Ketzer Racing Team

[smittythewelder]

You sure are right about Harleys, and lots of other prime vehicles, having been cheap forty five and fifty years ago. The trouble was, once we got 'em cheap and had fun with 'em, we SOLD them. Sold them cheap. Walk around any summer weekend carshow/cruise anywhere in the country and listen to the old men: "Oh man, I HAD one of those! It was mint! Never shoulda sold it! Worth eighty grand today, just the way it was!" I have all too many such stories. One was about the very nice 1960 Duo-Glide, bought for $850 from a machinist who had blueprinted the engine. Had some good times on that big tub . . . once I managed to get it started. The '60 panhead was among the first of the Harleys to have a lot of compression, and one of the last to be kick-start-only! It had the stock ignition and carb, and was cold-blooded. Good thing I was young!

[smittythewelder]

Where I live now turns out to be a fairly good place to watch airplanes fly over. It's fifteen miles from any controlled airspace and seems to be a corridor for people going from here to there with private aircraft. Also, the Boeing flying club sends their students out here to practice, so there's freguently a 150 overhead doing stall approaches and such. Not too long ago I heard a good noise and looked up to see a B-17 slowly making its way south from some event, shortly followed by a B-24, neither of which I had ever seen in the air.

Two days ago I was standing out on the property with a much younger fella when we heard a good sound and looked up to see, wonder of wonders, a P-51 passing by. We simultaneously exclaimed, "P-51!!," and then stood silently watching an listening as it passed out of sight and earshot. My friend said, "What a good sound those engines make!" Pulling the rank of age, I said, "That airplane is owned by somebody who has to be pretty careful with his valuable old machine, and that engine was just loafing. And even when the P-51s were new, 45" manifold pressure was take-off power, and the 5-minute combat emergency maximum was about 60" MP. To hear the REALLY good sounds from those engines, you had to have been standing on the front straight at Seafair in the Sixties or Seventies, when six or seven Unlimited hydros, all on the nitrous and making 130 inches, made their run for the first turn." That was a sound and a sight so good that I think if I had expired on the spot it would have been with no regrets. I feel bad for all the young guys today who'll never get to experience some of the great days of piston engines. What old guy, having lived with sounds like the glorious roar of a Lockheed Constellation with four shorty-stack Wright radials each making 2500 horses of take-off power, could be happy in a world of Tesla cars and gas turbine Unlimited hydros? At least we still have Top Fuelers. And Harley-Davidsons.

Actually, there's still one place you can go hear the sound of big round engines and V-12s running flat-out. The Reno Air Races. If you have never attended this event, see it while you're still able.

[Ketzer]

Yeah, Smitty, there’s nothing like that sound. I was lucky enough to land a composite structures course in Reno (taught by a lady, structural engineer type, who worked on the Lear Fan). The course wrapped up a few days before the races, and I had to get back to work. While I didn’t see the races, I did go out after class to watch some testing and trials.

In Fairbanks, hearing a DC-6 takeoff and eat up three quarters of the runway in ground effect before easing into the sky was like hearing a battalion of Banditos hitting town on Harleys. Still, there’s something to be said for touching the start button on a Falcon 10 and then having that finger ready on the abort switch as it—BooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!—sends the interstage turbine temperature toward the red, but stops just short of it (OOOOOOOOOO!), like some giant Casper back there, and then, “Starting #2.”

[Master Oil Racing Team]

You could also have heard that sound of six two twelve of them spaced with about four feet in between mounted on the frame of diesel trucks in the sixties and seventies. The primary power source for the powerful triplex pumps used in fracing (yes fracing.....not fracking....which sounds obscene), were Allisons, Merlin and Rolls Royce engines from WWII. They had the power to push the triplex pumps up to 10,000 psi. The pumps had to be small bore in big castings to be able to handle the pressure, hence multiple pumps and powerplants to put out enough volume for a high pressure high volume frac. The pumps were all manifolded together with a single large high pressure pipe to the well head. Everything was precisely monitored through a single primary control, but each truck had its own operator at the controls. Early days were hand signals. Later there came headsets. If the sand being pumped at a very high rate did what is called a "screen out" (meaning the sand packed off} psi immediately jumped through the roof and pumps had to be shut down. All pumps had safety pop off valves to relieve pressure and they were basically valves with nails used for shear pins. The sound of a good successful frac job was a half dozen or more of these engines running at high speed and it was a very unique sound. For a lot the workers, they just took it as part of their job, and everyone had to wear ear protection. After a couple of hours of pumping it could get old, but today it is a nostalgic sound of the past.

[Ketzer]

Island Queen: During the 80s, Dad went through several motorhomes, each one larger than the last—fix it up, trade it off. He, Mom and sometimes Uncle Ed vacationed in the Carolinas and along the Gulf Coast into Florida, always with a .45 semi-automatic under the driver’s seat as life was getting dicey, especially in southern Florida, but their favorite spot was around Apalachicola on the panhandle. He also bought an older houseboat that he kept docked at Mountain Harbor on Lake Ouachita. The houseboat easily slept eight and was the venue for many a party, one of which he later gave for my buddies from Central Flying Service who arrived with girlfriends and ski-boats so that we traversed the lake like an carrier convoy. I tried repeatedly to tumble up and barefoot ski behind a Mastercraft boat, and while I tumbled up okay and skidded successfully on my back and butt, feet forward, at 45 mph, I fell on my face every time I tried to plant my feet and never did get up. The abuse my body suffered wasn’t appreciated until the following day, at which time I understood that recovering from such activity wasn’t as easy at 38 as it was in my 20s. Dad was supposed to be the Captain and sober chaperone for that party, but was too sick when the day arrived. Adamant that the show must go on, he tapped Uncle Ed for the job. Except for a badly gashed foot, courtesy of some fool’s broken bottle (not one of our fools) that required a drive to Hot Springs and several stitches, the party was free of disasters. Mostly, though, trips on the Island Queen were sober, leisurely crawls around Lake Ouachita to enjoy nature and anchor in a remote bay to BBQ. Mom and the Island Queen before we got it all cleaned up.

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While I was still in Hot Springs with Doc Fowler, Dad decided what we needed to do was rescue Ford Falcons and Rancheros from junk yards, and we did put several back on the road. Being an old Ford mechanic, Uncle Ed was in the middle of it, and I took over blowing paint. We built up a ’62 sedan for my brother Jerry’s daughter (being embarrassed with the ride, she quickly traded it), and a ’63 Falcon Ranchero—straight six, three on the tree, no seat belts, steel dash—that ended up with my son when he graduated from high school, and he survived the experience. The queen of the fleet was a ’57 Ranchero, but it was gone in a hurry—someone made Dad an offer he couldn’t refuse. With big brother, Jerry, and a few Falcons:

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About blowing paint, while I painted parts and pieces on airplanes, I had never done a complete paint job until a local boys ranch with a F-9 Panther on static display called Futrell’s asking for a bid. Dad declined the job, but suggested they call Hangar One, so I ended up doing it on the weekends. The prep work was a real mother and masking outside was no fun, but the paint scheme was easy; enough of the existing lines remained that they were easily recaptured. Dad came out to drag hoses when I sprayed, a task I did for him a hundred times, and despite the occasional pine needle or bug that had to be plucked from the paint, it turned out pretty good. And, man, the $300 sure came in handy! Wrapping it up: Dad rolling hoses and me in the cockpit.

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After five years with Doc Fowler, I was ready to move on and took a job up in Little Rock with Central Flying Service, discussed a couple pages back in this thread. Central provided an opportunity to be trained and work on turbine powered aircraft, from King Airs and business jets to MD-80s and 737s. But on the nightshift anything and anyone could drop in on us. One night the astronaut Gene Cernan taxied up to the hangar in a Cessna 421 suffering the bang-bangs (bad magneto). When we had him fixed up, Cernan joked about paying his bill with Moon rocks. One of the mechanics replied, “Gee, I don’t know, Mr. Cernan…we got a lot of rocks in Arkansas.” At night also came the literal “fly-by-night” cargo operators in Piper Navahos, Beech 18s and DC-3s who had no intention of getting work performed at Central until the FAA snuck out and hung an un-airworthy tag on their airplane. Anyway, wrapping up a Lear 35 at Central:

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After the mid-80s, Dad’s health, along with his vision, began to fail. He made many trips to the VA Hospital in Little Rock, and every time he went, he saw a different doctor, and each one came up with a different diagnosis and prescribed different drugs while failing to remove him from the existing drugs. He was taking pills to counteract pills, to counteract pills, and none of them did any good. At last a doctor, dumfounded by all the drugs, removed him from everything, admitted him to the hospital, ran a battery of tests, and determined he had leukemia. It took the VA two years to come up with the correct diagnosis.

The VA hospital was not a pleasant place: it was located in a bad part of town and had such poor security that people came in off the streets to roam the halls, enter rooms, rifle through patient’s belongings, and take whatever they wanted. Many of the painful tests, spinal taps and the like, were performed by interns and new nurses, the veterans serving as Guinea pigs. While it made me angry, Dad never complained, had faith in the VA, and said they were doing the best they could with what they had. I didn’t think so, and still don’t. It was post-Vietnam; America was between wars and had little regard for its Veterans. For all the current political bluster about taking care of our veterans, just watch what happens when we leave Afghanistan. Today, the VA fiasco is a scandal and fills the news; tomorrow, such poor treatment won’t even make the back pages. Dad was a combat, Purple Heart, prisoner of war veteran; I can only imagine how veterans with fewer points were treated.

Even so, he had good days along with the bad and lived with leukemia for many years. It never stopped him. Dad continued working a full week, still worked in his shop, still went out on the Island Queen. Not only that, he took in another major project, an old Chris Craft cabin cruiser that he got for $150 and a chainsaw. The boat was half-rotten, and could only serve as a template to build a new one, but that’s all he needed. Uncle Ed and I went with him to haul the Chris Craft back to the shop; we glanced at each other and raised our eyebrows when we saw it. Uncle Ed wasn’t doing too good himself. He had a lung removed and had a heart condition (Uncle Ed never stopped, either). Vernon Ashley was doing okay and often stopped by. Although very poor at woodwork, I helped on the Chris Craft when I was around, and certainly when Dad was up in the shop on one of his good days. I removed all the instruments and took them to a buddy, Bill, at Central Flying Service who worked in the instrument shop. Bill rebuilt the instruments and repainted the faces, and in exchange, I performed an annual inspection on his Stinson. Here’s a picture of the Chris Craft the day we got it and a work-in-progress picture.

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[Bill Van Steenwyk]

Steve:

I may have a solution to the question about the builder of your Hydro, STYX TRIX:

As you, and some of the other readers of BRF know, Stan "Butch" Leavendusky, has had a rough several years with various health problems. As friends for 40+ years, I had been wanting to visit him since his hospital stay back in December, but like all good intentions, different things had interfered with the 380 mile trip to Little Rock. After being notified by his wife that he was having some further problems, I just decided that most things can be put off for awhile, except that type friendship, so made the trip down to see him and just got back about 10:15 this evening.

While there I told him about your thread on BRF, but due to some computer problems that they were having, was unable to get to the site to show him what had been posted about your family. I am sure he will look at it in the next several days when they get the computer up and running again. We were talking about the mystery you had mentioned as to the origin of the boat, and he said that it was surely his Hydro that he had built when he made the venture into Hydro's for a short period during that time frame. He either sold the boat outright, or traded it for something to your Dad, and after looking at the photos again after I got home I am in agreement with what he said as I was there for a time when the boat was being constructed, and also when it was rigged out and painted for the first time. The boat was built by Richard Krier from measurements taken from a Butts Hydro that was owned by Tom Berry. Rich also built another one at the same time, and possibly John Dortch Jr. was the customer for that one. Both were built in the basement of one of Rich's brothers over a winter.

Butch made the comment that he never thought a Hydro would be so hard to drive, as he was upside down and out the side of it several times while he owned it, so he decided to concentrate on just Runabouts which he had been, and continued to be quite successful with. Looks like your Dad was not able to tame it for you either. As you may know the Krier family is famous for their Runabouts, and not really for their Hydro's, but they have been very successful in construction of them as they built 3 boats for me that I won a National Championship with, along with most of the records for the class, and a Hall of Champions induction. Also after I quit driving, they built a 125 Hydro for myself and Todd Brinkman that Todd's son, Tim, won both a National and World UIM Championship with in 2002. So you probably had one of the very first Krier Hydroplanes built for anyone outside the family. If I am not mistaken, they built one or so for another Krier brother who did not race very long.

Hopefully with this information the mystery of where it came from, and the builder, is solved. One less thing to ponder over.


ADD: Also had a thought about the builder of "Slim Chance". Your Dad knew Tim Chance, and Tim Built some boats during this time frame, and given your Dad's penchant for naming boats for something familiar, it could be something he built, although its hard to be sure without asking him. (Tim)

[Ketzer]

Thanks for the info, Bill Van. So, according to Butch Leavendusky, I was again in a boat prone to flip! Guess I wasn't as bad as I thought. Well, "Styx Tryx" was fast on the straights, but dicey in the turns, for sure. Great info about the building of that boat, and I think you're correct about "Slim Chance," too, i.e., a Tim Chance boat. Very sorry to hear Butch is having health problems, and here's wishing him better days ahead. The next time you talk to him, give Butch best regards from the remnants of the Ketzer Racing Team.

[Ketzer]

Steel Magnolia: About the time I was heading north to Alaska for a job with the Feds, a job that Dad encouraged me, indeed prodded me to apply for, he was swapping the “Island Queen” for a steel hulled cabin cruiser that he appropriately named “Steel Magnolia.” He rented a slip at a new island of boat docks under construction at Brady Mountain on Lake Ouachita. Once the dock was completed, he and Uncle Ed went to work on their portion of it, installed a gated, lattice fence, lights, overhead fan, storage areas, deck furniture and the like. I spent a good portion of my first two years with the FAA down in Oklahoma City going through training while Vicki remained in Fairbanks to hold the fort down and pursue her MBA. On most Fridays after class, I packed up the rental car and headed to Hot Springs to visit the folks and do what I could around the house to help out: mowed lawns, cleaned gutters, painted and the like. Dad and I made trips to the boat dock to watch the ongoing construction. At last finished, he moved the “Steel Magnolia” into position and the floating second home was completed. He and Mom spent many a weekend out there, as did Uncle Ed with his family.

Dad’s health was up and down, good days and bad, with frequent trips to the VA hospital in Little Rock. With all that, and being half-blind, he and Mom—she being the official navigator and reader of road signs, as he could no longer see them—drove the motorhome out to Las Vegas to visit his grandson who was in the Air Force. He talked about driving up to Alaska in the motorhome, but didn’t like it when I suggested he take Charlie or Uncle Ed along to help out. Dad made it clear that he did not require any help.

In January of 1993 during my third year with the FAA, I was selected as a team member for the recertification of Air France’s aircraft repair station in, natch, Paris, France. The FAA certifies foreign repair stations in order to work on U.S. registered aircraft, and such repair stations are a feather in the cap for those countries as the United States, at least at that time, led the world in aviation (and space and medicine and science and technology). Foreign aviation regulations, even China’s, are patterned after ours, and the lingua franca for air traffic controllers worldwide is English…not French, Chinese, Russian, Spanish or Pashto, but English. Indeed, many foreign air traffic controllers are trained in Oklahoma City. Those foreign repair stations require recertification by the FAA every couple years, and the company, in this case Air France, pays the U.S. Government a chunk of change to do it. An IFO (FAA International Field Office), of which we have several around the world from Singapore to Frankfurt, does the recert, but those guys are frequently backed up and begging for help; thus, inspectors from field offices in the U.S. are asked to volunteer. So, I, from a Podunk field office in Fairbanks, Alaska, headed off to Paris, France. Now, I wasn’t totally ignorant of Air France, as I had geographic responsibility for major carriers that flew into Fairbanks, including Delta, Northwest and Air France’s 747 cargo planes that made a fuel stop before hopping over to Japan.

In order to save U.S. taxpayers as much money as possible, FAA inspectors moving around the world on business are required to travel first class, i.e., on the jump seat, doing what they call an “En Route Inspection.” Talk to any upper-level FAA muckety-muck, and they will tell you the FAA does not use air carriers for transportation, that they are conducting a required inspection. However, they will not tell you such inspections are often created to move Inspector X from point A to point B…and that’s really not a bad thing. Mechanical failures aside, many aircraft accidents probably would not have happened had an inspector been sitting on the jump seat, not that they know more about flying than the company pilots—they don’t—but because with FAA onboard, the pilots are paying strict attention and doing everything by the book. Two examples where accidents might have been averted: the Colgan accident near Buffalo, and the Asiana flight that landed short in San Francisco.

The jump seat hierarchy goes like this: The FAA can bump deadheading company crewmembers; the NTSB can bump the FAA; Secrete Service can bump the NTSB. If you see someone in a suit heading into the cockpit with the crew, no worries, it’s either FAA, NTSB or Secret Service (deadheading airline pilots are required to wear their uniforms). So I scheduled en route inspections and reserved jump seats from Fairbanks to Seattle; Seattle to Atlanta, with an overnight there; and then Atlanta to Paris. Those were the best laid plans. Things went awry in Seattle, though, when the United 747 crew discovered two inoperative items that together grounded the aircraft. Every air carrier aircraft has a Minimum Equipment List (MEL), that allows them to fly with certain items inoperative, but there are caveats: You may fly with X inop if Y is operative; or Y inop if X is operative, but you may not fly if both X and Y are Tango Uniform. I hung with the crew and talked to the mechanics for a couple hours, but they had to have parts flown in (don’t know why they couldn’t get them in Seattle of all places), so I decided get out of Dodge and went to check the boards for a flight east. Walking through the gate area where the passengers sat getting grouchy—and Eileen might appreciate this—I overheard a passenger say, “A flight attendant told me it’s no big deal, but there’s some big FAA dude onboard, so they’ve gotta fix it.” That’s not only fair, but standard operating procedure: blame the Feds.

The best case scenario for an en route inspection is to arrive early for the first flight of the day, do the walk around with the first officer, inspect the exterior, observe the ramp rats, talk to the mechanic if one is around, then go inside and talk to the flight attendants, inspect their Flight Attendant Manuals for currency, inspect the cabin, the airworthiness certificate and registration, the aircraft logbook, the MEL, look at the crew’s pilot and medical certificates, and make apologies to the captain (so you’ll be sure to get a free lunch). You do not, as an FAA Inspector, get in their way or slow them down; they’re on a tight schedule and it must not be disrupted unnecessarily. If you ground their airplane, buddy, you better be right, or all hell will come down on you, as it tumbles their schedule and costs a fortune, a fortune the FAA will be forced to reimburse if you were in the wrong. Best case scenarios aside, you walk up to the counter, show your credentials, ask if the jump seat is available (no NTSB or Secret Service), get on with the crew, exchange credentials with them, talk to the lead flight attendant, flip through the logbook, and then you’re strapping in and testing your oxygen mask and headset: off to the races, V2 and rotate. And that’s how I ended up on a Delta flight to Cincinnati, which was at least in the right direction.

Walking down the concourse in Cincinnati, I passed a gate announcing a Delta non-stop flight to Paris that was leaving in 45 minutes. It was early evening, and I was tired (one may not sleep on the flight deck), but I checked and the jump seat was vacant, so it was strapping in, testing the oxygen mask and headset: V2 and rotate. That was on a 767 and what a great flight deck, not quite the Starship Enterprise, but close, seats like lounge chairs surrounded by picture windows: neat stuff. By the time I got to my hotel room in Paris, I was ragged out but too buzzed to sleep. Needing to adjust the internal clock, I forced myself to sleep around midnight. At 0300 the phone rang. It was my Aunt Rebecca in Arkansas. My father had passed away.

Trying to get my head screwed on, I spent the day walking around Paris, and then the following morning went to the airport, checked the boards, and caught an American DC-10 direct to Dallas.

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[smittythewelder]

Steve, you're about to get to serious/sad stuff, your dad's passing, so before you do I'll interject my little jumpseat story.

I think my memory of this is not too far off, so I'll state as fact that in about 1958, President Eisenhower appointed as head of the FAA one Elwood P. Quesada. Quesada was something of a pioneer aviator, who had been part of a crew that set an endurance record in the Thirties with some very early mid-air refueling. At his appointment to the FAA job he was a retired Army Air Corps general, who had evidently taken going by the book to heart. Very quickly he made himself the most hated man, running the most hated agency, among the ranks of airline pilots.

Before Quesada, generally speaking the airliner captain was king of his realm, at least once his realm was airborne, and the tenor of the operation followed the personality of the captain. Airlines tended to have their own personalities, too. Pan Am was noted, at least in earlier days, for rather imperious captains who did all of the flying themselves, and expected a measure of truckling from mere co-pilots and navigators. Captains for other outfits were usually less grand, and in my dad's company, Pacific Northern Airlines, the biggest carrier to and within the Alaska Territory, captains generally split the flying duties with co-pilots, letting them get plenty of landings and other practice. Now, Quesada didn't really change any of this. But before he came along, some of the the other aspects of flying, from the aircrews' standpoint, were optional and tended to considerable informality. Cartoons circulated through the flying community featuring such scenes as compliant stews sitting on pilots' laps during the flight were overdone but funny because they were not entirely without basis. Airline pilots in those golden years of the business (1950s) were still esteemed by the public, and nearly any captain did a little basking in this glow by putting on his uniform jacket and hat and leaving the co-pilot running things while he took a slow stroll back through the cabin, yakking with the stews, schmoozing with passengers and "showing the flag" while on the way to his goal, the men's room. Sometimes a passenger or two would be invited to come up front and have a close-up look at the flight deck and marvel at all of the gauges and such. Most passengers liked all of this, and assumed that the captain had the judgment to know when the airplane was safe with just the co-pilot in the cockpit. And they were right about that. Almost always.

"Sonofabitch" Quesada, put an end to the optionality and informality of the good old days of airliner operation. Pilots were to go by the book, stay at the controls, and pay attention to flying and only to flying. No more guests in the cockpit, no more "showing the flag." A captain was a hired hand, not a Hollywood star or a host for cockpit tours. And when you turned sixty, you were out. The glory was gone, and veteran flyers hated the change. In retrospect, Quesada was probably right. Planes had carried two or three dozen passengers, but soon they would be carrying hundreds, and the skies would have more and more traffic. An insistence on full-time professionalism within tight bounds was probably inevitable. But it went down hard at the time.

Sorry, Steve, that turned out to be a long preamble to my little personal experience of what flying was in the pre-Quesada days. We were living in Seattle at the time, but decided to take a family trip back to visit friends in Anchorage, where we had lived for seven years. The trip north coincided with one of Dad's scheduled flights, so on a beautiful summer morning in 1957, Mom and us three kids joined the other passengers walking out on the ramp to the huge Lockheed Constellation, its huge engines under shiny aluminum nacelles streaked by hot exhaust gases and occasionally dripping oil from the "externally-lubricated Wright" 3350 cubic inch radials. Oh, air travel was fun then! Today passengers don't walk up to a plane, they are herded directly from the terminal to the airplane cabin down a fully enclosed cattle chute, very antiseptic and safe, but then the airplanes of the jet age are so boring, just high-efficiency appliances, that maybe it doesn't matter.

Anyway, as airline employee family members we were on a standby basis for whatever seats had gone unsold, which happily enough for us were often seats in first-class. A Connie generally had just two rows of first-class seats, total of eight, just aft of the cockpit door and ahead of the wing and engines. The two rows faced each other, so that if you were in the first row and had one of the window seats you had an awesome view looking aft at the whole leading edge and the front of both engines on your side. I won't go into a long description of engine start-up, taxiing to the runway, engine run-up, and take off (though I love to tell about it, as the thing was repeatedly engraved in my soul when I was young, and certainly led to my avid interest in mechanicalia).

Up in the air, headed north, Pacific Northern Airlines "Flagliner" (all the airlines had goofy names for their flights then) Flight Three bound for Anchorage with a stop in Juneau was that day the airplane ride of a lifetime. Because the weather was perfect all the way, and because there wasn't a lot of traffic, Dad got clearance to fly the trip down low, maybe 6000 feet (I lost him a couple of years ago or I'd ask). We were over the heavily wooded islands of the Inside Passage most of the way, a glorious sight, with a fishing boat or other craft here and there to add interest over the five and a half hour trip.

I went into all of that on the changes in flying wrought by FAA Admin Quesada just months after this trip to make clear my personal good luck in what happened next. We're cruising along, maybe 220 knots, my nose pressed against the window, when I get a tap on the shoulder. It was the co-pilot, whom I knew just enough to recognize (PNA was a small company, and everybody knew everybody, and since they had almost all lived in Anchorage and started and raised young families there from 1946 to at least 1953, families knew families). "Phil, your dad wants you to come on up front." Minutes later I was strapped onto the jumpseat, a position of glory not even available in Heaven, to my thinking. When the rules changed shortly thereafter, this could not have been done, but at eleven I got to see the whole operation as the Connie approached Juneau (this could be a tricky approach, but we had perfect weather), did the ground turnaround, and took off. I've told you about the ten thousand take-off horsepower of those shorty-stack engines; oh lordy, what a sound, what a sight from the jumpseat!

But the best was yet to come. Back at cruising altitude and the co-pilot gets out of his seat and says, "Come on up and sit here, Phil." Oh! My! As a pilot's kid (and my mother had worked for the Weather Bureau during the war), I had absorbed a little bit of actual knowledge about flying and weather, about control surfaces, and the basic guages. But with the multiplicity of gauges and switches and throttles, many of these multiplied by four, it took a long time to identify anything that was somewhat recognizable to me. So here's the part that would send the modern bureaucrats into a tizzy. After I was in the right seat for a while, Dad in the left seat says, "Here, take the yoke and try flying it. See if you can steer around that little cloud there." I'm eleven years old, the kid with the stick. Of course, Dad's there coordinating my "steering" with the rudder pedals, and ready to take over if I start doing something stupid. But I'm pretty cautious and easy with machinery by nature, so I just eased the Connie around the cloud with no jerkiness or other drama, and the passengers would never have detected a thing. After that few minutes of somewhat stunned delight, I was put back in the jumpseat, then sent back to the cabin before we started letting down for Anchorage. And I guess I've never recovered. I have lousy eyesight, therefore glasses with a lot of correction, therefore could never fly commercially myself. But I did it once.

[Ketzer]

Great flying memories, Smitty. Those were simpler times, for certain, and we were fortunate to experience them. Pre-9/11, crews, especially foreign carriers, often left the cockpit door open. Now, of course, they’re locked, barred, and flight attendants give you a ration if you get too close, all with just cause.

But, no, that was as sad as this thread is going to get, and this story is pretty much a done deal. I will add, though, that Uncle Ed passed away two years after my Dad (they were both 68); my Mom lived to be 81, and Vernon Ashley, who just passed away in 2013, was 83, I think. My Dad’s life, as short as it was, was full and exciting; he sure loved boat racing and other motor sports. I do wish he had been blessed with better health his last several years, and that he had lived long enough to see his Rangers come back into prominence with the likes of Spielberg’s, “Saving Private Ryan,” to hear Tom Brokaw name “The Greatest Generation,” and to witness Baby Boomers, including yours truly, looking away from their navel long enough to appreciate and acknowledge what their parents overcame and accomplished. Thanks for your posts, Smitty.