Odd Little Coincidences

It’s funny how things are connected in our lives in ways we cannot understand and don‘t even know.

In 2006 I began working in the town of Brewton, Alabama. Every time I’d drive up there from Pensacola I’d pass the “Welcome To Brewton!” sign which proudly notes that it was the home of William Lee Golden (singer with the really long hair in the Oak Ridge Boys) and Hank Locklin (also a country singer from an earlier period). I knew that Hank Locklin’s big hit was “Please Help Me, I’m Falling” but he had others as well.

Mr. Golden had long since departed Brewton. But Hank Locklin, who’d moved there in 1970 to be with his new wife who was from there, stayed. It was in Brewton in 2009 that he died at the age of 91. I remember the day; a lot of the locals knew him.

Flash-forward to 2015. My boss and I are in his brand-new Ford F-350 pickup truck, heading to North Dakota to pick up some helicopters and parts. As we drone along on the Interstate, the Sirius/XM radio is tuned to “Willie’s Roadhouse,” a station that plays lots of Country oldies from the 1950’s through the early ‘70s. And this song comes on…

Walking the floor
Feeling so blue
Smoke cigarettes
Drink coffee too
Honey, you’re the reason I don’t sleep at night…

Immediately I’m jolted out of my Interstate-induced slumber (apparently I have what they call “carcolepsy“). I know this song…love this song! But I haven‘t heard it in years - maybe not since the 1970’s. It’s a good song…catchy…the kind that stays with you, apparently for decades. I look at the radio. It‘s Hank Locklin: "You're The Reason (I Don't Sleep At Night)."

Well I’ll be damned. If I had only known. Or remembered. I would’ve gone to his house and talked to him. The guy had been a performing member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1960. His final appearance on the Opry was only two years before he died. The guy was a legend. We would have talked for hours, or until he called the cops to have me ejected.

It turns out that “You’re The Reason” was written by fellow Alabamian, Bobby Edwards who had a decent hit with it (but in a different key) on both the Country and Hot 100 music charts in 1961. But “You’re The Reason” was covered by a bunch of people, including (but not limited to) Hank Snow, Conway Twitty/Loretta Lynn (a duet), John Fogerty and Hank Williams III (“Hank III”). Hey, a good song is a good song.

Even Gerry and the Pacemakers, they of the original British Invasion covered the song although they did not release it as a single. It was at a faster tempo of course, but it's a nearly-identical remake, even in the same key as Hank Locklin’s version! Check out both Locklin and Gerry and the Pacemakers' versions below!

There are so many different versions of this song it’s not even funny. And they’re all great! Hank Locklin’s version did not chart as highly as Edwards’ original but oddly it is the one I remember.

When we got back to Brewster, my friend, guitar mentor, hell of a musician and fellow pilot, Chris Erickson and I set out to learn “You’re The Reason” on our guitars. It’s not a complicated song: E, A, B7, that’s it. It’s even in a key I can sing (sort of - if you call what I do “singing”). We could probably do a passable job of it at The Bakery if they ever institute an open-mic night.

And you better hope to God they don’t.

An Embarrassment of Riches

I turned sixty the other day. Sixty! How on earth did that happen? I look in her mirror and still see that fresh-faced, innocent, um, 40 year-old I used to be. I have thankfully few wrinkles, owing to a fairly stress-free life but probably more to my “don’t give a shit” attitude than anything else. My hair is grayer (but not totally!), and there’s still lots of it in most places.

None of my other “milestone” birthdays (30, 40 or 50) were particularly upsetting, but for some reason this one is. I don’t like being sixty. I don’t even like the thought of it. But there you go.

Additionally, being born on September 11th is not great. It’s a somber day, not one of gleeful celebration. For my parent’s generation it’d be like being born on December 7th. So I was kind of hoping to keep this birthday low-key; let’s face it, I’m not ten. But you know…the more you want to not do something, the more your friends want to do it.

My Facebook wall filled with birthday greetings. From Atlanta to Florida to Washington state, all around the country and even around the world they came. The best comment was from my friend Daniel Speed: “Congrats on not dying for another year.” Gee, um, thanks Daniel!

My friend Mikey Nehring flies a firefighting helicopter for a company based out of Olympia, Washington. What with all the fires raging out here this summer he’s been bounced around quite a bit. But as luck (or something!) would have it he had gotten based up in Omak, Washington which is just a few miles up the road from Brewster where I’m at.

The big fires are all pretty much under control now, and Mikey’s ship got released on my birthday. Instead of going home, he came down to Brewster. We decided to not go out and get shit-faced drunk as we usually do and just did a big steak barbecue at our helicopter base.

Then our friend Nate Englund called. He dried cherries for another operator this past summer and because he's young and cool we got to know him. Great guy. He called from Missoula, Montana which is five hours away. “I’m inbound!” he said. What a nice gesture, coming over just for my birthday.

All of the other pilots have gone home or onto other gigs, but Lauren St. Romain is still around. She and Danny Smith (one of the owners) brought a big chocolate cake. Instead of 60 individual candles which surely would’ve elicited a visit from one of the Forest Service waterbombers she just got a six and a zero so I only had two to blow out instead of sixty. Thank you, Jesus.

So we had a nice party. No, there are no pictures. It was outside and mostly after dark.

I don’t want to get all mushy and sentimental. But I’ve said before and I’ll say again that I’m blessed with the best friends anyone could ever hope for. It is intensely gratifying and extremely humbling to know such good people. When it comes to friends, I have an embarrassment of riches. I thank you all.

Malaysian Airlines MH370: Still Gone

How can a big plane like a Boeing 777 just disappear into thin air? Seems preposterous, doesn’t it? But that is apparently just what happened to that Malaysian Airlines jet back in March of 2014. Thin air. Gone.

Back in July of 2015 a control surface called a “flaperon” was discovered on Reunion Island which is (don’t Google it) in the Indian Ocean about halfway around the world from Malaysia. It appeared to be from a Boeing 777 of which exactly one is unaccounted for (guess which?). It was covered with barnacles.

A word about the flaperon. You might know that the little flipper thingees out on the end of an airplane wing are called ailerons. They move in opposite directions. One moves down and one moves up and the airplane banks toward the wing with the up-deflected aileron. Stick your hand out your car window at speed and you can simulate how an aileron works. We’ve all done this as kids.

Then there are wing flaps. These panels extend out of the wing, increasing the wing area and changing the curvature of the wing to lower the speed at which the wing will “stall” and lose lift.

Normally, ailerons and flaps are separate and operate independently. Flaperons are usually (but not always) located inboard toward the fuselage. They not only deflect with the ailerons but are also linked to droop with the flaps. Don’t ask me why jets have these control surfaces; it’s a complicated aerodynamic explanation I’m sure.

Anyway the flaperon was found. Initially it appeared to be from a 777. It was immediately sent to France of all places to be examined. Sure enough the French said it was from a 777 and the Malaysian government assured the world it was from MH370 (I guess using the “logic” that no other 777’s have crashed and therefore it must be from their plane. I mean, how could it not be?

Well…

Strangely, the French authorities stopped short of saying that the flaperon came from that Boeing 777...that being MH370. Boeing, who you’d think would have something to say about this matter, has been eerily quiet. You see, there is a little data plate that would normally be attached to the flaperon which would specify which airframe it went on. The data plate is not there. Nor are any other markings that would directly link the flaperon to MH370.

Huh?

Let us realize that Boeing does not make every single part of their aircraft. Much of the plane is sub-contracted out to other manufacturers, many of which are in other states or even foreign countries. Spread the wealth, you know. It turns out that a Spanish manufacturer makes flaperons for the Boeing 777.

So the mystery deepens. We really don’t know any more than we did before, other than that a damaged, barnacle-encrusted flaperon from a 777 has been found. Putting on my tin-foil hat, I believe that whoever commandeered MH370 somehow obtained a flaperon and chucked it into the water someplace, hoping it would be found and assumed to be crash-damage. Only it wasn’t found. It stayed submerged for over a year before washing up on a beach thousands and thousands of miles from where it “should“ be.

Yes, I still think that MH370 was taken somewhere and landed, not crashed. What does this mean for the passengers? Probably not good things. But I'll bet that plane gets airborne again, and in it will be a bomb (slightly) larger than the latest Adam Sandler movie.

Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Some of my friends…one Mike Nehring in particular have been grousing that I haven’t published anything on the blog lately, which is true. I think Mikey brought it up because I write about him a lot and he probably just wanted to see his name on the internet again. Well the joke’s on him because I won’t be mentioning him at all in this post.

One reason I haven’t posted anything is because it was such an uneventful summer. There was no rain to speak of. No. Rain. Up and down the Columbia River valley from the Canadian border down into Oregon, hardly anybody flew. This was great for the growers, but not so great for us. The helicopters (and we pilots) all get paid a “standby” fee whether we fly or not, but it’s better if we fly, obviously.

Since it was such a dry summer, the U.S. Forest Service was on high-alert. They did not want a repeat of last year’s devastating Carlton Complex Fire, the biggest fire in the history of Washington State. Everyone was on pins and needles, with (ground) fire crews and helicopters stationed everywhere “just in case.” As soon as a small fire would start, the crews hustled to put it out.

This worked well for a while. Eventually there were too many small fires all up and down the west coast. Resources got stretched thin…as thin as Deez Nuts’ chances of winning the presidential election. (I would’ve said “Donald Trump’s chances,” but in this bizarro-world of 2015 America, I suspect The Donald could actually win!)

And as we got into August, the air around Brewster filled with smoke…again! It was a time of perpetually foggy days. Step outside and you could taste smoke. It was relentless and depressing. The fire dominates our lives. Just like last year.

We evacuated to safer ground some helicopters of our own as well as a couple of airplanes owned by some friends. We got one out in just the nick of time: Another twelve hours and it would’ve burned to the ground. The owner was happy…and lucky…to save his house.

We own a little grass-strip airport up north on the river between the towns of Brewster and Omak. It’s out in the desert surrounded by sagebrush. If the fire, which was well north of us came south blown by the wind, the airport, a house, two hangars and a workshop would all be in serious peril.

The owner of the company and I were there, assessing the situation when the wind suddenly picked up directly out of the north. Suddenly we were enveloped in a thick cloud of smoke. We could not tell how close the fire was, but we knew it was coming. Thus began a mad dash to move as much stuff of value out of harm’s way. We left with the uneasy feeling that there wasn’t much more we could do. However fortune smiled on us - the wind died and shifted and the fire never came. You just never know…

Around us, small fires joined together. The end result is that in terms of acreage, for the second year in a row Washington State has its biggest fire in history: The Okanogan Complex.

While all of this was going on, we received a call from a cropduster in North Dakota. A long time ago he had operated Sikorsky S-55’s, the same kind of helicopter we use for drying cherries. We’d made some entreaties in the past, but he never would sell. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t sell anything. Finally, more than ten years after our first contact, he called. He’s getting old and wants to sell. He made us an offer; a deal was struck. It was six helicopters in all (non-flyable anymore) and a shit-ton of parts and equipment. It would take numerous trips with multiple pickup trucks/trailers. And it was 1,300 miles away - two full days of driving. The timing could not have been worse.

We wanted (and needed) to get these helicopters home before the weather and roads turn bad up here, which it will soon. Once we were sure that the company property in Brewster was as safe as could be, we reluctantly headed eastbound.

So far we’ve made two trips there and back. Each one was an adventure worthy of its own blogpost. Oh, the tales I could tell of overheating vehicles, a blown transfer case in one truck, an impending transmission failure in another, an alternator failure that boiled the juice out of both batteries, and a truck that would randomly go into “limp-home” mode and limit our speed to 45 mph. Great fun.

I think we can get all of the remaining parts and stuff in one more trip. If all goes well (hah!) I’ll finally be able to get out of here and go home around the middle of September, before it starts getting cold, which you know I‘m not looking forward to. So there's light at the end of the tunnel. It’s always fun to come up here for this gig, but it’s always nice to go home too.

My Annual Washington Sojourn

I have an odd double-life. I live most of the time in Pensacola, Florida but spend my summers up in Washington State. This is my fifth year working for the helicopter company that does cherry tree drying up here in Brewster.

It’s about as far from Florida to Washington as you can get in the continental U.S. Diagonally from one corner of the country to the other it’s a little over 1,800 miles straight line. It’s a little more if you fly since you have to go past Brewster to Seattle and then come back on a little commuter plane. And if you drive it’s about 3,000 miles! There is no direct diagonal route; you have to “stair-step” your way northwestbound.

So getting here is not exactly easy. I’ve driven up twice (which took three full days), ridden up on my motorcycle once (which took the better part of a week), and flown twice on the airlines. It’s always an adventure.

This last trip up was thankfully the most uneventful. We had no weather delays or other issues, and all of my (three) flights were on time. Dave Sr., the owner of the joint met me at the Wenatchee Airport and drove me the rest of the way to Brewster. It was about as painless as air travel gets these days. Glory be! I still don’t like flying on the airlines and am seriously considering just buying a car and driving back when the season is over.

This past winter was very mild up here, so they tell me. That, combined with the warm Spring we’re having up here means that the cherries are “early,” perhaps by as much as two weeks. So we’re kind of scrambling to get everything ready in anticipation. Since I got here the weather has been simply gorgeous.

It would be easy to just move up here and stay year-round. The beauty of this part of the country is unbelievable. And I could almost see myself living here permanently…if not for the winters, even when they‘re “not so bad” as they coyly say. I just don’t like the cold. Plus, I really love Pensacola. It’s nice being here, but in a way I’m already kind of looking forward to getting back home. To my other home.

Back To Washington This Year? Simply Irresistible.

I’m always ambivalent about going up to Washington State for three months in the summer to fly helicopters.  And it’s not that it’s not fun - of course it is!  But it takes a huge chunk out of my life in a time of year when I’d like to be doing stuff down here in Florida.  So the decision to pack up and leave is tough; it is never a done-deal. Especially this year.

Last year was bad.  There wasn’t much rain, so there wasn't much cherry-drying flying to do.  Plus, we had the Carlton Complex fire, the biggest in the history of Washington State.  It consumed nearly everything around us, sparing the town of Brewster itself for some reason.  It was crazy-stressful as we sat around on pins and needles wondering when we’d have to evacuate the helicopters to a safer place and how much of our ground facilities and equipment we’d lose to the fire.  You can’t save everything.

There were other, personal and personnel factors that caused it to be a bad year as well.  When I left, which I did at the first opportunity I promised myself it was my last year.  But…the inquiring phone calls began shortly after January 1st.  Just little, “Hi, how’s it going?  Hope to see you soon,” kinds of things.  I did not commit.

The deal they offer is very lucrative…and by itself it’s hard to say no to the money.

But the real trouble is that I like the guys who run the company so much.  The owner, Dave Smith Sr. is notoriously publicity-shy, and he doesn't like when I write about his operation in specific detail.  So I won’t.  But he and his son Danny are damn good people.  Dave’s been in the aviation business for over forty years, and he’s endured some incredible challenges and experiences along the way that make him a most interesting character.  I’ve been working for him for four summers so far and I’ll bet I haven’t even scratched the surface of all the stories he’s got to tell.

But not only that, my young friends Brandon, Lauren and Chris are coming back, all of whom are by now seasoned vets now…dependable and capable…fine pilots who know the ropes.  The chance to work side-by-side with them again is, to quote Robert Palmer, simply irresistible (1).

Plus my good friend and (platonic!) soulmate Mike Nehring, the guy who introduced me to this whole cherry-drying mess in the first place will be hanging around when he’s not stringing powerlines for the company he now works for in Olympia, WA.  Although we talk on the phone nearly every day, I haven’t seen Mikey since last year. It’s always a party when he comes to town.  The guy is just non-stop fun.  He reminds me of me when I was his age.

Our fleet of helicopters is more diversified now.  During my first season, we only had five Korean War-era Sikorsky S-55’s.  Four of them had old-school radial engines (the kind you see in those old documentaries of B-17 bombers); and one was a “turbine conversion” whereby the old radial was swapped out for a smooth, quiet, reliable turbine engine of similar horsepower.  This year the fleet has grown in size and type to eleven helicopters, with a couple of modern Bell helicopters added, as well as more turbine-conversion Sikorsky’s.

So I could - if I wanted to - fly a more modern, turbine-powered ship.  But I don’t.  I’ll stick with the piston-powered version.  They’re more…umm…challenging to fly, and certainly more fatiguing than the turbine birds which are sooooo much easier to fly.  But flying these old, loud, cranky, cantankerous beasts connects me with the past…and with my dad, I guess.  In 1954 he flew the USMC version of this very helicopter which they called the HRS when it was brand-new as I was being born.  I guess the draw is too strong.  (Plus, oh please, anyone can fly a turbine!)

Given all of the above, how can I refuse to go back up?  But this year will probably be my last, I swear!  Just like last year was.




(1) Typically obscure reference to a song called, “Simply Irresistable,” by musician Robert Palmer from 1988.

What To Say and When To Say It... Or Not

I've had young helicopter pilots introduce themselves to me and try to come off as big experts because they have a thousand hours or so of flight time.  I met one who claimed to know everything about the Bell 206.  I asked him how much flight time he had?  “About 2,000 hours,” he said, which I knew was a lie…okay, an “exaggeration.”  And, I pressed a little further, how much time of that is in the 206?  “About 50 hours.”  Hmm.

I let him talk on and on for a while.  I did not mention that of my 11,000 hours of flight time, over 7,000 hours have been spent flying the various models of the Bell 206.  Does this make me the most knowledgeable 206 expert in the whole universe?  Hardly.  But you could say that I’m “familiar” enough with the type.  And I was familiar enough with the ship to know that this young pilot to whom I was talking didn’t know shit about the Bell 206.

The point is, you never know who you’re talking to.  Especially in my current line of work, you never know who’s getting in the cab.  I re-learned this just yesterday.  A guy hopped in at the airport and asked to be taken to Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville Hotel out on Pensacola Beach (a $35.00 fare).  Sure thing!  Off we went. 

I usually ask my passengers what brings them to Pensacola?  This guy tersely said he had a meeting, but didn’t offer any details.  “Well, you sure picked the right place to stay!” I offered.  “The Margaritaville is one of the nicest hotels on the beach, *and* it has a great restaurant, Frank and Lola’s right inside.” 

In the first place, both statements are true.  There are good and not-so-good hotels out on the beach; Margaritaville and the Hilton are two of the best.  But I'd never want to insult anyone about their choice of hotel.  Making people feel bad about themselves is never a good idea.  

It turned out that my passenger was in charge of all Margaritaville facilities worldwide, the number two man under Jimmy Buffet himself.  Yikes!

Knowing when to keep your mouth shut is important, obviously, but knowing what to say and what not to say when you do open your mouth is equally important.  It's a lesson it took me a very long time to learn.