as I was trying to make sense of Baker’s information, the PA blared: “Captain Baker . . . You have an overseas phone call in the Company Office, Sir.”  Baker naturally left the mess hall, carrying my Service Record Book and the results of my tests with him.

 I broke out my pocket dictionary and looked up integrity. “1: an unimpaired condition; SOUNDNESS. 2.: firm adherence to a code of esp. moral or artistic values; INCORRUPTABILITY.  3.: the quality or state of being complete or undivided; COMPLETENESS.  Syn. See HONESTY.” 

I wrote the definition in my pocket notepad.  I intended to discuss it with Captain Baker, but he left Adak on an R4-D transport plane that evening carrying his B-4 bag.  The Captain never returned to the island.  So I have wondered ever since whether he’d had one of those problems with integrity. What made the Captain’s discussion scary was this: I had never had a bank account, had never purchased anything on credit, and hadn’t even had a wife to worry about.  Hell! I was 18, and just trying to get into the US Navy’s Aviation Cadet Program.  But I have to say that Baker put the fear of God in me; I never have bought anything on credit that I haven’t worried about making the payments.  It would be four years before I opened my first checking account, and when I wrote a check I agonized until the damned thing cleared, fearing that I’d made an error in the math and the check would bounce.  This fear of losing my integrity due to a bounced check stayed with me all these years.