The Wandering Minstrel

I photographed this classic 1964 Pontiac GTO convertible outside the local auto parts store. It was clean inside and out and the top appeared to be new. Nice.

Clickable image.

We passed this very clean 1950 Chevrolet pickup truck on our way back to Arizona this morning. Note the chrome on most everything including the differential. Clickable image courtesy of The Better Half.

I thought that the classic car photo opportunities would dry up once we moved to Wickenburg. Well, it looks like I was wrong today as we passed through the old downtown district where this beautifully restored late 40’s Chevrolet coupe was parked. This is a beautiful car! Clickable image courtesy The Better Half.

By the way, the old miner and his burro behind the car is part of the free self-guided historic tour of the old part of town. If you’re ever in town, stop at the Chamber of Commerce and get the tour guide.

Nowadays it’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe but just up Railroad Street from where the Better Half snapped this photo stands an old A.T.& S.F. Steam Engine that originally ran along these tracks years ago. I like the railroads because it’s in my blood, I guess. My Granddad was an engineer on the Pacific Electric Railway and I grew up sneaking rides in his rail yard engine in Long Beach Harbor where he was working when I was a post-WW2 kid. My two brothers were there too, but I’m the only one with the built-in railroad interest.

This was beautiful - we can hear the train blasting their horns from our hotel room and it was just a matter of time before the crossing gates would lower during one of our trips to town and we could see one of these beauties roll by. As the train passed, we noticed that the load mostly seemed to be of USA origins, not the usual Yang Ming and other Chinese shipboard carriers we see in on the trains in So Cal.

DrJim, who blogs at Every Blade Of Grass, liked the expression so I decided to use it as the title of this post. Jim was commenting on the post yesterday about Miss Piggy.

Clickable image - Sitting in the H-4 Cockpit

As we continue to sort through all the old junk in the closets and drawers, we find little nuggets like this ancient photo of me sitting at the controls of The Spruce Goose. It was on a slide when I found it last week so I took it to the photo shop to have it scanned onto a CD ROM.

The story dates back to 1982 when I and a contingent from the Hughes (Aircraft) Radio Club were invited to take a private tour of the H-4 Hercules in Long Beach, CA, prior to opening the exhibit up to the public. The huge wooden airplane was in a dome adjacent to the Queen Mary.

We got the whole deal. We walked out into the wings of the plane where an engineer was stationed behind each of the eight giant R-4400 Pratt & Whitney radial engines. I even got to climb up on the top of the Goose (covered in plastic tarps) and walk on the wings and fuselage. It was incredible! Everything was there - the 20 passenger seats behind the cockpit, the radio rack with all of the original ARC radios from that era and the cockpit itself in its original condition.

Of course, I wasn’t the only guy to sit in the same seat occupied by Howard Hughes that day, but I was the best looking (according to The Better Half, that is).

My Mom (still around at age 90) says I was present the day Hughes lifted the Hercules off in Long Beach Harbor in 1948. My Dad had taken the family, Mom, me and my two brothers, to witness the taxiing-turned-test-flight. Sadly, I was taking a nap in the car and can’t remember the event. I was five at the time.

Back in the early 1980s, I had the pleasure of serving as flight instructor to primary student Fraser Heston. A mutual friend and former student, Ralph, introduced Fraser to me and wanted to have Fraser take his primary instruction in Ralph’s Piper PA-18 Super Cub, a descendant of Piper’s Venerable J3 Cub. I was one of the few taildragger instructors at SMO then, so I got the job.

Clickable image: Fraser Heston posing by Ralph’s Super Cub (found during the big house cleaning)

One of the big events was when Fraser was to have his first solo flight. His Father, the immortal Charlton Heston brought the family to witness the event. After a few trips around the traffic pattern as dual instruction, Fraser was ready to make his three take-offs and landings to a full stop (touch and go landings don’t count for taildraggers). I got out of the airplane near the gas pit where there was an observation deck. I introduced myself to “Chuck” and his family as Fraser taxied out for take-off.

Fraser’s three trips around the pattern were flawless. His landings were smooth and uneventful - which is a good thing. We cheered from the observation deck as Fraser taxied back for each subsequent takeoff. after the last landing, Fraser taxied to the tie-down area next to the observation deck and we all met him there.

Chuck proposed a toast to the event. The family brought a bottle of champagne and several little plastic champagne glasses. Chuck had to pour the champagne into glasses on the horizontal stabilizer of an adjacent Cessna since Ralph’s airplane’s horizontal stabilizers aren’t horizontal on the ground. We toasted to Fraser’s perfect first solo flight. The family then adjourned to have brunch in Westwood Village.

The Better Half and I were honored to be invited to the screening of “Mother Lode” a few weeks later. We both met with Charlton Heston, the star of the film, and with Fraser, the writer and producer. On the way out, The Better Half (literally) bumped into Lou Ferigno, star of “The Incredible Hulk.” That was a fun night.

I am very proud to have these events in my pilot logbook. I still brag about having this experience from time to time. This is one of those times.

During the time I worked in aerospace, I would usually have something humorous or controversial hanging on the office wall. At one point in time, this sign graced the walls of a cubicle where I dwelt 20 or so years ago when not in the lab shooting laser beams into our experimental electro-optical analysis subsystem (I was writing software for the embedded devices and needed to test them with near actual environment).

Today, while continuing the clean-up of old stuff, I found this sign in one of the piles. It’s in the recycle now, but not before I got a photo of it for posterity. Plus, it fits into the mold of the non-PC environment of this blog. Clickable image (if you want to read the fine print).

Well, not the proverbial attic, but rather all of the cubby holes where we have stored pictures and documents over the years. Since we’re now committed to building our home in Arizona, we’re starting to dig out stuff we’re NOT taking with us and either dispose of it, shred it or give it to family.

The Better Half has been at it since a few days ago, going through our vast collection of photographs (non-digital hard-copies), sorting into keepers and non-keepers piles. Today, I got into some old boxes and cabinets upstairs and discovered documents such as my original application for employment to Hughes Aircraft (now Raytheon), tax records, old trust deeds, legal papers of all descriptions, some not fond memories, I must admit, and a set of plans to add on to our California home 25 years ago. I even found my original DD214 Navy discharge papers. Talk about a trip down memory lane.

Some of the old papers went into the safe but most went into the shredder. Many of the old photos were sorted into several large envelopes by The Better Half destined for family to see and dispose as they see fit. A lot of old kid pix of nieces and nephews who now have their own kids. I still have a crap load of old 35mm slides in the garage - they’re next.

We have really a lot of stuff to clean out over the next months and we’re transitioning to Arizona. We’ve only scratched the surface of 30+ years accumulation of stuff in our California house.