My Fathers Guns

 

Last Thursday was my father's birthday. He'd have been 79 years old. But life seldom works the way we'd like, and I inherited these shotguns a little over eight years ago.

This week-end, I took them out to the range to remember him. I brought a box of game loads for each of them and took down a fair number of clays in his memory. 

The 12 gauge Ithaca that I once gifted him was right on, breaking 22 of the 25 clays. It was an old parkerized police dept. gun that came with an 18" barrel but I fitted it with a 28" barrel for him for hunting...and he lost the 18" one somewhere over the years. (If any of you have one that you don't need, I'd love to replace it...)

The little Iver Johnson single shot 16 gauge that he bought as a teen was a little less effective as the bronze bead on the muzzle broke some time ago and requiring me to hold under the clay just right. I don't have it quite down yet, but someday...

It was a great day to be out, a cool and crisp 45 degrees and sunny...just like those fall days in Michigan like we used to go out in together. He'd have right at home here...and he'd have bitched constantly about the cold. But we'd have had fun.

Now the guns are getting a proper cleaning and oiling and I'll consider fixing that Iver Johnson front bead. I haven't decided whether I will or not yet but I probably will. Had he still been here I'd have fixed it for him just to keep him from blaming it every time he missed something.

I do miss him. 

And most of the day as I shot, and traveled to and from the range, I couldn't help but hum this song by the great Elton John. It came out when I was just a kid, not even old enough to ride a bike, but I never heard it until decades later. It has meaning for me now.

Today...

My father would have been 77 today.

So in his memory, I took his guns out to shoot them. But I was denied, as the only area shotgun range is flooded and closed.

Still...they're going to get a good cleaning tonight nonetheless. With a good western on the TV and a beer or two afterwards.

My Father's Guns.

Not forgotten. I wish we'd had more time.

My Father's Gun

Four years. Has it only been four years since he left? It seems like forever. So much has happened in my life that he wasn't here to see. So many things that we never got to.

Well yesterday I took some time to take this old Ithaca Model 37 out to the range for some trap shooting.

It was the one that I bought him so long ago back when we had plans to go out hunting together.

It was an old Sheriff's Dept. trade-in that I found, and I put a 28" field barrel on it for him. But the trips never really happened. We were both busy back then, and moving in different directions, and the hunting trips never happened like we'd planned. We'd gone trap shooting a few times, but that was about it.

Four years ago today, this old gun became mine again. I wish it hadn't, but...

Yesterday, in his memory, I took it out to the range and busted some clays with it.

I didn't get 'em all, because I'm out of practice and I was never that good to begin with, but I got enough that I think he'd have been impressed. Maybe even proud.

Miss ya, Pop. Wish you were here.

Saturday Man Movie

in 1966, John Wayne starred in El Dorado, basically a remake of his earlier Rio Bravo. Both movies centered around a sheriff and friends battling a rich rancher who has them outnumbered and outgunned. In Rio Bravo, he's got Dean Martin, Walter Brennan and Ricky Nelson to help him. In this one, he's backing up Robert Mitchum, Arthur Hunnicutt and a young James Caan makes an appearance and then stays to help. And here's Caan's entrance, as "Mississippi".

Frankly I'm not sure which of the two I like best, because both were great. This one is special to me though because it's the last movie my father and I watched together back in September, 2012. I'd flown up to spend the week-end with him, and we watched the Tigers lose another game, then this came on, and I stayed to watch it even though it was getting late. We enjoyed this movie, and he seemed to be doing so good. We made plans for my next trip up, but it was only a couple of weeks later that I got the call and flew back again, this time for the funeral. So I guess I like this movie better than the other one, if for no reason than because watching it was the last thing I ever got to do with my father.

Another great scene:


That was a good movie, wasn't it, Pop?

Snow, and Memories.

Snow.

We got 2-3 inches yesterday by the time it stopped. Not much at all, especially compared to the Michigan snowfalls that I remember from my youth. But it was enough to coat the mountain here with white, and keep the trash trucks and fed-ex from coming up here. Wusses.

I remember growing up, how even an inch would have my dad out there with a snow shovel, clearing the whole driveway and the sidewalk. It didn't matter if the sun was going to come out the next day and the temps would be in the 40's, that driveway was going to get cleaned off today and so was the public sidewalk in front of our house and our own walk leading up to the front door. That was just part and parcel to being a homeowner and no one was going to have to trudge through snow in front of our house, not even if the only person out walking was the mailman. Yeah, they used to go out in the snow, too, back in the day.

Well that notion of his stuck with me over the years, and to this day, I can't look at an unshoveled driveway without reaching for the nearest snow shovel, even if it's a steeply inclined drive like mine and no one is expected to come over.

This one's for you, pop.

Happy Birthday, Pop. Couldn't find a picture of you with a snow shovel, but we sure had fun with the Uzi that summer day back on '07, didn't we?

My Dad. January 7, 1942 to October 2, 2012. Still missed.

Those were the days...

Today was my father's birthday. He's no longer here, as many of my readers know, but I still think of him a lot, and this post about Barbie Jeep racing on Bayou Renaissance Man's site brought back a real good memory of our time together.

Back when I was maybe eleven or twelve or so, I got the idea to make an un-powered go-cart out of an old lawnmower frame, minus the engine and handle. I took the wheeled body, painted it all slick--complete with racing numbers--added a rope on the front which served both for pulling up the hills and for holding onto for the ride down, and off my dad and I went with it to the local toboggan hill, which didn't get much other use come summertime.

Once there, we dragged my homemade instrument of personal destruction up to the top, my dad got his camera ready, and then I launched myself down the hill like an amateur Evel Knievel.

Faster and faster that cart would go--as fast if not faster than any sled in the wintertime. Of course the problem with that cart was that I could neither steer it or brake it and once in motion, my only real option was to hang on for all I was worth until it stopped. Sounds simple, but in actual practice, there was always a bunch of tractor tire ruts at the bottom that added just that much more spice to the ride, because if/when I hit one at speed, they were usually more than sufficient to flip me over or send me tumbling end over end. As a result, I very rarely ever managed to reach the fence at the end of the run, which was just as well because the cart had, as I've said, no brakes. Hitting the fence wasn't much less painful than hitting the ruts. Looking back, I got hurt on in some fashion every run, but I kept taking it back up the hill for more because I was a kid and kids were tougher back then. Cuts and bruises were badges of honor and there was no such thing as an X-Box to give you your rush. No, if you wanted a rush, you had to go outside and get it yourself, and without a helmet or any sort of padding, usually with your dad standing right there cheering you on, if you had any kind of a dad worthy of the title.

And my dad was always good for helping and supporting on stuff like that, be it building bike ramps for jumps in the street, model rockets, football or baseball games, or stupid ideas like that carts of death. He always made the time and encouraged me to try things, even if it meant letting me learn from my own mistakes.

I learned a lot about physics from that lawnmower body go-cart, and not a little about prudent decision-making as well, although it took a while for that last part to really catch.

Thanks, Pop. And Happy Birthday.

It's been a year.

It's been a year to the day since my father passed away after a tough bout with lung cancer. A whole year already.

I still miss him and think about him every day. I miss our regular phone calls, especially the ones every Sunday night. I even miss all of the e-mails I'd get from him, many of them about things debunked as urban legends or on-line hoaxes months or years prior. Somehow these things, no matter how thoroughly discredited, would still somehow get to him, only to be sent immediately on to me and dozens of other people. He sent me several of them a day for years, and I eventually gave up trying to explain to him that some things that pop up on your computer just aren't true and really shouldn't be sent back out to everyone that you know.

I miss those stupid e-mails.

But what I really miss is the opportunities lost. There were so many things that we'd wanted to do together but for one reason or another, had put off. We never took his new motorhome on a get-away together. We never made that Alaska trip that we'd talked about for years. The timing just wasn't right any time we talked about such things. "There'll be another time," one of us always said. And then one day, there wasn't any more time. Suddenly he was too sick to do anything. And then he was gone.

I made as many trips back up to see him as I could in the last few months. That's why I got the airplane. But by then, we really couldn't do much more than sit around his back porch, or maybe go out for breakfast. I'd give anything for just one more week together down here at my place, drinking beer and playing cribbage on my deck as the fall colors change. Or just one more Tigers game. We never even went to their "new" stadium together. So many things left undone, and still so many things left unsaid, even though we both knew that the time was drawing near.

I love you, Pop. I never said that enough.

My father.
January 7, 1942 to October 2, 2012.

On Fathers' Day...

First year without my dad. But some things just trigger memories.

Like Calvin.

I'm thinking that Bill Watterson was looking in our window one day.

Happy Fathers' Day, all.

Remembering

Today is January 7th.

My father would have been 71 years old today.

I think that I will go down to the local food bank and make a donation in his name. He would have liked that.

Happy Birthday, Pop.

Sunday Thoughts

Sundays kinda suck just a bit these days.

For years now, almost every Sunday without fail, my father and I would talk on the phone, one of us calling that other. The first question: "How you doing?"
The second: "So, you go to church today?"
Both of us over the years had our issues with going to church, but these last few years saw us both making it almost every week unless illness or work got in the way. So we'd talk about that for a bit, and then we'd usually talk about my nephew, The Spud, for a bit. I'm missing those Sunday calls right now.

Believe it or not, some of you other bloggers would come up quite a bit during those calls. He always loved Brigid's blog, and the videos on Peter's site were getting to be a close second favorite of his, followed by the posts on Rev. Paul's blog and the military and travel stories on Old NFO's. He followed a lot of the folks on my sidebar and my first reaction when I find neat stuff on some of your sites is still: "Oh, I have so got to send that to Pop..." And then I catch myself.

He was never very political when I was growing up, but these last few years, he was all about getting rid of Obama. I know that he'd have turned out for this one and doing his part to turn Michigan red again.

And in that vein, I went out to try early voting yesterday only to find a line that was an hour and a half long, per the security guards at the door at the courthouse. That was too long for me because I had somewhere else to be, but I WILL be voting on Tuesday for sure, if for no other reason than because I saw two people there whom I know full well to be hard-core Democrats and it will by my goal on election day to get to my local polling place and cancel one of them out. How about you? Can I count on you out there to cancel the other one out? This election is too important to sit it out or to waste a vote on some non-electable third party. Gary Johnson is not in this race and a vote for him is a vote that could have gone to defeat Obama yet did not. Like Romney or not, this is about removing Obama, period. I'm only lukewarm on Romney myself but I would cast a ballot for Mussolini or Pol Pot to get Obama out of my White House and away from the seat of total power. we can always fight the next knucklehead tomorrow but we've got to get rid of the Kenyan Poser first. So get out there on Tuesday if you haven't cast a ballot already, and oppose Obama with the only thing that can stop him: a vote for Mitt Romney.

I'm Murphy's owner and boss, and I approve this message.

Tigers Gotta Do It.

My Dad was always a Detroit Tigers fan. As long as I can remember, he rooted for this team, even when they sucked, which was a lot of seasons over the years. I can remember him taking me to their games at Tiger Stadium way back in the 1970's, and we'd watch and cheer for the likes of Rusty Staub, Mickey Stanley, Mark "The Bird" Fydrich, and Al Kaline. In the 80s, we watched Kirk Gibson and Cecil Fielder, and even went to a publicity event to hear Sparky Anderson talk about what it took to be a winner. The Tigers were something that we shared back then.

I'll confess that come the 90's, we didn't see much of each other or watch many ball games together. There were reasons for that that I won't go into, and the last decade saw me away from the Detroit area but for a few short visits back. But this last year in particular, we had a lot more time together, and some of it was spent in front of his TV, this time watching Prince Fielder, son of Cecil, play for that same team. Tiger Stadium down on Michigan and Trumbull was long gone, but my Dad stayed a fan all through the years.

This year, my Dad had hopes for the Tigers. He'd have loved to see them sweep the Yankees and earn that World Series shot. And I know that he'd be in his glory watching them take the Series this year.

So while I applaud the San Fransisco SF Giants for their sterling effort this year, I pity them and their die-hard fans (Six and Nancy Pelosi). Sorry Giants and Giant fans, you've had a good run, but this just isn't your year. Maybe next year. This year belongs to the Detroit Tigers and my Dad.

Games...

One of the things that I'll always remember about my father is his love for certain games, a love which sometimes bordered on an obsession. Growing up as a kid, I'll never forget how much he liked to play Monopoly. He would dragoon my sister and me into game after game after game, each of which would last for hours, or until he had all of our money, or until we were sent off to bed, at which time he declared victory by default. And he always won, every single time. It wasn't until I was old enough to pay close attention to the financial transactions that I began to observe a pattern of "banking errors" which were as regular as they were consistently in his favor. Naturally he was always the banker. But he also played with a strategy that enabled him to gain eventual control of those key properties that every winner needs to possess while us kids were still collecting favorite colors or properties with cool-sounding names. But there came a day when I began to see what he was doing and emulate him, and then his winning streak came to an end.

Scrabble was another favorite of his over the years as well. This was a bit safer to play with him since there was no money to be doled out and tracked, but as my vocabulary grew through the years, I came to realize that many "words" that he used to rack up major points were either "creatively" spelled or else they weren't really words at all. I eventually got to where I could hold my own with him, but they were some tough games, both because he really knew Scrabble strategy and because he was always the scorekeeper. "(See: "Monopoly banking errors" above.) And like our Monopoly games, I finally began to beat him once I observed his strategies and copied them, at which time my college vocabulary began to overcome his score-keeper's math advantage, at which time, this game, like Monopoly, ceased to be a favorite of his, at least until my nephew, The Spud, became old enough to play.

But come what may, we always had Cribbage.

He developed a love for this game maybe ten years ago or so, and I was reluctant to engage him for a long time because by this time I understood how things worked. Sure enough, the first few times that I sat down to play with him, it was obvious that he'd done his homework and learned the game, and he was pretty damned sharp at it. Frankly, I didn't relish getting beat game after game after bloody game so I didn't take him up on too many invites to play. But then I lost my leg and he came to stay for a few weeks to help me adjust, and he brought that damned Cribbage board with him.

This time I was pretty much at his mercy. I mean, I didn't even have my first prosthetic yet so it's not like I could walk away from him. We set up a table in my gun room and every evening we played Cribbage for a couple of hours and talked. And as expected, I lost almost every game for a while.

But over time, as with the other games, I began to see his strategies, and once I understood how the game worked, I began to formulate my own. By the time he finally packed up and went home, I could hold my own with him most of the time, and I think that we both saw that this wasn't a game that was automatically going to go one way because of his score-keeping or another because of my literary skills; by the time he left it had settled down to a game of skill and chance between two equally-capable adversaries, usually fought with cold beers on the table and a snoozing German Shepherd beneath it. Those were good moments during an otherwise traumatic time.

Over the years, when he came to see me, or when I went home to see him, the Cribbage board was usually broken out and put to use for a few games every night. Over the last few months in particular, we actually played quite a bit, only now it was him who was experiencing the diminished mobility. But he hadn't lost his Cribbage sharps though. He was still white hot at it and neither one of us was able to develop much of an edge over the other. It got to where I was really enjoying our games and looking forward to the next two-out-of-three or three-out-of-five match.

Alas, we never got to play on my last visit with him. In fact, I only just made it up in time to say good-bye before he was gone. But I'll always have the memories of our time together and the hours we spent with his Cribbage board. And now I have a permanent reminder in the form of this:

It was his board. The one that we always played on. The board is scuffed, and the pegs are worn, testaments to the use the we put it to over the years. Now it'll occupy a special place in my home office and every time I see it I'll be reminded of the time we spent together with it. And every time I look at it I can't help but smile because I know that one of these days we'll be together again and if Heaven's anything like I imagine, I have to think that there'll be a Cribbage board and a deck of cards around somewhere.

My Father's Guns

I have my father's guns now, three shotguns.

The first one is an Iver Johnson Champion 16 gauge single-shot that he bought back when he was a teen. The finish is original, if a bit neglected.

His brother told my this week how they went to a hardware store together back in the 1950's and my dad picked it out and bought it. Somehow it wound up disassembled and tucked away in my grandmother's basement for a few decades until I found it while nosing around in the late 1980s. My dad took it home again, and I spent some time carefully cleaning it up for him and gingerly removing a light layer of surface rust until the original blue shone through again. He kept it hanging on the wall of his den in a house he lived in in Dearborn, Mi for years, and then he moved again a few years ago and the shotgun wound up back in a closet again. During all this time, it likely never saw an oil rag, and I'm going to need to go over it again. That's a lot of time put into an old single-shot that's worth maybe a $150 on a good day, but this one's my dad's, so it'll get as much work as it needs to make it shine like new again, and then it'll get a place of honor here in the Lair.

No more basements or closets for this one.

The second one is one that I bought him, also back in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Back then, he and I were going hunting a bit and shooting clays, so I bought him a used but sharp Ithaca Model 37 12 gauge pump, both so that he could have his own gun for these things and because I worried about him living where he did, just a few blocks from the Detroit border.

It originally came to me with the 18" riot barrel as it had been a sheriff's department gun before, but I found a modified-choke field barrel at a gun show and bought that for it too so that he'd have both a game barrel and a deer/defense barrel for the gun. The shotgun was parkerized and the barrel blue, but unless you look close, you can't tell the difference. This gun's serial number indicates that it was manufactured in 1968.

He and I never took it out more than a few times back in the day, but I did find out at his memorial service that he'd had it out clay shooting with a good friend of his from work recently. That made me smile to think of him still finding enjoyment in this gun so many years on. He seems to have mislaid the original short barrel that the gun came with, as I could not find it in the closet where it sat on a shelf next to the Iver Johnson. But that's ok. After a good cleaning, it'll go into my living room display rack next to my own much younger Ithaca pump and I'll look at them and remember the times that we went out with them together.

Also found in that closet was another old single-barrel 12 gauge that I did not recognize at first. Then I remembered. Back when I was going to clean up his Iver Johnson for the first time, I wanted to do it right, without ruining anything. So I went to a local gun shop that had a bunch of junk guns and bought this battered and rusty old single for $25 or so, then I used it for practice with various cleaning and rust-removal techniques until I was sure that I could work on the IJ without harming it. After I was done, I cold-blued it and oiled the stock, and my dad wanted it for display in his den so I gave it to him. I'd forgotten all about this one until we pulled it down off the shelf. First I thought that it was his old 16 gauge and I was shocked at how bad it looked, and then I saw that it was a 12 gauge and I eventually remembered what it was and how it'd gotten there. This one is a Newport Model WN, which was a trade name used for guns made for the Hibbard Spencer Bartlett Company of Chicago, a large sporting goods wholesaler of the day. Crescent Fire Arms Company of Norwich,CT made these for them from 1892 until 1931. It's in poor shape and long past having any value at all other than sentimental, but it'll go nicely on the mantle over the fireplace in my library.

I didn't want your things, Pop. I'd have rather you just kept on having them forever. But life doesn't work that way. Rest assured that I'll take good care of them for you.

Gone to God

My father.
January 7, 1942 to October 2, 2012.

I love you, Pop.

Emergency Flight

I was at work yesterday when I got the call. "Come home. Now. He's really bad."

I've not mentioned it here before, but my father has cancer. It's one of the reasons I've been back to Michigan so much recently. It's actually why I bought the airplane--so that I could get back more, and quicker if need be.

It took me five minutes to tell work that I was leaving and wrap up what I was working on. Then it was a fast drive home to grab a bag and pick up Murphy, with a call to the airport FBO to fuel my plane and have it ready for immediate departure.

I'd been watching the weather for days, contemplating a trip up here this week-end anyway. But the weather was looking marginal at best, and my father'd sounded so good when we talked on the phone on Thursday. He was up and moving around and we'd discussed going out to do something when I got there. I'd already decided to postpone my trip until the following week-end because the weather was looking dodgy, but then I got the call and I knew that it wasn't being made lightly.

The flight was somewthing else, to be sure. I won't go into detail but I broke just about every rule of VFR operation in my haste to get home in time. My ride was waiting for me at the airport on the other end and just a few minutes after landing, I was on my way to my father's place.When I got here, I saw that he'd been moved to a hospital bed in the living room by the hospice staff, not a good sign, because you just knew that it was meant to be temporary. I couldn't believe that he'd gotten so bad so quickly since my last visit up here just a few weeks ago. But he was awake, and he recognized me and smiled as he said my name. That alone made the whole stupid, risky trip worth it. He knew I was here for him.

Now just a few hours later, he doesn't recognize me or anyone else. He alternates between a drug-induced rest and periods of agitation where he just wants to get out of bed. He doesn't appear to recognize me any more. But he did when I got here and I have to think that deep down, he still knows I'm here.

Posting's going to be sparse for a while as I deal with this. And your prayers will be appreciated.

Cancer's a motherfucker.

2nd Flying Day of the trip

After arriving in MI on Saturday, I spent some time with my mother, and my nephew, The Spud. I also got together with Aaron from The Shekel and his wonderful family for a few hours. This time, we went to the beach for a pig roast, and as Aaron's wonderful wife Tash sat in her beach chair, I bet his oldest daughter Aaaby that she could not hit my hand, which I then held over Tash's head, just out of her view. Naturally, Abby swung, I pulled my hand away, and it was a perfect fait accompli. I love kids...Hee! And of course we also spent some time with Aaron's wonderful gun collection. Gotta get my fix in somehow, right?

Meanwhile back at the Lair, my neighbor Chuck went over to take Murphy out and as soon as he opened the door, Murphy bum-rushed him and took off down the driveway. Chuck pursued as Murphy turned and ran down the street, clean to the corner where Chuck's house is, and around the corner and out of sight. So where did Murphy go? Why to Chuck's front gate, of course! Murphy so loves Chuck, Chuck's wife, and their dogs that he went right over there to spend the day without even waiting for Chuck to leash him up. Silly dog.

Sunday was spent with my father, gong to church, eating BBQ and planning Monday's flight when he wasn't looking. This was a trip up to Ludington, Michigan to see his brother. This was going to be a surprise but someone (cough! Mary! cough!) spilled the beans Sunday night. Still, we got off Monday morning without a hitch and flew west. The skies were pretty clear but we got more convective turbulence than I recall ever getting before--it was whipping us up and down like a retarded yo-yo until I got up to about 5,000 feet, at which point I got locked into that altitude by Lansing Airport ATC as I approached their airspace.

Then we got passed off to Grand Rapids, and had a nice overflight above the city, despite being kept up high by their ATC.

(Downtown Grand Rapids. Photo credit: Pop)

From here, I'd planned to loiter over Grand Haven, MI for a bit since we have quite a bit of family history there, but alas, the turbulence was even worse here, and Muskegon County Airport to the north seemed really bugged about us lolling along just outside of their airspace. I kid you not, about every other transmission from their approach controller started with MY call sign, asking my direction and intention. So I took the hint and just turned us north towards Ludington. But not before we got a few more good pics.
Here's a ship, inbound to Grand Haven's channel.

It's an old self-unloader converted to a barge combo by removing the aft deckhouse and engines and making room for a large tug. I really hate when they do that to these beautiful and unique old ships. This one is the McKee Sons, coupled to the tug Invincible. Built in 1945 as a fast troop ship, she was lengthened and converted to a self-unloader in 1953. She sailed as a steamer until 1979, when she was laid up in Toledo, where she sat for ten years In 1990, she was converted to a barge, as shown here. Lotta history in that old hull.

Here she is, heading into the channel, heading to the Verplank Dock about two miles up the channel.

It's so narrow that she'll have to back out of there after she unloads.

Look at her cutting through the silt coming out of that channel. I'd have loved to go lower, but decided not to due to the protestations of my passenger and Muskegon ATC. For the same reason, I nixed a planned overflight of downtown Grand Haven and Spring Lake. Maybe next time...

Next, we passed Muskegon as we went up the shoreline. By this time, I felt like there were three of us in the place--me, my father, and the Muskegon Approach controller, who apparently had no one else to talk to. But he was gracious enough to allow us an overflight of the Muskegon ship channel so we could grab some shots of USS Silversides, SS 236, at berth.

(Photo credit: Pop)

(Photo credit: Pop)

She's a museum ship now, and one of the best sub restorations I've seen. Next time I fly up, hopefully Aaron and I can fly over for a visit so I can blog it here.

Here's my Pop, caught in a rare moment when he was not clutching the right cabin grab handle with both hands and/or complaining about the bumpy ride.

And Mason County Airport at Ludington.

I added to my aviation education on this field. I checked the recorded AWOS (Automatic Weather Observation System) and got wind speed and direction from them. Based on that, I chose a runway for landing. On approach though, I saw smoke from a local smokestack which suggested a different wind direction entirely. "AWOS got it wrong," I thought. And because of this, after calling on the local Unicom frequency for wind and runway in use at the airport and getting no response, I switched to a runway that lined up with my idea of what the winds were doing. I realized my error on final as I shot over the numbers about 20 knots too fast. However I still got her down, albeit with a bit of tire screeching and using up a fair bit of runway. what do you know, but AWOS was right all long. Lesson learned. Next time I won't be so quick to second-guess it.

We had a nice lunch with Pop's brother and caught up for a bit as we rode around Ludington, and then it was time to head back. Surprisingly, when I was back at the airport, the airport attendant told me that he recognized my plane. It turns out that the man who owned it back in the 1970's and 80's had family in Ludington and used to fly it up there all the time. Now this plane has a bit of distinctive tail art on her that that owner had put on, and the airport man immediately recognized it. (So did the people at Plymouth Mettetal--my plane was owned by a couple of people who'd based it there and they all knew it, too. "Oh yeah...that plane's been around here for years..." one said when he saw it. Small world.

Then we flew back, staying high so as to avoid much of the turbulence. This time even that didn't seem to do it, though. It was still bumpy as all get-out and updrafts kept taking us even higher. But I converted that free altitude to speed by nosing her down and keeping on a shallow dive that added about 10-15 knots to our over the ground speed in addition to what we were getting off of a quartering tail wind. We made the trip from Ludington to Canton in 1.8 hours, including a practice missed approach I shot on arrival.

And here's the happy passenger, back on the ground. Admittedly, it was a rough flight both ways due to all of the clear air turbulence, but he did real good.

Happy Father's Day, Pop!

Because classic old guys never go out of style.











Yeah, he shoots machine guns. So don't mess with him.





You can read more about him by clicking on "My Dad" below.

(Toldja I'd make you famous someday, Pop!)

In Lieu of a Birthday Card

Well I didn't get the card off on time again this year, but I figure that this burger commercial from South Africa will do as an acceptable stand-in.

Happy 70th Birthday, Pop!

My Dad...On Fathers Day

As a young man growing up, I couldn't help but notice that my father never had much luck with his cars.

I think that it began when I was just a young child. We were driving along one day, me in the passenger seat, and I said "Hey, look at this picture that I drew today." (It was a really good picture of a steam engine, if I recall.) He turned to look at it and steered his 1975 Mercury station wagon into a parked car.

Bummer, Dad.

A few years later, he had to help me out with my paper route because my paper route bike was busted. He was a little upset to say the least at 3 AM, and when he went to put his Buick Skylark into reverse, the gear shift knob, which had been loose for some time, came off in his hand. Losing it for just a second, he slammed the knob down onto the dashboard, only to have it bounce up and star the windshield, cracking it from one side to the other.

That one I'll remember as the morning that I felt a need to laugh like never before, but was forced to suppress even the slightest smirk lest I be slaughtered on the spot.

And then I got my driver's license, figuring that I could take some of the burden off of him. I mean, if he didn't have to drive me places all the time, he wouldn't wreck his cars so much, right? Well not so much.

The very first time that I went to move his Skylark out of the garage so that I could get the lawnmower that was in front if it (because he had parked way too close to the lawnmower), my foot slipped off the clutch and the car shot backwards, right into the new addition that we'd just put on the house. No real damage to the car but rebuilding that wall wasn't a whole lot of fun for either of us.

And then the next year, he got a new car after the Skylark's little 4-cylinder engine inexplicably burned out. (OK, the fact that to a sixteen year old boy, EVERY car is a potential race car might have had something to do with it...) He got a brand new Dodge Aries--a K-Car. (My dad sure had style, didn't he?) That car wasn't three weeks old when I had it out with a couple of my friends and another car hit the front end of the new Dodge and took off. Wow--that was fun bringing that car home and commiserating with my dad over his tough luck, let me tell you.

But none of these were as bad as the luck that he seemed to have with his Pontiac Bonneville diesel. A rule that he imposed was that if I was going to drive his car, I had to put fuel in it. Well I was young and still in high school. I had no job. So I would usually scour the couch cushions for change and hit my no-account friends up for gas money, and usually I'd wind up putting a dollar or two into the gas tank, at least technically complying with his edict. I always put enough in the tank to get the car home. Alas, one day I did not put enough into it to allow it to actually reach the closest gas station when my dad took it out, and he unfortunately ran out on the way to the station. Ever try to prime a diesel engine that's been run out of fuel? He had a heck of a time getting that car started again, if I recall.

But that wasn't near as bad as the night that I was out driving with a couple of pals and decided to go down a dirt road that I'd never been on before. I mean, how could I know that the road ended in a big pond, right? And as I stood there later next to my dad (prudently out of arm's reach, of course) I could not help but feel sorry for him and his never-ending bad luck with his cars as we watched the wrecker driver pull that Pontiac back out of the water.

But he seems to be doing much better these days for some reason. Knock on wood, and Happy Father's Day, Pop!

Selfridge ANG Museum visit

Last Sunday, after church, my father and I took my nephew The Spud out for a bit, just to spend some quality "guy time" with him and expose him to something besides video games and the television set. We took him up to the Selfridge Air National Guard Base museum, in whose back lot can be found nearly seventy years' worth of military aviation history in the form of some of the finest aircraft ever to grace the skies in defense of this or any other country.

It was cold outside, with a heavy wind blowing and snow/freezing rain occasionally coming down on us, so my father couldn't stay out there too long, but as for me, I was in Heaven. So much winged goodness in one place, and all touchable!

Bear with me on this one. I have so many pictures that I'm going to set up another blog page just to display them. But just for a tease, here's a few.

This F-86A used to fly with the Michigan Air Guard out of Kellogg Field in Battle Creek.

This Lockheed P-3B Orion used to hunt Soviet submarines. Now it's here on display and open for tours.

Here's The Spud, climbing the boarding ladder into the P3B Orion.Spud wanted to sit at the controls. He was a bit put out that I relegated him to the right seat. The left seat had my name on it.


Here's my father, freezing to death in front of an A-7D Corsair II


An F-4C, perhaps one of the very aircraft that my father and I used to come out to the base to watch fly on week-ends, way back when.

I'll never forget noise so loud that it shook the car, and the kerosene residue that they left all over us as they launched off of the north end of the runway, right over our heads.


They switched to these F-16s a little later. It just wasn't the same.


Here's what they fly now. the 127th Wing flies the A-10.Unfortunately none were flying on this day due to weather conditions. I'd have liked Spud to have seen that.

The Spud in front of an M113, clearly wishing that he was somewhere else.


There was so much here that I wanted to show the boy, but I guess when you're a modern-day 12 year old, this:is more interesting than this:

I don't get that. When I was twelve, it would have taken half a dozen MPs to get me out of a yard like this. It was still hard for me to go on this day, but my father had gone back to the car and Spud had gone after him quite some time before. So reluctantly, I left the aircraft and fantasies of flying each and every one of them behind and returned to reality. But I'll be back to see them again some day. Count on it.

Give me a day or two and I'll have the whole yard posted for your enjoyment.