CHAPTER 5 In The Still Of The Night

The Technical High School Class of 1960 has never had a reunion that I was aware of, invited to, or was able to attend. I believed that most of us never cared to see each other again. Tech was a vocational school where you could start out life with a trade and maybe a job if you wanted one. There was little school spirit, just a lot of determined, self-oriented people bent on survival with a high school diploma and a few college credits.

Bonnie went to Tech because I did. I had decided that I would become an aircraft mechanic. Her family had moved near the school and lived just a block away. Her mom died in that house near the school. She and her dad moved around a couple of times and wound up in a house that was less than two blocks from my own in southeast Poly. Somewhere in our junior year there was something in our relationship that just gave way to changes. It was me. Perhaps I had grown tired of her. I was definitely attracted to other girls. Then too, I was becoming a possessive, jealous jerk. Whatever was between us was turning rancid. In any case there was something in me that just snapped and I stopped communicating with her completely. It was anticipated. It was cold. It was necessary.

I was a self-taught guitar player with a dream of having a band. During my senior year at Tech, I assembled a three-piece combo with another guitarist and a drummer. I dubbed us "The Solomons". I am not sure now nor was I then, if it was a name selected for the Solomon Islands or the Biblical king. We built a song list of about thirty tunes that we could play passingly well, all copied directly off the radio. Our show-stopper was "In The Still Of The Night" by the Five Satins. I sang lead as best I could by imitating Little Anthony. It worked. We played one successful gig at the Sycamore Recreation Hall between records spun by the recreation director. Shortly after that, I somehow made a connection for us to play a paying job at a Teen Canteen dance on the Northside. We bombed for thirty bucks and never played again.

I had put in almost three years of aircraft training and my interest in airplanes became contagious. My father worked for Bell Helicopter and decided that he wanted to learn to fly. So did I. It became a common ground for our adult father-son relationship. It was not as big a deal as it seemed, he got a heck of a good buy on a 1948 Taylorcraft BC12D. It was a lovely two seater fabric plane with a 65 horsepower Continental engine and a cruising speed of about 90 miles per hour. It was no more expensive than a good car. The Studebaker had gone through a front end job, brakes, several driveshafts and several odd-matched sets of tires. The engine was just fine, but one day she just gave up. I was pulling in the driveway at home when the right A-frame gave way and she crashed hard to the concrete on the right side. I was dumfounded. I turned off the engine and sat there in a dazed stupor for a full minute. I had just begun to wonder how the car must look tipped at a crazy angle like that, when the A-frame on the other side did exactly the same thing. The car had not moved an inch since it had stopped, other than crashing ignominiously to the ground. I was double dumfounded. I managed to drive the car grinding and scraping all the way, into my dad's parking spot. I wonder yet if the car had not been tampered with. Two blocks down my street and a block and a half toward the neighborhood store lived a friend about my age who also had a 1950 Studebaker. His was a black convertible with a blown engine. He was headed for the Navy. It took a couple of weeks of serious negotiations, but we worked out a deal on it. I traded my white-laquered engine over to the convertible which was otherwise in much better mechanical shape than my white jet. A little flame work around the headlights made the job complete, and I was back on the road again with fresh air all around.

I drove that car for the remainder of High School. I got my diploma in the spring of 1960 and was forced to miss the graduation party. I had to be at work for my new job the next morning at 7am. I had signed on as a mechanics helper at the small airport where our plane was hangered. Thatt was a mistake. I had begun to learn that some people don't like you when; (1) You areyoung, or (2) if they are supposed to be your boss. This was lesson number two. Something about me just didn't set right with my new boss and he took his time developing his hatred for me. I got along fine with everyone else. In spite of the obvious personality conflict, I made the best of the job. There were some fine adventures at Russell Field in my two month career there. Most mornings before work, I would arrive early and fly in the still morning air. It was wonderful. Then too, there was non-stop entertainment from the customers who would fly in to gas up their aircraft.

One of these was a crop duster pilot who was flying to Oklahoma City. He arrived in a brand-new Snow aircraft, one of the best crop dusting planes in the air. We were fogged in with visibility down to about fifty yards. How he found the airport, I'll never know. We gassed up his plane and filled a five gallon Jerry Can full of aviation fuel. He almost made it away from the pump when I spotted his Jerry Can spout on the rear stabilizer. He was about to fly off with an open can of gas in the spray hopper. He and the Snow would probably become a flying torch. Several of us called, hooted and raise hell. He thanked us for saving him from certain incineration and waved gallantly as he taxied down the strip, for take-off through the misty soup that was our air supply that morning. It was only fitting that he "buzz" the hanger on his way out and he did it in grand style, waving again. I motioned in frantic animation at the fifty-foot light pole in front of him just before he spotted it himself. The Snow almost broke in half when he heaved back on the stick. He missed the pole by less than five feet and almost stalled out about 100 feet up. We never saw him again.

The air gets very thin when it is hot. Overloaded aircraft have a rough time of it. We were paid a visit from an Air Force Colonel who with his wife, was traveling cross-country. He was flying a salvaged Grumman Beaver which had been used for reconnaissance during World War II. It must have flown for a million hours and appeared to be extremely tired. With a full load of fuel and four additional Jerry Cans of gasoline plus wife and baggage, it just refused to become airborne in the 103-degree heat. The Colonel made two takeoff attempts. The second was directly toward a set of powerlines. He had just barely enough airspeed to turn away from them and lost all that in the turn. Under full power, the Beaver settled to earth like a tired old dog. A new set of spark plugs and five gallons less fuel gave it just enough lift to get above the 20 foot "dead zone" of heated air just above the ground. He didn't even try to fly the takeoff pattern. He just set the compass on north and gained what altitude he could, flying just above downtown Fort Worth and just below the Carswell Air Force Base traffic. How he kept from being shot down must have been a matter for the radio.

My own antics were limited to kid stuff. I had a new girlfriend named Eileen who was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I guess I had a thing for brown eyes. She didn't care for me however and despite several dates and proclamations of passion, she broke it off between us. As a farewell salute, I called her to let her know I would be flying over her house. Being thus sure I would be observed, I dropped two harmless rolls of toilet paper out of the airplane at about 3,000 feet. Sure enough, I was spotted by a Civil Air Patrol plane. I got a warning, but no citation. On one beautifully smooth misty morning I crashed. I had been shooting landings that were extraordinary. Absolutely no bounce at all. I was enjoying myself immensely in what was the finest flying weather of my life. Over at the hanger was the boss, frantically waving me in. He had arrived early and was determined to spoil my fun. It was a full half-hour before I was supposed to be on the job. I made one last touch-and-go before coming around for the final landing and it was a sweet greaser. It was as though I had landed on water. The T-Craft simply kissed the ground. The boss was waving wildly in an unmistakable demand that I get to work NOW. I pulled off onto the taxi way faster than I should have. The landing gear simply gave way. What had made my landings so smooth was that the bungee cords - a kind of huge rubber band supporting the landing gear, had snapped. The plane dropped to the restraining safety cable and I immediately shut down the gas and ignition. The plane was still rolling dragging the left wingtip, when the restraining cable itself snapped. There was a shower of dirt and pieces of propeller in the air. Everything stopped. There was no fire, but every piece of fire and safety equipment on the field was on the scene in less than a minute. That consisted of a few old cars, a pickup with a fire extinguisher and a three-wheel Harley Davidson with a rumble seat. The real damage was limited to the prop. The plane was repaired inexpensively and re-certified for flight in less than a week. An inspection of the bungee cords revealed that they had either worn out or been cut. I flew several times after that but my confidence was gone. A few days later on the way home, the Studebaker engine locked up. It seemed to be as good a reason as any to quit my job.

Something at Russell Field and I did not belong together.