A Pilot Turns 360
Published by Brian Christofferson at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Brian Christofferson
Cover Design by Andrew Christofferson
A life story ought to be told from the best angle, all the dirt and bad language swept out the door. In mine, the "n" word appears in the very first paragraph. It is not there to shock. That is just the way it happened. The "f" word appears three times in this book, each time in dialogue. That is the way I sometimes talk.
The callous treatment of beautiful, bright young women is another point that jumps out even before the book is half-finished. If I had that part of my life to do over, I would.
If you choose to read what I have put down about a volatile time in my life, be advised that it is not a blueprint for how one should live their life. I took the path of least resistance. I did what felt good at the time. I was loose with my seed and enjoyed myself to the max, all the while preparing to get into med school. My take-away from the bit of flight training I had received made me realize that it was important to develop a "Plan B" in case med school did not come to pass.
As much as the medical world attracted my attention, the nuts and bolts draw of airplanes and the visceral thrill of flying made it an even match. I sought advice and actually followed some of the suggestions. None of the words of wisdom was more important than those received from the fine man I accompanied on rounds in 1975. Without his counsel at a critical crossroads in my life, I would not be where I am today. Right here, right now is darn good.
I dedicate this book to Dr. Wesley.
B.C Potrerillos, Panama 24enero2012
Along about December 22 I arrived in Laramie. A day or so later Ludi and I headed down to Sterling, Colorado, to where her parents had moved when they left Wyoming. Mr. Simpson had once remarked when I asked him, “Why do you live in Torrington?” “Cause the niggers won’t live here.” Sterling seemed to be the same kind of town.
Mr. Simpson had a good job in the school district and had some feeder cattle in the local stockyards he was raising presumably for “fun” money. I spent the better part of a day with him while he checked on his investments. I was not much use as I had on some hiking-type boots that would have accumulated cowshit in mass quantities.
It occurred to me recently that Mr. Simpson might have been expecting me to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage. That was the furthest thing from my mind at the time. I had not even asked his daughter for her hand in marriage. The facts were that I had done my reverse indentured servitude to my country, college was in my future and I was planning to get my flying credentials as a plan “B” while preparing myself to get into med school.
The big problem was that Laramie (where Ludi was going to college) did not have a flight school approved by the Veteran’s Administration. I was aware of that some months earlier and planned to go to school at the University of Montana in Missoula and get my ratings at Johnson Flying Service out at Johnson-Bell Field.
My trip to Sterling may have had more import with Ludi and her two sisters than ever occurred to me. That fact may have become more obvious to them when the only gift I offered to anyone in their family was the bottle of Chivas Regal I gave to Mr. Simpson. He allowed sometime earlier that he liked to enjoy the Chivas and refill the bottle with cheap scotch to share with others. Somehow, that resonated with me. I received no gifts from anyone in the Simpson family that Christmas.
After a few days, I made my way up to Eureka to stay with the folks for a while and enjoy some good home cooking. I also wanted to enjoy the lack of that nagging feeling that had troubled me on the last few visits. That feeling over almost four years that once my visit was over, it was time to head back to Denver or Wurtsmith and the USAF.
On New Year’s Eve day, I headed up towards Wolverine Cabin. At the end of the plowed part of the Grave Creek road, I did not notice the end of the plowed road and the parking lot and continued up the hill on snowmobile tracks. Things got messy in a big hurry. The car I was driving (Triumph TR250) was light but snow machines are even lighter and do not pack the snow enough to drive a car on in most circumstances. Luckily, some of the snowmobilers helped me get back to the parking lot.
Then it was time to get on those cross-country skis again. They were still almost brand new but I did have a better handle on how to use the wax more effectively. I had a heavy pack but the snowmobile tracks made for easy skiing. Straight north up the hill and then a turn to the west along the level towards the end of the road. At that point, it would have been a climb up the backcountry trail to the cabin.
Andy and Jake, you may remember the summer backpacking trip we took up there when you were in your early teens. We had Oscar along. There were some young men with guns staying at the cabin and doing some shooting. I told them Oscar was a good dog and would they please not shoot him. It was a good trip.
The trip on New Year’s Eve day 1974 was a good one as well. Bright, clear and cold as hell.
I had a big bottle of Lancer’s Rose along. It froze. I managed to warm it up enough to get a few sips along the trail.
The camp for me that night was at the point where the backcountry trail started up the mountain. There was a large tree and I burrowed down through the snow into the area around its base. It made a great campsite. It seems that I needed to get wood from other trees to keep a fire going over the night, I am not sure. However it worked out, I did keep a fire going, although sleeping a bit and then waking when my bones got cold seems a bit brutal from here.
The next morning is lost in the haze of thirty-seven years. There is, however, an olfactory memory of that afternoon. I recall flopping into my old bed at the folk’s house in Eureka without a shower and with the aroma of wood fire smoke still lingering on my body.
1975
James of Bigfork and I moved into a house owned by his older brother on South Fourth West in Missoula. Free rent is a beautiful concept. We had little money. There were many meals cooked on the gas grill in the kitchen. Hash browns and nothing else. Hash browns and nothing else. Hash Browns and nothing else. Hash browns and Nothing else.
It was actually a beautiful stove. It seems there was a large stainless steel plate over some gas burners. I do not remember being hungry that winter.
James and I spent some time with my high school buddy Les, his wife Carol and son Brandon at their apartment on the west side of town. It seems like we were over there at least five times that winter. We were helping him keep connected. We had some great times there.
Later that spring, I had some tickets to a Griz game at the Adams Fieldhouse and invited Les along. ESPN was there so it must have been an important game. After the game Les headed back to his place and I headed back to mine. We did not go out for a beer.
Being in school was actually a lot of fun. James and I had a class together. Physical Geography, I wish that I had finished that class and had done well. I also signed up for Chem 101. I spent a lot of time in an office on the main floor hammering out details on taking the class and obsessing on a poster on the office wall. I finally talked the secretary into selling it to me. It was a picture of Albert Einstein and the quote; “Peace cannot be gotten through war, it must be gained through understanding.” I mucked it up with a rambling anti-war; anti-nuke sentiment laden diatribe scribbled on the back and sent it to my former co-workers at Wurtsmith Air Force Base.
The lack of money raised its ugly head in early February. One of the more curious things that I had chosen to do was to join a book club. “Pay only one dollar for seven books!” Was the advertisement that caught my eye. “A book a month after that for a couple years” was part of the fine print. I withdrew from school on February 10 so that I could start collecting unemployment compensation. I used some of the proceeds to pay the book club. It was a crazy time.
Started flying with Hancock of Executive Aviation around the middle of February. It turned out that Johnson Flying Service (the legendary Fixed Base Operation) had changed its focus away from flight instruction. Executive, where I was to do my flight training, just happened to be approved by the Veteran's Administration. As my GI Bill benefits still applied to flying and paid ninety percent, I figured that things would work out before I got a bill for my ten percent.
Jim was the manager of the local operation and was a hell of an instructor as well as a good people manager. He had flown for a small airline back east. He may have even been their chief pilot for a time. One of my favorite memories of him was his standard line when offered a coke. “Nah, just give me the quarter and I’ll buy myself one later.”
I flew with him a number of times and he appreciated my flying as much as I appreciated his skills as an instructor. He offered me a job as a part-time office worker. I always got a kick out how he minimized my position. My official job title was as a part-time, evening and weekend assistant manager trainee. He even used that title once when introducing me to a prospective customer.
My first couple of weeks at Exec was busy. I flew almost twenty hours, which was a lot of flight time. That is exactly the way I should have approached the process. I was working on my Commercial License and flying many hours in a row helped to keep the material fresh.
Up to Eureka
James and I went on a cross-country to Eureka around the last of February. I had recently been checked out in the Cherokee Arrow and was feeling “special” flying a plane that had retractable landing gear. That may have been the time I gave Grandma Hall, my sister (your Aunt Julie) and her friend Rose, a ride out towards the Koocanusa reservoir.
A few year later a bunch of us were taking a rock-climbing class from Don and Jandy of RMO through the community college. It was thrilling enough to be thirty feet off the ground on a pitch and then hear a jet go screaming by, low over the reservoir and south towards Libby. It had to have been a guard fighter jet on a "training" mission. I will never know; I was too scared on the rock face to turn around and look.
I had a momentary thought of flying under the bridge at Rexford the spring of '75, but better judgment won out. I wish I had flown under the bridge instead of some of the flying that I did do over the next couple of days, it would have been a hell of a lot safer.
When it was time to return to Missoula the next morning the weather had turned sour. James had to get back to his job at the Marshall Ski area. We jumped in Grandpa Hall’s pick-up and headed for Missoula.
From this perspective I think the plan was to get James back in time for his job the next day and that would free me up to do whatever I needed to do to get the plane back for its scheduled flight the following day.
The smart thing for me to do would have been to get a good night’s rest in Missoula and then return to Eureka early the next morning.
This was not to be a weekend for doing smart things.
I got back to Eureka about three in the morning, tried to get a couple hours sleep and then got up and had Grandpa Hall drive me out to the Eureka airport so that I could fly back to Missoula to have the plane in position for the morning departure there.
The weather was still stinko. I launched out of Eureka and was in the clouds, flying solely by reference to the flight instruments shortly after leaving the ground. That was the kind of flying I did all the time once I had a job as an airmail pilot. On this particular morning though, I did not yet possess an Instrument rating.
It gets worse.
My plan was to acquire visual references as I approached Missoula and enter the controlled airspace there under VFR (Visual Flight Rules). Was not to be. I flew by Kalispell, broke out of the clouds near Polson and landed. I waited for a while, and then started out for Missoula. The weather got so bad that I turned around but could not get back into Polson. I headed up the valley and got caught in the clouds and decided to try to get into Kalispell City airport.
This is where it gets ugly.
Have you heard of the saying that “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing?” My basic instrument skills were top notch. My understanding of IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) however, was a bit lacking. I proceeded to navigate out to the northwest side of the Flathead Valley using the VOR (VHF Omni Range) and basic pilotage. I turned back towards City airport using only the signal from KGEZ, which was displayed on my ADF (Automatic Directional Finder) as a needle pointing directly ahead to the station. I knew that if I passed over the radio station (which would mean that I had passed the airport as well) the needle would swing to the tail of the aircraft at which point my plan was to climb to a safer altitude, communicate with the Flight Service Station, confess my misdeeds and comply with their directives. Also known as the four Cs. Climb, communicate, confess and comply.
Telling this part of the story is easy. Trying to imagine what was going on in my mind at the time is scary. It had to have been an incredible time, flying around with no real plan. I was looking for a safe haven. I was going from one destination to another working out the details on the fly, so to speak.
As luck would have it, I found the city of Kalispell and landed at the city airport. There I parked at Strand Aviation, met the owner and spent the better part of the day with him. He knew exactly what I was doing and counseled me in a way that would not make me resent his efforts and try to take off into bad weather again. I appreciate him to this day for his kindness in helping me get back to Missoula in one piece.
Let us review this trip. Took off from Eureka solid IFR. Flew through controlled airspace in the Kalispell area without a clearance and landed at Polson. Could not get into Missoula, could not get back to Polson. Flew up to Kalispell and shot an improvised approach (which infringed on the controlled airspace of Flathead County Airport) to the uncontrolled field at Kalispell City Airport. I might still be in jail if anything had gotten bent on that trip.
When I finally got to Missoula the charter or the flight instruction that had been scheduled in the Arrow had long since been canceled. The only thing left to do was go to the country music festival at the field house. Just so happens that James had tickets. We met up with Heavy Evy and another friend, Craig. It was looking to be a good time but realistically speaking; I had not had more than an hour of sleep in the last forty-eight and was not functioning terribly well. I slept soundly at the field house. It was an all-night concert and I slept all night. James might have been there watching me and kicking me when I started snoring, I am not sure.
I Have Seen the Tetons Up Close
By the middle of March and after another six hours of flight time in the immediate and local area, I decided it was time for another cross-country. This trip was to Laramie, in the worst part of the year. I am not sure if anyone was checking my flight plans or not. The trip to Laramie was not memorable except for the landing. Laramie is at seven thousand feet altitude and consequently the air is just a bit thinner. The runways are longer there because aircraft tend to use more runway to take-off and land.
Ludi and I had a good time. Another trip down to the Cowboy Bar. Dinner at a fine restaurant and probably a movie. Out to the airport the next morning in time to get back to Missoula by ten. The first problem was a low oil pressure indication while taxiing out to the runway. I was in the Cherokee Warrior and had minimal experience in starting an airplane that had been out all night, cold soaking in the elements. (In Missoula, the airplanes were hangered each evening and taxied over to the flight line for each day’s flights.) By the time the time the oil pressure "problem" was addressed, the schedule for the Warrior was screwed up for the day.
Take-off was exciting at the seven thousand foot altitude Laramie Airport. I will trust my memory on this one. The runway was at least ten thousand feet long. The plane lifted off at the same indicated airspeed as in Missoula, but the ground speed was quite a bit higher. It was an interesting visual.
The flight to Missoula was even more exciting. Like my flight towards Missoula from Eureka in March, I had no business being out there. I recall so well the horrible turbulence on the route between the peaks on the way back. Makes my palms sweat even at this moment. Especially now that I have the experience and knowledge that tells me that that kind of stupidity is usually rewarded with death.
Back to flying and working evenings at the airport like nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
James and I went down to the trailer that Craig shared with his twin brother Carl for the appearance of the Griz in the NCAA tournament. We gathered round a small black and white TV and cheered on our team. They lost to UCLA that night by only three points. Michael Ray Richardson played splendidly and every person in Montana thinks that we would have won except that one of the refs inadvertently elbowed one of our star players. As a side-note: The aforementioned star player retired recently after coaching thirty years at one of the Missoula high schools. Must type faster.
During the first week of April, I did an instrument cross-country flight (legally) to Bozeman with Hancock. Hancock brought a date and I had my friend Betsy along as well. We got a taxi and went to the Seals and Crofts concert at the field house. Flew back after the show and were in Missoula by one am. It was curious though how Hancock had me do the approach to Missoula. We flew until the lights were so bright that it was obvious we over downtown and then he suggested that I reduce power, roll the plane into a bank and spiral down until we broke out into the clear. It was only a few miles further to the navigation station where we could have done an instrument approach procedure to the airport. What the hell was that about? Stand by for more on that question towards the end of the chapter.
Ludi came up for a visit that spring. She was less than impressed with my living conditions. James' brother had most of the house filled with material to do the remodeling. My room, however, was an island of calm in the midst of a storm.
We stopped at St. Patrick’s hospital to visit her cousin who was dying of brain cancer. Ken was his name. I had known him in high school. He was in a coma, Ludi and I sat there and talked quietly. I held Ken’s hand for a while. It was a moving experience.
We drove up to Eureka for a visit. I met the mayor. I think she was Ludi’s aunt. We returned to Missoula and Ludi took the airliner back to Laramie.
I sold my car that spring to pay my debt in Michigan ($551) as well as to pay for flying in Missoula. Ludi had observed sometime earlier that my cars were my hobby. Sure glad I grew out of that one. The Triumph was a wonderful car. In spite of all the shit written about British automobiles, that one never left me afoot.
I bought a Peugeot bicycle that lasted me until the spring of 2006 when I finally put it in the dumpster. Somebody suggested it was not fit even to give it to the Salvation Army. It seems that it was a bit trashed out.
I trashed it out intentionally a few minutes after I bought it. I ran a key up and down the Peugeot logo on the frame to make it less attractive to thieves. If only I had some gray spray paint. The bike storeowner was appalled when I brought it back for the “free” one hundred mile tune-up. I apologized and quickly explained my intentions. That did not seem to work. Never went back.
Those first hundred miles came quickly as I was riding to school in the morning and out to the airport every afternoon. One day along Russell I passed a long line of cars caught in traffic and someone hollered at me. That was interesting.
Another time out by where the Reserve Street overpass now crosses Highway 10 on the way to the airport a guy started screaming at me and making wild gesticulations. It was quite bizarre. I rode slowly, way out on the shoulder. He got out of his station wagon (faded green with fake wood paneling on the side, adrenalin set memories surfacing) and started chasing me on foot. Had it not been so scary, it might have been comical. I rode fast enough to stay ahead of him but not so fast as to leave him quickly and have him return immediately to his car. He finally did give up on the “chase.” I rode quite a ways further, stopped and waited patiently by the side of the road for him to pass. He seemed not to notice me trying to blend in with the side of the road. Either that or maybe in his mind, all had been forgiven.
A few weeks later on about the same stretch of road I was pedaling along, minding my own business when a car came by with the right front wheel about a foot outside of the fog line. A real wake-up call.
Most of the time however, it was the same old trip out to the airport. There was a convenient convenience store about half way. Almost every time I made the trip, I would stop and have Ding-Dongs and a carton of milk. Sad but true.
That is not to say I was getting fat. I bought some new clothes that spring (I do not want to talk about it and thankfully I do not have pictures) and immediately they started fitting looser. I specifically recall doubling over the waistband about two inches in the back on one of my pairs of pants and “covering” it up with my belt. Like no one was going to notice.
Because it was so far out to the airport and back and because my free place on South Fourth West was not comfortable, I spent many nights on the hide-a-bed couch in the lounge out back of the office. I am thinking it was mostly Friday nights or nights when I did not have a class early the next day.
On some nights, I probably got a ride back to town when the linemen and I would have a chicken dinner at the Double Front. Chad and Bert grew up together in Red Lodge and were roommates in Missoula where they went to the Vo-Tech. They went to class and flew during the day and worked evenings at the airport; fueling airplanes and other linemen tasks. I would usually call in our dinner order ahead of time and always used the name “Jones” rather than spell out Christofferson. For some reason that oftentimes got a chuckle out of them.
I flew a few hours with both of them in 1976. (Jumping ahead a year or so) In early May, Bert and I went out to do some Commercial maneuvers. Before we left the ground on that afternoon, I received the most important lesson of my flying career.
If you get nothing else out of this book, please make note of this; It had been a long day with primary students doing take-offs and landings. Bert and I were strapping into 8877E and I made the comment something to the effect that; “At last I can relax, because I’m with someone who can fly a fucking airplane.” Bert paused for a long moment and said something like; “Yeah, you relax and I’ll be the one who kills you.”
Back
The skydivers were a wonderful bunch. I never did go to see their hanger but a lot of them came up front and liked to hang out around our office. That was cool. It made our office seem like a happening place, which it was. One of the more interesting of them was the pilot, Jay. He had reason to be up front in our office because he was constantly ordering fuel as they were constantly flying loads of jumpers and needed to keep the fuel loads at an optimum (enough gas to fly the load and a bit extra in case there was a problem, but not too much extra because they stuffed their Cessna 180 full of paying skydivers each trip)
Jay also had another side to him. Some thought he was the infamous D.B. Cooper. The person in the early seventies who extorted money and some parachutes out of one of the airlines and then jumped off the airstair of a Boeing 727 somewhere in the northwestern United States.
What struck me about Jay’s response to the undercurrents of rumors is that he neither confirmed nor denied anything said about him. He simply smiled and let imaginations run wild. A brilliant strategy if you wanted people to talk about you and hold you in some sort of curious adulation.
Jay deserved a certain amount of adulation in my humble opinion because I saw him land at city airport one time during a skydiver convention the summer of 1976 after dropping a load of jumpers. He kept the tail of the 180 off the ground until after he turned off the runway. It was a beautiful sight.
A sub-group of the skydivers was nicknamed the Smoke Jumpers.
That name was not from jumping down on fires to put them out. It was from jumping after tiny little fires to get up.
Some of their activities included riding ten-speed bikes up and down the runway late at night or early in the morning when there was no traffic.
A certain skydiver friend told me they liked to time other goings-on around the arrival of the mail plane at three am. This event involved lying in the grass just before the approach end of the runway in use. I guess it was a real rush when the plane came right over the top of them all loud and brightly lit up. (Of course, when I started flying the mail, I came in low and sometimes pulled one of the throttles back on short final to simulate an engine failure.) Evil but fun.
It stuns me from this perspective all that I did at Executive Aviation within the first few weeks of being hired. It must have been one of the side effects of being free. Or, it may have been the application of new methods of doing things that I learned in the Air Force.
It is easier to beg forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.
Act as if you own the place and people will assume that you do.
While I am sure that I had not asked the boss if I could spend nights in the back room, I distinctly remember him saying "NO" when I asked if I could build an apartment above the hanger out back.
Back to school spring quarter
Took Astronomy, Logic and Ecosystem Biology. The Astronomy class was wonderful as I remember having a major ah ha experience having to do with rotation of the planets about the sun and the rotation of the individual planets. The professor was less than thrilled however, when I suggested he could fly on a training flight above the clouds to observe an upcoming "astronomical event" if the weather was bad in the valley.
Logic was good for, well, logical thinking. Joy Toppin was in the class. She was a newscaster on one of the local TV stations and would be my friend Steve’s main squeeze within the next couple of years. The three credit “C” that I got in Ecosystem Biology was memorable only for one piece of information passed along late in the quarter. The TA was saying how it was fine to use snow as a water replacement in the high country with the exception of “red snow” that is, snow that has been colored by small colonies of fungi. When asked why it was not appropriate to eat red snow he simply replied; “Because it’ll give you the shits.”
At this point, I changed my major to pre-med. It was easy to write that sentence. The actual change came about because of a two-year inner dialogue and then finally, a two-hour conversation with an advisor in the Lodge named Marilyn. She was a beautiful woman, a bit more mature than most of the people at the University and one who wanted to see if I was serious about becoming a Doctor.
I was.
A lot of my training in Michigan before getting out of the Air Force was aimed at becoming a doctor. A neighbor told your mom and me along about 1978 that to attain a goal; “One needs to work towards that goal, one step at a time.” I was taking that advice, years before it was given.
I delineated some of my plan during our interview. The "Hot Line" in Oscoda Michigan, outside of Wurtsmith Air Force Base had been one of the first things on my path to becoming a doctor. That included several nights of training, a real-life encounter group and several stints as a sympathetic ear.
A friend and I took a class that Central Michigan University offered that led to EMT certification. The best part of the program was the Saturday we spent in the Emergency room at a local hospital. Bullet holes and broken bones. My friend's wife was working at the hospital over the weekend. She arranged for the doctor that was on duty that weekend to come out to my friend's house the following Saturday for a visit. We talked about a lot of things, money, student loans, schedules, nurses, respect, everything. The young doctor was remarkably open.
There were classes I took to qualify to give respite care. The State of Michigan paid people to provide care for homebound individuals so the parents could go out for dinner and a movie. I used that training once with a young girl with Down's syndrome. We played games, and played games and played games. The parents had a night out. It was a great evening.
Marilyn believed in me. I believed in me too. I worked hard on Plan “A.”
Marilyn assigned a doctor for me to go with on rounds. His name was Dr. Wesley. He was a fine man and we spent a lot of time together. He was incredibly intelligent, generous with his time and extremely compassionate with his patients. We met on the fifth floor of St. Pats between my time at the University and my time out at the airport. He even had me paged once: "Dr. Christofferson, please pick up a white phone. Dr. Christofferson, please pick up a white phone." Until recently, I had not thought of that for years. It had a special ring to it.
We visited a woman suffering from a lung problem (possibly due to a lifetime of smoking). Dr. Wesley talked to her for a while and then stuck a five-inch needle into her back between her ribs and about three inches off her spine. He hooked the end of the needle up to a tube, hooked the tube up to a vacuum bottle and proceeded to empty one of her lungs of a rather large amount of greenish-brown liquid. The woman's spirits picked up considerably after that.
My knees were shaking a bit as we walked down the hall. He explained about the liquid and the prognosis for the woman. No time to catch your breath in a day with an Internist. In the next room, my introduction as a young man who wanted to be a Doctor was acknowledged and we quickly got down to business. After all, folks did not go to the hospital because they felt good and wanted to meet new people.
This patient had cancer and Dr. Wesley was going to take a sample of marrow from his hip. Another huge needle came out. The Doctor pushed the needle into the largest part of the hipbone. I do not recall anyone administering pain medication while we were there. Perhaps, it had been given some time earlier. There was a lot of pain associated with this procedure. A lot of pain.
The groans that were part of the tissue extraction were excruciating for me and I was just “there,” watching and trying to understand exactly what was going on.
Another time Mr. Stevens, who with his wife was taking care of my Grandpa Gjesdal, happened to be bunking with the patient we were about to visit. Mr. Stevens thought we were coming to see him. I think I covered well. Dr. Wesley even gave his records a thorough look-through. Mr. Stevens was happy for all the attention except for he was sick of people “poking around in his privates” and would I please do something about that?
A few years ago, I saw Dr. Wesley on a TV commercial for graceful aging or something like that. They apparently filmed the commercial on the oval at the University.
He looked good. I have an important story about him that I am saving for later in the chapter.
It was good being back in school. Lots of flying too. Steady job at the airport making sales pitches and filing old pay stubs in the quiet times. Working on Plan “B.”
Clyde Fredrickson from Hamilton
One spring weekend “Smooth Ride Clyde” came to town with his biplane. It seems that Clyde had done some advertising in the local newspaper about his venture. Two folks could ride up front while Clyde handled the controls from the back. Open air cockpit.
Because Clyde was using our office as a base, all of the office personnel took free rides on Friday night. I think Mary the secretary and I shared the front hole for a jaunt around the airport.
Saturday dawned calm and clear as any picturesque day one could imagine.
Paying folks thronged to the airport to get their five minutes of excitement. As weekend-assistant-part-time-manager-trainee I did my best to schedule rides. Things started to go to pot within the first hour or so. Gee, Clyde actually wanted to stop and get gas or use the bathroom on occasion.
He really screwed it up when he demanded fifteen minutes to eat some lunch. Some folks went from mildly irritated to downright rude. My inexperience showed through when I tried to stick to the "plan" when it was obvious to everyone else that the "plan" was not going to work out.
It occurred to me while writing this that it was just like when I was a freshman in high school and a friend and I were checking coats at the Senior Ball.
We took people’s coats, handed each of them a ticket and put their coats in a random place. The best part about back then is that I think we left before the party was over and expected those good people to find their own coats.
In spite of my best efforts, Clyde’s weekend in Missoula was a great success. Folks who wanted a ride in an old biplane got their big chance and Clyde made some serious cash.
Gordon Lightfoot
Came to town for a concert that spring. He played in Pullman the night before, jumped in his chartered Lear afterwards and arrived at Missoula about two am.
Once they opened the door, I stood patiently next to the airstair until I got an invitation to join the festivities inside. Mr. Lightfoot was carrying on and complaining about people who insisted on clapping during a performance.
Seems like it was a problem when the clapping reverberated to the stage and was out of phase with the performer’s beat. I promised that I would speak to the people going into the fieldhouse for his next show. That comment earned me a scotch or two. (Not to worry, I had accommodations at the airport that night.)
The consumption of mass quantities of alcohol after landing had more to do with being safely on the ground in Missoula than it had to do with the performance in Washington. The main man had more than a little fear of flying.
It is a good thing he was not with the pilots when they came out to the airport the next day.
The captain nearly fainted when he looked up the valley that he had guided the plane down the night before. They had been on an instrument flight plan, flying by reference to instruments Because the night was so clear and smooth there was a false sense of security.
The path to the runway is delineated by an electronic pair of beams called the localizer and the glide slope. (AKA Instrument Landing System or ILS) The localizer guides the aircraft laterally to the field by causing instrument needles inside the aircraft to deflect left or right when the aircraft is not on the beam. i.e. If the aircraft is left of the beam the needle is off to the right and the pilot is directed to fly “to the needle.” As the aircraft corrects to the center of the localizer (beam) the needle indicates that fact by moving towards the center of the indicator. Similarly, if an aircraft is below the glide slope, the pilot is directed to fly up to the needle to maintain the proper glide path to the airport.
The captain had joked shortly after arrival the previous evening that the localizer needle had acted like a windshield wiper blade. Swinging back and forth across the gauge. “The only time we were on course, “he added laughingly, “was when we were crossing it.”
He got serious after his view up towards Nine-Mile and was not conversational at all. He may have learned an important lesson from the manner in which he had made the arrival the night before.
I know I sure did.
Out to Oregon with James and his brother
If James felt traumatized by his earlier cross-country with me, it did not show. Around the second week of May, he and his older brother (the one who was part owner of the house in which we were living) rode along with Hancock and me on a trip to Oregon. We dropped the brothers off on the east side of the mountains. It was a gravel strip and I did not give the situation much thought when we departed for central Oregon.
Hancock had some friends in Corvallis he wanted to give a tour around the Willamette Valley. We made arrangements about when each of us would use the airplane and where we would hide the key. I planned to hang out with Uncle Bob, Aunt Jeanine and the kids.
That evening I gave brother Bob and his daughters Liz and Christy a ride around the Corvallis-Sweet Home area. The girls were about ten or twelve years old and really seemed to enjoy the ride. I had given them each a piece of sugarless gum (with their father’s approval of course) to help with ear pressure equalization. I recall the girls sitting cross-legged on the back seat seeming happy as can be. We spent the night at their home in Philomath watching slide shows of the kids growing up.
The next day was hot. By the time we repositioned to eastern Oregon to pick up James and his brother it was quite hot. James took this picture as we taxied in to pick them up.
Ground school is in order. Density altitude is that altitude used to compute aircraft performance. Local pressure altitude, compensated for temperature variations equals density altitude. Hot air is less dense (hot air rises) and the higher the temperature, the higher the density altitude.
Among the limiting factors at the gravel strip east of the mountains was the high-density altitude caused by the high temperature. In addition, Hancock and I were trim; James and his brother were not. Finally, we were about to depart from a gravel strip which would offer more rolling resistance and unevenness not found on the typical asphalt runway.
From this perspective, it seems that I had accounted for all of the factors before we started the take-off roll. A large part of training is about aircraft performance. I was good with arithmetic and figured that we were within the proper parameters. It did not help that I had an instructor along. I was under the impression that if I were about to do something stupid the instructor would take over and save the day. Again, from this perspective my instructor was only a few years older and had only a few hundred more hours. Not much of a difference.
None of this shit concerned me until we were half-way down the runway. Then it all concerned me. Hot, miserably hot. Gravel pinging off the fuselage. We were not accelerating as we did only the day before in Missoula. Ahead of us, off the airport property were some trees (known in performance parlance as obstructions).
Towards the end of the runway, Hancock may have pulled back on the yoke on his side to get us airborne. Landing gear up and away we went.
I told my outfitter buddy Don on the way down to Stone Hill in 1988 that sometimes pilots escaped by the skin of their teeth and no one knows the better. That is, if someone almost has an accident in a car or a truck there are probably witnesses. People are familiar with dangerous situations in cars and trucks as most people are drivers. In airplanes, things are a bit different. “Gosh Brian, thanks for the good view of that bird’s nest in that tall tree back there at the end of the runway at Sunburst.” It was not that bad, but you understand what I am talking about. Once we had the gear up everything changed. Airflow into the cabin cooled things off quickly. No gravel noises. The focus shifted from the near term goal of getting underway to the goal of getting back to Missoula and drinking some beer.
One of the Most Beautiful Sights I Have Enjoyed in my Life
A lot of this book is about reliving the past. I wish I could go back and replay that trip out of Eastern Oregon. To gain altitude we slipped over a ridge and into the crater that held Crater Lake. It was beautiful beyond belief.
Slipping over that ridge was a longer story.
I knew the numbers on accidents during training flights. It was important not to become one of the statistics. Ground school went a long ways in preventing accidents. The instructor talked about what the lesson was going to be for the day, which afforded the student a chance to ask questions about certain maneuvers in the lesson. Specific procedures were briefed at this stage, nothing left to chance.
I was glad Hancock was along. If he had not been there to suggest otherwise, I would have climbed in relative safety over the airport and then headed on course. As it was, we were close to the terrain at times. We had not briefed the departure procedure. Once we were airborne, the plane was climbing well. Hancock pointed over towards the lake, indicating that we ought to do our climb there.
It seemed a bit sketchy as far as "what if" margins go. (Meaning, "what if" the engine quit at any particular moment on the flight.) I recall seeing the ground clearly, from not too far away. This was mere minutes after our departure. I was still in the throes of post adrenalin euphoria. My trusted instructor was pointing again, up and through an opening in the trees. To be open and honest; this may not have been the safest thing to do with two trusting passengers in back. (Probably illegal as hell too, but gawwwwwwd was it fun.) I think, though, if the engine had failed catastrophically we would have been able to make a survivable forced landing.
Again, from this perspective, it was an interesting time in my training. If I could somehow go back with my 20,000 hours of flight experience, I would have been able to make an instantaneous decision about the relative safety of what we were about to do. At that point in my "career," however, I had less than 100 hours of flight time, slightly more than two weeks on the job as Captain.
I would have had no problem saying no. Hancock was just so darned confident. I trusted him. It was clear that the lesson for the day was not just about flying but also about being an instructor.
Past the trees, the view opened up to the blue expanse of the lake and the clear blue sky. It literally took my breath away. From the aspect of being down low, where missing a turn meant crashing into the rocks, to one of being above it all. I felt "special" again.
Blessed beyond belief.
The Cherokee Arrow was climbing well; the walls of the crater were becoming part of the backdrop and less of the foreground. I continued the circuit on around, a victory lap of sorts. I felt good, really good.
This was a random shot of Crater Lake from an old shoebox at my mom's place.
Once clear of the lake and on course, Hancock had me use the hood to practice flying only by reference to the flight instruments. The hood is a view-limiting device that restricts vision outside of the aircraft. James and his brother were more concerned about the hood than the danger I had exposed them to on the departure from the eastern Oregon airport. James took this photo.
That trip might have been a graduation gift of sorts to James. He headed out to Australia for a teaching job there. My friend Tricia from a few years earlier did the same thing. Apparently, it worked out well for her. James' plan was to gain experience, return to the states and get a good job in Montana.
Going to Denver
Along about the first part of June there was another cross-country with Hancock. This time there were two other students along. One of us would fly a leg, we would stop for gas and someone else would fly the next leg. It worked perfectly, no information overload.
The destination was Denver. I talked regularly with Ludi and knew she would be home with her folks in Sterling. I remember thinking about calling her the night before we departed to make plans for the weekend. I was tired though, and saved the effort by saying to myself that I would “surprise” her.
The trip down to Denver worked out great. If someone else were flying, I would sit in the back and learn from their mistakes. That was a great situation. In January of ’05, I trained in the Beech 1900 in much the same fashion.
I called Ludi’s place in Sterling shortly after landing. Her mom answered the phone and was stressed to tell me that Ludi was out of town. Seems she had gone on a trip somewhere with somebody. It was a bit of a shock.
I called my old friends Craig and Brownie. They too had gone to school in Denver while in the service and had chosen to go back and live there after separating from the USAF.
It worked out well.
I got a hero’s welcome of sorts and was invited to spend the weekend at their house. Hancock had not made plans and joined us. We went up to the Red Rocks State Park and looked around a bit. There were concerts held there, it was a magical place.
Standing at the back of the seating area at Red Rocks it struck me that it would be fun to trot down to the stage via the stone seats. I moved towards the stage in a kind of a disjointed stumble. Hancock went smoking by me in perfect stride. That caught me off-guard.
Back at Craig and Brownie’s place, someone pulled out a joint and lit up. Hancock would have none of it. I was impressed by that.
The next day Hancock made other arrangements for the rest of the weekend.
Towards the end of my visit with Brownie and Craig, we headed out to the Denver Zoo and had a great time hanging out. Our group of friends was scheduled to meet outside the Zoo in only twenty-five months. Stopped by the airport where I was to give them a ride around the Denver area but the other guys on the trip did not leave the key to the airplane in the proscribed location.
I have a sense that my hero’s welcome was wearing off. I had probably let it be known that staying with them was my second choice. (Each time I called Ludi’s mom, she seemed a bit more desperate.) I suspect that the next day either Brownie or Craig gave me a ride to the airport and that was that.
The trip back to Montana was shocking in that I got lost going up the wrong canyon in Wyoming. Hancock pissed me off when he showed the other commercial students in back how badly I had screwed up. From this vantage point, I am glad he did that. It made me want never to screw up in the same fashion ever again.
Back to the routine in Missoula. Lots of flying. Sometimes twice a day. I flew quite a bit with Hancock and on occasion with another instructor by the name of Ray. Phase checks with Jim. I did well.
I stopped by St. Patrick’s Hospital about once a week to apply for a job. The plan was to spend some time in the hospital learning about how things actually worked there. The gal in personnel got to know me and would say something like; “Sorry, Brian, nothing for you” as I walked through the door.
On June 16, I rode along on a trip to Great Falls in a Beech Baron. The mission was to return some ladies of the night to their homes on the east side.
On the return trip, I got to fly. Only my second experience in a twin-engined airplane.
It was a great time. The Baron was a powerful airplane, fast and solidly built. It was green and white and the engines had scoops on top signifying that they were the two-hundred and sixty-five horsepower variety.
Approaching Missoula, the tower assigned a straight-in approach for runway 25, straight into the sun. The pilot I was flying with glanced over at me, shrugged his shoulders and took the controls at that point. Frankly, I was glad he did. I had done a considerable amount of flying around Missoula by that time but had not seen anything like what I saw on the ride down final to the assigned runway that day. The view was totally obscured by the glare of the sun. We could barely make out the approach end of the strip. From the tower’s perspective it all made sense. The captain made a fine landing. It was no big deal. I liked the feel of a twin-engined airplane.
Autumn, daughter of my boss's wife Marion came to town for a six-week visit with her mom and step-dad. Apparently, Jim had arranged for her to ride up from Kansas City in one of the company trainers. Looking back, I am a bit irritated that Jim did not ask me to do the flight. I was out of school for the summer after all. Must have been because I was indispensable as an assistant, part-time, weekend and evening manager trainee. Jim chose one of our best customers instead. Dick was his name. He probably got a commercial flight to Vero Beach Florida where Piper trainers were born. He likely then flew the brand-new Cherokee to Missouri to rendezvous with Autumn, then up to Missoula.
The mechanics complained that Dick had spit tobacco juice out the side window of the Cherokee and it flowed all the way to the tip of the tail, staining the new paint.
My first sight of Autumn was as she strolled hurriedly through the office shortly after arrival. Strikingly beautiful, a city girl by all appearances and the scent was blood warmingly delicious.
You may hear me rant from time to time about the Amway line of bullshit and Amway products in the future, but for now let me just say that this young woman wore an Amway fragrance that I had not enjoyed before or since. The specific name escapes me. I am convinced that each fragrance smells just a bit different on every woman who wears it.
On June 21 Autumn and I flew up to Kalispell and landed at Kalispell City Airport. What a difference four months made. The weather was beautiful. We walked across 93 to the Outlaw Inn for a coke. It is interesting that the major landmark I noticed on the way north was the radar site on top of Blacktail Mountain. On the way back we flew by the repeater repeater site near Mt. Aeneas and down along both sides of the Swan Range on the way to Missoula. Seems like I saw the runway at Meadow Creek and mentally tagged it as a place to explore a bit more closely at some point in the future.
A few days later, I rode along with Sanderson on a trip to Denver. We were in a Cessna 421 and I was in Heaven. The mission was to get some of the primo car sales representatives to the auction in Colorado and back. I did not get a lot of stick time because I was not smooth and the boys in the back demanded smoothness.
The sales representatives were drinking beer on the way back to Missoula and Sanderson dipped the wings a time or two when one of the boys was using the relief tube, other than that, he was rock solid. I watched everything he did and quizzed him mercilessly. He was my idol.
One of the things about Sanderson's flying that stuck with me for years was that upon each landing he made while I was with him he did not use the brakes a great deal. After landing in Missoula he leaned over and said; (imagine the best John Wayne voice here) “You might need those brakes someday.”
Twenty years later and I was flying the night mail to Billings via Helena. Sanderson was living in Idaho Falls, flying a Cessna Caravan in southern Idaho for the same company. Imagine my pleasure one night when he showed up in Helena needing a ride to Billings.
I had been practicing the flying habits I gleaned from that trip to Denver. (As well as other habits gleaned from other fine pilots, of course.) I had not seen Sanderson for twenty years but recognized him right away. To him I was probably one of many kids he helped along the way.