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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Revenge / Poetic Justice / Karma
- Published: 06/08/2012
Justice
Born 1938, M, from Canon, GA, United StatesJUSTICE By Michael D. Warner
Copyright 2005 by Michael D. Warner All rights reserved.
I hung up the telephone and with a sigh stumbled down the hall, rubbing
sleep from my eyes. Standing before the sink I tried to remember which knob to use, which really didn’t matter, because each produced only cold water. I knew this but for some reason thought it advisable to alternate, so I always did it, maybe just for the hell of it. By the time I had dried off I was fully awake.
My watch read three a.m..
Managing a small airport was a job not always filled with excitement and romance. Sometimes, it became one of hard work and little sleep. This particular Saturday morning, I felt romance-and-excitement were out, and that hard-work-and-little-sleep were in: The owner of the single-engine Beech Bonanza wanted his ship out of the hangar for a four a.m. departure.
Nine aircraft were based at Bussell Field during the summer of 1960. All nine were safely hangared inside the large, wooden building a thousand feet from my office. Some made recurring flights during the week but all were certain to fly out on either Saturday or Sunday when the weather was nice, which it usually was in central Alabama in late May. My problem was that the owner’s departure whims were unpredictable. It seemed no matter which plane I parked in the rear of that hangar, it was sure to be the first one to want out on a weekend morning.
Leaving the office, I pulled the door closed and walked down the shallow incline, grumbling to myself in the chilly darkness. Because the hangar opened only at one end, I would have to drag maybe six or more airplanes outside before getting to the Bonanza.
The one hour’s notice helped. I could do it in forty minutes. In those days moving airplanes was all done by hand. Tugs and towmotors were to be found only upon the larger airports. My mood was a bit dark.
(Pause)
The Bonanza’s drone faded into the distance as I closed and locked the office door. Then I collapsed on the old settee.
I was sound asleep when my next customer arrived. He was pounding on the door as I awoke. He entered the office, made for the coffee urn, then helped himself to a hot cup of the several-days-old over-cooked brew. He took a swallow, then gurgled. I looked up to see him staring at me with the expression of a man who had just detected an unpleasant aroma in a crowded, slow-moving, elevator. Although he blinked his eyes rather rapidly, he did not complain. He knew I had not yet cleaned the one-week’s accumulation of hangar dust and bird poop from the windshield of his new Cessna-210.
Instead, setting the mug down on the counter, he looked at his watch and croaked, “I need to be leaving now. Can you go ahead and get my ship ready for me?” I knew that this wasn’t a request. It was more of an order. But hey, that was my job. We walked down to his new ship.
Minutes later, the 210 was airborne. I shaded my eyes with my hand in the usual way and squinted into the summer dawn made red by the mist. Her awkward landing gear made the departing Cessna look like a bird with broken legs as the spring-steel struts swung slowly into the gaping fuselage wells and her oblong gear doors closed to hide them from the slipstream.
This was the initial production year for the Cessna 210. To my knowledge she was the first high-wing single-engine airplane having retractable tricycle landing gear. Swept tails and three-color paint schemes had made their debut into the the aircraft market. That industry had learned from the U.S. automakers. The Big Three: Cessna, Piper, and Beech. Each bracketed the competition by trying to offer a model just a little bit faster, just a bit cheaper or perhaps just a bit more comfortable than the closest competitor. Many choices were now available.
Beech had redesigned the Twin Bonanza to become its cabin-class Queen Air. Cessna would not produce a cabin-class aircraft for another four years. Piper, with the exception of its Pawnee crop-duster, had yet to produce a low-wing single, although its Twin-Apache with the addition of a large slab tail and larger engines became the Piper Aztec, designed to chop away at the Cessna 310 market.)
The weather forecaster in Montgomery had predicted scattered variable-to-broken clouds with six-miles visibility in haze, which caused me to expect a busy day. Six miles visibility was less than a lot for a great majority of weekend pilots plying the skies. Most flew sans-radio. Pilotage and dead-reckoning were their only navigational tools. Pilotage involved reading the aviation chart and simply looking down to see on the ground what was depicted on the chart. Dead-reckoning involved using time-speed-distance calculations made prior to flight and also during flight to determine where one ought to be.
Pilots maintaining headings based upon predicted wind calculations were subject to the inaccuracies of winds-aloft forecasts. The nation’s first weather satellite, TIROS-1, launched April Fool’s Day that year, had yet to revolutionize aviation weather forecasting and I knew I could count on getting my share of lost pilots that hazy Saturday.
Bussell Field was located some distance from a large lake. This terrain had little in the way of distinct landmarks and the lake drew lost pilots like a magnet. A pipeline and a powerline, crossing each other at a shallow angle near the lake, led to confusion for some. The pipeline connected petroleum terminals in Atlanta with the rich oil fields and refineries of Southern Louisiana. Some pilots mistook it for the powerline and, following it instead, would pass close enough to my airport to spot the field on all but very worst visibility days.
Viewed from the air a pipeline and a powerline look similar, like a swath cut across the Earth’s surface by a giant lawnmower. However, the latter swath has poles spaced equidistantly along its length. A sharp eye gazing without prejudice nor panic can tell the difference.
The powerline diverged not far from my field to lead its followers towards other airports. Most highways and most railroads twisted and wound across the state. Small towns appeared similar from the air. It was easy for a pilot to become lost on a hazy day in my part of Alabama.
Lost? Those pilots who had found themselves in such predicaments were less than willing to admit it. After all, pilots are proud of their navigational abilities. The safety of flight depends upon this necessary skill. A hot-rocks pilot who has managed to convince himself that he is God’s-Gift-to-Aviation would sooner take a whipping than suffer the incredible embarassment attendant upon admitting being lost. After all, his credibility, his reliability, and his prowess were at stake, not to mention his valued reputation. No, being lost was the true ego-buster.
A pilot would sooner admit forgetting to check his fuel or oil caps, or forgetting to untie the aircraft’s tail before trying to taxi from the parking area than he would to admit being lost. How could a pilot holding reasonable self-esteem ever admit ‘being lost’? No, a lost pilot landed then spent his time trying hard not to look lost. He would nod and smile politely at other aviators as he wandered about in hopes someone standing around might mention the name of the airport or of the nearest town.
Nonchalantly, the lost airman would read the sign on the hangar.He would reconnoiter the parking lot. He would examine wall calendars, and ask to see the telephone book.
By then the restaurant had opened, so I detoured on the way back to the office, cutting across the gravel parking lot and the two-lane curved drive which circled back to the state highway. A short while later, with a tummy full of Zeke’s pancakes, I found my mood had improved considerably and I went about the business of running a small airport. Much of this consists of airing tires, pumping gas, washing airplanes, and in those days, cheerfully swinging props on those craft not having electric starters. Answering the telephone and sometimes having to run a hundred yards to do so kept me from getting out of shape.
Midmorning arrived. An angry orange sun beat through the haze. Several airplanes had landed and I found myself busy as the pilot lounge filled with transients and locals, all talking “pilot talk”. The visitors were easy to spot: They were the ones holding the mugs of my free coffee.
Suddenly, a well-dressed pilot looking to be in his middle twenties pushed through the door. As he approached the counter, I detected an obvious air of arrogance. A silk scarf dangled loosely around his neck with one of its ends hanging down his back. The leather jacket was correctly unzipped and his sunglasses were pushed up into his hair above his forehead. The narrow tie was secured by a rather large, golden-winged tie-clip. If any doubt remained that he was an aviator, an oversized pilot’s wristwatch weighting his left wrist dispelled that notion. Many would have been proud to have placed that timepiece on the center of their mantle pieces above a suitable fireplace.
He looked at me and ordered: “I want you to top off both tanks with eighty octane. Dip the oil, then come back and tell me what it reads.”
Jack B., my friend from the cotton mill, had overheard the order. I stifled a smile when Jack made a lewd gesture behind the man’s back.
I hastened to do the pilot’s bidding, trotting down to the gas pit where his red and silver Cessna 140 was parked. Reaching the ship, I spied the very pretty lady perched in the copilot’s seat. Climbing the ladder in front of the wing, I stole several glances. Her clear face and sparkling eyes were framed by soft brown hair that draped forward of her shoulders, contrasting warmly with the tan and rather promising sweater she wore. When she smiled at me, I almost overfilled the left tank. My eyes took in slender wrists and delicate hands, stopping when they came to the gold wedding ensemble encircling her third finger.
I finished the refueling operation, checked the oil level, then walked slowly back toward the office. (Two airplanes were in the pattern: Our green and silver Cessna 150, followed on downwind by a bright red Taylorcraft L-2. The Cessna was over the threshold. I stopped to watch as the pilot flared about twenty feet too high above the pavement. My innards tightened. I supposed his did too, because just then I heard the ‘whroom’ of the hundred-horsepower Continental as he poured on the coal, aborting the landing attempt and climbing away from the runway.)
Pausing on the office steps, I turned to watch the Taylorcraft settle onto the runway in a perfect three-point landing. Entering the office, I made my way behind the counter and began tallying the fuel bill for the Cessna 140.
Most of the chairs and both of the couches were occupied. About a dozen people were seated. Another six were on their feet, wandering around making impromptu introductions, and discussing such things as: The FAA. The high cost of fuel. The virtues and faults of various aircraft, and other various and sundry items of ‘airplane talk’. I noticed that the pilot of the Cessna 140 was in a rather heated discussion with the local owner of a Luscombe 8E, an airplane superior to the 140 in many respects. The 140 pilot seemed very sure of himself. Sensing the tone of the argument a short distance away, one got the impression that the fancy dressed pilot was lecturing his debator.
That conversation ended. I saw his eyes rove the room. He wandered over to the rear windows, looking out as if interested in the architecture of the airport restaurant.
My friend, Jack, sidled over beside me. “He asked to see the ‘phone book,” he said. Then he added darkly, “He never made a call.”
I nodded. “Did he check out the calendar?”
Jack nodded. “Sure did.”
We smiled evilly at each other.
Our telephone directory served six communities. Bussellville was listed among such towns as Kellyton, Dadeville, and Martin. The now-faded painted name on the old wooden hangar memorialized one of Bussellville’s early mayors. The calendar was from an International Harvester dealer some three towns distant, and the sign on the airport restaurant stated simply: “Airport Restaurant”.
There was a wall chart made up of many sectional charts but the hole where the nail had been driven in to hold the pull-string obliterated the airport name. Years of pilots’ pressing fingers had smudged out most of the immediate area to be unreadable.
Billy Joe Harrison had just finished retelling his favorite story about the lost pilot who had landed a yellow J-3 Piper Cub almost out of gas at our field during the middle of a clear afternoon the previous summer. After discovering he had mistaken our field for an airport some forty miles distant, he had torn his sectional chart in two, balled up the pieces and had thrown them as far into the bushes as he could. He then printed a FOR SALE sign on the back of an envelope, shoved it behind the windshield, and had stalked angrily into town to catch a Trailways Bus home.
The story drew loud guffaws from the group of pilots who had been listening, including our arrogant visitor. Billy Joe had just begun his tale about the lost Naval Air Cadet, when the door burst open to admit the pretty wife of the Cessna 140 pilot who had grown tired waiting in the airplane.
Smiling, she swirled into the room. The crowd became silent. Glancing around, she spotted her husband then called in a voice bright and clear:
“John, did you ever find out where we are?”
--THE END--
Justice(Michael D. Warner)
JUSTICE By Michael D. Warner
Copyright 2005 by Michael D. Warner All rights reserved.
I hung up the telephone and with a sigh stumbled down the hall, rubbing
sleep from my eyes. Standing before the sink I tried to remember which knob to use, which really didn’t matter, because each produced only cold water. I knew this but for some reason thought it advisable to alternate, so I always did it, maybe just for the hell of it. By the time I had dried off I was fully awake.
My watch read three a.m..
Managing a small airport was a job not always filled with excitement and romance. Sometimes, it became one of hard work and little sleep. This particular Saturday morning, I felt romance-and-excitement were out, and that hard-work-and-little-sleep were in: The owner of the single-engine Beech Bonanza wanted his ship out of the hangar for a four a.m. departure.
Nine aircraft were based at Bussell Field during the summer of 1960. All nine were safely hangared inside the large, wooden building a thousand feet from my office. Some made recurring flights during the week but all were certain to fly out on either Saturday or Sunday when the weather was nice, which it usually was in central Alabama in late May. My problem was that the owner’s departure whims were unpredictable. It seemed no matter which plane I parked in the rear of that hangar, it was sure to be the first one to want out on a weekend morning.
Leaving the office, I pulled the door closed and walked down the shallow incline, grumbling to myself in the chilly darkness. Because the hangar opened only at one end, I would have to drag maybe six or more airplanes outside before getting to the Bonanza.
The one hour’s notice helped. I could do it in forty minutes. In those days moving airplanes was all done by hand. Tugs and towmotors were to be found only upon the larger airports. My mood was a bit dark.
(Pause)
The Bonanza’s drone faded into the distance as I closed and locked the office door. Then I collapsed on the old settee.
I was sound asleep when my next customer arrived. He was pounding on the door as I awoke. He entered the office, made for the coffee urn, then helped himself to a hot cup of the several-days-old over-cooked brew. He took a swallow, then gurgled. I looked up to see him staring at me with the expression of a man who had just detected an unpleasant aroma in a crowded, slow-moving, elevator. Although he blinked his eyes rather rapidly, he did not complain. He knew I had not yet cleaned the one-week’s accumulation of hangar dust and bird poop from the windshield of his new Cessna-210.
Instead, setting the mug down on the counter, he looked at his watch and croaked, “I need to be leaving now. Can you go ahead and get my ship ready for me?” I knew that this wasn’t a request. It was more of an order. But hey, that was my job. We walked down to his new ship.
Minutes later, the 210 was airborne. I shaded my eyes with my hand in the usual way and squinted into the summer dawn made red by the mist. Her awkward landing gear made the departing Cessna look like a bird with broken legs as the spring-steel struts swung slowly into the gaping fuselage wells and her oblong gear doors closed to hide them from the slipstream.
This was the initial production year for the Cessna 210. To my knowledge she was the first high-wing single-engine airplane having retractable tricycle landing gear. Swept tails and three-color paint schemes had made their debut into the the aircraft market. That industry had learned from the U.S. automakers. The Big Three: Cessna, Piper, and Beech. Each bracketed the competition by trying to offer a model just a little bit faster, just a bit cheaper or perhaps just a bit more comfortable than the closest competitor. Many choices were now available.
Beech had redesigned the Twin Bonanza to become its cabin-class Queen Air. Cessna would not produce a cabin-class aircraft for another four years. Piper, with the exception of its Pawnee crop-duster, had yet to produce a low-wing single, although its Twin-Apache with the addition of a large slab tail and larger engines became the Piper Aztec, designed to chop away at the Cessna 310 market.)
The weather forecaster in Montgomery had predicted scattered variable-to-broken clouds with six-miles visibility in haze, which caused me to expect a busy day. Six miles visibility was less than a lot for a great majority of weekend pilots plying the skies. Most flew sans-radio. Pilotage and dead-reckoning were their only navigational tools. Pilotage involved reading the aviation chart and simply looking down to see on the ground what was depicted on the chart. Dead-reckoning involved using time-speed-distance calculations made prior to flight and also during flight to determine where one ought to be.
Pilots maintaining headings based upon predicted wind calculations were subject to the inaccuracies of winds-aloft forecasts. The nation’s first weather satellite, TIROS-1, launched April Fool’s Day that year, had yet to revolutionize aviation weather forecasting and I knew I could count on getting my share of lost pilots that hazy Saturday.
Bussell Field was located some distance from a large lake. This terrain had little in the way of distinct landmarks and the lake drew lost pilots like a magnet. A pipeline and a powerline, crossing each other at a shallow angle near the lake, led to confusion for some. The pipeline connected petroleum terminals in Atlanta with the rich oil fields and refineries of Southern Louisiana. Some pilots mistook it for the powerline and, following it instead, would pass close enough to my airport to spot the field on all but very worst visibility days.
Viewed from the air a pipeline and a powerline look similar, like a swath cut across the Earth’s surface by a giant lawnmower. However, the latter swath has poles spaced equidistantly along its length. A sharp eye gazing without prejudice nor panic can tell the difference.
The powerline diverged not far from my field to lead its followers towards other airports. Most highways and most railroads twisted and wound across the state. Small towns appeared similar from the air. It was easy for a pilot to become lost on a hazy day in my part of Alabama.
Lost? Those pilots who had found themselves in such predicaments were less than willing to admit it. After all, pilots are proud of their navigational abilities. The safety of flight depends upon this necessary skill. A hot-rocks pilot who has managed to convince himself that he is God’s-Gift-to-Aviation would sooner take a whipping than suffer the incredible embarassment attendant upon admitting being lost. After all, his credibility, his reliability, and his prowess were at stake, not to mention his valued reputation. No, being lost was the true ego-buster.
A pilot would sooner admit forgetting to check his fuel or oil caps, or forgetting to untie the aircraft’s tail before trying to taxi from the parking area than he would to admit being lost. How could a pilot holding reasonable self-esteem ever admit ‘being lost’? No, a lost pilot landed then spent his time trying hard not to look lost. He would nod and smile politely at other aviators as he wandered about in hopes someone standing around might mention the name of the airport or of the nearest town.
Nonchalantly, the lost airman would read the sign on the hangar.He would reconnoiter the parking lot. He would examine wall calendars, and ask to see the telephone book.
By then the restaurant had opened, so I detoured on the way back to the office, cutting across the gravel parking lot and the two-lane curved drive which circled back to the state highway. A short while later, with a tummy full of Zeke’s pancakes, I found my mood had improved considerably and I went about the business of running a small airport. Much of this consists of airing tires, pumping gas, washing airplanes, and in those days, cheerfully swinging props on those craft not having electric starters. Answering the telephone and sometimes having to run a hundred yards to do so kept me from getting out of shape.
Midmorning arrived. An angry orange sun beat through the haze. Several airplanes had landed and I found myself busy as the pilot lounge filled with transients and locals, all talking “pilot talk”. The visitors were easy to spot: They were the ones holding the mugs of my free coffee.
Suddenly, a well-dressed pilot looking to be in his middle twenties pushed through the door. As he approached the counter, I detected an obvious air of arrogance. A silk scarf dangled loosely around his neck with one of its ends hanging down his back. The leather jacket was correctly unzipped and his sunglasses were pushed up into his hair above his forehead. The narrow tie was secured by a rather large, golden-winged tie-clip. If any doubt remained that he was an aviator, an oversized pilot’s wristwatch weighting his left wrist dispelled that notion. Many would have been proud to have placed that timepiece on the center of their mantle pieces above a suitable fireplace.
He looked at me and ordered: “I want you to top off both tanks with eighty octane. Dip the oil, then come back and tell me what it reads.”
Jack B., my friend from the cotton mill, had overheard the order. I stifled a smile when Jack made a lewd gesture behind the man’s back.
I hastened to do the pilot’s bidding, trotting down to the gas pit where his red and silver Cessna 140 was parked. Reaching the ship, I spied the very pretty lady perched in the copilot’s seat. Climbing the ladder in front of the wing, I stole several glances. Her clear face and sparkling eyes were framed by soft brown hair that draped forward of her shoulders, contrasting warmly with the tan and rather promising sweater she wore. When she smiled at me, I almost overfilled the left tank. My eyes took in slender wrists and delicate hands, stopping when they came to the gold wedding ensemble encircling her third finger.
I finished the refueling operation, checked the oil level, then walked slowly back toward the office. (Two airplanes were in the pattern: Our green and silver Cessna 150, followed on downwind by a bright red Taylorcraft L-2. The Cessna was over the threshold. I stopped to watch as the pilot flared about twenty feet too high above the pavement. My innards tightened. I supposed his did too, because just then I heard the ‘whroom’ of the hundred-horsepower Continental as he poured on the coal, aborting the landing attempt and climbing away from the runway.)
Pausing on the office steps, I turned to watch the Taylorcraft settle onto the runway in a perfect three-point landing. Entering the office, I made my way behind the counter and began tallying the fuel bill for the Cessna 140.
Most of the chairs and both of the couches were occupied. About a dozen people were seated. Another six were on their feet, wandering around making impromptu introductions, and discussing such things as: The FAA. The high cost of fuel. The virtues and faults of various aircraft, and other various and sundry items of ‘airplane talk’. I noticed that the pilot of the Cessna 140 was in a rather heated discussion with the local owner of a Luscombe 8E, an airplane superior to the 140 in many respects. The 140 pilot seemed very sure of himself. Sensing the tone of the argument a short distance away, one got the impression that the fancy dressed pilot was lecturing his debator.
That conversation ended. I saw his eyes rove the room. He wandered over to the rear windows, looking out as if interested in the architecture of the airport restaurant.
My friend, Jack, sidled over beside me. “He asked to see the ‘phone book,” he said. Then he added darkly, “He never made a call.”
I nodded. “Did he check out the calendar?”
Jack nodded. “Sure did.”
We smiled evilly at each other.
Our telephone directory served six communities. Bussellville was listed among such towns as Kellyton, Dadeville, and Martin. The now-faded painted name on the old wooden hangar memorialized one of Bussellville’s early mayors. The calendar was from an International Harvester dealer some three towns distant, and the sign on the airport restaurant stated simply: “Airport Restaurant”.
There was a wall chart made up of many sectional charts but the hole where the nail had been driven in to hold the pull-string obliterated the airport name. Years of pilots’ pressing fingers had smudged out most of the immediate area to be unreadable.
Billy Joe Harrison had just finished retelling his favorite story about the lost pilot who had landed a yellow J-3 Piper Cub almost out of gas at our field during the middle of a clear afternoon the previous summer. After discovering he had mistaken our field for an airport some forty miles distant, he had torn his sectional chart in two, balled up the pieces and had thrown them as far into the bushes as he could. He then printed a FOR SALE sign on the back of an envelope, shoved it behind the windshield, and had stalked angrily into town to catch a Trailways Bus home.
The story drew loud guffaws from the group of pilots who had been listening, including our arrogant visitor. Billy Joe had just begun his tale about the lost Naval Air Cadet, when the door burst open to admit the pretty wife of the Cessna 140 pilot who had grown tired waiting in the airplane.
Smiling, she swirled into the room. The crowd became silent. Glancing around, she spotted her husband then called in a voice bright and clear:
“John, did you ever find out where we are?”
--THE END--
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Valerie Allen
10/28/2024"That which I greatly fear has come upon me." Despite his best cover-up plan, he was found out! A well-written story with a good message.
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