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Introduction
Flying is a life enhancing experience that improves us physically, mentally and spiritually. It attracts all manner of people for all kinds of reasons. It evokes a variety of emotions and many times gives us a good look at ourselves.
I have tried to tell some stories about people that fly...and the emotions they feel. These stories are found in a newsletter that I publish on an irregular basis under the headline "As The Beacon Turns". The name came from the fact that these stories were usually written at the airport late in the evening after all flying activity had ceased.
I was there alone, telling my stories and watching the rotating beacon sweep the ramp and the airplanes parked there. I enjoy telling these stories. I hope you enjoy reading them.
David Bradley
Contents
- Marvelous Marvin
MARVELOUS MARVIN
As I closed out the year of 2005 I was perusing some old log books. His name jumped off the page. The years have softened the impact. I did not break out in a cold sweat. It was more of a twinge of pain, reminecient of an old injury.
This is a true story so I will stick to first names. It all began on a cold, cloudy Monday morning in January, 1992. I was pretty much a one-man-band in those days. Paul Jobe, my long time instructor, who ran the business and did all the flying while I was gone for the first Gulf War, had moved on to better things. In the six months since his departure I had gone through a series of young flight instructors who did not fly, did not shave and did not get to work on time.
As I pulled into the parking lot I noticed a transient plane tied down on the ramp. A late 60's model Cessna 172, sporting a home made brown and yellow paint job,oversized tires and the huge drooped wing tips. It was not here when I left yesterday. I had closed early because the bad weather.
I unlock the front door to the terminal building and immediately smell coffee. My hopes rise. Has Paul come back? Instead I see a small man, middle forties, grinning ear to ear standing behind the counter. He obviously has discovered we don't lock the back door.
"Howdy, I am Marvin" .
Marvin could not be more than 65 inches tall and I swear most of that is his head. No, not his head, his hair. Marvin has the most elaborate "comb over" I have ever seen. The color, the swirls and whirls remind me of a hornet's nest with eyes and teeth. I nod my head but cannot speak. It does not matter.
"Dang it! That weather was bad. Clouds down to here" (His hand is extended about 18 i/nches above the floor.) I was so low I coulda flown under the belly of snake."
His eyes got big and his bushy eyebrows exploded into an arch not unlike a scared cat....a big cat. As his story about the weather continued, I stared. This was one remarkable looking man. He was so diminutive in size he would have barely registered in the first foot of the robbers height scale next to the door at Casey's. He wore a green, flannel shirt tucked into jeans so tight I could read the label on the Skoal can in his front pocket. He wore black cowboy boots, polished to the luminesnce of high grade coal, with white spots on the side arranged in some oddly familiar pattern. I couldn't take my eyes off them.
"Like them boots? Looky here".
He plopped down onto the window sill and pulled his left boot off as easy as pulling your foot out of water. He thust the boot toward me, the strange white spots on the black background before my eyes. I felt a little dizzy.
"Whadda see? Dang right. Them's Holsteins".
For a nano second I saw black spots on a white background and
a Holstein cow. Then just as quick, it went back to white spots
on a black background. In my display case I had a bumper sticker
that said "Flying" that did the same thing. I am still
dizzy.
He pulled the boot back on with an easy motion and stood up.
That is when I noticed his belt buckle. It was about the size
of VASI bulb and painted to be the head of a Holstein cow, grinning,
with her tongue stuck up one nostril. (Unless you have been around
cows this sounds strange)
"Ain't that a buckle? She comes with a CB radio and doubles as a satellite dish. You think this baby won't swing your compass?"
I was not sure if he was kidding or not..
"Marvin, I am David Bradley".
"Sure you are. I am Marvin".
That went well I think. Marvin then embarked upon a soliloquy
detailing his flight into Boonville. He had flown off a farm
strip near Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. ("That would be in the
southeast corner of Brown County, don't you know....56085 on the
zip")
The weather had been good for the predawn take off. He had planned
on getting gas in Trenton, but was enjoying a good tail wind and
in his words "it seemed a shame to holler whoa to a good
runnin horse" so he kept coming. He hit the bad weather
about 40 miles north of Boonville.
" I done a high speed merge with the trucks and tried to keep up. Shoulda stopped for gas. Them tanks are dryer than a popcorn fart".
"But why Marvin? What are you doing here?"
"Instrument rating. I'm all but done. Too much ice up home. Bishop, that would be my instructor, sent me down to Boonville where it would be warmer. "Ceptin Bishop wanted me to go to Booneville, Mississippi, Prentiss County 38829 on the zip. Saaay, what you got on the zip here in Boonville, Missouri, Cooper County, don't you know"?
I am feeling queasy. But my little dog Bernie is lying with his head in Marvin's lap getting his ears scratched.
Booneville, Mississippi was Marvin's destination. But Boonville, Missouri was where Marvin had run out of gas. And here is where he would stay. It was as he put it, "Carmen". Besides he liked a place that left their back door open. He looked the place over, saw our flight training literature, and hiked down to the corner and booked a room for a month at the motel. "It is named the Atlasta Motel. At-Last-A motel. Get it?" And I was pretty sure I was going to get it.
I was close to telling Marvin I could not work him in, but before I could he had counted out five one hundred dollar bills for gas and instruction. "Let me know when that is gone" I wondered if he kept the money inside the belt buckle, maybe up the Holstein's other nostril. I reviewed his logbook. He had over 200 hundred hours, with about half of it dual. The solo entries in his own handwriting were nearly unreadable. But the dual entries were meticulous, all in black ink. Everyone was signed by a Bishop Black. Maybe there was hope. But I found myself wishing Jobe was back on the job.
By mid afternoon the weather cleared. It was a little breezy, but I decided we would fly. As I gassed his airplane, the first thing I did was crack my head on one of those drooped wingtips. It brought blood. "Heh, heh....watch yourself. My butt is built pretty close to the sidewalk so I don't have to duck", he said as he strolled under the wingtip, fully upright.
The plane seems solid and the log books indicate regular maintenance. I suspect, however, it has been drinking nothing but tractor gas for years. I hope it will not founder on good aviation fuel. Avionics are minimal, but adequate. One Nav / Comm with a glideslope, an ADF, marker beacon, transponder.....and what I find out later is probably the oldest working LORAN in the U.S. It looks like a Crosley television set from the the late 50's. About the size of breadbox it hums and clicks and maybe even smokes a little. Apparently it has no data base. All the waypoints are entered by the user. And that explains Marvin's fixation on zip codes. Instead of entering the airport identifier, he uses the airport zip code as the identifier. "She ain't that accurate, but she will get you inside the zip code."
Marvin's stick and rudder skills are impressive. The ball stays in the center, the heading does not stray, altitude is rock solid and the airspeed stays where he wants it. He understands the airplane and is comfortable making it respond. Under the hood there is no change. He can fly.
But things change when we attempt the VOR 20 at Columbia. His airwork is good, but he cannot visualize where he is. He understands the instrument approach procedure, but just cannot fly it. "One peak is worth a 1000 cross-checks" he tells me as he looks out from under the hood to find the airport. "Bishop says I gotta visualize, but peakin is a helluva lot better".
We have no intercom but we do wear headsets. Marvin's headset is at full extension just to accomodate his comb over. He talks constantly, to himself, me, the tower to nobody in particular. With full needle deflection he says he is "a smidgen off". When he over corrects and goes through the selected course he exclaims: "She went through there like a scalded cat" ! After about an hour of this, Marvin's headset is askew on his head, the mike up in front of his right eye, he is holding his stopwatch in his mouth and the approach plates are on the floor. But his comb over looks great.
We call it quits and head home. I tell him to take off the hood. Marvin is unfazed. Perched up on his cushion he points the airplane West loads up a mouthful of Skoal and announces "this sure beats milkin cows". I perk up. I grew up milking cows, looking up at the planes as I waded the winter mud. It turns out Marvin is a hired hand on a dairy farm near Sleepy Eye, 56081 on the zip don't you know. The owner and also his fllight instructor is this Bishop as in "Bishop says....." .
"Bishop says we will sell them cows and just fly all over the country till the money is gone. Bishop is plenty smart, but I don't know. I do a lot of complanin', but I like milkin'....it keeps a man regular if you know what I mean." I did.
The following days did not go much better. Marvin spent most of his time exchanging pleasantries with the tower operator at Columbia, Kansas City Center and other pilots. I tried to train him on my simulator but he would have none of it.
"Flyin' that 'simbulator' is like a doctor operating on a dead man. It just don't matter if you screw up." I try ground school. I am in the middle of explaining the intracacies of selecting an alternate and look up to see Marvin shaking his head.
"You are pickin' fly poop outa the pepper. I ain't goin if the weather is that bad". That was good sense with which I could not argue.
We worked hard but made little progress. His airwork was perfect, but that is as far as it went. "Bishop says I am a cornbread eatin autopilot". I could not argue with that either. I needed help. Little did I know it was on the way.
"Bishop, this here is David Bradley. This here is Bishop". Like Marvin two weeks ago, Bishop had just materialized. But what really surprised me was Bishop was a woman. A big woman. Not fat, but tall and strong, about 50 and really pretty. I thought of Garrison Keillor and where the women are strong...... .She has a gentle, easy manner about her. She is as self confident and subdued as Marvin is outrageous.
"Mr. Bradley" she said softly. "It is a pleasure to meet you. May we talk?"
She told me that she had driven down yesterday from Sleepy Eye. We talked about Marvin's training. I started off with all the positive stuff..the basic airwork. And then realized that was it. Bishop smiled and nodded. I knew she had been here before.
"Look, I know old Marvie can make you want to eat ten penny nails. I taught him to fly. He can fly the box the airplane came in...but put that hood on him and try to get him to concentrate on an instrument approach and he just becomes a wild man. He says it is not natural, flying an airplane inside a cloud. He said he would as soon lick a frozen pump handle before he would fly in the clouds. But Mr. Bradley, don't you worry. I am here to make you a deal".
She got up and stepped to the door of my office. Marvin appeared immediately.
"Marvelous, Honey, you go get the airplane ready. We are going flying. This afternoon you are going to take your checkride." Marvelous was a blur of boots ahd hair as he went out the door.
Bishop sat back down. "Let me tell you a story". I couldn't wait.
She told me that until a year or so ago she had made her living as a pilot. Flight instructing, flying charter, night freight, what ever it took. Even had a little flight school for awhile in St. Cloud. But then her Uncle in Sleepy Eye died. She was the only heir. He had left her his 800 acre farm and about 200 head of dairy cattle, plus a bunch of cash, stocks and bonds. He even had an insurance policy that paid the inheritance taxes. The farm was being run by a manager and had a half dozen employees, one of which was Marvin. All he did was milk cows, 12 hours a day; five days a week. They became acquainted. It turned out Marvin was an airframe and powerplane mechanic, licensed by the FAA. It was a deal he had worked out when he was in the Navy. He talked her into flying lessons and in turn he would maintain her airplane. He even helped build the grass strip on the farm. She said she had doubts at first, but Marvin proved to be an excellent mechanic. And she never saw anyone take to flying like he had.
"Marvin is an amazing man. He never ceases to surprise me with what he knows and what he can do. And he has a heart of gold. Somewhere along in this past year, Mr. Bradley; I fell in love with Marvin. We are going to get married."
I thought I might cry. Marvin getting this good woman and all that money!
"Now when we get back he will be ready for his check ride. Here is his knowledge test results. He got a hundred. I just need a little time in the air with him to get him....focused." And with that she was out the door.
And the rest is pretty predictable. They were gone for about three hours. But the plane's Hobbs meter only showed 1.2 hours elapsed since I had last flown it. I never said a word. Marvin sailed through the oral portion of the examination. His answers were short, but accurate. He did look pretty disgusted though when we discussed the selection of alternates. The flight was the same way. As always his airwork was impeccable, but this time he made smooth intercepts, anticipated his descents and level offs. And the tower controller, recognizing Marvin's voice and the airplane tried to engage him in a visit....but Marvin was having none of it.
We came back to Boonville, I wrote up a license and they left. I have not seen them or heard from them since.
Over the years I have worried a little about that check ride.
But I always fall back on the examiner's rationalization......"he
was okay when I checked him" . And chances are, if Marvelous
Marvin ever did crash his plane, his protective hair-do would
save him from any serious head injuries.
d.d.bradley