Dolly Parton sang to me... just me.

It was the evening of Thursday, September 19, 1974 and I was a newly-minted usher at the Saginaw Civic Center. Dressed in my white shirt and clip-on tie, and black polyester pants, my usher's uniform consisted of an ill-fitting orange dinner jacket. We were under some strict rules: stay at your assigned post and stand up straight, no hands in pockets (anyone caught with hands in pockets was assigned the over-sized red "monkey gloves" to wear as punishment... I never wore them) and above all NO SITTING DOWN.

That night was the Merle Haggard Show and his two stars were Dolly Parton and Don Bowman. My station was at the back door to the arena, right next to the trash compactor room. There was really nothing or anyone to actually "usher" as only stage hands and building employees went in an out that door. Thus, I stood in my assigned position and earned my $1.65 an hour pay.

Just before the show began I suddenly saw Dolly Parton walking my way. Now, for those of you who never met her in person there is one thing to keep in mind. Dolly was very short- standing just 5-feet tall while wearing flats. That is much of the reason why she seems to be so "busty." As she approached me she asked,

"Are you just standin' here honey?"

I replied that we were not allowed to sit. She looked around and said,

"We're gettin' you a chair."

I insisted that I was not allowed to sit. But she got the attention of a stagehand and ordered him to get me a chair- which he promptly did. I was then directed by Dolly to sit in it. As I objected one final time she firmly said,

"Look... I'm the star of this show, and if I say you get to sit, you get to sit!"

So I did.

Dolly them pointed to her sweater, which was white with all sorts of colored butterflies on it and asked me how it looked? I replied that it looked very pretty.

"It's for my new song," she replied, "Love is like a Butterfly. I'm introducing it tonight. Would you like to hear it?"

Now, you do not hear that from a country and western star and then say that you're more into rock-n-roll. Nope. You say "Sure, I'd love to hear it." Which is what I said.

With that Dolly Parton stood there by the arena's back door and in full acapella sang the entire song to me... just me! When she finished she asked what I thought of it? I told her that I liked it a lot and I was sure it was going to be a huge hit. She smiled sweetly and told me to keep sitting as she walked away.

She wasn't gone for two minutes before the arena manager, Bill Fifer, came along accompanied by my dad who was then the head usher! I was firmly asked what the hell I was doing sitting down? I told them the whole story and they looked at one another, snickered and basically said in that case it was okay.

Every time I saw Dolly on TV thereafter I told anyone within ear-shot that Dolly Parton sang to me in person. I will always do that too.

 

TALES FROM MY SCREWBALL NOTEBOOK: Project Firebird

 

When the summer of 1972 began, my best friend in the world, Jimmy, went on a trip to Florida with his folks. While there they stopped at the Kennedy Space Center. Knowing full well that I was an insane space and rocket nerd, he brought me back a KSC loose leaf note book which had a photo of the Apollo 4 Saturn V on the jacket. That notebook became my prized possession and inside it I recorded all of my screwball rocket projects. After more than half a century it still survives and even became the inspiration for my cartoon series "The Program." Now I'll share some of the craziness.

This volume is FIREBIRD DAY

On July 4th, 1972, our neighborhood of Sheridan Park, in Saginaw, Michigan had a simple holiday. My family celebrated by swimming in our above-ground pool while dad BBQ'd chicken. As darkness set in we kids set off sparklers lit by one of dad's railroad flairs. Privately owned aerial fireworks were unlawful in Michigan as were fire crackers and M-80s. Yet some folks smuggled them in from southern states. Bottle rockets were allowed as long as they didn't explode in the air, (yeah... just try and fine some of those.)

However, Tom Moore, the crazy guy who lived next door to me had a smuggled supply of all sorts of fire works and thrilled all of us kids by lighting them off. Among his dazzling little pyro techniques was a string of fire crackers that were a total failure. When he lit them, most simply did not explode. Instead they sat on the driveway and just spun around and spit a little fire. He quickly decided to get rid of them. That was where his rocket-crazy kid next door asked if he could have one?

"The f&%kin' things don't work," he grumbled to me, "just take 'em all."

And so I did.

Where he saw sparks, smoke and failure, I saw thrust. Retiring early to my room, I constructed a makeshift, balsa wood coated with glue, nozzle for the former firecracker. Removing the fuse, I carefully glued the nozzle in place and added a stick for stability. I now had a basic bottle rocket. Next I molded a Project Mercury style tiny capsule with enough room for one of the ants from of patio to fit into. After all, you gotta have a passenger, or it doesn't count... right? Next I used some balsa scraps to fashion an elevated launch pad with 3 hold down arms to steady the booster. I wrote "F B ONE" down the rocket's body in red pen. My work took me late into the night, but my parents were used to me sitting up late working on some crazy flying things. Of course by sometime after midnight I decided to let the glue dry.

The following morning I was up early and using great care I reinstalled the fuse, caught the hapless ant-stronaut and soon Firebird One was poised on the launch pad.

Once the fuse was lit it took about 5 seconds to burn. With a small "pop" the rocket departed the pad much faster than a normal bottle rocket and zoomed far higher as well. I actually lost sight of it, but was hugely surprised that the dang thing actually flew like a rocket!

There was no wind that morning and I figured it had to come down somewhere close to my back yard. Now the recovery phase began. In our neighborhood, all of the kids knew that when they heard a rocket going off, it almost always came from my house. Shortly after the launch several kids arrived and I told them I was searching for the rocket. That effort went on for the better part of two hours as my crowd of volunteer searchers gave up and dwindled. Then one sharp-eyed kid shouted that he had found the rocket! As a reward I told him that tomorrow's launch was at 11:00, and he was invited. Gleefully he got on his bike and road off.

Apparently that long time sealed in the bee's wax capsule caused the ant to to die- but hey... the faulty firecracker became a rocket. Re-using what parts I could, I started work on the next rocket for tomorrow. Indeed the little kid who had found Firebird One was there at 11:00 on the dot to witness the launch. It was different than what we both expected.

This time the Firebird Two rocket exploded like the firecracker that it was, with a bit of extra power. The launch pad was destroyed and bits and pieces went everywhere. The little kid thought it was beyond cool and road off on his bike telling everyone that this one blew up.

I went back into my room, put on my Apollo 16 tape and wrote the Firebird Two details into my KSC notebook- it was the very first entry. More of that class of rockets blew up than flew up as the summer of 72 went by. I even created an Explosion Prevention System (EPS) which amazingly worked. But the shock killed the payload.

Thereafter I always consider July 5th to be "Firebird Day" when I remember my crazy rockets. Plus, ants always seem to avoid me on July 5th... can't figure out why.

 

GRANNY COULD SEE THE FUTURE

 When I first got engaged with my wife Teresa we spent a lot of time trading stories about our parents. At one point I told her that my mom had had a strange knack for seeing the distant future. Teresa scoffed at that. I told her that as far back as I could recall, my mom always said that I would someday marry a girl with long black hair. I often scoffed at that too. After all I normally got involved with blonds, or girls with medium length brown hair. Then when I did get involved with a girl with long black hair, mom was sure that "this is the one!" Instead it turned out that this one was a disaster. Thus I went back to blonds and girls with shorter brown hair.

However, in late 1986, there I was engaged to an oriental woman with long black hair.

As most of you may know, both my wife and I are alumni of the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. It is an important place that I spent a decade working my way through. Plus Teresa and I were married on that campus in 1988 and the university's co-founder J. Paul Riddle, who became a close friend of mine, attended our wedding. We've always stayed close to ERAU. When I was in school there and my folks would visit campus my dad would park his motor home on campus and we'd have friends come aboard for some of mom's cooking, and dad's stories about being a railroad engineer.

When it came time for our oldest daughter Akie to look for colleges, she was accepted at the University of Hawaii. As parents were were rubbing our hands thinking that we'd be spending Christmas in Hawaii for the next four years. Yet, she was also accepted at ERAU. Neither of us had pushed her in that direction. In fact I was pretty stoked at the fact that she was considering marine studies. When it came time to go and visit campuses she decided to visit ERAU.

When I mentioned that to my mom she gave me a very specific and direct order,

"I want a picture of her the moment she sets foot on that campus!"

So, we made a family 10-day trip to Disney World and took one day to stop by ERAU so Akie could get a tour. Additionally I took the photo.

One year later she was enrolled at ERAU. Just a few months alter her granny passed away, yet she has seen another of her premonitions come true. On April 5, 2026 Akie graduated and we all agreed to re-do that photo. 

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. The 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.