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Brothers: Whether the gas burning Mercs, the flatheads or the rotary valve Konigs to come, I didn’t learn squat about working on engines; largely, because I didn’t have to. Dad and Uncle Ed already had it figured out and done by the time I strolled in. Around the Ketzer shop, if you hesitated a moment, or had to “get around to it,” well, you could forget it, because it was already done, and done perfectly. And, when projects were on-going, you never walked in to ask, “Do you need any help?” You would be ignored or given a shake of the head. Nope, you walked in, sized up the situation, looked at what was being done, considered what needed to be done next, and started doing it. Then, with everyone at their task, conversation and banter would resume, and Mom might walk up from the house to bring coffee or glasses of ice tea. If you couldn’t figure out what was needed next, you started sweeping the floor or greasing lower units or something. Before long, one of them would call out, “Stevie, come here and hold this,” or, “Stevie, go get me one of those…” That was working with Dad and Uncle Ed. I learned a great deal from those guys, but only a fraction of what I should have. (Steve Ketzer in his shop on Douglas Drive and one after he traded for the Marineaux equipment.)

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There’s an art to helping. After many years, my wife, Vicki, has yet to learn it: “No, Vik. Hold the flashlight so ‘I’ can see, not so ‘you’ can see.” Or, backing up trailers that I’m not too good at to begin with, I won’t be able to find her in the mirror, and if I do, she’s back there with hands all a’flutter like she’s trying to explain Chinese algebra in sign language. But after Dad and Uncle Ed found each other in 1965, Uncle Ed with his wife and two boys, along with my newly found grandmother, moved down from Cincinnati to Hot Springs, and soon the relatives (Dad’s sister, Pauline, her husband, Ernie, two girls and two boys, one of them Mikey) from Brooklyn also moved to Hot Springs. They were all fun and nice people. But of the lot, Dad and his brother Ed from then on were like “peas and carrots.” Between working at the airport together all day, and then working up in Dad’s shop until 9 or 10 PM, and then running off on the weekends to boat race, they spent far more time with each other than they did their own wives. (Hot Springs Sentinel Record newspaper photo of Uncle Ed Ketzer, Steve Ketzer, and Vernon Ashley—I have no clue what they meant by “outside right.” Ed is on the left.)

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In Cincinnati, Uncle Ed had worked as a mechanic for Ford, and he was a great automotive mechanic—he bailed me out many times, and would drive halfway across the country to come save me. In Hot Springs, Dad got him a job at Futrell’s, working on airplanes under his supervision until Ed built up enough time to test for his A&P (it was A&E when Dad took the exam, the E for engine, but later changed to P for Powerplant). Someone, I think Futrell, with Ed standing there, asked Dad, “Do you think you can turn him into an aircraft mechanic?” And Dad answered, “Hell, yes, as long as I can get him to throw away those big hammers.” Going from automotive to aircraft was going from half-inch drive to quarter-inch drive (instruments and avionics even smaller) and absolutely nothing was ever forced, i.e., no big hammers. Well, Uncle Ed turned out to be a great aircraft mechanic, and a pilot, too. His specialty was overhauling engines, either Lycoming or Continental; he turned out a bunch, and I helped with the teardowns, Gunking, cleaning and painting: Lycoming grey, Continental gold…orange around the base of the cylinders if the walls had been chromed. Very pretty and such a unique smell when they cooked off chemicals after the first ground run.

It took Uncle Ed a few tries to pass the A&P writtens—General, Airframe, and Powerplant—as he wasn’t a great written test-taker (That’s one thing I am good at, taking written exams. Through college and later taking course after required course at the FAA Academy in OKC, I wanted to make one of the highest scores, naturally, but more important to me was being the first to finish, and finishing as quickly as possible. I was racing! So I kicked the mind into overdrive and roared through the test—first thought, best thought—and then casually walked up and tossed it on the instructor’s desk while other students looked up in shock: “Damn you, Ketzer!” ). But the oral and practical exams were easy for Uncle Ed. Still, I wish I had been in the room with him and the FAA’s Designated Mechanic Examiner for the orals, because when you asked Ed a question, you might have to wait five minutes for an answer, but you’d eventually get one, well thought out and correct. So I could just see Uncle Ed chewing on his cigar and staring at the examiner after each question. I often joked that I would ask him a question, go get a cup of coffee, and come back for the answer.

As for Dad, it sometimes irritated me that he was so good. When he bailed me out, I complained that he knew so much, and that solutions came so easy for him. He countered that he didn’t always know all that stuff and that he had to read the manuals and study, which was what I should do (instead of, I’ll guess, via osmosis, my preferred method). That was true; he did study. I still have a couple of his notepads from the 1950s when he was working toward his A&E, and I can see him studying and learning the rudiments, all in his textbook cursive. But he was just so damn fast, quick to understand, to get it. You could almost see the gears spinning and lining up in his head, like some kind of burly Data from Star Trek, and then, to mix metaphors, a 100 Watt light bulb coming on. Whereas, for me, when it came to things of a mechanical nature, my mind was like a three-way bulb, except it went up to 100 from one watt, one click at a time. For Dad, reading a wiring schematic was like “Dick and Jane,” whereas for me, even after years as an A&P, IA, Repair Station Inspector, and FAA Airworthiness Inspector, it was (is) like wading through Kierkegaard or Thorstein Veblen. (Some pages from Steve Ketzer’s old notepads.)

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Not to speak too much of myself, although it’s already too late for that, what I personally missed and needed was the schooling to understand theory, because I was too lazy to do it on my own. Of course, I studied and learned enough to pass the tests (with high scores), but just enough. From Dad and Uncle Ed, I learned what to do and how to do it, but I didn’t always know why I was doing it. You can qualify to take the A&P exams three ways: Military experience, going to a FAA certified school (usually two years), or by logging thirty months of practical experience under a certified mechanic, the latter being what Uncle Ed and I did under Dad’s supervision, but Ed was a natural mechanic, and I wasn’t. Still, I ended up being pretty darn good! (Har!) Many, many years later as an FAA inspector, I had young people come into my office with inadequate documentation and frightened eyes to request approval to take the A&P exam based on practical experience. With the meager documentation, I was compelled to quiz them and then call their A&P supervisors and quiz them. If they had the right answers, I’d throw in the towel and say “I am going to approve you to take the exams, but before I do, I’d like to tell you a little story about theory.”

It is interesting, though, how American boys, and perhaps boys everywhere, once learned their father’s trade, whether me in aviation, Wayne Baldwin in the oil industry, my buddy, Shorty, who became a brick layer like his daddy, or other high school friends who followed their father’s trade into plumbing, electrical work, transmission overhaul, or what-have-you. No more. No more. (A few more pages from Steve Ketzer’s notebook.)

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