Chitchat

When I was running around in the Beech last fall, one day I got to chatting with Duane, the FBO at our local airport.  I'd said something about how it was possible to carry out IFR flying in difficult conditions using just the Beech's ancient basic instruments -- an old style attitude indicator that had to be caged (locked) if pitch and roll became extreme, altimeter, vertical speed indicator, airspeed indicator, turn and bank indicator, heading indicator and whiskey (magnetic) compass, but that I wished that we had an updated panel with modern instruments, including Strike Finder or StormScope and all sorts of other goodies, including for fuel and engine management.

I mentioned my father had talked about upgrading the cockpit gizmos, including installing weather radar, something like the Garmin GWX-8000 with Doppler, wind sheer and turbulence detection and ground clutter suppression.  I surely would love to have that.  We were flying the bug smasher with instruments Jimmy Doolittle would have conducted the first blind flight with back in 1929. That seemed dumb to me, considering all that was available today.

"You tell your dad we can install all of that and whatever else he wants right here.  And I'll make sure he gets a special price, too," Duane said.

"Gonna overcharge us, huh?"

"Oh, Wanda! I wouldn't do that to an old friend and a long-time customer."

"Kidding."

"Seriously, your dad can trust us to do a good job in a timely fashion at a fair price.  If you go somewhere else you don't even know if they can work on that plane and if they can it might be a year -- and that's no exaggeration -- before you get it back.  We'll just order what you want and install it.  Also tell your dad that if he is upgrading the panel he should seriously consider upgrading the engines -- I mean, you've still got generators and carburetors on that old-timer.  Think what fuel injection and electronic ignition would do for  reliability and performance, and alternators... -- oh, right I was thinking of mentioning to your dad that he ought to install Hoerner wing tips.  They really would improve performance and handing.  You just can't spin a plane with Hoerner wing tips."

"I wasn't planning to spin it.  I don't think that's on dad's 'to do' list, either."

"Well, you know what I mean.  The tips make the plane more stable.  Think about that in IFR turbulence."

"Okay, you sold it to me.  Now sell it to dad. And you know what else I'd like?  One of those laser landing height systems, one coupled to a gear-up warning -- not that I would ever land with the gear up or not be able to judge my landings" -- cough -- "but, you know, just in case."  I was thinking, but didn't say, that I'd like a gear-up warning that didn't just sound a horn but one that would bellow in the voice of Ron Lee Ermey, "Hey, numbnuts, lower the fucking landing gear!"  Being in the Navy and serving alongside Marines endears that sort of exhortation to you.

"Whatever you guys want, we can order and install."

I sensed a bit of eager urgency in Duane's pitch and, looking around the rather bleak airport with no aircraft in the pattern, only one employee besides Duane, Randy, the A&P guy and all-around service provider and some occasional part-timers and hanger monkeys I'd seen around -- of course, there was Butch, who ran the diner, but he wasn't involved with airport operations -- I realized that this was an airport on the edge of extinction.  I'd never thought about it before.  The airport had always been here.  Duane had always run it as far back as I could remember, but recalling visits here in years past, it seemed that it had once been much  busier.  I asked Duane about it.

"Oh, yeah.  We were doing gangbusters before Covid."

Duane explained that there were tourists flying in in summer as well as the ag business and in the fall came the hunters and fishermen in season.  In addition, there were plenty of locals, especially the ranchers  with their own planes who serviced them with him. Aircraft from government agencies like the Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, occasionally ICE or other law enforcement, contract firefighters, even some National Guard flights also stopped by for fuel, sometimes maintenance or to have a bite to eat and take a bathroom break. 

"I had three full-time A&P guys doing maintenance, repairs, annuals, plus a couple of helpers for them and a dedicated fuel service man, line service technicians, customer service lady and two or three ramp apes. Let me think who else we had....  Well, some others. I had two or three CFIs that kept busy.  When they weren't instructing they offered scenic flights.  They did pretty well.  We talked about setting up a skydiving operation but never got around to it."

Duane said the restaurant was also doing a great business before the lockdowns.  He had a cook, cook's helper, two waitresses, a busboy and dishwasher and a cashier.  The two rooms that are now crash pads for rare overnighters used to be one big dining room. It had a little stage for local musicians or whatever else.  A poetry reading group used to meet there. Duane recalled a young woman reciting in dramatic fashion a poem about Bonnie Parker.  She was so good all the diners stopped eating to listen to her, then gave her an ovation. There was a local drama group that acted out plays. It all brought people in. 

"But then with the Covid lockdown everything came to a stop.  Airport business dropped off a cliff and it's just never really come back."

The restaurant suddenly had no customers. No locals, no tourists, no fly-ins.  Duane had to let everyone go and closed it.  He converted the dining room to sleepovers just for something to do, really, and to maybe get some income when the motel down the road also had to close.  

"You remember -- that one at Cool Springs that Tom H___ had with the kids' playground, curiosities museum, souvenir store and cafe?  He got pretty near wiped out by the Covid thing." Tom converted the motel to monthly rentals, which is all that saved him, Duane said, since they filled up pretty quickly.  There's not much in the way of cheap rental units out here.  

"That's where Jim lives, you know.  He does when he's here in the summer, anyway. Tom's dad started that place with a bait shop after he got out of the service in the Sixties."  He got drafted but lucked out, Duane said, getting stationed in Germany rather than being sent to Vietnam.  His brother joined the Marines, wanting to see some action, but he was trained as an air traffic controller and spent his enlistment at Yuma and never left the States.  "He worked here when he first got out and came home, but after a while he left, I think it was in..., huh, I can't remember.

"What was I saying?  Well, anyway, Tom closed the bait shop, the souvenir shop, general store and everything. You know the place I'm talking about, right?  A few miles down the road."

"Oh, yeah," I said, "My aunt Viola was the manager of the cafe and store for a long time.  She started working there after her husband died. Her daughter worked as a waitress summers when she was in high school."

"I remember Viola! Sure.  And was that her daughter Hester or ... oh, what was her name?  Roxanne!  Oh, course, Roxanne. She was the pretty one.  She could have been a movie star."

"It was Hester."

"I should have remembered that.  Well, anyway, Tom has a Navion that he hangers here.  He inherited it from his dad when the old man passed away.  But he hasn't flown it since the lock down. I imagine he can't afford to anymore. He put it up for sale but so far there haven't been any offers."

"That's like my dad inherited our Beech from his father," I said.  Granddad bought it after he retired from the Navy and returned to the ranch."

"Most of the planes and the folks who fly them out of here have been doing it down through the generations, passing on their planes to their kids. I guess you will be getting the Beech one day." 

"I hope it's a long way off, and, anyway, one of my brothers may want it.  I'm not going to get into a fight with them over a dumb airplane.  So, what are your plans for the airport?  Are any of your kids interested in operating it?"

"I don't know, Wanda.  They all have established careers.  None of them flies.  None has ever expressed any interest in the airport and I don't think any of them would want it.  I suppose when I pass on they will just sell it.  If they can find a buyer.  If not, they'll probably sell off the equipment and land for whatever they can get, or just abandon it."

I didn't like the sound of that.  This airport was a big convenience for us.  Where would we go for fuel and maintenance, annuals?  Not to mention the comradery.  Destination City was a long haul away and we really didn't know anybody there so we'd just be dollar signs to their FBO.

"I hope you stick around for a long, long time.  You and this airport."

"Thanks, Wanda, so do I.  But, to be honest, I don't know about keeping the airport going. Randy has hinted that he may have to move on if things don't pick up.  A good, experienced A&P man like he is could make a lot more money someplace busier.  I think the only thing keeping him around is he has family here, owns his house and his wife and kids aren't eager to move."

I thought about Butch, the fry cook, it would be pretty tough on him if the airport closed.  I said as much to Duane.

"He's done pretty good for himself here," Duane said.  "You know, I was just thinking about re-opening the restaurant when he showed up, pushing his motorcycle."  He'd run out of gas in sight of the airport.  He was dead broke and asked if there was some kind of work he could do to earn enough money to buy a meal and a tank of gas.  Duane asked him what he could do and he explained he was a short-order cook.  

"I hired him on the spot.  But I told him I couldn't afford to pay him much by way of salary, at least at the start."  Instead, Duane offered him a percentage of the sales plus let him live in the apartment above the restaurant rent-free -- it was empty anyway.  

"Butch brought the place to life and he works like a dog.  Never takes a day off, is up in the wee hours getting everything ready for the breakfast trade, cooks, serves, buses, washes, sweeps and mops.  Whatever needs to be done he does it." Duane explained that Butch managed the inventory, worked with vendors, handled the books.  He even made the roadside sign advertising the place, designed it, built it, installed it.  "He's a wonder, Wanda, he truly is."

"I had no idea, but I'm surprised he has no help."

"He could hire whatever he needs, but he says until the place is solidly profitable he won't take on any expenses not absolutely required."

"He's going to burn himself out."

"I've told him that but he laughs it off.  He says he's got nothing else to do anyway.  Better to be taking care of the diner in the evenings than sitting alone in his room watching TV.  I guess he's right about that."

"So what will he do if you decide to shut down?"

"I talked to him about the possibility and he just said that he was looking for work when he came here and he'd be looking for work when he left." Duane scratched his head.  "I guess that means something."

"Maybe it means he doesn't expect much from life anymore."

"I suppose no one should."

An idling mind

 

It hasn't been a bad winter so far, all things considered.  We did have some very, very cold days a while back, minus 40 degrees one morning, which is a mite chilly. We had snow flurries today, the high around 30 or so I think and there's long been snow on the ground, six or eight inches or thereabouts.  Last year I would have thought we were having a terrible winter, but this year, eh, just the dreary season.  Or for me it is, not being able to do much, even go outside for very long or very far.  No sidewalks here. When I do go for a mosey, I take along a stout oak walking stick. I have to be careful not to slip and fall.  But whereas last year I was very agitated in my forced immobility, this year, other than being prone to mopiness, I am okay to sit by the fireplace, look out the window at winter and read or knit.  Lord, I'm turning into my mother -- not that there's anything wrong with that!

I wrote a while ago about a relative back around 1900 or so getting in a gun fight with horse thieves while she was pregnant and getting shot before doing for the bad guys.  I was thinking about that today and wondering if I could do it and the answer was no way, are you out of your mind?  Forget it.  They could have the stupid horses.  No question people back in those days were made of the very sternest stuff. Genuine pioneer stock was too tough to kill they used to say. They had to be to create a civilization out of a primeval wilderness.  I'm proud of my pioneer ancestors although nowadays I'm supposed to be ashamed of them.  Fie, I say.  Fie!

Dad is so much better now that he and el jefe went snowmobiling cross-country, staying a couple of nights at one of the remoter line shacks while they snow-shoed around the neighborhood.  Have you ever tried to walk with snowshoes? -- not just for a few yards but for miles?  Include me out on that.

In 1982, my father visited the Triumph factory in Meriden to pick up a new Bonneville he had ordered, an Imperial Edition made to commemorate the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Dianna Spencer.  For some reason, I remembered it as a special edition commemorating the Pearl Anniversary of Elizabeth becoming queen, but when I asked my dad about it, he set me straight. Now that I think about it, it could also have been the Oak anniversary edition, too, as Triumph had been making motorcycles since 1902.
Anyway, while there, he was given a tour of the factory and he spotted some sort of machine tool, I forget what it was, that had been clearly broken badly and then welded back together. He asked what happened to it, and his guide casually explained that it had been damaged when the Germans bombed Coventry in 1940. At that time, Triumph had a factory on Priory Street where it had been building motorcycles since 1907. The plant was destroyed by the Luftwaffe.
But the Triumph workers dragged the machine tools out of the ruins, repaired those that had been damaged and installed them in the relocated plant some miles away in Meriden.
Whenever the subject of the value of the strategic bombing campaigns during World War II has come up, my father always mentions this little story to illustrate how futile much of the effort was. It’s really hard to damage machine tools, process machinery and the like, by bombing so thoroughly that they can’t be put back in working order.
In any case, there was that piece of equipment still doing its job more than four decades after the Blitz had ended.
While my father was at the factory, he met Lord Hesketh, who was contemplating buying or investing in Triumph. He invited my father to visit his estate at Easton Neston to do some pheasant hunting. There he met his friend, Bubbles, and some race car driver (the Lord financed a Formula racing team) who gave him a jacket with the racing team patch on it, the slogan of which was, “Sex: Breakfast of Champions.”
Lord Hesketh was also into creating his own motorcycle (I assume he wanted Triumph to manufacture it), the Hesketh 1000, an example of which he gave or maybe sold at cost, I don’t know, to my father, to evaluate. It was supposed to be the modern-day reincarnation of the fabled Vincent Black Shadow with state-of-the-art engineering.
We still have both motorcycles. The Bonneville runs just fine, but the Hesketh long ago lunched its transmission.
My mother took one look at the Hesketh jacket my father proudly wore home from his trip to the Sceptered Isle and informed him that he could keep the motorbikes but that jacket had to go.

Erté ideal woman

Gibson girl

The image of the ideal women of 1947 depicted in the diagram to the left persists today.  It was firmly established in the public mind by the artist George Petty and his Petty girl, which began appearing in the 1930s, published by various men's magazines and adorning calendars advertising the Ridgid tool company (there's a joke lurking in that name and association but I won't stretch for it).  Prior to the Petty girl, the ideal female shape was the 1920s boyish flapper, depicted famously in the art deco women of the artist Erté, who once remarked that the perfect female breast fitted inside a coupe cocktail glass.  And before that was the narrow-waisted, buxom Gibson girl, evolved from the bustled beauty of the previous generation.  It seems to me part of and evidence for the ossification of popular culture that the female shape deemed most ideal, which once changed from generation to generation, has now remained unaltered for a good 90 years.

 

O
f course, males still think association with females will give them cooties. 

"I went out to buy an envelope.
"'Oh,' my wife says,  'Well, you're not a poor man, you know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?'
"I pretend not to hear her and go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people, and see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by and I give them the thumbs up. And I ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know.
"The moral of the story is we're here on Earth to fart around.
"And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore."
~ Kurt Vonnegut