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So based on Greg’s comment on last week’s story about me ‘embellishing’ things – I just had to put this story up. It happened in August of 2010, and like a lot of my stories – it started out as an email to a friend, in this case, one who’d told me to go out and do something fun that weekend.
It involved Greg.
And he gave me permission (well, actually, told me I had to) write this story.
So without too terribly much editing, here’s the story/note I wrote to my friend who wanted me to go do something fun, and come back with pictures to prove it…
==
I had a fun morning – went to see the Blue Angels down at the Museum of Flight.
I chatted with my buddy Greg for a few hours in the parking lot of the Museum until the coffee we’d drunk earlier at Randy’s needed a place to go…
But I’m getting ahead of myself…
Greg and I had been sitting in my ’68 Saab, sharing stories, and watching the planes at Boeing Field. One of the stories involved something that had actually happened about 50 feet from where we were sitting right then, it was a story of me talking my way onto the only flying B-29 in the world, but before that, successfully badgering a newspaper photo editor I didn’t know,
…for a paper I’d never seen,
…into holding space on the front page
…for a picture I hadn’t taken yet,
…from a plane I had never been on,
…and was quite literally trying to talk my way onto.
We laughed, and Greg kept talking about my golden tongue and how I could talk my way into anything – using that B-29 as an example. I needed the laughter. I’d been feeling a little down about a lot of things, wondering about life and stuff, and recovering from some recent surgery, and Greg’s a very good friend, and did a lot of listening, and a lot of encouraging, for which I’m grateful.
Eventually, the coffee we’d had earlier needed to be dealt with, and since it was still raining, we just drove down toward a row of Porta Potties at the far end of the parking lot. As we did, we looked around and noticed we were one of only two cars in the formerly crowded lot. We saw that the other car was parked beside the Porta Potties we were heading for, right next to this canopy kind of a thing with a sign on it that said something like “SR-71 Pilot and Author”.
That got us talking about SR-71’s, (there’s one in the Museum of Flight) – and I told Greg about this one mission – the only one I could remember reading about right then, in which one of the pilots had flown from England to Libya, and on the way back out, the plane just flew faster and faster – and they had to hang a left to meet their tanker out by Gibraltar. They did (when you’re flying Mach 3+, that takes a bit of geography) – and the pilot pulled the throttles back over Sicily – and still ended up overshooting the refueling tanker over Gibraltar… (note: if my math is right, that’s about 1,100 miles of coasting – you can read the story here.
We stopped, Greg got out to take care of his stuff, and I took a second look at that sign, “SR-71 Pilot and Author”.
It was still raining, and under that canopy was a fellow, sitting in the only dry chair in the parking lot, surrounded by a bunch of empty, wet tables, all of whatever he was selling was gone – he was just sitting there with his feet up, talking on a cell phone.
Alone…
In the parking lot.
In the rain.
Hmm…
SR-71 pilot?
Well heck, I figured that there couldn’t have been too many of those, I wondered if he knew the guy who’d done that Libya flight Greg and I’d just been talking about. So while Greg headed off to take care of his business, I approached him – and he motioned he’d be off the phone in a minute, so I waited, and while I was waiting I saw the name on his banner – “Brian Shul.”
Hmm… I had no idea who Brian Shul was, but it seemed like he must be that SR-71 pilot – or maybe know him.
He ended his call.
“Are you Brian?”
“I sure hope so, been signing his name all day.”
“Say, I was just telling my buddy here about an SR-71 pilot who did a mission out of Libya and ended up overshooting his tanker out by Gibraltar… “
“That’s me.”
“… and I was wondering if you happened to know who that pilot might be…”
“In fact – the whole story’s in my book, would you be interested in a copy?”
My mind was already several sentences past that last one before it came to a screeching halt and processed what I’d just heard.
“He… you… that pilot – waitaminute…”
I had no idea that I’d actually stumbled into one of my own stories – and turned around to see Greg, who’d heard that interaction as he was coming back, and saw his jaw do what mine must have done just seconds before, which was to simply obey the law of the acceleration of falling objects and hit the pavement of the parking lot in just under a second.
You see, one of the things we’d been talking about was how Greg thought I might have embellished some of my stories – and about how easy it can be to do.
But the funny thing is – if I tell a story – well, I tell a story… I don’t think I embellish it, I just tell it. (often they simply didn’t need embellishing, they just needed to be told well).
We talked with Brian for a bit.
I shook his hand.
I bought his book.
He autographed it for me.
Greg took a picture of him and me – beside my very definite “sub-sonic” Saab, because I needed proof to show a friend that I’d done something fun that weekend.
And the funny thing is, Greg and I both learned something that afternoon.
We learned that you never know when you’ll stumble onto – or into a story, and it had become very clear that I didn’t need to embellish a dang thing on this one, because no matter what anyone asked, it was absolutely true that at the very moment I was telling Greg the story of the SR-71, the very pilot of that plane in that story, was sitting not 100 feet away, under a canopy, in the rain, on the south end of the parking lot at the Museum of Flight, right next to the Porta-Potties.
- Coincidentally, in the picture above, Brian and I are standing next to my Saab 96, built in 1968. The plane Brian was flying (tail number 960) in the story I was telling Greg, is now down at the Castle Air Museum, right next to Castle Air Force Base, where my dad was stationed, back in 1968.
What heaven must be like.
I’m an airplane nut who’s seen airplanes from the ground once too often.
I’m a cancer survivor who realizes that “someday” is not a day of the week, that life is not a dress rehearsal, and that I have been given a second, and actually a third chance.
I’m a guy who’s spent far too much time working and not enough time playing.
It’s been my dream to fly since I was a little boy, when my dad was in the Air Force, and when times were simpler, and the magic of the skies was still new and still fresh…
And I’d seen sailplanes, here in the states, and in Germany where I spent part of my growing up years, and there was a magic to them, an allure that no other airplane had. They would fly circles for what seemed like such a long time – and just magically stay in the sky.
I mean, to fly is simple…
Jump.
There, you flew for a second.
Wanna fly longer?
Get a trampoline.
Wanna fly MUCH longer?
Well, now you’re talking wings of some kind – and that’s where things get interesting.
If you want to fly even longer than that – well, now you’re talking engines and propellers. And when you talk engines, then you need fuel, oil, electricity, a cooling system, and gauges to tell you what they’re all doing – and things get simultaneously a little simpler (to go up, push the throttle(s) forward, to go down, pull back on them), and a lot more complex (in addition to flying, you also have to manage all the systems that have anything to do with the power you have available with that throttle).
Another side effect of having an engine is that it also makes things noisy to the point of often having to wear earmuffs to filter out the noise…
They say that the main reason for the propeller is – well, it’s a fan to keep the pilot cool, because if it stops running when he’s in the air, he starts to sweat, but really – it’s to make the flying thing simple… Push forward on the throttle, go up.
Pull back on the throttle, go down.
So if that engine, whether that’s a piston engine, a jet, or rocket engine quits, you are now officially flying a glider. A Cessna 152, for example, will go forward about 9 feet for every one foot it goes down. It might do that at 60 mph. That’s called the glide ratio, in this case, it’s 9:1. The space shuttle – which is also a glider when it’s coming in, goes forward about 3 feet for every one foot it goes down, so a 3:1 glide ratio, it’s just that it does it a WHOLE lot faster, from a WHOLE lot higher up.
Now aside from those types of planes, there are planes that are designed from the get-go to fly without engines. They’re called Sailplanes, and the best of them can have a glide ratio where they’ll go forward 60 feet for every one foot they go down. They are truly, truly amazing works of engineering, craftsmanship, and art.
This means that the space shuttle, for all its engineering brilliance, has a glide ratio a lot closer to that of a crowbar or a brick than that of an actual airplane.
So I made myself a promise awhile back – I guess you could call it one of the things on my “bucket list” – that I would fly. There were so many things that kept me from doing it – but the other Sunday, I realized once again, that life is not a dress rehearsal, that “someday” is not a day of the week, and that there is no contract anywhere that says anyone is obligated to give me tomorrow.
Realizations like that tend to be fairly deep.
The events that cause realizations like that are often quite a bit deeper.
But on the day I had this realization, the weather was perfect, and the next two weekends were the last of the season. I knew I’d be gone on one of them, and had no guarantee of the weather on the second one.
This made the decision relatively easy to make.
I asked my son if he wanted to get out of the house for the afternoon, and with such a perfect fall day, he agreed. I told my wife and daughter we were heading out for a bit – and I have to say that even though I wasn’t sure that I’d go flying – it seems I was subconsciously setting things up so that my options were never limited.
We drove for about an hour to get to this little airfield (Bergseth Field) out in the middle of nowhere – and on this gorgeous Fall day, they were as happy to see us as we were to be there…
We watched – and the difference between this airport and any other airport I’d been at in a long time was like the difference between a calm pool and a roiling river.
If you wanted to take off, they’d look up in the sky to see if there were any other planes coming in – and then you’d hear them yell ‘Pattern Clear” – and off they went, quite literally taking off from the edge of a cliff.
It seemed that for the exchange of a few little oval pictures of dead presidents, one could buy a ride in one of those sailplanes. Michael was more interested in me going than in going himself, so the exchange was made, and along with the pilot, I got into the two-seater sailplane, a Schweitzer 2-33. After I was buckled in, and Michael had handed me the camera, I looked right…
Michael’s smile made this feel like the absolute right thing to do.
…and saw him smile, which told me I was doing the right thing, and that he was simply happy because I was living a dream.
We took off heading west for a bit, swung north, then did a 270 degree turn to the left, climbing the whole way…
Notice I said, “We took off…”
Something to realize is that flying a sailplane is the only type of aviation I’m aware of that has the aerial equivalent of calling a triple-A tow truck as a standard, expected part of the deal. You don’t take off like a normal airplane, because you have no engine. So you essentially ‘borrow’ one from somewhere. Some places have huge winches that launch you into the sky, some will use a car or other vehicle, some even use huge, huge rubber bands, and some will use another airplane – and that’s the one that’s the aerial equivalent of a tow truck. Very strong, very stable, very reliable.
And that’s the one we used.
As we climbed, near Enumclaw, Washington, the pilot of the tow plane turned toward nearby Mt. Rainier.
I was awestruck.
I felt a breeze…
After we got up to altitude and the tow pilot had let us go, the pilot sitting behind me asked a simple and profound question…
“Would you like to fly?”
The little boy in me, the one who had wanted to fly for over 40 years, was jumping up and down so hard that the seat belts were strained and the canopy was in danger of cracking. The 40+ year old man that the little boy was in, sitting in the front seat of an old, but still graceful sailplane, tried to hold down his excitement and said, “Sure, I’d like to give it a shot”.
And for a moment, both the little boy and the man, held the stick for the first time.
We flew.
I flew.
And a breeze blew, and Heaven’s curtain parted for a moment to allow me to peek inside.
I flew!
Wow.
The pilot brought me back into the cockpit by asking if I could keep the wings level, and the nose just below the horizon. I’d done it often enough in my dreams that it was easy.
He had me turn the plane south, and I learned that when you bank a sailplane to the right, for example, the plane wants to go straight for two reasons, one, it just likes the whole equilibrium thing, and two, the drag and the leverage from the aileron on the “upwing” side pulls that wing back a bit, turning the nose left, not right. I gently pressed the right rudder pedal with my right toe, got the nose going the right way – and I learned what was meant by ‘seat of the pants flying’ – you really do feel it in the seat of your pants.
We turned again, and the pilot complimented me on the turns and asked if I’d flown before.
In Reality?
No.
In dreams and in my mind?
Yes.
The adult in me was soaring – I was above the cares of the world, and nothing else mattered.
But the altimeter unwound just like a timer, when there was no more altitude, our time would be up. He landed it, and I saw my son smiling as he walked toward us.
That magical moment made for happiness both in the air and on the ground.
His smile matched my own, but for different reasons. He was simply happy for me to have finally lived that dream.
So was I… So was I…
We talked a bit as we drove home, about life, and the usual things, but my mind kept drifting back up to that blue, blue sky, and I found it hard to keep both feet on the ground when I’d held the sky in my hands.
(C) 2011 Tom Roush
A little background on this story first…
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What you see below started out as a note to my friend Greg who asked how our weekend was. People have learned, over time that asking me questions like this often ends up with – um well – stories. This was no exception. The weekend in question this time was President’s Day weekend, 2007, and the story had so much in it that it became one of my longer stories.
The previous year we’d gone out to a place called “Norwegian Memorial” over President’s day weekend. The weather on *that* weekend was stunning, cold (27 degrees in the daytime), but clear, very little wind (a wonderful story, but for another time), so when we found out the troop was heading out to the Olympic Peninsula again, we were all over it.
We wanted to relive that incredible adventure.
However – the adventure we lived, while incredible, was very different, as you’ll see.
Also – over time, I realized there was another, related story, or maybe series of stories – or lessons, tucked inside this one – those lessons will follow – but for now – this is a trip to Shi-Shi beach with the scout troop (Ballard’s BSA Troop 100) Michael and I had been a part of for years. Shi-Shi beach is out on the Pacific Ocean, near – well, it’s not near anything. But if you remember those Native Americans (the Makah tribe) who wanted to go whaling to keep their culture alive a few years back – this is just south of them.
//
Normally I take tons of pictures on trips like this. This trip was different. There are SO many pictures that weren’t taken on this trip. You’ll see why as we go.
The original plan was to leave for Neah Bay around 5:30 Saturday morning to try to catch up to the troop who’d left the night before. However, I had unplanned work that didn’t get finished until 1:30 that morning – which messed up my 5:30 plans for leaving just a touch. In fact, I didn’t wake up till 8:30.
After some last minute packing and the like, we headed out the door to drive up to the ferry terminal for the first leg of the trip. I thought we were making pretty good time – but as we were sitting in the ferry line, it became clear that the reason we were making such good time was that my watch had slowed down before actually stopping. So we’d not only missed the one we’d hoped to catch, but we’d missed the one after that… and the one after that, and… well heck, we were at plan C or D by this point.
The weather was clear blue sky, just like we’d found the previous year at Norwegian Memorial, but by the time we got out to Neah Bay around 4:00, it was absolutely raining sideways. We’d been told to stop at this thing like a lean-to to pull our gear out of the car and transfer it to the truck of our contact there to get out to the trail head, but it was raining so hard, and coming from anywhere but up, that the little roof we were under did nothing to keep us dry. As we left in his truck to go to the trail head, he pointed out the “lean-to” we were supposed to be at. That one was roughly 100 feet long. Yeah, would have been nice to see that one in time…
We got to, then left the trail head at 4:35, and before we left, we have this little prayer we say whenever we go out. It’s something I learned in Germany when I was growing up, and it’s become not only a habit, but a good one:
Alle Schritt, und alle Tritt,
Geh’ du Lieber Heiland mit.
Gehe mit mir ein und aus,
Fuehre Du mich selbst nach Haus.
Wo ich bin, und was ich tu’
Sie’ mir Gott, mein Vater zu.
— which roughly translated, equals
Every pace, and every step
Lord come along beside me
Go with me in and out
Lead me safely back home.
Where I am, and what I do,
Watch over me, Lord.
This had far more importance than we knew at the time.
Given what time it was, we started walking fast. After about 2 miles over a little gravel, some boardwalks and occasional mud, we found a turn, and it was like walking down a stream-bed with an inch of water coming down it. No problem, it was hard pan, we didn’t sink into it and it was easy to walk on. When we got to the bottom, all the water that we had been walking downhill with kind of stopped. It had been bringing all sorts of organic matter down with it, which gathered into one honking big mud hole.
With no other options, we pressed on, and the mud started out only ankle deep in most places, but was calf deep in others. Stepping carefully, we were able to avoid the places where it was obviously knee deep. Some of the foot prints we saw made it clear others had learned that the hard way.
There were about 30 spots like that, ranging from the size of a typical kitchen to twice the size of a city bus. It was hard to walk around them most times because the surrounding area was worse in many ways.
The sections of mud were so deep in places that one of our scouts literally got stuck in one of them on the way back out. We’ll come back to him, well, on the way out.
We felt, at the time, like we had no options but to go on. Camping where we were was far too wet. We were on the only trail out there, so we didn’t feel like we were in danger of getting lost, but still, with our ride back gone, the fact that we were the only ones on the trail at that time of gave us very little room for error.
Honestly, I don’t think I could embellish the story right now to make it any worse than it was, and it’s not that it was so horrible, it’s just that we’d gone from bright sunshine that morning to raining sideways that afternoon to hiking out toward a beach in mud up to our calves, and we were only about an hour into the hike.
After a while, we’d learned that walking in mud is fairly challenging, especially with my right leg running short on hamstrings, and carrying the loads we were carrying.
We also learned that if you are walking in mud that deep, anything shorter than hip waders is going to mean that your feet will very definitely get wet.
And we learned the benefits of wool socks (you aren’t really sure when your feet are wet – because the wool insulates so well).
Eventually, we got through all that, the path curved to the left (south) and we saw we were on a fairly dry path along the top of a ridge, the ocean to our right. At that point, we saw a sign, not a celestial one, but a bunch of boards nailed to a couple of hunks of wood shoved into the ground. The sign indicated that the trail stopped there, and if we wanted to continue, we had to hang a right, down the hill.
It was still light when we got to that point, but because of the trees, just barely. Michael and I headed down what looked like it might be a trail, but it was REALLY hard to make out – especially since it was under more trees, and it was that time of day when it’s too dark to see, and not dark enough for flashlights to make much difference. In addition to our backpacks, we were carrying a 5 gallon bucket with our portion of food for the troop in it because we needed to have stuff in hard sided containers to keep the raccoons away.
(Little did we know that the raccoons wouldn’t be caught dead in this weather).
The trail was steep enough in places that we were using tree roots as steps. I’d go about 10 feet, then light the way for Michael, then he’d come follow me. I slipped once and lost my water bottle. I could see it down the hill and off the trail, but seeing it and getting it were two different things. It stayed there. I’m sure some raccoon appreciated it later.
Michael did an amazing, amazing job, I am so proud of him – and told him so, but I don’t think he really, truly understands how much he did.
We made it a little further, about halfway down the hillside, which bore a bit more of a resemblance to a cliff than a gentle hillside, it turns out, and then saw a couple of flashlights on the beach as we were looking down through the trees.
Oh, wow, salvation!
We yelled, “HELLLOOOOOOOO!!!!! IT’S TOM AND MICHAEL!!!!”
No response…
We waved and yelled again, and again, and again, waving our hands, our flashlights, anything, but got zero response.
Finally, the lights came toward us, and we called out again, and added,
“WHO ARE YOU?”
“We’re Scouts“
Uh… Right.
We’d made the assumption that it was only OUR troop that would be crazy enough to go camping in a rainstorm.
“Right, but who are YOU?”
“We’re scouts from Troop 4435 on Whidbey.”
Oh, crap.
Our troop WASN’T the only one crazy enough to go camping in a rainstorm.
They graciously gave us a little guidance down the rest of the hillside, which made it much easier for us to keep going. Then we asked them if they’d seen anyone else recently, and they said they’d seen two other people with purple pack covers (like what we had on our packs) walk by at some point – they were camping just south of Petroleum Creek – which was “two or three creeks down” the beach.
They led us through their campsite, and out onto the beach, where, in the absence of any other directions, we hung a left and started walking.
We set up a pretty good pace because, honestly, we didn’t know exactly how far we had to go. Also, if it’s not clear yet by the writing, it was dark by this time. There were no stars at this beach, nothing but clouds, occasional rain, lots of wind, no light, and the roar of the Pacific Ocean 50 feet from our right ears.
The one thing we didn’t know – or have a true sense of because it was dark, was the tide – and the fact that it was out. The beach sand we were walking on was hard and level. We found out later that that was the only reason we were able to walk anywhere.
So that’s what we did…
We walked – and walked, and walked.
It must have been at least twenty minutes before we saw them – but there they were, three lights in the distance. Of course, they could have been 20 miles away, we absolutely couldn’t tell from where we were, but we kept walking – and found a creek – and crossed it.
And found another creek, and crossed it.
And a third one…
We figured we were home free.
Those lights in the distance hadn’t changed. Michael and I were walking fairly closely together – to the point where we’d occasionally bump into each other, and were using one flashlight to light our way since we were on the beach and there was no reason to use both of them.
In fact, we felt like we were in a bubble of light in the darkness – there was no real way to tell we were making any progress of any kind, no landmarks passing by, nothing.
At one point, Michael, without slowing down, smacked his flashlight and said, with a surprising amount of conviction, “Never again…”
“What?”
“NEVER again…”
His light had been giving him trouble, and was flickering a little bit, and the whole ‘adventure’ bit of this was wearing just a little thin.
“Never will we do a hike like this again,” he said, gesturing to the cold, the dark, the wet.
“…but boy, will I have stories to tell my grandkids…”
His ability to look at things with a perspective most kids his age don’t – and the ability to see the good in a bad situation, while going through the bad situation, is one he’s become very good at.
We kept walking.
Speaking of flashlights, that trip was indeed the last time we used them. They’d looked effective when we got them, but it was very, very clear that if you wanted a good light, you definitely needed to spend the money and buy a good light. A little later we were to find out what that term meant.
We kept walking, and eventually, were able to tell a difference in color on some of those lights we’d been seeing, and it was clear that one of them was a campfire, because it was yellow and flickering, the others were lights like Coleman lanterns, a little blue tinge to them, and less flickering.
We walked on.
At one point, it looked like someone had poured gas onto the fire, as it flared up pretty brightly. We figured that just had to be our scouts, so we were encouraged by that.
We’d been told by those first scouts that it was 3 creeks down the beach. By this time we’d gone past at least six, and not passed any of our own scouts, so we weren’t really sure what to think.
We came to a campsite short of the one we’d just seen with the lights, and could see lights and fire there, and we yelled, “HELLOOOOOO!!!” Someone came out with the mother of all flashlights with a beam you could walk on (clearly this was a good light) to see who was out on the beach at this time of night, and we found they weren’t scouts, either… The fellow with the light offered us some water (we were pretty tired by then, and my water bottle was gone) – and we must have looked like crap. The fellow told us the scouts were the second campsite down from theirs. He also mentioned that the next creek, Petroleum creek, was a little deeper than the other ones, about six inches, and that we should be careful.
As for the campsites, remembering our little experience with counting creeks, we figured we’d check every campsite, not just the second one, and so, at the next one, we called into the darkness, “HELLOOOOO!” – and no one even got up – it was just “WRONG GROUP!”
We looked at each other for a moment, shook our heads, and walked on.
By this time, those lights weren’t any bigger, but it was clear we were getting closer, and this cheered us greatly.
We walked on.
…and slowly, gently, almost imperceptibly, another sound came to our ears, which was a different, much harder to describe sound than the roar of the ocean that had been in our right ears the whole way. This was more the sound of a high frequency hissing/splashing combined with a much lower frequency rumble.
That sound didn’t make any sense until the source of it came into the front of that bubble of light we were walking in.
It was Petroleum creek.
And with all the rain, it was fast.
The rumble was rocks the size of grapefruits and cantaloupes rolling down the streambed, being pushed along by the water.
Where we were it was about 25 feet wide at least.
Michael and I stood there for a moment and just stared: “What should we do? What could we do?”
The troop’s campsite was clearly on the other side of that mass of moving water. Behind us we had all the distance we’d traveled and not found the group. To our left, we had logs that had been piled by the tide at the base of a cliff. And to the right, in the roaring darkness, we had approximately 5,000 miles of ocean and tide before there was any thought of land.
And that tide was starting to come in.
Suddenly the 25 feet of rumbling, splashing water in front of us didn’t seem like such a big concern, our options were clearly narrowed down to forge ahead, and forge ahead we did, right through the water.
If our feet hadn’t been wet by that time, by golly, they were wet now.
There is something about walking in very fast moving water that’s pretty amazing, and at the same time, terrifying.
If you’ve not experienced this, the water is alive. It is trying to push you over, and it doesn’t care. It doesn’t care whether you’re tired, or whether you’re sore, or whether you’ve got people waiting for you. It doesn’t care what you have planned.
It just is.
The rocks that weren’t moving when we stepped on them rolled under our feet. Those we didn’t step on rolled into our ankles. We had to be on our toes, so to speak, the whole time.
But we made it through…
…and we walked on.
And eventually we got to the campsite, where we saw we had to cross at least forty feet of wet, slippery logs just to get off the beach. One of the scouts came down (I couldn’t tell who at the time) and took the 5 gallon bucket from us. Michael got up there first, and it took me a while to get across the logs, I was quite concerned about getting across, with my right leg the way it is, being so tired, and the fact that the logs were wet and slippery and all. It would have been very, very easy to slip and break something important. Paul (the scoutmaster) came over and took my pack, told us we were just in time for dinner, and aimed us toward the “kitchen” – where there was a lot of food (spaghetti, salad, etc). It was 7:35. We’d been walking as fast as we could for three hours straight.
They’d almost given up on us – but then they saw Michael’s light coming down the beach, and they watched as we got closer, and they helped us get off the beach when it was clear it was us.
We stood and ate. There wasn’t much room, really, to sit down. People were talking and glad to see us – I couldn’t see them because of all the salt and water on my glasses, the sweat in my eyes, and the smoke from the campfire and oh, and they were all wearing headlamps – which meant that when they looked at me, all I saw was this smoky star pattern of lights, and I couldn’t see who was looking at me at all. I could mainly tell by altitude.
The voice coming from above me had to be Kim.
The one from a little lower had to be Dan.
The one that sounded like a Georgia peach cobbler had to be Ken.
The lower (both in altitude and timbre) voice sounding like a mixture of camp coffee and gravel sounded like Paul.
Past that, I couldn’t tell.
The wind hadn’t died down, but we were in a bit of shelter, so that was good. It was clear that right after eating, the only smart thing to do was to put the tent up, hunker down in the sleeping bags, and go to sleep.
Dan asked about our tent situation, and I told him that both Michael and I each had a tent, and that we could each set up our own, but it seemed more logical to just set one up quickly and go with that. Dan asked if I had my little orange pup tent (I did) and he suggested that I would be dryer if I were in a newer tent (my pup tent was 20 years old, and well used). Paul had suggested the only flat spot was right there on the trail – but that wasn’t wide enough for any tent, but when we went to get the tent, our packs were on a flat spot under a tarp, so we just set the tent up there – first time ever, in the dark, in the wind, in the rain… Got it up in about 10 minutes, though now that we know, we can do it faster. It took us a while to get everything settled, but once we lied down, we were – well, laying down never felt so good.
As I lay there, slowly letting go of the tension of the last day, just beginning to allow myself to rest, and realizing that we’d accomplished what we’d set out to accomplish, I started to see these strange animals – kind of holographic, iridescent dragons – it was very, very strange… I told Michael I was starting to dream before I was asleep, and Michael said, “Pop, you’re really out of it, you’re hallucinating.”
Oh good…
We said our prayers, grateful that we’d made it in safely, and were instantly, profoundly asleep.
The trip out is another story.
The trip out…
I’d been up in the middle of the night. I’d been dreaming that the tide was coming in, and as is the case in many such dreams, reality and mother nature strongly urged me to get outside and take care of another tide wanting to go out. I did – and saw, at the edge of the flashlight’s beam that the tide, all 5,000 miles of it, was very definitely in, and it was right on the other side of all those logs – there was no beach visible at all – it was more than a little unsettling, making me realize how close we’d come to not making it on the way in.
In fact, the waves got pretty loud there for a while – with the splashing of the waves being in the higher frequencies of sound, and again, an occasional low frequency rumbling accompanied the splashing. This time it was a little softer, and far, far lower than the rumbling of the rocks in Petroleum Creek. This rumbling I could easily feel through the ground I was standing on. At the time, however, I was awake enough only to notice it, but not awake enough to try to figure out what it was. I went back to the tent, crawled into the sleeping bag, and closed my eyes, only to be awakened seemingly seconds later by the yells of one of the adults, “Get up, get packing, we’re moving out in three hours!”
Um…
We’d just gotten here…
In fact, at that time, it had been less than 12 hours of “gotten here”…
The wind hadn’t died down, and we had rain squalls coming in off the ocean one after another.
Paul, the scoutmaster, had looked southwest when it was light enough and saw a rather large, ominous looking dark cloud, and given the state of some of the scouts (some having done poor, inexperienced packing, etc.) it was clear that if we were to stay another night, we’d be dealing with things far worse than just being wet, like hypothermia; and those things would only get worse if we were to try to hike out with the scouts in that condition to start with. The decision was made to leave, immediately.
In fact, the clock was very definitely ticking from that moment. The tide charts said that high tide was at 12:53 and that it would be a plus 9.3 (or 9.1, don’t remember which) high tide, which for those of you who understand these things, means it was way freaking high. The highest of the month.
Understand, we had about 10 scouts and 11 adults to get packed (think herding cats), out of the campsite, over the logs, across a stream, and up about a mile or two of what was now very steep beach, and rocks, and logs, and whatever the ocean decided to spew out before that tide came in.
I found out later that it was exactly at this time, when we were walking out, that my mom, 150 miles away, felt the very strong urge to pray for us. She didn’t know why, figuring that, “The boys are just on a campout.”
She prayed anyway.
It’s one of the reasons I appreciate my mom. She’s got enough experience to pay attention and to listen when God pokes them and tells her to pray.
Back at Shi Shi, on the way out…
There was this little matter of a rock that jutted out into the water at high tide that we hadn’t seen in the dark on the way in. This meant, if we weren’t past it by the time the tide came in, we were going to be there on the wrong side of the rock until that tide went back out. That might be a rather uncomfortable place to be for a few hours, I mean, imagine having your back to a cliff, wind and spray in your face, and the surf grinding huge logs into mush right in front of you (this was what I’d felt through my feet the previous night). Clearly getting caught between any of those logs was well past unacceptable. Had we gotten stuck on the wrong side of that rock, even getting back to the campsite might not have been an option, we didn’t know – and didn’t bother to think about anything remotely close to that.
The important thing was to get off the beach,and get off it fast.
Michael and I left a few minutes before the rest of the troop because we figured that because of my leg, we’d be slower than the others. We got packed up very quickly (heck, we’d barely had time to unpack), and got moving.
First thing we did?
Crossing the logs to get back onto the beach.
Cross those logs – and it turned out that the low rumbling I’d heard during the night was the waves thrashing those logs we’d crossed around like toothpicks.
It made me think quite a bit – given that we’d walked in on a low tide and had made it just in time. The waves didn’t move the logs around gently. It was a seismic event, and I realized that it was that that I’d been feeling through my feet the night before. Being caught out on that beach would have been – well, in a word, fatal. We would have been backed up against a cliff, with logs grinding themselves and anything in between them into mush right in front of us, with that ocean on the other side. It would not have been a good night.
Next thing we had to do was cross Petroleum “creek”.
Since our shoes and feet were already completely soaked, we didn’t even slow down, we had that race with the tide to get the almost two miles up the beach before there was no beach left. A couple of wet feet in wool socks was nothing.
I’d look back every now and then to see who was coming – and recognized Kim’s bright yellow/green coat and figured that because of my leg, they’d gain on us and pass us (the whole point of leaving early was based on that assumption).
Much to my surprise, they didn’t.
My view of Michael as we left Shi Shi. We all walked as fast as we could to get off the beach before the tide came in
On the way in, Michael had occasionally asked, “Want me to drop it down a little?” (referring to the pace we were walking) – and I would usually say “No” because I was using him to pace myself.
If he was going to go fast, I was going to go fast, and keep up with him.
Period.
On the way out, Michael’s only comment was, “Keep up, old man! I am NOT dropping the pace.” I was behind, but I did manage to stay with him.
With the tide in, what remained of the beach to walk on was anything but smooth.
With that tide already on its way in, all that flat, hard sand was under water, so we had to walk on the steeper part of the beach. That part was filled with rocks, logs, and occasionally somewhat dry sand – so that meant all our walking was either on that dry stuff that just sucks the energy right out of you, or on the slippery rocks, or threading our way in between.
It was about this time that Michael, having seen one of the “Top 10 most Beautiful Beaches” in the world, mentioned, through the wind, the waves, the sand and gritted teeth, that he thought the reason the beach was called “Shi Shi” was because there was no ‘t’ in the Makah language.
I was not, at the time, in a position to disagree with him.
Now the last time we’d walked down this beach, we didn’t know how far we had to go, because
a) it was dark, and
b) we’d never been there, and
c) we had no idea how far we needed to go, and
d) all we knew was that we had to hit the beach and head “left”.
One thing we actually saw this time that we didn’t see the night we hiked in was that big rock you had to get around before the tide came in.
And the tide was definitely coming in.
Paul and Dan, learning what “Sea Foam Green” really is.
When we got to the rock, we finally understood what “Sea Foam Green” was. The waves had deposited this line of foam about 2 – 3 feet high right at the base of that rock, and we stumbled through it before the waves came any higher.
We later heard that those coming behind us actually had to time their walks around this rock as the water had already come that far.
We got past it, and found this fellow we’d run into at the trail head the day before. He wasn’t American, didn’t speak English very well, and while we were trudging up the beach with all our big packs, he was tootling along with a little day pack. We were doing everything we could to get north, OFF the beach, and he was just getting onto it. And heading south. Toward the dead end that was that rock. No idea what his plans were, but it was strange. Michael asked him how far to the trail head, “Oh (gesturing back over his shoulder, with a thick eastern European accent), one thousand miles?” (We’re thinking, “Alaska?”) We figured he might mean 1000 meters, and kept walking. Somewhere along the way I found a stick, which I found I was depending on quite a bit.
We kept going. Problem is, we didn’t have much in the way of landmarks when we came in (since it was dark when we’d done it), so knowing where to get off the beach was getting to be more and more important.
Michael and me, just after getting off the beach
Eventually, Michael was very sure he’d found where we got onto the beach, and he was right. We climbed up there, waded through a pretty deep puddle, and just stood there for a bit, catching our breath and waiting to wave to the next group that came by so they could quickly get off the beach. Turns out that Kim had been following us, and said, “Man, you guys were really moving!” – That was a nice compliment from someone who’s 6’5″ and has two tremendously long legs.
We all rested for a bit, then the folks who could, dropped their packs and go out and help the remaining little scouts who were having trouble, and there were a few.
Michael dropped his pack, and since he was hot from hiking so fast, dropped his jacket and headed out there and brought the packs of several of the little ‘scoutlets’ back in. He was on his way out again when I looked and saw how big the waves were getting.
Michael, lower right, heads out a second time to help some of the little scouts get their packs in. It’s good we were hiking fast and not looking at those waves while we were out there.
That’s when the hail started.
This wasn’t just piddly hail, but hail that came crashing through the trees, ripping leaves off as it came down hail.
Being under the trees, I have no idea what it was like out on the beach where Michael was helping the other scouts.
They came back with some packs and things, and went out again to help the little ones.
Eventually everyone got back, and we ate anything we could find. We had packed for another day, so there was no shortage of food.
We rested for a bit longer, this crisis over, since we were off the beach, and braced ourselves for the rest of the hike, which was that slog through the mud I wrote about earlier.
Michael coming up the “hill” – behind him somewhere over the edge is my water bottle.
Also, remember that hill we climbed down? We had to climb up it this time. But it was (relatively speaking) dry, and there was light – so we could actually see what we were doing. While we were resting, some of the older scouts came and ferried packs up that hill – that was very nice, and made the hike up a whole lot easier. Seeing it in the daytime made me think twice about the trip we’d taken down the thing at in the dark, loaded with packs, in the rain.
I didn’t bother to try to find my water bottle.
We took a little break at the top, and marched on – always trying to stay at the edges of the mud holes – I tried to count them again, but lost count at 30-ish of them… again.
Paul and Eric going through one of the 30+ mud holes along the trail out.
Of course, our feet were soaked from the moment we’d hit that creek a couple of miles back, so worrying about mud just wasn’t worth it, but there was this stability thing we were concerned about – namely making sure we didn’t fall down while we were walking through all that mud. I had to make it clear to one scout that his shoes (and the plastic bags he had his feet in) needed to be tied securely because if they weren’t, he could easily end up face planted in 6 inches of mud, with his backpack on top of him. I didn’t have to explain to him that breathing, in that position, would be a touch on the difficult side.
He got it.
And he tied his shoes.
Eric just as we found him, and before Ed pulled him out of the mud.
At least one scout did end up getting stuck, and was sitting/laying there when we came up to him. Ed (his uncle) picked him up and got him out, but we had to make sure the number of boots coming out of the mud matched the number of feet coming out. (one boot got stuck, and we had to fish around in there to get it out).
One scout was just exhausted – he kept sitting down on the side of the trail, but we got him going, it takes more energy to put the pack on and get up again than it does to keep walking – but (we later found out) that this was his very first hike ever, so he had no idea what to expect, and that much walking, with that much stress, was a little beyond him. I helped him get up once and get his pack on. In doing so, I also reached down to pick his pack up so he could get up, and just about threw it into the next county. It weighed less than 20 pounds. Mine was 70 with all the wet clothes and food in it and all. (I’ll have to work on that).
The hike out, once we got going again, was really uneventful. Mud. Trail. Mud. More trail. Mud, more mud. Gravel. Then boardwalk (split hunks of wood spiked onto 6 x 6’s) – eventually, we got to the trailhead, where Mark had thoughtfully already brought the bus. Again, food was brought out, disbursed, and eaten. We found ourselves wondering at the number of calories expended on this trip, as that first part wasn’t just “hiking” – it was moving as fast as we could go to make sure we weren’t stuck. That would have been exquisitely bad.
The mud was everywhere
Eventually, things were packed, the bus was loaded, and we were off to go get the Saab, and start the 5 hour trip back to Seattle, and civilization.
It was scary at times, but I do have to tell you, it beat the heck out of a weekend of wasted time in front of the TV any day.
—
Now like I said, there’s another story in all of this, and it came to me as a series of lessons, or things I learned over the months that followed this one.
I don’t have all the words together yet, but I’m going to do something a little different this time – I’m going to give you a ‘rough draft’. And I’m going to ask you to do something a little different. When you’re done seeing what I learned – if something stuck with you about this story – let me know in the comments, maybe we can all learn something together
That story is about the lessons of Shi Shi beach.
- Each of us – as we travel this road of life, will have times when the road is easy, and the burden is light.
- However, there will also be times when we will face challenges, where the outcome is unclear, where the challenges themselves seem to be insurmountable, and where there is real danger, and yet, for whatever reason, we must press on.
- I’ve learned that when you are in those situations, when you are in over your head, and you need help, people you’ve never seen before, will appear out of nowhere, and give you help and direction when you need it, and you will never see them again.
- I’ve learned that sometimes, the road can be oppressing, that you can feel completely surrounded by danger, and it can be very, very frightening.
- I’ve learned that a little light goes a long way, and as long as you have a light to guide you, you can go far.
- I’ve learned that having someone alongside you to encourage you, by either matching your speed, or encouraging you to match theirs, can make you go farther than you thought you could by yourself.
- I’ve learned that there is no better friend than one who will do just that.
- I’ve learned that there will be times when you want to just stop, and rest, and quit, that you simply can’t, you must go on.
- I’ve learned that there will be times when you want to keep going, but the smartest thing to do is to stop and rest.
- I’ve learned that knowing the difference between these two is not always as clear cut as one might think.
- I’ve learned that while moving forward is dangerous, not moving at all is even more so, and you must go on.
- I’ve learned that going on can mean doing things you’re not used to doing, and going on can be more difficult in the short run than just staying put.
- But I’ve also learned that time doesn’t stand still. Life goes on, and in some ways, life, just like Petroleum Creek in the story – doesn’t really care how you feel, or whether you’re tired, or scared, or lonely, or unsure of yourself. Time, and life, marches on.
- Just like with Petroleum Creek, when we had a cliff to our left, 5,000 miles of open ocean to our right, and nothing we needed at our backs, there are times when you have no option but to plunge ahead and push relentlessly forward into the unknown, no matter how tired or scared you are, to achieve your goal.
- I’ve learned that whether you know it or not – people are watching you. The way you deal with the struggles you’re facing may be the only inspiration people have.
- I’ve learned that some of those people watching you will be ready to drop what they’re doing and help you out at the drop of a hat.
- I’ve also learned that some of those people watching you will not help at all, and the best thing you can do when you encounter people like that is to simply keep walking.
- I’ve learned that when you are absolutely exhausted, and have done all you can, and can do no more, to not be too proud to let someone else take the load off your back.
- I’ve learned that no matter how hard you think things are, they can, and sometimes do, get harder.
- I’ve learned that when you can see clearly, and when you have the opportunity to see things in the light – that they can be far, far scarier than they ever were in the dark, because now you can see just how close you were to the edge, or to simply not making it at all.
- I’ve learned that prayer is important, critical, and we never know how much the prayer of someone many miles away affected us. Conversely – I’ve learned that if I’ve got this weird feeling that I should pray for someone, given what I’ve seen, I pray for them, and pray right then.
- I’ve learned that communication is so vital, and it has to work on both ends. Messages sent but not received are the same as messages not sent. It was only after we got back that we found two messages on my cell phone from one of the leaders, both telling us of the weather and the dangers, and that we shouldn’t come. The messages had been successfully sent, but I was not in a position to receive them. That one has some implications that are a little deeper than I can wrap my mind around right now.
- I’m sure there are more. But as I thought of how Paul had gently taken the heavy pack off my shoulders when we finally got to the campsite, and how I had to restrain myself from throwing that 20 pound pack into the next county when I picked it up – I learned one more thing: Things that are easy to one person may be almost impossible for others, either because of their condition or because of the load they’re carrying. A burden that is heavy for one, may be easily lifted by another. And when we’re in the position of being able to lift the load for another person who simply can’t go on, it is our responsibility to do so.
I’ve had to drive across the country a few times, and I have to tell you, in my experience, there is no more desolate place to drive than across North Dakota. Understand, that doesn’t mean it *is* the most desolate place, but it’s the most desolate I’ve experienced.
This day, we’ll call it ‘a few years ago’, I was coming back home after finishing Grad School, headed west out of Fargo. I left the Motel 6, filled up the tank, got an Egg McMuffin and a big ol’ cup of coffee, and hit the onramp to I-94. I went through first, second, third and into fourth, where I stayed for most of the next 460 miles.
After leaving Fargo, the countryside was absolutely flat, the road arrow straight, and I remembered that my dad had told me about countryside like this, where, as he said, it was so desolate that it was 100 miles between fence posts.
I was seeing it with my own eyes, and he was right.
I think, though, they might have planted a few more since he’d gone through to keep the fences up during the brutal winters up there. I didn’t have to worry about the winter, though. I was driving in the late spring, and was, for whatever reason, driving what appeared to be the only car on the road. There were spots where I literally saw no one else. Not through the windshield, not in the mirrors…
No one.
At least I had the radio to keep me company…
…until that, too, faded out.
So I’m driving along, about 70 mph, it was the speed limit, and it was a comfortable speed for the car –
(which for some reason had been ordered with Ford’s venerable 2.3 liter 4 cylinder engine AND a 4 speed manual, (normally reserved for their larger six cylinder engines). By the time you got up to speed on this thing, it hardly even thought of gasoline.)
– but the road was so straight I found myself looking for something to just lock the steering wheel to.
In fact, as I was looking around, I tried to see if there was anything to catch my eye, to see if I could have something to focus on as I was driving, but there was nothing.
At all.
No cows.
No Antelope.
No Wapiti. (oh, go look it up J)
And no, no fenceposts.
On top of that, there was nothing but static on the radio.
Nothing.
I had never seen so much nothing in all my life.
I did not know that nothing was manufactured in such large quantities, or how North Dakota had become the recipient of so much of it.
I figure it must have been some congressional thing or something, but after a while, I’d exhausted all the variations of geography (flat), geology (none), wildlife (none), and politics (not even going there).
I’d been driving for roughly 4 hours, and something that rarely, if ever, happens in my life happened…
I got bored.
I think it is at this time that my Guardian Angel’s pager went off.
It is astonishing the kinds of things that happen when you’re bored. I’m sure a surprising number of teenage adventures happen by default, simply because those teenagers were bored.
I wasn’t a teenager, but I was driving.
Through North Dakota.
And I was bored.
I looked around for something to do.
(Keep in mind, for some silly reason I was thinking that keeping 3,000 pounds of car and all my worldly possessions between the lines apparently wasn’t enough “to do”)
I found, after a while, I could just hold the wheel rock steady, and it would drive for close to a minute without me having to move it at all.
I found that the need to do anything (steering right or left) was preceded by either the right front tire hitting the rumble strip on the right, or left front tire smacking the reflectorized turtles between the lines.
Heh… I could drive by braille.
<One note: don’t do this at home. In fact, don’t do this in North Dakota. They might get a little miffed. What follows next is about as far from smart as I was from civilization. I don’t recommend that you do this at all, the fact that I managed to survive through this doesn’t mean everyone will, so you have permission to laugh at youthful idiocy, but not to repeat it.>
So, being bored out of my mind, I decided to do something to pass the time, and snagged a book out of the back seat. I remember it still – the book was called ‘Enola Gay’ – and was a historical book written by, if my memory serves me correctly, the pilot of the plane, Col. Paul Tibbets. At any rate, I propped the book up against the steering wheel to see if this whole thing would work, and found that I could read and see where I was going through my peripheral vision. It did work!
The book that set off my Guardian Angel’s pager.
Understand, it was stupid, but it worked.
My Guardian Angel realized that this wasn’t a drill, and that he needed to get there in a hurry.
I drove a little slower than speed limit, and did a scan of everything, windshield, mirrors, gauges, every few seconds. I was still the only car on the road, so felt relatively safe. I drove for miles, reading chapter after chapter, holding the book onto the steering wheel with my thumbs, and flipping it down a bit when I noticed (key word there) another car passed me.
This worked beautifully.
Until at one point, being engrossed in the story, and driving below speed limit, I completely missed the big Cadillac coming up in my rear view mirror.
I would have flipped the book down, holding it so the other people couldn’t see it, but just didn’t see them in time.
I looked up just in time to see an elderly gentleman and woman in the car looking over at me with a look of utter horror and revulsion, her face telling me exactly what she felt, without her mouth ever having said a word.
Her face clearly said the one thing that had completely escaped me when I came up with the idea of reading a book while I was driving a car, that in the grand scheme of things where you have stupid on one side and genius on the other – what I’d done clearly wasn’t on the genius side.
It was only after they passed and I saw their tail lights getting smaller in the distance that it all seemed to sink in. I tossed the book in the back seat, and noticed that my Guardian Angel was giving me a look you don’t want to get from your Guardian Angel.
I think, given that a few years have passed since this happened, I understand that look of hers a lot more now than I did then. And now that I have a little bit of that gray hair, if I saw a young kid reading a book while they were driving, I’d probably be the one giving it…
…and I’ve tried a little harder to keep my Guardian Angel’s pager from going off.
A number of years ago, when I was just starting out in college, I’d often find myself driving through McChord Air Force Base (now Joint Base Lewis McChord) in large part because
a) I could, and
b) there were SO many cool airplanes there.
One weekend they had an actual air show, with the Thunderbirds, and aerial demonstrations of guys jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, explosions, the whole works. It was great. I got to walk around the flight line and look at planes up close I’d only been able to look at from a distance, and in some cases, I was able to go out and either touch them or actually, the most fun, sitting in the cockpit of a military airplane, and pretending to fly it, you know, just like you do when you’re a kid.
So later that week, after the airshow was over in reality, but I was still reliving it in my mind, I happened to go over to McChord, and look out at that very same flight line, and of all things, found an F-4 Phantom in the very last spot on the left. This is a plane that sucks down more gas in a minute than your car does all year. Speaking of cars, I parked mine in a legal zone (no, really) and was just drawn to the Phantom.
I walked over toward it, with my hands behind my back – I wanted to be sure that if anyone did see me and had this feeling like I shouldn’t be there, that my hands were in a very obvious spot of not being able to do anything…
The plane was facing away from me, and I walked around it clockwise, starting on the left side and working my way around. I looked at, but didn’t touch those elevators that were angled down so sharply.
I walked further, hands still behind my back, and ducked under the wingtip, which is angled up ever so slightly.
I looked into the engine intakes, imagining how much air they must have sucked in as those big J-79 engines spooled up.
I couldn’t see into the cockpit, but walked around the front of the plane – still careful not to touch anything, and made it back around the other side, and finally came to the gaping maw that was the back end of those engines. The F-4’s engines have what are called ‘afterburners’ – which means simply that if you have the jet engine running at full throttle, and the engine simply can’t put out more thrust, you start pumping buckets of fuel into the hot exhaust – where it – well, it doesn’t ‘explode’ – but all those pictures you see of military planes with 20-30 foot flames out the back? That’s what happens when you hit the afterburners. It can easily double the thrust of an engine.
Now the J-79 engine was weird, in a way… It was the one engine the military had that, surgeon general’s warning or not, they simply couldn’t get to stop smoking. If it was idling, it was fine. If it was in full afterburner, it was fine. If it was anywhere in between, it smoked.
It was like leaving a big arrow penciled into the sky saying, “Hi! Here I am!” All you had to do was look up and follow the pencil mark in the sky. At the end, sure as anything, there’d be an F-4.
It made camouflage and stealth kind of a moot point.
But those engines, oh gosh – I’d seen what they could do in real life. I was in a KC-135 tanker, shooting pictures of one being refueled somewhere over Missouri. The plane, call sign “Misty 42”, was in the pre-connect position 50 feet behind us. Gus, the boom operator (the boom being the big pipe that did the refueling) called out on the radio “Misty 42, forward 50” – as in “come forward 50 feet” – and this 60,000 pound plane that was parked back there behind us, just shot forward those 50 feet and then stopped like he was anchored there – right where Gus could top it off. And when Misty 42 was finished, I saw something I’d only seen in movies – the pilot banked hard right, pulled hard on the stick, peeled off, and was gone.
So when those engines were running, they would just leave this layer of soot in the sky, and, coming back down from the sky and to that flight line, where I was standing with both hands behind my back, I was mesmerized by the business end of these huge jet engines, some of that soot I was talking about had been left inside the engines, creating a blackness so total it would make charcoal look white. It gave a totally new definition to the term “black hole” and I was wondering how much of a problem it would be to swipe a little soot off the engine of a Phantom.
It was this wondering that caused curiosity to prevail over common sense.
…but not by much…
I unclasped my hands, and slowly, with my right pinkie, swiped it against the inside of that engine, to see if any of that blackness would actually come off. It didn’t seem to, I was looking at my pinkie, trying to figure it out, when
“Can I help you, sir?”
Uh oh…
One of the United States Air Force’s finest SP’s (Security Police) was standing there, in uniform, which was as complete as a military cop’s uniform could be…
“Uh, no, actually, I was just looking at the F-4 here”
“Did you know, sir, that you’re not allowed to be here?”
My gosh he was polite…
On the other hand, he could afford to be. He had Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson snug in a leather holster at his side to help him out, should he need it.
“Sir, see, there’s this red line here on the pavement…”
He was right… there was indeed a red line on the pavement…
“Sir, you’re not supposed to cross that line.”
“Really?”
“Did you see the signs painted on the ground, sir?”
“No – I mean, I was just here the other day…”
“Sir, that was for the air show. See here?”
…and he walked me over to where one of the signs was indeed painted in a big white rectangle on the ground.
“They’re painted on the ground every 100 feet.”
And I’d parked my car beside the hangar, and walked right out there, between two of them, totally oblivious to the signs, and totally focused on the F-4…
“Sir, can you read the line in red there, near the bottom?”
I started reading the stenciled letters on the pavement.
“Sir, do you understand what that means?”
And things suddenly became very clear. That line there meant that Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson didn’t necessarily have to stay in their little leather holster, they could have come out to back up the Security Police officer and no one would have batted an eye.
“Yes sir, I do.”
He escorted me back to my car, realizing that I was just a young kid not much younger than he was, likely just as much of an airplane nut as he was, but I was driving a little red Saab (1967 model 96, 3 cylinder, two stroke, and a 4 speed transmission, on the column, for those of you who are curious) at the time, all by myself, and he was driving a blue Air Force police cruiser, with his pals Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson quietly squeezed into the front seat with him.
I was a little more careful from there on out, but I still considered McChord my home away from home.
…
Fast forward 21 years. I’d gotten married, had the wonderful privilege of becoming a father, and lo and behold, there was another air show at McChord AFB. I took my son to see the show, and this time I got to the McChord AFB air show in a little blue Saab (1968 model 96, Deluxe, with a V-4 engine, and a 4 speed transmission, on the column, for those of you who are curious), and this time, I wasn’t alone.
We watched, and heard the Thunderbirds tear the sky apart again – watched the aerial drops, the explosions, all the cool stuff, it was great – and then as we were walking through the displays – I realized I’d been there before. Not just on McChord AFB, but as I looked around, wondering why the hangars looked familiar, and why the tower looked so familiar, not just individually, but collectively, I felt this incredible feeling of déjà vu, suddenly I realized I was standing on the spot – THE VERY SPOT where that F-4, the SP, and Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson had been those many years earlier.
I’d told my son the story you just read more than once, to the point where he could do the little swipe with his pinkie just exactly like I did it, and I knew, I just knew, I had to show him that spot, and take a picture of the sign on the ground, with the red letters, and the red line on it.
And I did…
Sure enough… it was still there.
I got the shot of him with the sign in the story I’d told him so many times.
…
Fast forward again – to the year 2010, I’d done a presentation in Tucson, and found that after the presentation, we had a few hours to do some touristy things, and given the fact that I am an airplane nut, and that the last time we’d been in Tucson I’d only been able to drive past it, the Pima Air Museum was definitely on our list. It has hundreds of airplanes, and in the few hours we had, we tried to see as many as we could. We walked past some, paused for a moment at others.
And then I saw an F-4 and stopped cold.
A Phantom.
“Michael! This is it! This is the kind of plane I was talking about!” –
…and I did the little pinkie swipe with my right hand.
He knew exactly what I meant, and before I could do anything or even stop him, he’d gone to the back of the plane, and I suddenly knew what the SP had seen those many years ago.
Without me saying another word, Michael had not only gone to the back of that Phantom – but gone to the right engine, and with his left hand still held firmly in the small of his back, like I’d done when I was the very same age, he took his pinkie, and swiped a little soot off the engine of a Phantom.
And no one stopped him.
© Tom Roush, 2010
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