Airport Inn

 

WE'RE ON OUR WAY!

SAAB STORY- WIPERS

 

When you fly the Saab-340 in the Great Lakes region you don’t worry about the weather… because you’re normally stuck doing approaches, landings and departures in the slop most of the time anyway. Most of the devices on the aircraft work great, when they’re not deferred, and as long as you stay within their published limitations.

 

Aboard the SF-340 one casual device is the windshield wipers. The wipers serve two real purposes. First, they are great for clearing rain and wet snow from your view. Second is they are an unintended icing alert. That’s because when you get into the ice, they are the first thing to accumulate the super-cooled precipitation. Additionally, when they start to ice-up, they “whistle” a sound that every northern SF-340 pilot knows very well. It’s great at night when you’re in the stuff. They wipers, however, have two limitations on their use. In “slow” setting it is 130KIAS and in the fast mode it is 160KIAS, neither of which you’re likely to need them on an approach or landing.

 

One somewhat rainy morning we picked up our assigned aircraft at CID for the regular run to MSP then back to CID and a short drive to the crew crash-pad. My captain noticed while I was out pre-flighting that his wiper would not stow. Instead, every time he cycled it, the stinking thing went to the stowed position and then sprang back up to an annoying position nearly at eye-level. He knew it had a speed limit, but couldn’t recall off the top of his head what it was. I’d just come back from re-current and remembered it was 130 and 160. Now we’re gonna take a delay while he went into Ops. and called. They said the mechanic said it was good to fly like that and last night’s crew had flown it that way.

 

Our answer was to simply fly to MSP at 160 rather than normal cruise. Hey, we were getting paid by the flight hour- this was good “doggage.” Thus, we chugged to MSP with that wiper blade just mocking my captain all the way. When we called in-range the captain ordered that he wanted the mechanic to meet us on the ramp. Considering that I was close to my captain’s up-grade, I tagged along to watch the show.

 

Now an equally annoyed captain and mechanic came face to face. The mechanic, however, was one step ahead. He had the service manual and a protractor. Fully prepared he informed us that, A. The speed restrictions were for operations only and didn’t apply to the parked position, and B. The manual said that as long as the stopped position on the windscreen was not more than (and please DO NOT quote me on this, because it was many years ago and I do not have the exact numbers) 42 degrees, the aircraft was good to fly, Then, he took my captain up and showed that his mechanic’s protractor showed something like 33 degrees. So, we were good to go no matter how annoying it was.

 

On the leg back CID, my captain just sat there and stewed. He’d been fed up with the company for more than a half dozen years and this added to his frustration. In fact, his normally talkative self was absent. We were cruising at max continuous temp. just so he could burn up some of the fuel we had inadvertently saved the company on the previous leg and our indicated air speed was snuggled up near the barber pole.

 

Suddenly, he reached up and hit the wipers! The annoying blade gave “snap” and it was gone!

 

Not wanting to put anything on CVR that may get us into some sort of hassle, I just looked at him and said,

 

“What was that!?”

 

“It was buggin’ me,” he replied calmly.

 

Next, he looked at me with a smirk and said,

 

“Hand me that squawk sheet.”

 

He wrote simply,

 

“Wiper went away.”

 

It was no longer our problem.

UFOs!!!

 Sometimes world events are such that I just have to do a series...

ORANGE COAT

 

There’s only one reason why I can recall what I did 50 years ago today- and that comes by way of relating it to an oddball event. That screwball event consisted of a “daredevil” trying to shoot himself over a canyon on a garage-built rocket while a zillion people paid to watch on private TV… so it’s easy to remember. The date was September 8th, 1974 and it was the day that I began work at my first real job. Oh, sure I did odd jobs such as popcorn vendor at the circus, or cutting people’s lawns for cash. But this was a REAL job, with a supervisor, who had a manager, who had a general manager. Yep, I was an underling making that $1.65 an hour minimum wage. Still, this was the job I’d wanted for more than a year. I was going to be an usher at the fairly new Saginaw Civic Center.

I wanted to be an usher there since both of my parents worked at the Civic Center (now the Dow Event Center) part-time. Mom had been one of, and probably the first, hourly employees hired there before the building opened in early 1972. At that time only the arena and front offices were ready to open. The whole facility wasn’t officially opened until the 6th day of May 1972, yet in order to begin generating revenue General Manager Bill Fifer and his assistant Bob Lister, had the arena opened for events in late January. My dad soon became the main Zamboni driver and we kids were in that arena ice skating nearly every weekend beginning in March of 1972. A staff of ushers acted as rink guards and aided guests during other arena events. They wore really ugly orange suit jackets and followed very strict rules like how to stand, never to sit, hands out of pockets and always be polite. I wanted that job.

The only problem was that you had to be at least 17 years of age to apply and I was too young. Finally I turned 17 in the spring of 1974, but hockey season was nearly over and they would not need ushers until the fall. Finally, as September of 1974 arrived I put my hat into the ring and applied for the job. Actually, I don’t recall ever formally interviewing for the job. My mom and dad were good friends with the Fifers and the Listers and dad had just been dubbed “Head Usher.” Thus, it was taken that I’d be on that staff, and September 8th was the first usher event for the season. It was the closed circuit, big screen showing of Evil Knievel’s Snake River Canyon jump. The show would be projected on a huge screen in Wendler Arena.

Dad as "head usher"

I’d spent the previous two weeks looking forward to this day. I got my black slacks, black shoes, white shirt and clip-on tie. Of course, since I’d been running around that place for two and a half years, I knew every seat, section, door, room and hallway and Mr. Fifer joked that I didn’t need any training at all. In fact, they made me a rink guard right away- even though the ice wouldn’t go down for more than a month. He quipped that I was probably one of the best skaters in the city, so he was sure I could handle it and my dad agreed. During the season I ended up skating three 2-hour sessions on Saturday, two on Sunday, a half hour of public free skating after ever weekend hockey game plus about a half hour between sessions just for fun. That added up to about 14 hours of ice time every week from October through April. The best part was- I got paid for it.

On the day of Evel’s canyon “jump” I was stationed in section “19”. To say this job was a no-brainer would be an understatement. To say that Evel’s “jump” would be thrilling, would be overkill. It was just a dangerous stunt using an under-engineered rocket “sled” that failed at ignition deploying its drag chute at liftoff. Yet, I got paid to stand there and watch until it was all over and everyone who’d paid to come in and see the farce finished their popcorn and went home. The announcers at the Snake River site did their best to drum up the drama, but it wasn’t much of a thrill for me. As a diehard space buff the “rocket bike” was underwhelming. Afterward I turned in my ill-fitting orange coat and went home with dad.

Hey- hockey season was coming, dad had me on his ice crew and there would be some interesting times ahead. I got to meet Karen Carpenter, went to dinner with Loretta Lynn and her crew and just before the Porter Wagner Show,

Dolly Parton sang a whole song to me while I was working at the back door to the arena. You see when you compliment the star on her sweater that has butter flies on it, and she says, “It’s for my new son- Love is like a butter fly. I’m introducing it tonight. Would you like to hear it?” You don’t say, “Naaa, I’m into rock and roll.” You say, “Why yes Ms. Parton.” And so, she ordered a stage hand to get me a chair- told me to sit in it, and sang me the whole song. I told her it would be a hit.

That first job was one of the few that I actually liked. However, it was a lot of hours and took up every weekend and usually most of my weekday evenings. But I got paid to skate… ya’ cannot beat that.

ABOUT SMELT

A few words about smelt. On the Great Lakes these pint-sized fish run in schools near the shoreline in the early spring. For example, on Lake Huron, in the Tawas and Whitestone Point area the run is normally in late April and always during the night. These fish are caught by using a simple hoop net. The process is known as "smelt dippin' " and often involves camp fires and beer. Once caught they are very easy to clean. You simply lop off the head, slit down the belly and thumb down to the tail to remove the guts. Roll them in some flour and pan fry in oil until golden and crunchy. They are really yummy because all of the bones and scales as well as the tails are edible. Actually catching the little buggers is another matter.

As a little boy growing up in Saginaw, it became clear that smelt dippin' was a right of passage. From the time I was eight until I was a teenager, my dad and uncles always took me smelt dippin'. I always wondered what the deal was- ya' go out in your waders, dip yer' net in the cold lake- sometimes having to shove the ice flows back out to lake with yer' foot- then come home exhausted with wet feet, numb fingers, and one frigging smelt.

On the night of April 23, into the morning of April 24, 1969, I was again on my way up-north to the lake with my dad, my uncle Tom and our neighbor Vern for smelt dippin'. We had a large steel washtub and an inflated tractor tire innertube. That would float with us and supposedly hold whatever smelt we netted. Our destination was a spot called "Singin' Bridge" which was a two lane bridge over a creek that flowed under US-23. The bridge had a steel grating and when cars drove over it, the thing made a sound that if you were drunk enough may have sounded like singing. The beach was fairly crowded but the other dippers were spread out into the sackcloth darkness. We floated our tub and I waded out as far as my scrawny legs would take me and dutifully began dipping while the three grown ups went farther out. A half hour passed and nothing... soon it was well after midnight and I was sure I was close to hypothermia. Dip- nothin' dip, nothin' endlessly. My only justification was that no one else out there in the blackness seemed to be getting anything either.

Then I dipped, and it was like my net got caught in a sandbank. I struggled as hard as my little skinny arms could and as I lifted the net it was filled to the top with sliver squiggling smelt. Standing there a bit shocked I softly called out to my dad,

"Look."

"Holy shit," dad murmured and then commanded me to not say a word.

Quickly he motioned to the other two men to get over to where I was standing still trying to hold that net that likely weighed as much as I did. They rushed over and we dumped my net. Then all of us stared pulling nets full out of the lake. We were standing in the middle of a whole school of smelt! It took only minutes for the four of us to fill that washtub. I forgot my wet feet and froze fingers- the smelt were finally runnin'. Then my uncle and our neighbor rushed the floating washtub toward the beach. My dad motioned to me to "watch this" and in his loud railroad engineer's voice he shouted.

"THEY'RE RUNNIN' THEY'RE RUNNIN' "

The onrush of other dippers was almost frightening as we got the hell out of the water. It took both my uncle Tom and Vern to get that tub into the back of the station wagon. We were done for the night.

I spent the whole of the next day learning how to clean smelt, bag 'em and freeze 'em all, except for the ones to mom would cook for dinner tonight.

The smelt were indeed runnin'.

 

People have often asked how I got into cartooning? And what were my first cartoons like. Well- here’s the answer. My very first cartoon strip.

It was early 1975 and while at my workbench in the electronics lab at COC, I felt the urge to do some cartooning. I wanted to do cartoons with sick violence, death and laughable characters. Of course, if an 11^th grader got caught doing such involving lots for people getting mowed down, even in 1975 I’d have found myself in protracted counseling. I pictured myself in old Dan Jacoby’s office looking at ink blots until I graduated. The answer was “ants” you can kill as many as you want and no one cares! Since I’d been featuring ants aboard my model rockets crashing to their doom- it was logical that his ants and their ant world that exists among, but un-noticed by the humans, would be the setting. Inspired by the old television series, “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”, I began work on “Forage to the Bottom of the Sea” which featured not only the ants, but my boyhood best friends Jim Brink and Ken Wolff.

Sketched within remarkably small frames and done totally in pencil, the strips were crude and contained both off-color language and sometimes humor that only the three of us could understand. The story was that of a miniature submarine and its crew of ants that sailed from the creek that ran behind my house in the farm-town of Freeland, Michigan to another creek that ran near my old neighborhood on the east side of Saginaw, Michigan. Interestingly, if you followed a map, in the 1970s it was indeed possible to connect the two locations by way of water, so long as you can sail in depths of less than three inches. Once back in my old neighborhood, the submarine ants engaged in a fictional havoc imposed on Jim and Ken.

I knew nothing about cartooning and was doing the strips off-the-cuff as a pass-time to get my brain off of electronics (which by the way, I passed with an “A” in the 11^th grader and qualified for “Advanced Electronics” in my senior year plus a job in that area after graduation- I was not a fan of electronics, but felt it may one day help me in aviation. The electronics training saved my ass in the cockpit more then once.) My ant characters were crudely illustrated and my penmanship and grammar were awful. Most of the jokes were inside stuff that only Jim and Ken could snicker at. I did, however, leave a few “easter eggs” as they call them today, for the guys. For example, the fish on the tree refers to Jim’s passion for fishing. Also "Brink" is the name of the ant who invades Jim Brink's home and then Jim feeds him to his fish- so he fed himself to the fish. Additionally, the serial number on the side of the “Flying Snub” 738278 was my serial number when I was in the Civil Air Patrol. Those give a clue as to how “inside” the humor was.

Yet cartooning was a great pastime. While most folks sat and watched TV to pass the time- I sat and drew mindless cartoons. The work quickly evolved and bettered. When I got to college a friend in the dorm insisted that my cartoons go into the Avion student newspaper… and things went nuts.

That, however, is another story.

 

A HALF CENTURY AGO TODAY- SEPT.14TH, 1973

 

I’ve published a version of this earlier, but today- September 14^th, 2023 is a special day. At my age it’s not possible to remember what I was doing two weeks ago today, but a half century ago today… well, those events are burned into my soul. It was a Friday and it was a sharp turn for the better in my life. Thus, I republish this as a celebration version of the moment when I moved to a very nice place called Freeland, Michigan. It was a warm and friendly place filled with good people and to this day, although I live far away, I still consider it “home.”

As the summer of 1973 drew to an end my parents were at the rough end of a long decision process. Their oldest son, me, had just spent, or perhaps “wasted” is a better term, the past three school years at an east side Saginaw, Michigan Jr. High School called Webber. A half century later that crap hole is nothing more than a vacant lot and I, for one, could not be more pleased about that. At Webber, nearly EVERY day presented a fight or a shake-down or some other pointless commotion in the classroom. Very little learning went on other than street savvy. By summer of 1973 I was scheduled to enter Saginaw High school where things were actually worse than at that hell hole called Webber. Mom and Dad were sure that their smart assed son would get knifed in a week at SHS. They had just one real choice- move.

While our house on Freeland’s Dawn Drive was still being finished, the school year started. About a week and a half into the school year my folks finally arranged for me to live at my aunt and uncle’s Freeland home on Church Street so I could start Freeland High School. Mom and dad had tripled… I repeat… TRIPLED their monthly house payment to move the family from Saginaw, Michigan’s Sheridan Park to our new home in Freeland. But until our house on Dawn Drive was finished in late October, I’d be commuting between Saginaw and Freeland every week. Frankly, it was worth it to escape the Saginaw public school system.

My first day at FHS began early on a Friday morning. In the pre-dawn, mom drove me from the east side of Saginaw out to the farm town of Freeland. Due to overcrowding classes for the high school were on half-day sessions beginning at 7am and finishing at noon. Thus, by the time we arrived at the school things were well underway. We stepped into the office where the ladies in the office staff were expecting us. After some standard enrollment paperwork and their constructing of a schedule for me, the new kid, I was quickly becoming a FHS student. The one problem was that the Saginaw public school system was so far in the dumper that as a 10^th grader at FHS I would need to take a few 9^th grade classes just to catch up.

Soon mom and I found ourselves in Principal Tom Vitito’s office as she finished my enrollment paperwork. About the only kink in the process came when mom informed Mr. Vitito that I’d be absent every Tuesday until further notice because I was under subpoena as a witness in a murder trial. His eyes got big with this “My God what kind of kid have I just enrolled?” look. Even after Mom assured him that I was a witness for the prosecution, he still looked a bit worried. I recall that he asked me what happened and I told him that I was not allowed to talk about it until after the trial… that didn’t really help.

By the time that the paperwork was done I’d missed first hour class and had to go on to my second hour class- Michigan History. One of the ladies from the office led me to the classroom, introduced me to the teacher, Mr. Judd Terwilliger, and I was told to take a seat. Feeling like I had “New Kid” tattooed all over me I was given my text book. Yet, what I was really concerned about was not the class, but the up-coming change of classes. You see, at Webber, every new kid who came into the school anytime after the first week got jumped and beaten up sometime on their first day- usually in the hallway between classes- it was sort of an indoctrination. Thus, I figured that the bell to end that class could very well be my introduction to hallway pain.

The bell rang.

My next class was Drafting with Mr. Dan Craig and I had to walk nearly the length of the school to get there. Yep, there I was walkin’ along with my antennas up expecting to have to drop my books and fight at any moment. The worst part would be that me, the five-foot seven-inch 135-pound scrawny new kid was gonna lose any hallway fight. Surly, sometime today I was due for a pummeling that would make a street hockey fight seem like a love fest.

Yet, nothing happened!

In fact, as I walked toward drafting class, there were three pretty girls standing by the office and one of them actually smiled at me! I forgot all about getting beaten up- I was completely enchanted. What kind of a place was this?

I had “break” next in the “cafitorium” as I pronounced it, perhaps that was where I’d get jumped. Nope… just kids, vending machines and more good lookin’ girls. It had to be some sort of a ploy… they’d get me at dismissal and beat the snot out of me outside of the school… right? Yet, there had not been a single fight all day, and no one hustled me for my lunch money (which was in my shoe, just out of habit) and kids actually carried books around. Plus- no cops… the whole day went by and the police didn’t show up at the school for anything. Then at dismissal, everyone simply went home. No one was hanging around in large groups looking to nail the stragglers… everyone just… left.

I walked to my aunt and uncle’s home to wait until my mom could come back out to Freeland and pick me up and take me back to Sheridan Park for the weekend. There were two nice bikes in the garage and my uncle had told me that I could use either one whenever I wanted. Since I had about five hours to kill, I decided to take one and ride out to the airport. It was a fine day as summer was still hanging on and Tri City Airport was just a short bike ride away. I parked on Freeland Road just off the end of Runway 5, sat in the grass watching the aircraft and thinking about that girl in the hallway who’d smiled at me. Freeland High School was polar opposite of what I had expected. Instead of getting chided and beaten up by thugs, I’d been enchanted by an amazing blond!

The next day I was back in my Sheridan Park neighborhood telling all of my friends about my new school. No fights, I didn’t get jumped, no commotion in the classrooms, no hustles for cash, plus the place was filled with good looking girls! My pals were amazed, but convinced that I’d get jumped the next week.

That never happened.

Freeland High School was a safe clean place where learning actually could and did take place, but it took several weeks for me to get used to it.

I was lucky to escape SHS and to end up in FHS and to graduate with the class of 76. However, I got the funny feeling that Mr. Vitito always kept an eye in my direction, perhaps expecting another murder trial.

ANTLAB

 

Today, June 22, 2023 marks 50 years since the splashdown of the Skylab 2 crew. As a 15-year-old space geek, and model rocket nut, I was totally revved up to do something Skylab-like… and the answer was…

ANTLAB 1

Spaceflight is as much about inspiration as it is about exploration and thus following the Skylab 2 mission, I was inspired to make my own flying “workshop.” Taking one of my 1/200 scale AMT model Apollo Service Modules and cracking it open I began to install balsa “habitation” equipment in it.

My plan was to catch three little red ants from our patio, stick them inside the thing and see how they would survive. I called the project “Antlab 1.” Sure, I had to drill a small window into it so the critters could look out and perhaps even get some air. Using a single edged razor blade, I attempted to cut a small hatch in the side. A single slip of the hand and I sliced two fingers! The blood would have panicked my mom so I used my Civil Air Patrol first aid training and applied direct pressure with my paint rag until the bleeding stopped. Lucky the paint on the rag disguised the blood and Mom never knew how much I had hemorrhaged. Later in the day when mom finally saw the wound, she decided that I should get an Xacto knife set as a belated birthday gift; it was a little safer than the razor blade.

Once I had Antlab 1 fully configured I had to, of course, ground test it. Using the un-mutilated fingers that I had left I caught three ants and stuck their helpless little butts into the workshop. Waiting 24 hours I opened it up and they crawled out; success! Now it was time for Antlab 1 to be tested in flight.

Any rocket geek from the 1970s can tell you that the Apollo SM from the AMT 1/200 model kit fit quite well into an Estes BT-20 flying model rocket body tube. I just happened to have an Estes X-Ray rocket whose payload section had separated and drifted away to God knows where. That X-Ray’s BT-20 booster tube would be adapted to boost Antlab 1. It did, however need to be repainted black and white like a Saturn V first.

My scheme was to make a huge parachute out of a drycleaning plastic bag that would be attached to the lab. The booster would be jettisoned because, A: there was no room in the tube for a second parachute and B: I never liked the X-Ray kit anyhow. The clear parachute would be so big that the Antlab would practically hover in the sky and give the ants a lot of time to… crawl around… in the sky. Frankly, if I had thought of it at the time I could have applied to the United States FDA and gotten a huge federal grant for the project— it was that strange.

On a calm summer morning in mid-July of 1973, Antlab 1 lifted off from 3324 Lexington Drive. The cut-down fins of the booster allowed for a higher than expected flight and after a seven second coast the lab and its chute ejected as planned.

Blossoming open, the lightweight parachute did exactly what I wanted and Antlab 1 seemed to simply hang in the sky. Ever so slowly it descended with its crew of three ants aboard. The mission would have been perfection if it had not been for the power lines behind our house. The following October, when we moved from that house, Antlab 1 was still hanging there on the upper-most wire. The mission lasted a lot longer than I had expected. It was a good thing that I gave the ants a window to look through.

MAJOR ANNOUNCMENT:
I have just contracted to be aboard the luxury cruise vessel Le Bellot on their October 2 through 9 adventure. I'll be giving lectures and side-tables all about the Great Lakes. This is going to be FUN! For details visit https://www.gohagantravel.com/programs/cruising-the-great-lakes-2/