PART
VI. Vignettes
A
book of flying stories should include a chapter on our amazing world airline
system. So this is about my airline flight to Africa. Visiting with our mission
pastor on a Sunday morning, I commented, “Tim, I sure wish I was going with you
and your group to Africa next week.”
I
guess it was just one of those things I was supposed to do because on Tuesday,
the phone rang and it was Tim telling me he had made me a reservation to go on
the trip. How was I to tell my wife of forty plus years, that I was off to
Central Africa for three weeks to visit the David Gordon Medical Center at the
Presbyterian Synod in Livingstonia, Malawi?
At
Barnes & Nobles, I purchased a map of Africa and looked the place up in a
travel guide. There were only two paragraphs on Livingstonia. The village sat
atop a high plateau overlooking the eleventh largest lake in the world and
described the place like something right out of the movie Shangri-La.
Carrying
a small backpack with my camera, some personal items and one change of clothes,
I donned a broad-brimmed, floppy safari hat I had been saving for just such an
occasion and boarded a plane at Amarillo airport for the first leg of four
flights to the interior of the Dark Continent. My American Airline flight to
DFW joined me up with part of our group and we would meet up with the rest of
the group in Detroit.
My
journal began, “It is Sunday, the first of June about 4:30 in the afternoon. We
are somewhere over Arkansas aboard Northwest Air Flight 696, high over a white
cloud layer. There is rain forecast for the eastern United States, which may be
a problem as we are tight on time to connect with our flight to London. Our
Fokker-100 jet is a plane I’ve flown in several times and like. The air is
rough now and a little hard to write.” The trip was to be a milestone in my
life experience and my journal ended up being sixty some pages when typed up.
Arriving
at the Detroit airport, we had only twenty minutes before our London flight was
to depart and of course, our connecting flight would leave from a terminal a
mile away. I flagged down a golf cart for the less youthful of our group. We
threw our hand luggage on and the younger ones took off running.
At the departure gate, I remembered I
had left my favorite sweater behind. As I took my seat, I watched as a phantom
hand with my sweater reached through the door and gave it to the steward, as he
was about to shut the door. That ol’ wash-n-wear knit sweater had taken many
trips with me.
It
was drizzling rain and almost dark as we taxied out in the large DC10. Passing
behind rows of airliners parked at their gates, the fluorescent and neon lights
from the terminal and the lights on the jets flickered by my two-story-high
window seat.
The scene reminded me of something like fly our friendly skies to paradise right
out of the movie Blade Runner. We
were packed in like sardines. Northwest was not known for its roomy seating on
international flights. My new seat partner, in a row of nine seats across with
two aisles, was an attorney from Ohio who worked in Poland. A movie showing on
the forward bulkhead was out of my view, but I wasn’t interested.
My
journal continued. “It is the middle of the night Monday morning, June 2nd
and we are flying somewhere over northeastern Canada. I can make out the
outline of a large body of water by the sparse community lights along the
shoreline. The pilot just announced we are cruising at 33,000 feet and will be
arriving in London at 10:00am local time, that will be 4:00am in Texas.”
An
hour later, we were still over land. I could see the occasional cluster of
community lights through a thin cloud layer. Odd, it had never occurred to me
that when flying from Dallas to London, two-thirds of the flight was over land.
The
North Star was a little ahead of our left wing, so we were still on a slight
northerly heading as we passed over Newfoundland and out over the north
Atlantic. I thought of Lindbergh in his small Ryan monoplane droning on into
the night.
Checking
our direction of flight by the stars reminded me of a joke between my daughter
and I. On a trip to Ohio, Laura was driving as we headed east out of St. Louis.
Passing through some construction, we were all visiting and missed seeing the
detour sign or notice the setting sun had moved from our rear window to our
left windows. Sixty miles up the Interstate to Chicago, we discovered our error
so, if the sun is setting in your left
window, we must be headed for Chicago.
Flying on into the night, only the
dark blue-black of the Atlantic Ocean was below. The northern horizon was
silhouetted by a bright glow. I wondered if this might be a light refraction
from Polar ice caps or the sun’s glow on the other side of the earth. Not the low
and slow kind of flying I had done all of my life. This was the realm of high
altitude flight.
Not having any success taking a nap,
I remembered I had forgotten to say the short simple prayer I always uttered
when I was piloting the plane and pushing the throttles forward for takeoff. I
closed my eyes and softly said, “God grant us safe passage.” My pocket watch
was still on Texas time and it was past midnight in Amarillo. Suzie had
probably just gone to bed.
In
the Navy, on those twelve-hour patrol missions in the old P2Vs, I could sleep
at my flight station and awake when called on the radio, but maybe I was a
little younger then.
I found some big band music on the
stereo and finally dozed off. Sometime later, I awoke with a crook in my neck
and figured out what those C-shaped air pillows the experienced air travelers
had around their neck were for.
From
my window I could see the first light of morning on the horizon up ahead. The
sky was turning from shades of deep blue to orange and magenta. Short night!
Atlantic
In A Single Bound
Most
of the morning, the Atlantic had been covered with a low cloud layer, but it
began clearing and I could see the open sea. I looked for ships cruising on the
ocean, but at 36,000 feet, a ship was just a speck. As the coast of Ireland
came into view, I thought again of Lindbergh and how he must have felt at the
sight of land.
The
display screen on the bulkhead was showing we had traveled 3,470 miles. Looked
like I would rack up some air miles on my Perks card. It doesn't take long to
cross Ireland at 640 mph and we were soon on approach through scattered cloud
layers into Gatwick airport south of London. On final, we came in low over
several quaint little English villages with narrow roads that wound through
well-kept, old two-story brick row houses.
Taxiing
to the gate, I saw a Boeing 767 with green, yellow and black stripes, Zimbabwe
national colors, parked on the ramp. I assumed it must be the plane that would
take us to Harare.
London
was about a thirty-minute trip by Express train ride from Gatwick and we
arrived at Victoria Station in the heart of the city. We spent the day touring
London atop a red, double-decker bus and had fish and chips in a local pub.
Ed
and I returned to Gatwick early to check on our flight scheduled. We found no
Air Zimbabwe ticket counter. We’d been kidding for days about the non-existence
of Air Zimbabwe airline because when we called the 800 number, no one ever
answered.
About
an hour before departure time, a British Air ticket agent arrived with an Air
Zimbabwe sign under her arm and placed it on the counter. After clearing
customs, we waited in a high-priced shopping mall lobby to board our flight.
There
were plenty of empty seats on the large plane and by raising the armrests
between the seats, we were going to be able to stretch out and get a good
night’s sleep on this flight.
Shortly
after sunset, in a light drizzling rain, our 767 taxied out, rolled down the
runway and climbed out through the dark gathering rain clouds. I could see the
lights on the coast of France as we crossed the English Channel.
My
thoughts were of the WW II B-17 crews that crossed this channel on their
missions of destruction against the Nazi empire and of the Luftwaffe and Third
Reich’s guided missiles that crossed back to rain down destruction on London. I
am thankful that these magnificent large jets did not exist in those years.
There
were ten attendants to serve a half-full airplane and it quickly became obvious
that we were no longer in the hands of the Europeans. Even the airline captain,
a tall clean-cut man, was black-African. There was reggae music on my stereo
headset and the magazine print advertising was distinctly different.
They
did not throw away the used soap bars, but placed them back in a paper cup. As
I would soon learn, the people of Africa wasted very little. The less you have,
the less you waste.
The
night was dark. We were flying high above a heavy cloud cover obscuring any
sight of the terrain below. We were served a dinner catered by British Air. By
the middle of the night, most of our group was stretched out asleep. I often
pasted the time trying to reason with God like Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof. But, I had bought one
of those neck pillow thingies at Gatwick, propped myself up against the
bulkhead and dozed off instead.
In
the middle of the night, I came wide-awake, got out my journal and began to
write. “It is 10:00pm Monday at home and Tuesday, June the 3rd
3:00am London time. I have just come to the sudden realization that I am
suspended in an aluminum tube, 35,000 feet in the air somewhere over the
continent of Africa!”
The
time in Zimbabwe is plus seven hours from Texas, only one more than London as
we were traveling mostly south and only a little east. Zaire, to the east of
where we were headed, had just ended a bloody civil war and renamed the
People’s Republic of the Congo. Didn’t we call it the Congo when I was a kid?
Soon
after sunup, we would be landing in Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe. I
reasoned that we were now south of the equator. I had never been south of the
equator before. I’ve always heard water goes down the drain counter-clockwise
in the southern hemisphere, so I got up and went to the restroom.
Now
this is funny. After washing my face, I filled the basin with water and pulled
the stopper to watch the water go down the drain. When it went straight down
the drain, I thought how stupid. All my years of working on aircraft and I
forgot it was suction that drains the water in a plane and not gravity.
The
only other person awake in the cabin with her light on was our Ph.D. nurse,
Virginia. We discussed briefly the Larium tablets we were taking as a
prophylactic against malaria. She was concerned about some rough air we had
experienced awhile back. It woke her and several others up. She knew I was a
pilot and asked if the rough air was anything to worry about. I told her unless
things started floating around in the cabin with us, there was no need for
concern and went on to explain we had probably passed over an arid part of
Africa and the turbulence had been caused by warm air thermals rising up from
the ground.
The
sun was full up when we were served breakfast of ham and eggs about forty-five
minutes out from landing. On the way back from the aft cabin, I stopped to
visit with a white-African fellow returning from a business trip to London.
Most of these folks spoke with a thick British accent even though born and
raised in Africa. He smoked a cigarette as we talked. It was allowed on Air
Zimbabwe, as tobacco was a main cash crop.
Looking
out my window from time to time during the night, I hadn’t seen one lighted
city. In the morning light, I could see a few dirt roads, some small towns, a
strip mine and cultivated areas. There was a light ground fog in the low-lying
areas as our Boeing 767 approached Harare Airport and landed.
I
got the feeling I had gone back in time. The aircraft parked on a large open
ramp and we deplaned down an airstair rolled up to the door like Dallas Love
Field in the 1950s. We hiked across the tarmac to the terminal building and a
quick walk through customs consisted of little more than a stamp on my
passport. Tomorrow we would depart for Lilongwe.
That
night, we stayed at the Bronte Hotel, a place right out of 1920 British
colonialism. Sitting on the back porch of the Bronte, looking onto a well-kept
garden that evening, I struck up a conversation with an interesting fellow. I
assumed by his manner of dress he was a quintessential great-white-hunter. As
it turned out, he was a retired Australian farmer who traveled the region with
others on what he called a walkabout.
A
walkabout into bush country for several days was more akin to a
photo-backpacking trip. On this particular trip, the Aussie was after black
rhino. He explained how his group of six walked with a guide in front and a
native gun bearer in back in case of a wild animal attack. It was illegal to
hunt the black rhino. They were extinct in most parts of Africa, killed off for
their horns, a valuable bounty sold to the Japanese who made highly sought
after potions from the horn. A few black rhino still thrived in a valley not
far from Harare.
The
Aussie told how the big cats in this part of Africa died off from a disease
similar to one that kills the common house cat. The panthers that survived were
now plentiful, but most were not large enough to attack a man. They did,
however, come into towns to kill chickens and small dogs for food. My
conversation with the Australian gentleman was rewarding and I listened with
great interest to his experiences in Africa.
I
shared the panther story with others in our group and whenever I would go for a
walk and someone would ask where I was going, I would smile and reply, “I’ve
got a poodle on a rope and I thought I’d go trolling for panthers."
“Wednesday,
June 4th and we leave for Malawi today.” My metabolic clock had
already adjusted to the local time zone and I woke up minutes before my wakeup
call.
We
each must purchase a $20 exit stamp to leave. Free to come in, but costs to get
out. On the ramp sat a vintage Boeing 707. We hiked across the tarmac and
boarded the plane. I kidded Tim about how old the plane was and that they
weren’t even used in the U.S. any longer. I explained how hard a four-engine
plane was to control with an engine failure and about my crashing the 707
flight simulator at the American Airline training center.
As
we rolled down the runway for takeoff, the seat tray in front of Tim fell off
on the floor. I laughed and pitched it over in the corner. Finally, Tim begged
for mercy asking me not to explain any more about flying to him. It was a
short, quiet, pleasant flight from Harare to Lilongwe.
The
Real Africa
At
the Lilongwe airport, we boarded a small Isuzu bus we chartered and headed
north to Muzuzu, a village at the foothills of the dormant volcanic mountains
along the Great African Riff.
It
will suffice to say, my visit to Africa was one of the great experiences of my
life. I wrote most of my journal by taper while in Livingstonia, as there was
no electric lighting.
The
humor of this may escape you, but whenever anyone asks me to describe what
modern rural Africa was like, I reply, “Were you ever in Oklahoma in 1940?”
I will
omit the details of our stay in Livingstonia and our work at the
turn-of-the-century David Gordon Hospital save for this one brief anecdote.
While
walking down a dirt road one afternoon, I met an elderly man and he stopped me
to visit. He pointed to a distant hilltop. “See that high place. I was born
there sixty years ago,” and added he was a Christian.
“I’m
a Christian too, an American. Pleased to meet you.”
The
old fellow smiled and said, “Oh yes, I know you white-man Christians. You are
the ones who stand still when you sing.”
Traveling
to Africa was one of the great experiences of my life. The day we left, many of
the villagers came to say goodbye and to say how sad they were we were leaving.
At the time, we were only thinking about going home.
Returning
to Lilongwe, we had dinner and spent the night at a Portuguese hostel. Early
the following morning, I was awakened by what I thought was someone playing a
loud radio, but it was a citywide loudspeaker system broadcasting Moslem
morning prayers.
We
had about 36-hours before we were to fly out. After some repairs to our
Japanese bus, Tim explained to the bus company manager we wanted our driver to
take us over to neighboring Zambia to a wild life game park on the Zambezi
River. A Dutchman who worked for KLM and his wife offered to pay their share to
ride along. It was about a four-hour drive, but our driver had never been there
before. Using a hand drawn map, some memorized instructions in kilometers and
the bus’s odometer, I eventually got us on the correct rutted and
full-of-potholes road.
In
mid-continent Africa, the nights are about as long as the days and it was soon
very dark with no moon. I could see Saturn on the horizon, so we were headed
generally in the right direction. We stopped once on the dark road for a
wee-break and several teenage boys appeared out of nowhere. They asked for
cigarettes. Out of luck as no one in our group smoked.
I
gave the boys the last of some chocolates I had been saving and they assured us
we were on the right road and indeed we were because we soon saw our first sign
indicating the game park was up ahead. More and more animal’s eyes glowed in
the bush from our headlights as we passed by.
We
arrived to a cold dinner served in a large wood-beamed, thatched-roof hut
complete with a bar. The hut was open on one side where a bonfire was burning
in a pit that overlooked the riverbank. Most of our group went to bed down in
the bamboo huts provided. Ed and I got a couple of beers and went to sit by the
fire. Cries of strange animals came from somewhere in the distance and
occasionally my eyes focused on one of the hippos grazing on the dry riverbed
below in the dark.
The
night sky was clear and the stars shone brightly in the cool evening air. We
were both too tired to talk, so we just sat there enjoying the fire as it
slowly faded to glowing gold embers. I stared out across the darkened
floodplain and said to Ed, “You know, it don’t get any better than this.” Ed
grunted in agreement. Sleep came easily that night.
At sunup,
two large, open-top Toyota Land Rovers and guides were waiting to take us to
the wildlife park. There was some hot tea, but no breakfast till we would
return three hours later. Our guide said to call him John, as we wouldn’t be
able to pronounce his real name. He headed down the dirt road to the Luangwa
Game Park where we came upon a modern concrete bridge that crossed the Zambezi
River into the park. It was not even the rainy season and the river was still a
quarter mile across.
Stopping
on the bridge, we watched as hippo floated in the river. At a distance, they
appeared to be large rock outcrops on the river. Below the bridge was a
crocodile whose head alone was at least four feet in length.
Winding
in and out of high grass and wooded areas, we saw herds of impala and stopped
to admire a forty-foot in diameter baobab tree. We saw lots of gazelle,
warthogs, waterbucks, monkeys and tropical birds. We came upon a large open
area that I realized was a well-maintained dirt airstrip. John told me that it
was for charter planes to land, but was seldom used.
I
didn't want to go home with a lot of nondescript pictures of animals in the
bush, so I’d step out of the Land Rover occasionally and ask the Dutchman to
take my picture with some animal in the background.
Returning
to the camp for brunch, we asked the camp cook to bake a birthday cake for Bree
who turn seventeen that day. I can only wonder what the icing was made of, but
it was sweet.
There
were a large group of baboons foraging in the dry riverbed below our camp. I
took my camera and walked towards them. Most ran, but one large male stood his
ground. One look at those K9 teeth and I said to heck with the photos and
retreated.
Late
that afternoon, we boarded the Land Rovers again and were off to find cats.
Panthers and smaller cats did not come out until night, but maybe we would come
upon a lion. John drove through a thicket and past some elephants foraging.
Elephants do not walk around things, they move forward pushing them over. A giraffe,
three stories tall, was feeding on treetops nearby.
We
came upon another Land Rover. The two guides spoke briefly in a soft voice in
their native language, Tambuka. John turned to us and explained the other guide
told him that there was a pair of lions a half-mile up the road, to keep our
voices low and please remain seated.
I’d
been told that a cat sees the Land Rover as a single large animal like an
elephant and will not attack it, but if a person steps out of the vehicle, the
lion sees them as a smaller animal and possibly something good to eat.
Apparently, this is true, but I still failed to see what kept the cat from
jumping right in the middle of the vehicle.
When
we saw the first lion, a large older male with a full-grown mane, he was
perched on a large rock across a small meadow. There was a herd of water
buffalo near a bend in a stream and I assumed the lion had been watching them.
There
was also a group of about thirty warthogs foraging in a nearby ravine. Out of
sight of the warthogs was a second lion. I thought it was a female, but John
said that it was a younger male that had not yet grown a full-mane. This would
be a rare delight to get to see, not only one, but two lions on the hunt.
The
young lion crossed about ten yards in front of our vehicle and slowly wandered
into the high grass on the other side of the road. The older lion moved in the
open area in sight of the warthog herd to get their attention. He was only the
decoy. Suddenly, out of the tall grass about fifty yards ahead, the young lion
emerged in a full charge.
The
young lion topped the crest of the ravine and charged down into the middle of
the herd. Thirty warthogs went thirty-two different directions. The young lion
put on his brakes in a cloud of dust and came up empty handed. He looked around
kind of dumbfounded that he had actually missed his prey. We all cheered
quietly for the lion's misfortune.
The
old lion, about ten yards to our left, sauntered slowly towards the humiliated
young lion and I put words into the mouths of the lions. The older lion saying,
"You dumb kid. I thought I taught you better than that," and the
young lion replying, "Aw, I didn't want warthog for dinner tonight anyway.
We'll just wait and have water buffalo later."
Both
lions crossed the road directly in front of our vehicle. The older proud lion
never turned his head to give us a glance. John told me a mature lion would not
look directly at you. It was said that he is too proud to do so.
As
the young lion passed within a stone’s throw, he looked directly at me as I
snapped a photo. The setting sun over my shoulder reflected in his yellow-gold
eyes and they glowed like gemstones. They were certainly the piercing eyes of a
killer. It was an eerie feeling that sent a chill up my spine.
In
the last line of Ghost in the Darkness,
the narrator says, "And even today in a museum, the lion will strike fear
in your heart." I’m not likely to forget it and I’ve decided I don’t care
for things higher on the food chain than I am.
John
asked, “Would you like to take a break here?”
I
think he was joking, but I replied, "No, I would like to put a mile or two
between us and those two cats first, please!"
The
sun was setting by the time we stopped beside a river with crocodiles on the
far bank. We were having biscuits and squash blossom juice for a snack. The
Dutchman asked, "Marvin, all day long you have been jumping out of the
Land Rover and asking me to take your picture. How come when we were watching
the lions you didn't jump out and ask me to take your picture?"
Everyone
laughed as I replied, "Guess I just forgot." Now why would I tell you
a lion’s tale in the middle of an airline story? Well because that’s the whole
point. Due to the wonder of the modern jet airliner, this entire adventure took
place only about 18-hour from my own front doorstep.
We
loaded into our small bus before sunrise and made it back onto the main road at
the little town of Chapata. Clearing border customs on the Zambia side and then
again on the Malawi side, we re-entered Malawi and headed for the Lilongwe
airport.
At
the airport, I explained to the company manager I had purchased diesel fuel and
had to pay duty on the bus at the boarder crossing as the driver had been given
no money, probably for good reason. The manager deducted the amount from the
price.
I
handed the bus driver some clothes I had changed out of and a sack full of
insect repellent, antiseptics and toothpaste. I had left everything else in
Livingstonia.
The
Lilongwe Airport had a nice restaurant on the balcony overlooking the aircraft
ramp and the best thing about my lunch was the freshly brewed Malawi coffee. I
had not had any luck finding roasted coffee up in the mountains where it was
grown.
Our
DC-10 arrived an hour late. Crossing the ramp to board the plane, I stopped to
talk to the Captain, a white fellow, about to begin his walk-around. I
introduced myself and walked with him. He had a distinct British accent and I
asked him if he was English. He was not. He was born in South Africa to English
missionary parents, but lived in Zimbabwe all of his adult life. He was a
reserve pilot in what there was of a Malawi air force and had flown DC-3s in
his younger days. We had something in common and joked about the Boeing 707
they were still flying.
He
liked the DC-10s Air Zimbabwe was operating. They had bought two and both were
fairly new. He explained that running late was not a problem. “The flight to
London is also running behind schedule. Besides, they need all the paying
passengers they can get. If they know we’re enroute, they’ll wait.”
I
smiled and said, “Hakuna Matata.” A Swahili phrase, not to worry, made popular in the Disney movie The Lion King.
He
laughed and replied, “You got it!”
After we were airborne and the
standard welcome over the PA, the Captain added, “We’d also like to welcome the
gentleman from Texas and his group onboard with us this evening.”
When
we arrived at the Harare Airport terminal, a tense atmosphere permeated the
place. Each member of our group was physically searched in a private room,
separate searches for male and female. The reason for all this security became
apparent just prior to our boarding the plane for London.
It
was dark when they finally called for us to board the London flight. As we
walked out onto the tarmac, a security guard stopped us as several limousines
and motorcycles pulled up followed by a pickup load of soldiers carrying AK47s.
The soldiers jumped out and surrounded one of the limousines. The president of
Zimbabwe was flying in the first class section of our flight to London. There
were a bunch of foreign government types on the flight. Then I remembered
reading about an international animal conservation conference held in Harare.
We
had lost our white-African airline captain. Our new crew was the one who had
flown us from London. The DC-10 climbed into the darkness and we leveled out at
cruising altitude was we were served dinner. The president of Zimbabwe was
addressed as Comrade President. He was welcomed aboard over the PA first by the
head stewardess and then again from the cockpit crew.
I
was seated next to the Minister of Conservation for Nicaragua. I asked him what
they were doing about slowing up the cutting of the rain forests and he went on
about how poor his park rangers were and how he couldn't afford shoes for them
or gasoline for their vehicles. Of course, it was the fault of the Americans
who didn't send more money.
I
intended to get some sleep, but the minister continued to visit with the person
seated ahead of us. I suggested that he might want to swap seats with his
assistant who did not speak English. They agreed. I took a sleeping pill,
inflated my neck pillow, put on my blindfold mask and I don’t remember a thing
until we were on final approach at Gatwick.
On
arrival, I headed directly to McDonald's, which I never go to at home. I
ordered a Big Mac, french-fries and a Coke. A young man with a Cockney accent
said, "Sorry, sir, we are still serving from our breakfast menu."
I
settled for a sausage dog on a bun and a Coke from the deli, purchased a bottle
of Chanel No.5 at the duty free shop and returned to our departure gate. I
called Suzie on the payphone to tell her I’d be home in 8-10 hours.
As
the coast of Ireland disappeared under the right wing, my thoughts drifted back
to Africa and to Livingstonia. When we left, our hosts all said that they were
sad we were leaving. I did not feel sad at the time, as I was ready to be
headed home.
Suddenly,
my eyes begin to water and I realized that I was feeling some form of delayed
sadness about leaving Africa. I scribbled these final words in my journal.
“There is a place in Africa were I
know the footpaths through the high grass and strange trees. Where the
waterfall is higher, the valley deeper, the mountain higher and the lakes more
beautiful than any I have ever seen before.
There is a place in Africa where I have walked the clay dirt
roads and been greeted by hello, how are you, I am fine too. I look at them,
how little they have, failing to understand why they are not unhappy.
There is a place in Africa where
there are some people who can call me by my given name because forever so brief
a time, I lived among them. We shared our lives, our hopes, our dreams and our
God together.”
After
lunch I went to the restroom and shaved my neck, but left my three-week-old
mostly gray beard intact. We would now experience a thirty-hour day to make up
for the eighteen-hour day we spent going over.
Deplaning
in Amarillo, Suzie came to hug my neck. I had forgotten to put the blue mark on
my forehead like I had intended for her and Laura. A blue mark like the
witchdoctor had placed on the forehead of Sean Connery’s girlfriend in the
movie Medicine Man.
Charles,
a preacher from Kenya, gave me the three-way African handshake I had now
learned first hand. I got a couple of souvenirs out of Tim's shipping container
and went to the car with Suzie, Laura and my two grandkids. We stopped at IHOP
where I ordered a hamburger and an omelet. Something with seasonings sure
tasted good again.
My
body clock was still on Malawi time so in the middle of the night, I was up
wondering around the house turning things on and off to see them work. Well
what the heck, since I was up anyway, I’d pull up Microsoft Flight Simulator
and try one more time to nail that Boeing 737 approch into old Hong Kong
airport.
The year after I had flown to Malawi,
I flew to Kenya on British Air. After a short time in Nairobi, just another
large dirty city, I flew via Kenya Air in a small four-engine Fokker turbo-prop
along the Tanzanian border down to Mombasa. Seeing Mt. Kilimanjaro off in the
distance was a memorable experience.
With a missionary guide named Gary, I
visited the small Christian groups working among the Moslem majority population
in the countryside south of the city along the Indian Ocean coast.
The only cash crop I saw were the
cashew nuts, which grew wild high up in the jungle trees. The beginnings of a
European tourist trade had started to develop until the year before when the
Kenyan army very heavy-handedly put down a rebellion in the area and the
tourist trade was still staying away.
Returning to Nairobi, my British Air
flight departed at midnight from the Nairobi International Airport, but I had a
plan for the day. The driver and van I had prearranged were waiting for me at
the small commuter airport when I arrived.
Foot Of The Ngong Hills
Most tourists chose to visit the
animal farms and, if Out Of Africa
fans like myself, to visit Karen Blitzen’s home. However, I asked the
middle-aged driver if he thought he could find Denys Fitch Hatton’s gravesite.
He told me it had been many years since he had been there and it was on private
property, but he thought he could find it. It was a bit of a drive. We stopped
once and I purchased two Cokes and we shared my last can of Vienna sausages and
crackers. That was our lunch.
At
the foot of the Ngong Hills, we traveled up a muddy road through small
subsistence farms. The driver stopped at one gate and waited. He said someone
would come. A short time later, an old man approached. My driver got out and
asked me to wait.
While
I did not speak Swahili, it was easy to understand the owner was saying he was
not going to allow us to cross his land and equally understandable that my
driver was only trying to determine the price. He returned to the van to tell
me it would take a certain amount in shillings and assumed I would not pay that
much and would want him to continue negotiating.
I handed the driver the amount, about
ten dollars U.S. to give to the man. I would never pass this way again and
would have willingly paid twice the amount. We were then allowed to cross
through two gates and park outside a small fenced in garden area. I entered the
garden alone.
A monolith stone, about eight feet
high, stood in the center of the garden. The garden was well kept with a
variety of flowers growing round about. The view from the top of the slow
rolling hillside was not the vast open plain depicted in Sydney Pollack’s movie
where the lions lay on Fitch Hatton’s grave. It was overgrown now with trees
and checkered fields of corn.
Standing at the foot of the grave
outlined in small stones, I read the inscription on the small brass plate
mounted on the stone monolith, “HE PRAYETH WELL THAT LOVETH WELL
BOTH MAN AND BIRD AND BEAST. R.I.P. DENYS GEORGE FINCH HATTON 1887 – 1931”
I Wonder As I Wander
On
various occasions throughout my life I have had thoughts and discussions on the
subject of reincarnation. I always joked about why it was that everyone always
believed they had been someone famous in a previous life instead of someone
ordinary.
For
whatever reason, I seemed to identify with the white-Africans who lived out
their lives in British East Central Africa. Possibly, the reason I had sought
out this place. Fitch Hatton was a free spirit and an early aviator. He died in
1931 in a biplane crash. Returning from Mombasa in his biplane, it was believed
he had flown into a severe thunderstorm.
I
was born in 1936 and I always felt that I knew how to fly even before I ever
actually tried. Also, as I had discovered during my trip to Africa the year
before, I had an uncanny familiarity with the old British Colonial Africa. Was
it possible for one to return and stand on one’s own grave from a previous
life? Was I standing on my own grave?
I
stood there quietly for a bit, said a short prayer, took one final look off
into the distant hills and went to find my driver. As we still had some
daylight left, I asked him to drive me to Karen Blitzen’s old home. To my
surprise, it was about twenty miles away. Indeed, a sizable plantation in its
day.
The
house, now a small museum, had closed for the day, but I walked around the
grounds briefly and returned to the van. My driver dropped me at the
International Airport after a harrowing cross-town drive in heavy traffic with
little or no right-a-way control, but we made it.
I
changed planes in London and again at DFW. I suspect I will never again venture
to the Dark Continent again, at least not in this lifetime. If you want to see
the real Africa, you better hurry it’s disappearing fast.
PART
VI. Vignettes
At
least once in every lifetime you’re entitled to go do whatever it is you want,
within moral and ethical limits. Such were the years after I divested Flight
Dynamics. I had a little money put away so I did just that. This is the short
version of how I left and came full circle back to aero engineering.
For
a period of time, I entered into a loose business partnership at Sports Car
Center, a used car dealership located on Lemmon Avenue down the street from
Love Field. Lemmon Avenue was the premier strip for new and used car dealers in
Dallas.
Possibly
an appropriate name for a street lined with car dealers, but oddly enough, the
street was actually named Lemmon Avenue many years before the first car
dealership showed up.
A
Brit by the name of Morris designed and built the MG roadster, which stands for
Morris Garage. Our mechanic, who used to repair our cars, always claimed that
ol’ man Morris never dreamed in his wildest imagination that some Texan would
be driving his roadsters around in 110-degree heat with an air conditioner hung
on the little four-cylinder engine.
I
split my time between entertainment promoting and selling worthless Jaguars and
assorted roadsters to a wealthy Highland Park and North Dallas clientele. We
sold a lot of those looks-neat and goes-fast, but mostly worthless and hard to
maintain sports cars to the wives, daughters and girlfriends.
Their
lawyer, CPA and doctor husbands bought the cars for them I guess to keep them
happy. They drove them a couple of times, bragged at cocktail parties that they
owned one and never drove the cramped, uncomfortable little beasts after the
new wore off. Yesterday’s hot iron soon became garage queens.
We’d
often buy them back after the ashtrays were full. Guest held a couple of
European style tuxedo auto auctions at the then prestigious Camelot Hotel to
resell some of the really choice collector cars and high dollar antique
racecars.
About
this time in my non-career, I was making a real effort to promote a couple of
screenplays and movie treatments I had written. This led to my walking into the
Peggy Taylor Talent Agency. Peggy said she didn’t have a clue as to how to sell
a movie script, but why didn’t I hang around and see what I could learn when a
movie company was filming in town.
Peggy
would send me out on casting cattle calls with the rest of the movie star
want-a-bees on tryouts for commercials and movies filmed in Dallas. My going
would add to the numbers and give her better actors a shot at a part. More
often than not, ironically, I’d get a callback because I’d do walk-ons and the
pros all wanted dialog parts.
My
best commercial credit was for Southwest Airlines playing the part of a cowboy.
The theme of the commercial was Spreading
Love All Over Texas, advertising flights out of Love Field. A little
old lady and I stole the scene and the ad ran off and on for a couple of years.
My
short-lived and never aspired-to-acting career led to a filmography of six less
than memorable walk-ons including Semi-Tough,
Logan’s Run, North Dallas Forty, The Graduates and The Lee Harvey Oswald Story two versions.
I
taught night classes at Video Tech and directed a few commercials. During this
time, I also served on the City of Irving’s Cable Board, for which the Mayor
awarded all of us a nice wood and brass engraved wall plaque. I also worked a
little with Perry Tong at Silver Bullet Productions in Fort Worth. Perry shot
B-movies in 16mm and put them on 35mm to rent to drive-ins, but I never sold a
screenplay.
Peggy gave me an office and asked me
to see if I could help any of the mass of musical talent that showed up wanting
bookings and this lead to my managing a rock group and a country band. By
chance, I heard that Lamar Hunt was trying to revive the old Bronco Auditorium
in Oak Cliff he had owned for years.
So I made an appointment with Hunt to
pitch my idea for booking concerts into the auditorium. Hunt, who also owned
the Kansas City Chiefs, turned out to be a rather quiet, unassuming fellow. He
mostly listened and then told me to go ahead and try out my idea. I booked
everyone from Moe Bandy and Kitty Wells to a Mexican band to play on Cinco de
Mayo into the Bronco.
One reason Bronco was less than
successful, it was located in a dry precinct and no alcoholic beverages could
be sold on the premises. I imported Near Beer from a brewery in Arkansas and
was able to pick up a few hundred extra bucks at each concert by operating the
concession stand.
My sister-in-law, Nancy, worked the
concession stand by herself for me on Cinco de Mayo one night when my help
didn’t show up. An old Mexican gentleman staggered up to the counter and said,
"I drank six of these beers and I'm not feeling anything yet.” Nancy
didn't have the heart to tell the fellow that there was less than one percent
alcohol in a can of Near Beer. Nancy still sends me a Cinco de Mayo card every
year in remembrance of the night she worked her tail off at Bronco.
On
Saturday nights when a big name performer was not booked into the auditorium, I
promoted it as the Bronco Jamboree. I used local entertainers to makeup a
C&W house band. They started calling themselves the Bronco Band. Taking
turns as the lead singer, the band did the warm-up acts and worked for the
exposure. Several went on to reasonably successful careers.
One
of the male leads was a VW service mechanic on his regular day job, but he
could sing Jingle Bells and make
it sound like a country song. A tall fellow by the name of Ken played piano in
the band. He was more of a Van Cliburn than a C&W star, but he’d put on a
ten gallon Stetson and get a real kick out of the gig. Ken could play anything
and follow anybody.
I
haven’t a musical bone in my body, but I often had to MC the show so I’d play
with the band too. I’d stand out there and strum a C-cord on my Bona Venture
guitar and mouth the words. I used to tell people, “I’m a professional singer.
I’ve been offered money several times to stop.”
Saturday
night’s work wasn’t over till we struck our set and set up the stage for Sunday
morning church services. A tall, gray-haired evangelist rented the auditorium
for church services. The stage was set with a giant dove of peace on a red and
gold velvet backdrop. The evangelist preached and his orchestra played praise
music. It was not unusual to see diamond rings and hundred dollar bills thrown
on the stage.
The
auditorium seated about 3,000. I was never able to fill the place except for
Cinco de Mayo, but the church services were standing room only. The evangelist
hated Rock-n-Roll. I saw him one Saturday night in the balcony and spoke to
him. He told me he was praying for the failure of the rock group on stage. As I
recall, I don’t think that particular group needed his help.
There
was a freebee music events magazine in Dallas called Buddy, named after Buddy Holly. The monthly magazine mostly
catered to rock music fans and survived financially on paid advertising. There
wasn’t a good venue for promoting C&W entertainers in the area, so I
started a similar publication and called it Country
magazine. The record companies and saloons also needed a place to advertise and
beginning with the first issue, Country
magazine made a profit and caught on fast.
National Geographic magazine published an
article on Willie Nelson that included a color photo of Willie doing a show in
Dallas. On stage, he is wearing a red Country
magazine T-shirt. Working with the local C&W radio stations, I was given
free press passes to all the best concerts. My wife and I personally met Dolly
Parton, Crystal Gale and William Shatner. I also worked with Buck Owens and
Lorne Green. All were great folks.
After
publishing Country for about a
year, a photographer, who worked part time for me and who hung out down at
Whiskey River with the Willie Nelson and David Alan Cole crowd, offered to buy
the magazine. I agreed, mainly because with the exception of a few other
colossal-failure concert promoters in Dallas, I was the sorriest promoter to
come down the pike. I tried my best to revive Bronco to its glory days, but it
was not to be!
The Country magazine photographer's brother
worked Saturdays at the Bronco Auditorium helping me with the sound and
lighting. After our last scheduled performance, we were tearing down to set up
for the church services the next morning and we started talking about what we
did for a regular day jobs. I told him I was a design engineer by trade and
didn’t exactly know how in the hell I had gotten into this business.
“Surprise,”
he said, “I’m a rep for a job shop engineering company.” One thing led to
another and he explained that he needed someone to fill a job at the
Aerospatiale Helicopter Corporation located in Grand Prairie.
I
told him, “No sweat, I could handle it,” and that’s how it happened that I went
to work at Aerospatiale to do a three-month contract job and ended up working
there for almost a decade, finally retiring as Chief of Avionics Engineering.
A
young motorcyclist by the name of Raines used to help me out at the Bronco
Auditorium. He ran errands for me, like hauling pickup loads of Near Beer in
from Arkansas. Raines had perfected the skill of motorcycle ramp jumping and
had aspirations of becoming as famous as Evil Knievel.
When
he performed his jumps, he wore a bright red outfit decorated with the Dixie
battle flag and called himself Rebel Raines. Reb came to me one day and asked
if I would be his agent and try to get him booked into auto races and county
fairs. Not wanting to be part of getting a nice kid hurt, I agreed on the
condition that we do it scientifically.
Bernie,
a math professor friend of mine on staff at the University of Dallas agreed to
do the trajectory calculations. Bernie had worked for the Defense Department
doing artillery and missile trajectory calculations. Reb was comfortable with a
jump speed of 55 miles per hour and wanted to be able to clear the width of ten
stock cars parked tightly side by side. Using the motorcycle and Reb’s weight,
Bernie gave us the exact angle at which the ramp had to be set.
Reb’s
first public jump was during intermission at a stock car racetrack in McKinney.
As I lined up the ten stock cars to be jumped, I progressively lined up each
car six-inches back. The drivers laughed when they caught on to what I was
doing, but from the grandstand, the slight stagger wasn’t discernable. Reb had
come down short on one practice jump, so I was buying us touchdown room to land
in front of the tenth car, instead of on top of it. Reb made it with two car
widths to spare.
After
a year or so, I lost track of Reb, but as far as I know, he never had an unsuccessful
jump. As a footnote, the one idea I never got to try out was to use a Ryan
Retro Rocket pack to assist the motorcycle. I still believe Knievel could have
made the Grand Canyon jump using this concept. Reb contacted Caesar’s Palace to
promote the idea, but after Knievel had taken the bad spill jumping the
entrance fountain, they said no.
During
the late 1980s and early 1990s, I assembled a vintage collection of Lincoln
motorcars that included two Continental coupes, a ‘41 and a ‘42, two ‘39
Zephyrs, a coupe and a sedan, a ‘48 Lincoln sedan that I drove daily, a white
‘56 Continental Mark II and my wife drove an ‘84 Continental.
In planning for retirement and
leaving Aerospatiale, I sold off my collection. The ‘39 Lincoln 3-window coupe,
used in a Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward film, was sold to a collector in Palm
Beach. When I finished restoring the ‘42 coupe gunmetal gray Continental,
Edsel’s favorite color for a car, I sold it to a collector in Houston. The
white Mark II also went. A few years later, I received a letter from the fellow
in Denver who bought the Mark II. He said he still had it and loved the old
car.
Since
my youth I had followed the exploits of aviator Howard Hughes and his maiden
flight in the Hercules flying boat, referred to as the Spruce Goose by everyone except Hughes. I
had a few dealings with Summa Corporation, which he owned, but never met the
man. I remember the day I was sitting in my office and my secretary came in and
said, “It was on the news that Howard Hughes had died aboard his personal jet
enroute to Houston.”
Someone
from Disney, the new owners of the Queen Mary and the Hercules, called saying
they were looking for a ‘39 Lincoln to exhibit for a 1939 theme Expo. The
Zephyr sedan was shipped to Long Beach and put on display beside the Spruce
Goose. We traveled to California to see the exhibit and to tour the Queen Mary,
but the biggest thrill of all was when I walked into the domed hanger and saw
the Spruce Goose for the first time.
During the time I was collecting and
restoring old cars, I also promoted and held several antique & collector
car auctions in Dallas, Amarillo and Las Vegas, but abandoned the car auction
business when the computer software company I started took off.
The
last year we held a Las Vegas Collector Car Auction, we all stayed at the new
high-rise Harrah's Casino Hotel. A friend, J. Woolley, my brother and I were
standing looking out the 25th floor window. I remarked, "This is about the
altitude ol’ Jerry and I flew down Las Vegas Boulevard in my old DC-3 years
ago."
Woolley,
a retired minister, was a real old car aficionado. He had gone with the ‘39
Zephyr business coupe to Kansas City when it was featured in the movie Mr. and Mrs. Bridge and had a great time
hanging with Newman and Woodward. J.W. moved on a few years ago, but I’ll bet
if heaven has any old V12 engines laying around, he’s tinkering with one them
right now.
I
finally sold my Harley-Davidson FLH Dresser. Never was much of a long-distance
biker, bandanna and all of that. I always wore a helmet. Maybe it reminded me
of my youth or maybe flying. Its been said that aviators enjoy riding
motorcycles because of the bike’s ability to bank in a turn.
My
long distance travel is now relegated to riding in the backend of some luxury
airliner. When I board an early morning flight and feel like I really didn't
get enough sleep the night before, I think am I ever glad I don't have to drive
this big beast for the next several hours. I can just sit back and relax.
I buckle myself into the standard
issue airline seat, built for a guy about twenty pounds lighter than me and
watch out the small oval window. I still like to see where I’m going. I watch
as we taxi for the next fifteen minutes. In my head, I hear every radio call,
"Cleared to cross three-five; taxi into position and hold; cleared for
takeoff..."
After two trips to the African
continent, I finally talked my wife into taking some long distance airline
flights. The next spring, we flew to London on one of the new Boeing 777s and
recently we flew to Paris and back via Houston.
We now travel in business class and
leave the flying to the guys up front. My wife is a good trans-oceanic
passenger as long as I make sure she has taken along plenty of books to read. I
still look out the window and listen to the stereo.
There is one thing that does worry me
a little. When did they let all these young kids start flying these big jets?
For
some reason, Suzie and I had never visited the Hawaiian Islands, so we took an
American Airlines Boeing 767 flight to Honolulu. We didn’t really go to see the
island beaches, but mainly to see Pearl Harbor and visit the USS Arizona.
We
were not disappointed. The giant battleship USS Missouri BB63 is now retired
and moored at Ford Island. It was on this ship’s deck that General MacArthur
accepted the signing of the Japanese surrender. It is fitting that it now rests
in the bay near the USS Arizona and nuclear subs quietly pass by on their way
out to sea.
A
visit to the Arizona Memorial cannot be described in words, so I will not try.
In my humble opinion there are three places and events that defined what
America became. There were and are Valley Forge, Gettysburg and Pearl Harbor.
After
a few days on Waikiki, we flew Northwest Airlines on to Tokyo. Our plan was to
retrace the path of the attack on Pearl. We toured the Imperial Palace gardens
and Asikusa, then on to Kamakura in Yokohama to complete our quest for what we
had jokingly labeled as our search for the Giant
Buddha. From the train, Mt Fuji loomed in the distance and reminded
me of the Japanese signal to commence the attack on Pearl Harbor. The message received by Nagumo’s Force was Niitakayama nobore, Climb Mt Niitaka.
Japan is a beautiful country. I am pleased they are now able to live in peace.
In
the early morning hours, we crossed the coast of California south of Los
Angeles at 40,000 feet enroute to Dallas. Most onboard were asleep, but for an
old pilot who had seen much of the world from 10,000 feet, the view of the
lights of L.A. off our right wing was an awesome sight. We returned to our home
in Amarillo on September 10th 2001. What an eerie next few days it
was with no sound of jet engines or contrails high overhead. Will this country
never learn to be prepared?
Davis-Monthan Airbase
For many years of my flying career,
I’d heard of a non-descript location somewhere in Arizona where old airplanes
go to die. A few years ago, searching for display aircraft for a museum and/or
even a restorable war bird, I actually discovered there was such a place where
six-thousand plus aircraft were stored on hundreds of acres in the desert near
Tucson. Through a contact at the Government Services Agency I was able to arrange
a private tour of the facility for my wife and I.
It is impossible to explain exactly
what is located at the site. I am certain the average non-aviation oriented
visitor would sum the place up by saying it was simply acres and acres of worn
out old military planes. To the flyer, the experience is a combination of
gleeful excitement and deep felt sorrow. Some will be resurrected and fly again
and some will have spare parts removed and reused, but sadly, most will meet
the fate of the beer can maker’s guillotine.
West of Tucson is a similar site for
retired commercial aircraft. Operated by Evergreen, it is not open to the
public.
The
collection of short stories herein, were written and then rewritten from our
home in Amarillo, Texas where we retired after living in Dallas for thirty some
years.
Without
exception, the most beautiful sunsets in the world occur on the high plains of
West Texas. In the blue sky high overhead, seemingly lined up along I40, are
the contrails of the jet airliners. Our house is directly under the flight path
of the Life Star helicopter’s route to the regional hospital. The old Astar
they operated for years, I am sure had my signatures on the engineering and
avionics drawings from Aerospatiale.
The
Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport, which was a B-52 base at one time,
has a 13,500 ft runway and is an approved alternate for the Space Shuttle. The
airport doesn’t, however, have a lot of air traffic and so various AF planes
use it to practice ILS approaches. On any given day, there might be a Texan
trainer from Enid AFB, a KC-135, a B-1 and on occasion even a B-2 in the
pattern.
Bell
Helicopter Division of Textron continues to expand the facility at RHAIA and
more and more tilt-rotor Ospreys designed for Special Forces operations are
being test flown in the skies around Amarillo. Even our old C-142 four-engine
cargo VTOL, a similar design concept to the Osprey, might have been successful
back in 1963 were it not for it’s underpowered engines and if it had the V-22’s
state-of-the-art computerized flight controls.
Headed
home to Amarillo from Florida a few years ago, after returning once to Tampa
for an in-flight emergency, we flew into the mother of all thunderstorms. In
the middle of the night we landed in San Antonio for fuel. Most stayed aboard,
we got off!
Our
luggage stayed on the plane scheduled to depart in the wee hours of the
morning. We spent that night in a motel with only what we had with us. By the
way, it was our 43rd wedding anniversary. Thus, up from San Antone and all that I got is just what I got on,
became a real life experience.
The
next week Suzie flew to Belize with our church group. I departed the next
morning with another driver and two teenage boys to deliver a medical trailer
to a mission hospital. We spent the night in San Antonio and five more nights
on the road in Mexico on our way to Belize.
Once
again, Suzie and I flew home to Amarillo with a camera, a small bag of souvenir
seashells and what we had on! We had given our extra clothes to people we met
in Belize who seemed to need them a whole lot more than we did.
For
a couple of Texas Caribbean tramps headed home, the song Amarillo By Morning took on even more
meaning. I jotted down this variation on the words based on the George Strait
song written by Terry Stafford and Paul Fraser:
Amarillo by
morning, up from San Antone, everything that I've got, is what I've got on.
When the sun is high in the Texas sky, I'll be setin’ in my easy chair.
Amarillo by morning, Amarillo I'll be there.
Our flight turned back over Tampa Bay. Broke and busted in
Dallas yesterday. Lost my luggage and no place to stay, somewhere along the
way. But I’ll be feelin’ great when that plane pulls out of the gate.
Maybe we’ll make it this time.
Amarillo by morning, Amarillo’s on my mind. High up over San Antone, the
clothes I’ve got, is what I’ve got on. Gave them away and didn’t look back.
Photos and shells in this here sack, if the Lord comes lookin’ for me, tell Him
Amarillo’s where I’ll be.
My
total PIC time is probably somewhere around 6,000 hours. When we flew at FDC or
GSA, we filled out a counter ticket, even if it was a maintenance test flight.
Eight years of my flight receipts were clipped in a manila folder that I had
good intentions of transferring to my logbook someday.
When
we trashed all the FDC tax records after storing them the required time, I
realized later that my flight records were destroyed along with them. After
leaving the Dallas area, I let my biennial check expire. Later, when I went for
my check ride, the only logbook I had showed 4,200 hours TT and dated back to
1970, so I just started logging my time again from that point.
A
while back, I joined the Buffalo Flying Club as I no longer owned a plane and
there was nothing suitable to rent in the area. The club’s two planes, a Cessna
182 Skylane with a STOL kit and a V-35 Bonanza were based at the Tradewind
Airport.
The
Confederate Air Force is now called the Commemorative Air Force, but I still
remain a member. My membership number is 1148. Pretty low considering they are
currently issuing membership numbers above 38,000.
I have only one last lament at this
writing and it is that in all my years of hacking around aviation, I never got
to fly a really high performance jet fighter. Oh, I’ve steered the occasional
Ruskie jet trainer and exec jet around the sky, but I had hoped to finished
this collection of stories with part of a chapter on going straight up in an
F-16D or maybe about my ride with one of the Blue Angels. Alas, it was not to
be.
My
fascination with the Lincoln automobile began decades ago with that baby blue
cabriolet the Air Corps Captain next door to us had owned. A side benefit to
having restored old Lincolns for years was an accumulation of old Lincoln
literature and memorabilia. I used this material in a book I wrote, Lincoln Continental, Classic Motorcars,
ISBN 0-87833-691-5. William Clay Ford graciously wrote the Preface for the
book. It was published by Taylor Fine Books in 1989 and has become the
definitive book on the history of the Lincoln and Continental.
Much
of my spare time is now spent at the computer. When I am not working on a
software design, I continue my writing and recently completed an action
adventure novel Flight of the Setting Sun,
which I am hoping will be made into a film. We’ll need to restore an old China
Clipper to shoot the story, as it is a 1930s fictional tale of a Pan Am pilot
and adventurer.
Steinbeck,
Kipling, Runyon and Gann were my favorite writers. Ernest K. Gann wrote Fate Is The Hunter and The High And The Mighty among others. As a
teenager interested in learning to fly, I read his early articles in Flying magazine with great interest.
Flying Stories is not the kind of book ol’
Ernie would have written, maybe as magazine articles. Gann wrote less and less
as time passed and went back to flying as a bush pilot up north somewhere. Odd
that I was thinking about Ernie Gann one day, wondering whatever happened to
him and days later read in the newspaper that he had passed away on that very
day.
In the end, there really is a theme
to all these unrelated stories. It is the unequivocal and indivisible
relationships between ambition, education, experience and technology. In
simpler terms, the forces, both internal and external, which cause each of us
to become who and what we are. A philosopher would put it this way. We are the sum of all our yesterdays and the hope of
all our tomorrows.
When
asked to speak at a pilot’s luncheon honoring the Wright Brother’s 100th Anniversary
of Powered Flight, my talk went something like this...
“I’ve
always considered it a privilege to be introduced as a pilot. It implies a
certain kinship, a shared experience with a special group of men and women. Or
as Pilot Officer John Magee put it, to slip
the surly bonds of earth... on silvered wings... where never lark or even eagle
flew.
I
want to tell you of a place. It was not the wind swept dunes of Kill Devil Hill
or of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It was not yet December the 17th,
1903. It was a place in the countryside outside of Dayton, not far from the
small Ohio town of Osborne.
Two
young men, bicycle makers, were holding onto a large object with two ropes
against the wind. The object looked something like a cross between a large box
kite and an early biplane. They called it a glider and they were using it to
test out various airfoils.
They
built a rather unsuccessful manned glider and tried to fly it on a hillside near
Huffman Prairie. Orville commented one time he thought man would fly someday, but probably not in his
lifetime. Wilbur died fairly young, but he and Orville both lived to
see man fly. Orville died in 1948. Aviation was only 45-years old and we were
already approaching the sound barrier.
In
the 1920s, the Army Signal Corps engineering branch moved from Dayton to a
small valley just over the hill from Huffman Prairie airfield. Appropriately
named Wright Field, it became Air Research and Development Command headquarters.
If
you go out old Route 4 there is a wooded area behind Wright Field. At the top
of the hill is a stone monument standing twenty or so feet in the air. On it is
a large tarnished bronze plaque, a tribute to the Wright Brothers.
About
fifty-yards behind the Wright Memorial is a lookout point that overlooks
Huffman Dam. Behind it lies the now tree covered Miami River bottom of Huffman
Prairie.
If
you stand on that hillside and squint just right and gaze out over Huffman
Prairie, you will be able to see the first U.S. Army Air training field where
the likes of Hap Arnold, commander of the Air Forces in WW II, first learned to
fly in a rickety old biplane. Or maybe catch a glimpse of Flight Lieutenant
Brown, who was credited with shooting down the Red Baron in the First World
War. He learned to fly there too.
Twelve
miles over the treetops is the airport at Vandalia where the first test pilot
school was located and the likes of Chuck Yeager and many others with the Right Stuff graduated.
To your right, you might see a C5A
coming in for a landing at Patterson Field. It was the first runway that was
built to hold a fully loaded operational B-36. The concrete on the runway was
laid six-feet deep.
To your far right at Wood City was
where a German engineer arrived with his family. He brought with him a dream to
build a 3-stage rocket. He claimed it would
fly to the moon, and it did.
The
Wright Brothers Memorial is not a cemetery. No one is buried there, but it is
nevertheless hallowed ground. It honors a birthplace. Within a fifteen-mile
radius of this hallowed ground, the entire American civil and military aviation
industry began, one hundred years ago.”
My wife and I have traveled to Florida to witness
two space shots. The first shot we attended was Apollo 17, the only night moon
shot. We parked our car at the edge of the bay along with hundreds of others.
Facing the gantry, we sat and waited well into middle of the night for the
launch.
When
the Apollo finally commenced liftoff, it was as though the gantry had been set
on fire and like a phoenix rising out of the flames, the Apollo slowly lifted
off. There was a pounding on our chests and the sky lit up so bright you could
have read a newspaper by the light. We watched in awe as it climbed faster and
faster and faded into the night sky.
A
few years later at sunup, we watched from across the bay as the third space
shuttle was launched into orbit. The space shuttle’s rocket, with its solid
fuel boosters, took off like a tin can that some kid had put a firecracker
under. It was out of sight in no time compared to the old Saturn rocket.
I
continue my long time interest in the cosmos. We visited the large array radio
telescope site at Socorro, New Mexico where my cousin Dan’s son is an
astrophysicist. We have also sought out Arecibo in the mountains of Puerto
Rico.
These
radio telescopes constantly scan the sky for any type of light wave signal, not
static or white noise as it is called. Recently, Congress suspended funding for
the Search for the Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project. Private
groups are continuing the quest for signals from the Very Large Array (VLA)
sites at Socorro, Arecibo and Green Bank in West Virginia.
Several
years ago, a blip from one sector of the galaxy appeared to be an identifiable
signal. After searching the same section of the sky many times over, scientists
working on the project have never been able to observe the signal again. Like
thousands of other volunteers, I run the SETI data analysis programs on my
computer.
It would be nice to find intelligence
here on the planet Earth first. Aside from that, our sun is only one star in a
vast group of stars called a galaxy, our local neighborhood in the universe of
stars. The probability of other planets orbiting at least some of those distant
suns is mathematically very good. It is also very likely that when conditions
are right, life similar to man could evolve on these distant planets.
The joker in the deck is timing! For
example, if an advanced alien life form had phoned us as recently as a hundred
years ago, we weren't home or at least we weren’t able to answer the phone at
the time. We think we know how long time is, we just haven’t figured out how
wide it is yet.
I’m still putting the finishing
touches on my science fiction novel, Starchild,
which I started many years ago. The fictional story is largely based on Albert
Einstein’s famous equation of Energy equals
Mass times the Constant Squared. The constant, as far as is
presently known, is the speed-of-light.
Thus, in theory, time slows at near
light-speeds. So if one traveled to a distant world, when they returned the
time period in which they had left would be ancient history. Einstein's
equation is more or less a scientific way of stating you can't go home again.
Bottom line, we are presently wasting
our time attempting space travel via chemical fuels, atomic or ion propulsion.
There is a relationship between magnetic and gravity fields. It is very likely
these forces can be dialed-up similar to tuning in a radio station. When we
discover how to harness these forces, real space exploration can begin.
If
we wish to speculate that UFOs are real, then we must be willing to accept one
of the following three scenarios.
First,
that the visitors are space travelers from a nearby solar system and are
technologically advanced enough to be able to travel at close to the
speed-of-light or have achieved some method of hyper-light space travel whereby
speed is unaffected by mass. The latter being most popular with current science
fiction writers that have their spacecrafts equipped with warp-drives or take
space shortcuts through wormholes.
Secondly, the aliens may not be space
travelers at all, but have somehow mastered time travel. A variation on this is
the parallel universe theory where the aliens come from another plane of
existence via a dimension unknown to us.
The recent raise in popularity of
String Theory and now the M-Theory propose the possibility of eleven dimensions
and an infinite number of universes.
Carl Sagan always used the word
Cosmos to describe where we exist in deference to the word universe, which he
felt implied all. Even Einstein suggested the possibility of at least a fourth
dimension.
Lastly,
we must consider the possibility that aliens are not aliens at all. That they
did and do now exist undetected among us. We’ll call this the Big Foot Theory. Certainly it would be
easier for an advanced culture to stealth itself than for a primitive creature.
UFO sightings go back to Bible times. Even Christopher Columbus’s log records
the sighting of strange lights on the horizon as his ships approached the new
world.
The
infamous Roswell Incident, which occurred on July 2nd 1947,
continues in UFO folklore. There are still credible witnesses alive at this
writing. Recently, a two-hour film of an alien autopsy surfaced. The most
significant question presently being asked by amateur investigators is what
happened to the debris from the Roswell crash.
Possibly
a coincidence, but it was only a few years after the Roswell Incident that we
developed the transistor, the microprocessor and made other quantum leaps in
scientific advancement. Could there have been a trade? Could there have been
some deal made? Remember our good old democratic American motto, when in doubt, go with the conspiracy theory.
How
big is space? That’s an easy one. It’s a really big place. The answer to the
question of, “How big should we build a space ship?” Well now, that takes a
little more explaining. The size of the Saturn rocket was determined as
follows.
The
contractor who built the main body of the Saturn rocket had to ship the
finished product via rail. On the rail line was a tunnel that the assembly had
to be able to pass through. A rocket body too large would not be able to go
through the tunnel’s diameter.
The
railroads were built along old trails the width of which had been roughly
determined by the wagon ruts in the road. The width of a wagon’s axle had been
determined centuries ago by the Roman roads.
The
Roman road widths had been determined by the width of the two horses that
pulled the chariots. Thus, the size of the most modern piece of equipment in
modern times was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of two
horse’s asses.
The Pilot Who Shot Down King Kong
The
stories in this book are based mostly on my own life experiences, but not this
one.
There
was one flyer that lived a life more full of adventure than any novel or movie
ever written. Such a man was Merian Cooper, born in Jacksonville, Florida in
1893. He was a movie actor, director, screenwriter and producer. His most
famous work was the 1933 film King Kong.
Cooper
entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1915, but left before finishing his senior
year. In 1916, he joined the Georgia National Guard and went off to chase
Pancho Villa all over half of Mexico. Cooper became a bomber pilot in the First
World War. He was shot down and captured by the Germans, sitting out the
remainder of the war in a German POW camp.
During Poland’s fight for
independence from late 1919 until the Treaty of Riga in 1921, Cooper and his
friend Cedric Fauntleroy flew as volunteer members of the Kosciuszko Squadron,
an American air group with the Polish air force fighting the Soviets. In July
of 1920, his plane was again shot down and he spent nine months in a Soviet
prisoner camp. Before the war was over, he escaped to Latvia and was given the
Virtuti Militari, the highest Polish military decoration for valor. General
Józef Pilsudski personally presented him with the medal.
Early
in his film career, Cooper was hugely innovative and soon became the number two
man at RKO Studios. He continued his innovation with breakthroughs like color
and wide screen.
Cooper
had a bizarre dream about a giant ape destroying New York City. When he woke,
he made notes about the dream and this was the basis for his classic 1933 movie
King Kong. The film, which Cooper
co-wrote, co-directed and produced, was a breakthrough in motion picture
technical innovation.
Director
Schoedsack donated $100 to the Officers' Mess at Floyd Bennett Field to secure
the Naval pilots and their aircraft for the most famous scene in the movie. He
also gave each of the pilots $10 under the table.
To
show their appreciation, the Navy flyers did something special. As Schoedsack
prepared to shoot the approaching planes, he realized they were linked together
by lines decorated by colorful flags. Needless to say the scene had to be
re-shot.
The
planes used to topple King Kong from the top of the Empire State Building were
basic Navy training models, Curtiss O2C-2 from Navy NY. Interlaced scenes were
shot using the real planes, miniature biplanes and a full-scale mock-up.
The
movie, made in time-lapse photography with an 11-inch animatronic, rabbit fur
covered ape, took much longer to make than anticipated. Cooper, referring to
the budget over-run of the production, jokingly remarked, "I'd like to
shoot that ape myself." And ironically, he did.
Cooper and Schoedsack played the part
of pilots flying one of the planes attacking King Kong. In a close-up,
featuring a Vickers-style gun on a swivel mount, the pilot-actors made the
final strafing run and Cooper personally fired the fatal shot that toppled King
Kong from atop the Empire State Building.
Though too old to be drafted, Cooper
volunteered to serve in WW II and was assigned to the Army Air Corps unit that
took over General Chennault’s Flying Tigers in Asia. Lieutenant Colonel Cooper
became the executive officer of the squadron and flew on many missions. He was
known for his hard work and relentless planning for minimum losses.
At war's end, he was promoted to
Brigadier General and returned to RKO. Cooper was a pioneer in aviation,
resourceful in the use of airplanes in movies. He served on the board of
directors for TWA. Cooper’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is misspelled Meriam C. Cooper.
Cooper was John Ford's favorite
producer with whom to work. Together they produced dozens of hit films like The Quiet Man, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande.
The
pilot, Andy, turned to his copilot and said, “Beautiful day for flying, don’t
you think, Buck?”
Buck
adjusted the power settings on the throttle. “Yes, and this baby cruises real
fine at thirty thousand feet. The view from up here is awesome.”
Andy
leaned over to check the engine instruments. “Isn’t that oil pressure running a
little high on the right engine?”
Buck
looked intently at the gauges, “Yes and the RPM on the turbine is falling off
too.”
Andy
saw the flashing red light on the instrument panel. “Damn it, there goes the
right engine warning light.”
Buck
retarded the throttle on the right engine. “It’s a fire in the compressor section.”
Andy
began an immediate descent. “Got to get the turbine speed down or it’ll
explode. Keep trying to shut her down.”
Buck
was worried now. “We’re losing cabin pressure. Get this baby on the ground if
you can, Andy!”
Andy
fought to control the giant jet as it fishtailed sideways from the loss of the
right engine. “I can’t worry about that now! Hit the emergency oxygen mask
release in the cabin. The worst that’ll happen is some of them will pass out.”
Buck
adjusted his seat forward to help Andy. “You know we’re doing about 4,000 feet
a minute descent now, don’t you?”
Andy
shook his head, yes. “There’s an airfield just on the other side of that large
forest area ahead. I’m going to try and make a landing there.”
Buck
exclaims, “Those trees are coming up fast, we’re not going to make it!”
Just
then, the cabin door opened and a young man in blue overalls said, “You two
guys will have to get out of the flight simulator now. We’ve got some
maintenance work to do.”
There We Were At Ten-Thousand Feet
There
is this oft-told story of a salty old RAF pilot who was asked to give a talk at
a ladies social club. The club president introduced the elderly gentleman as a
local hero.
The
Flying Officer began with one of his favorite war stories. "There I was at
ten thousand feet. There were fokkers to the left of me and fokkers to the
right of me. Where in hell did all them fokkers come from, I sez to
meself?"
At
that point the club president sprang to her feet to say, “I need to explain
that our guest is referring to the German airplanes made by the Fokker Aircraft
Company.”
"Yes
mum," replied the old pilot. "Those Jerrys had Fokkers too, but on
this day them fokkers was a flyin' Messerschmitts." He began again,
"There I was at ten thousand feet...”
Jim
Hardy flew B-17s in WW II and when he started with the airline, they were
flying the DC-3. Jim was an American Airlines captain and friend of mine from
Flight Dynamics days. He came into my office one afternoon laughing about
having just flown in from Arkansas and told me this story.
“In
the old days, on summer afternoon flights crossing thunderstorm alley, we’d
cruise at 12,000. Couldn’t go any higher to get over the storm and we’d say, if
we just had pressurization, we wouldn’t have to go through these thunder
bumpers. A few years later, American purchased DC-6 and DC-7 aircraft with full
pressurization. Now we could climb above 20,000, but we’d look up ahead and see
a line of thunderstorms at 30,000. We’d say, if we just had jet engines, we could
climb over those storms and not have to go through them.”
The
trip Jim had just returned from was a 727 flight. He smiled and said, “We were
at 32,000 feet and could not get over the top of this large thunderstorm and
had to go through it. You know, if we just had rockets...”
The
modern jet airplane has made it possible for us to travel the world like
Superman, who could leap small buildings in a single bound. Now, even the most
ordinary among us can leap whole continents. Most passengers board a modern jet
airliner and watch the movie or read a magazine.
The
marvel of traveling halfway around the world in less than a day is lost on most
of us, but again so is the beauty of this planet we daily ignore as we soar
high above.
Instead of thinking in terms of
building giant six hundred plus passenger airliners and city size terminals,
the aviation industry should be thinking about carrying passengers in smaller
more economical VTOL aircraft that fly direct between local airports on GPS
highways in the sky.
With advanced computer programs, the
airline HUB system would soon be as out-of-date as a railway passenger station.
Transports the size of a jumbo jet can and should be able to takeoff and land
in little more than their own parking space.
The
ultimate answer to air traffic control is fully automated aircraft. The Air
Force is doing this now with their new Global Hawk.
The
airliner of the future, it is said, will only have a pilot and a dog in the
cockpit. The pilot will be there to monitor the electronics and the dog will be
there to bite the pilot if he touches anything.