Wrote it in August 2011, the economy was still shaky. I spent a lot of time driving the woods in East Texas. My brother found it on our private family group. He has pancreatic cancer and is undergoing chemo. He found some solace in it.
We are in no way in the condition we were in in 2011. Even at the height of Covid the situation was not as bad. While right now, we are actually in a pretty good position, but we are in a situation that is changing fast.
Anyway. If you are scared, or under pressure. Never Never Never give up.
Never, never give up
The afternoon safety nap finished under the Highway 21 bridge over the Trinity river. The 1 Ton is lined out and pointed east.
Up against the wall you red neck mothers! Mothers who raised your sons so well!..
Willie did it better, but the musings start for the long drive back to Nac.
I never liked Country and Western, never owned a pair of cowboy boots. Until I moved to Virginia. Hum…Yep I remember the airport I worked at part time to afford a good pair of Tony Lamas.
Winter had over stayed its welcome. Nobody in his right mind would fly, it seemed that the clouds would have a convention in Fauquier County starting on Friday and break up on Monday. Late in the afternoon on little tail dragger lined up on the run way. He took off, made the pattern and was back on the ground in 10 minutes. There was no one around so I walked over to the hanger.
I helped him push the plane in, and about the time we started to close the doors, the old mechanic wondered over. “Well, how was the flight?” the old mechanic asked. “Low ceiling, too low. It’s one of them days where it is better to be down here wishing you was up there, rather than being up there wishing you was down here. But, I needed to get in the air, this weather is killing me.”
Pilots are that way you know. They just need to fly.
The pilot lit a heater in the corner of the hanger and said “Can’t fly, might as well drink. Anybody want to join me?” I looked of the mostly closed hanger door, the light was fading and I was supposed to close the airport at dark. I said “Sure.” and looked around and pulled up an old kitchen chair with the back missing and found and old faded cushion that had gone with it at one time. I pulled it up close to the heater.
The mechanic found a seat too. The pilot rummaged around and said “All I have for you to drink from is this old coffee cup. Just swish the whiskey around in it. That should kill anything lurking there.” He poured two fingers into it.
The Old Mechanic said to no one in particular "Yep, better to be down here…
My mind mind left in musings of its own. I was 12, my Mom sat the phone down and said, “You stay here, your brother and I will be back soon.” Much later that night my brother came home. He put us to bed.
In the morning Mom and Dad showed up. Dad had a big band aid on his head and his arm was in a loose sling. The story started to unfold as we drove up to the crash site.
Dad had rode with some other men in a light plane up to Arkansas to interview a man to work for the Church. On the way back the plane was passing through a stationary front when the engine lost power. This particular plane would glide like a flat rock with no engine. They were descending over the Big Thicket. The place is all trees and a couple of curvy roads. The pilot slowed the plane and prepared to crash. He figured if he could get it slow enough, somebody might survive. Just a few hundred feet off of the ground the plane broke out of the clouds, and my Mom still swears it had to be a miracle, because the only straight road in the Thicket was under the plane. The pilot put the landing gear down and flared. It was that fast. The winds clipped a few mail boxes and just as the pilot eased on the brakes, the engine roared back to life and the plane lifted off and one wing clipped a high tension wire over the road. The plane spun around, left the road way and wrapped itself around a giant pine tree.
As I looked at the wreckage of what had been a fine airplane, I was amazed at just how delicate an airplane was. The metal that was ripped from the wings was no thicker than the note book paper I carried to school. Looking at the wreckage my mind was unable to grasp how three of the four men could walk away and how the fourth would be out of the hospital in a few days. Maybe it was a miracle.
My musings over, I realized about half my whiskey was gone and the hanger flying was in full swing.
The Old Mechanic was saying “Yep, I was ferrying a beat up Cessna 150, I did not trust that plane, and was keeping my eye out for a place to land; just in case. It was a good thing too, as the engine just up and quit. I lined up on one of my emergency spots and had just cleared a fence when I noticed the irrigation ditch across my landing path. I figured, well that will kill me if I hit it straight on. So, I started turning to the left, and landed on my left wheel in a left turn. I looked out the right window and couldn’t see anything but sky, and the left wing was just clearing the ground. I tensed up waiting for the crunch, but it never came. I had turned 90 degrees and was parallel to the ditch! I looked out the windshield and there was a barbed wire fence in front of me, so just stood on the left rudder and kept on turning. I slowed down enough that my right wheel just missed the fence and the right wing hung out over it. I kept on turning and by the time I stopped I had landed that plane in a circle!”
My whiskey was finished about the time the story was, and the cold was creeping past the defenses of the heater so we broke up and went on home.
Friends,
They say as long as the plane is moving, you don’t quit flying it. We are like the passengers in that Cessna. We are looking out the right side window and can see the potential destruction passing under the wing. All our screams will not help, and about the time we start to feel some relief that the Mortgage Backed Securities mess will pass, we look up and see the Euro mess looking like a barbed wire fence menacing us like some kind of evil meat shredder.
Of course when the little plane in the story was finally stopped, the pilot was stuck in the middle of no where and the wings had to be taken off and the plane trucked back to a repair shop.
I bring all this up because we see the problems, but we do not have our hands on the levers of power. We have to, not only see the risks, but see how the people in power are going to respond to them. Nothing is static.
