CloudDancer
Registered User
L. Ronstadt - J. Ingram Duet
(*) Title credit to that Great Baseball Legend Yogi Berra.
Prologue
You know that feeling you get :-? ....the one when you’re standing in your driveway, leaning against the back end of your car, clasped hands resting atop a long handled rake as you take a break from the yardwork and talk about tomorrow’s big game with your neighbor for a couple of minutes. You’re talking about the record setting running back and could he possibly.....
Tires screeching a couple of houses down at the end of the block interrupts the conversation as you both turn to see that arrogant hot head kid from up the street :evil: gun his engine and fish-tail away from the turn.. Just as he passes you his hopped up old GTO belches a good backfire and.....all of a sudden as your neighbor turns and opens his mouth to speak you INSTANTLY feel like you are watching a movie you’ve seen at least once before, or get that weird feeling that this conversation is “vaguely familiar”.
And as your neighbor begins to speak you know EXACTLY what words he will utter and he is about to be interrupted (again) by the screech of tires as the cars brakes are locked and the horn blares as some small child chases a ball out in front of the still accelerating car. And it all happens in a FLASH of recognition..Weird, isn’t it?
It’s called DejaVu or dreaming about the future. And from what I’ve learned about it, MOST of us do it. Some rarely and some more often.
I had a recurring dream as a child that started as early as about five or six, if I remember right. I had it at irregular intervals every couple of years after that. Same dream. Each and every time. Didn’t vary one IOTA.
I was in a small plane apparently. Of what type, I had no idea. I don’t even think I had actually been IN a small plane by that age other than in my play time fantasies; my bedroom already being littered with die-cast model airplanes of every vintage, both civilian and military.
Oh, I had been in PLENTY of cockpits, even in flight. I had taken my first trip on an airliner at the age of three months and had been flying many times a year as a “non-rev” as both parents worked for major carriers and if one airline “didn’t go there”....the other DID. It was the GLORY DAYS of aviation in the 50's when the Captain would put on his coat and tie open the cockpit door and stroll through the cabin as a GOD.
The attractive women passengers would blush and clench their thighs a little tighter under the appreciative glance of the uniformed man, and yeah, even grown and powerful traveling male executives would often adopt a deferential posture in the presence of these Masters of the Skies....... (Sigh)....OH! For the GOOD Ol’ Days.
And then, approaching our row, HE would stop and lean up against the aisle seat in front of Mama CloudDancer enjoying the sight of my little face pressed up against the plexiglass inner window as I absorbed the passing of the earth so far below. And on VERY rare occasions came those most coveted of all invitations. “Hey there young fella’ ” I would hear. Whipping my face away I turned to see....the PILOT!! And he was addressing ME! “Would you like to go up and see the cockpit?”
NIRVANA!! This...THIS GOD had not only deigned to SPEAK to me, but was offering ME the opportunity to follow him back up the carpeted aisleway for a glimpse of Olympus!
I’ll refrain here, from quoting any lines about “men’s saunas Timmy”; and I wish you would to, although I must admit after watching Peter Graves on “Mission Impossible” for years, he WAS hysterical in the role. “Get me a Vector Victor”. But I digress.
I only told you about all THAT, so I can tell you THIS!
You know how when you are having a dream that ends in..............BLACKNESS (i.e. DEATH)!!
The bear is chasing you. He is closing in. The sounds of his paws and your feet crashing down on the fallen leaves and twigs in the forest crescendo in your ear as he closes the distance between you. PANICKED, you steal a quick glance over your shoulder to see he has closed the distance to a mere dozen yards or less!!
He’ll be on you in MOMENTS as you WILL yourself to run with superhuman speed. He’s right behind you now and you can hear the SNORTING and huffing as a great WEIGHT crashes down on you from behind and........BLACKNESS!!
Unless you have been mauled by a bear, and lived to remember it, the dream HAS to END.
Unless you HAVE died and come back (as a few apparently have) you have NO KNOWLEDGE of DEATH. Ergo, you can’t DREAM about IT! You can dream about feeling the pain leading up to it. You’ve EXPERIENCED pain. But you cannot, it is said by those who study these things, DREAM about that which you have no personal experience (of SOME sort) with.
In MY recurring dream I was in a small single engine private plane of some sort in flight. I was in a spin. And there was this intersection of a two lane blacktop highway or road, and a dirt road. In three of the four quadrants formed by the intersection there were tilled farm fields with row after row of something green. The fourth field was tilled dark rich earth with no growth, only row after empty row of tilled soil.
The spinning airplane was not directly over the center of the intersection of the roads, so as the spin continued and tightened, I had to follow the intersection of the roads as it swam crazily in a larger and larger circle around the windshield as the noise of the slipstream increased, the flat farm field growing ever larger in the windo.........BLACKNESS!! And I bolt upright in my bed, frantically looking around. I calm myself as I see the six inch long “doorsill” of light from the hallway light extending into the bedroom darkness, and hear Mom and Dad laughing at something on the Jack Parr show through the closed bedroom door. With a BIG sigh of relief I flop backward onto the bed in a prone position again and drift off once more.
I had gotten my private license primarily in a 1959 straight-tailed, no rear window Cessna 150. It had LOTS of airframe time and VERY faded green paint on dull aluminum. It cost me about $600 total, a very GENEROUS 3 bucks/hr. of which went to my WONDERFUL instructor.
I decided to move up in the world a little for my commercial. A larger school across the field had new and prettier slant tails with the rear window, and they were only charging a couple of buck an hour more. Although that WAS a 20% increase over the $10/hr. I had been paying, I mean, after ALL. You gotta’ be LOOKIN’ good out there in your RIDE when you’re taxying up to the terminal to pick up your date for a little “Go flying with me and let’s look at the lights from the sky babe” time. I was 17 and drove a rattletrap Ford Falcon to my high school. Image is EVERYthing at THAT point in your life. 8)
But if I could “snow” the girls parents, which generally involved presenting not ONLY my license but my LOGBOOK as well; and if the evening air was smooth; there was a GOOD chance CloudDancer's ol’ Falcon might get the windows steamed up
on a humid Texas night.
It was a muggy Saturday afternoon in June of 1971, as my old beater came wheezing and rattling into the flight school parking lot, scraping the bottom of it’s decrepit rusted out and useless muffler across the seam in the concrete where the sloping driveway met the ramp. (I REALLY need to get that fixed.) Down(grIND)shifting into first, two or three choice curse words, and pumping on the brake pedal to get what’s left of the brake pad rivets to (SQUEAL) press harder against the wheel rims ( I really need to get THOSE fixed) alMOST brings the car to a complete stop before I gently nudge the courrogated Texas sun-faded yellow aluminum siding on the wall of the office at no more than two or three miles an hour and “rebound” a foot and a half or so before the end of the squealing indicates that the car has been brought to a complete and final stop.
Noting that two pairs of instructors and students (Hey! One’s a GIRL!) Are preflighting their 150's in the flightline twenty yards or so directly behind the car; hoping against hope, I shift into neutral and reach for the dashboard mounted ignition key and rotate it counter clockwise in the (once again) vain effort to end the clouds of blue smoke emitting from the many holes in the aforementioned non-functional muffler.
Some number of the four or five WORKING cylinders under the dented hood (I’m not sure how many), as USUAL, can’t seem to compreHEND that I wish for them to QUIT WORKING NOW! Now, I NORmally would allow the ol’ girl a good thirty seconds or so of hiccuping, muffeled internal explosions, belching blue smoke in hopes that at some point during that period ONE of the elements of combustion would come up MISSING ( like maybe the GAS!!) and THEN she would finally give one last powerful fart-like release of compression, the shaking would quickly subside, the smoke would clear and I could safely set the parking brake and walk away dreaming of never again returning to this mechanical bag of SHIT!!
Prologue
You know that feeling you get :-? ....the one when you’re standing in your driveway, leaning against the back end of your car, clasped hands resting atop a long handled rake as you take a break from the yardwork and talk about tomorrow’s big game with your neighbor for a couple of minutes. You’re talking about the record setting running back and could he possibly.....
Tires screeching a couple of houses down at the end of the block interrupts the conversation as you both turn to see that arrogant hot head kid from up the street :evil: gun his engine and fish-tail away from the turn.. Just as he passes you his hopped up old GTO belches a good backfire and.....all of a sudden as your neighbor turns and opens his mouth to speak you INSTANTLY feel like you are watching a movie you’ve seen at least once before, or get that weird feeling that this conversation is “vaguely familiar”.
And as your neighbor begins to speak you know EXACTLY what words he will utter and he is about to be interrupted (again) by the screech of tires as the cars brakes are locked and the horn blares as some small child chases a ball out in front of the still accelerating car. And it all happens in a FLASH of recognition..Weird, isn’t it?It’s called DejaVu or dreaming about the future. And from what I’ve learned about it, MOST of us do it. Some rarely and some more often.
I had a recurring dream as a child that started as early as about five or six, if I remember right. I had it at irregular intervals every couple of years after that. Same dream. Each and every time. Didn’t vary one IOTA.
I was in a small plane apparently. Of what type, I had no idea. I don’t even think I had actually been IN a small plane by that age other than in my play time fantasies; my bedroom already being littered with die-cast model airplanes of every vintage, both civilian and military.
Oh, I had been in PLENTY of cockpits, even in flight. I had taken my first trip on an airliner at the age of three months and had been flying many times a year as a “non-rev” as both parents worked for major carriers and if one airline “didn’t go there”....the other DID. It was the GLORY DAYS of aviation in the 50's when the Captain would put on his coat and tie open the cockpit door and stroll through the cabin as a GOD.
The attractive women passengers would blush and clench their thighs a little tighter under the appreciative glance of the uniformed man, and yeah, even grown and powerful traveling male executives would often adopt a deferential posture in the presence of these Masters of the Skies....... (Sigh)....OH! For the GOOD Ol’ Days.
And then, approaching our row, HE would stop and lean up against the aisle seat in front of Mama CloudDancer enjoying the sight of my little face pressed up against the plexiglass inner window as I absorbed the passing of the earth so far below. And on VERY rare occasions came those most coveted of all invitations. “Hey there young fella’ ” I would hear. Whipping my face away I turned to see....the PILOT!! And he was addressing ME! “Would you like to go up and see the cockpit?”
NIRVANA!! This...THIS GOD had not only deigned to SPEAK to me, but was offering ME the opportunity to follow him back up the carpeted aisleway for a glimpse of Olympus!I’ll refrain here, from quoting any lines about “men’s saunas Timmy”; and I wish you would to, although I must admit after watching Peter Graves on “Mission Impossible” for years, he WAS hysterical in the role. “Get me a Vector Victor”. But I digress.
I only told you about all THAT, so I can tell you THIS!
You know how when you are having a dream that ends in..............BLACKNESS (i.e. DEATH)!!
The bear is chasing you. He is closing in. The sounds of his paws and your feet crashing down on the fallen leaves and twigs in the forest crescendo in your ear as he closes the distance between you. PANICKED, you steal a quick glance over your shoulder to see he has closed the distance to a mere dozen yards or less!!
He’ll be on you in MOMENTS as you WILL yourself to run with superhuman speed. He’s right behind you now and you can hear the SNORTING and huffing as a great WEIGHT crashes down on you from behind and........BLACKNESS!!Unless you have been mauled by a bear, and lived to remember it, the dream HAS to END.
Unless you HAVE died and come back (as a few apparently have) you have NO KNOWLEDGE of DEATH. Ergo, you can’t DREAM about IT! You can dream about feeling the pain leading up to it. You’ve EXPERIENCED pain. But you cannot, it is said by those who study these things, DREAM about that which you have no personal experience (of SOME sort) with.
In MY recurring dream I was in a small single engine private plane of some sort in flight. I was in a spin. And there was this intersection of a two lane blacktop highway or road, and a dirt road. In three of the four quadrants formed by the intersection there were tilled farm fields with row after row of something green. The fourth field was tilled dark rich earth with no growth, only row after empty row of tilled soil.
The spinning airplane was not directly over the center of the intersection of the roads, so as the spin continued and tightened, I had to follow the intersection of the roads as it swam crazily in a larger and larger circle around the windshield as the noise of the slipstream increased, the flat farm field growing ever larger in the windo.........BLACKNESS!! And I bolt upright in my bed, frantically looking around. I calm myself as I see the six inch long “doorsill” of light from the hallway light extending into the bedroom darkness, and hear Mom and Dad laughing at something on the Jack Parr show through the closed bedroom door. With a BIG sigh of relief I flop backward onto the bed in a prone position again and drift off once more.
I had gotten my private license primarily in a 1959 straight-tailed, no rear window Cessna 150. It had LOTS of airframe time and VERY faded green paint on dull aluminum. It cost me about $600 total, a very GENEROUS 3 bucks/hr. of which went to my WONDERFUL instructor.
I decided to move up in the world a little for my commercial. A larger school across the field had new and prettier slant tails with the rear window, and they were only charging a couple of buck an hour more. Although that WAS a 20% increase over the $10/hr. I had been paying, I mean, after ALL. You gotta’ be LOOKIN’ good out there in your RIDE when you’re taxying up to the terminal to pick up your date for a little “Go flying with me and let’s look at the lights from the sky babe” time. I was 17 and drove a rattletrap Ford Falcon to my high school. Image is EVERYthing at THAT point in your life. 8)
But if I could “snow” the girls parents, which generally involved presenting not ONLY my license but my LOGBOOK as well; and if the evening air was smooth; there was a GOOD chance CloudDancer's ol’ Falcon might get the windows steamed up
on a humid Texas night.It was a muggy Saturday afternoon in June of 1971, as my old beater came wheezing and rattling into the flight school parking lot, scraping the bottom of it’s decrepit rusted out and useless muffler across the seam in the concrete where the sloping driveway met the ramp. (I REALLY need to get that fixed.) Down(grIND)shifting into first, two or three choice curse words, and pumping on the brake pedal to get what’s left of the brake pad rivets to (SQUEAL) press harder against the wheel rims ( I really need to get THOSE fixed) alMOST brings the car to a complete stop before I gently nudge the courrogated Texas sun-faded yellow aluminum siding on the wall of the office at no more than two or three miles an hour and “rebound” a foot and a half or so before the end of the squealing indicates that the car has been brought to a complete and final stop.
Noting that two pairs of instructors and students (Hey! One’s a GIRL!) Are preflighting their 150's in the flightline twenty yards or so directly behind the car; hoping against hope, I shift into neutral and reach for the dashboard mounted ignition key and rotate it counter clockwise in the (once again) vain effort to end the clouds of blue smoke emitting from the many holes in the aforementioned non-functional muffler.
Some number of the four or five WORKING cylinders under the dented hood (I’m not sure how many), as USUAL, can’t seem to compreHEND that I wish for them to QUIT WORKING NOW! Now, I NORmally would allow the ol’ girl a good thirty seconds or so of hiccuping, muffeled internal explosions, belching blue smoke in hopes that at some point during that period ONE of the elements of combustion would come up MISSING ( like maybe the GAS!!) and THEN she would finally give one last powerful fart-like release of compression, the shaking would quickly subside, the smoke would clear and I could safely set the parking brake and walk away dreaming of never again returning to this mechanical bag of SHIT!!
the car kept merrily “deiseling” and jerking around like a fresh off the hook catfish flopping around in the bottom of an aluminum bass boat. 
SHE has interrupted her preflight to gain ful enjoyment of my obvious discomfiture and is barely controlling her laughter with a polite and slender hand raised to cover her mouth. 
issuing from the exhaust manifold accompanied by the traditional final death shiver. (I REALLY gotta get THAT fixed.)
My airline doesn't BELIEVE in retirement any more apparently. It's better to shove it off on the TAXPAYERS via the PBGC so that what money MAY be left laying around from the PILE OF CASH amassed through employee PAY and BENIFIT cuts is available for MANAGEMENT BONUSES for the HORSES PATOOTS who got us INto this %$#@ING MESS in the FIRST PLACE!! 
If the student was only interested in “learning how to fly, maybe” THIS was NOT your instructor. He’d dump YOU in a heartbeat. :evil: He hadn’t had a student fail an F.A.A. administered private, commercial, or instrument flight check in over ten years.
I went into the lobby and behind the counter to grab the black faux-leather attache case containing my a/c’s logbooks , local charts, and the a/c key. But MY FAVORITE machine had already been taken!! “Oh well, I remember thinking...a 150 is a 150 ...is a 150.”
from under the single faded and worn sheet covering my frame like a jack in the box. The last clear vision I can remember is of a 207 windshield full of tall trees ahead and only a few hundred feet below me and getting closer. I am panting like I just finished the 100 yard dash in high school. 
of the Gunderson family fold again; this time working for a new company now owned by Rod Gunderson. Unfortunately, to pretty much no one’s surprise (other than mine and my creditors, of course) Dan had lost his company through fiscal mis-“management”.
of the Gunderson multi-decade flying family dynasty, was already on his third screwdriver, well his third screwdriver at the hotel bar. With a somewhat surprised look upon sighting me, and unable to remember my name he hollered ‘Hey KID!! Ja’ still here AND ALIVE , eh? Wa’al I’ll be DAMNED! C’mon over an’ lemme’ buy you a DRINK!!” 
, it was too much for Rod to resist. In three minutes we had agreed upon an hourly rate and which airplanes I would fly and shook hands. Only the Gunderson apartment building was long gone and sold to a corporation which had renovated it and turned it into office space. It was now the end of the era when “room and board provided” was a STANDARD part of ANY flying deal in the bush. But at least they bumped the hourly pay rates to reflect it.
didn’t present enough of a handicap to the process; all the nicely meshed internal gears, conveyor belts, lifts, pulleys and dis-assembly lines behind my itchy naval; which had been moving along smoothly albeit slowly, making mulch of last night’s three cheese ‘n steak hogie sandwiches and five or six (lunch pail sized) bags of Frito-lay spicy barbebue chips; now apparently decide to hydro-lock to an instantaneous an jarring stop!!
back and forth to Kotzebue.
to fly high school students back and forth to Buckland, which shared high school with Selawik. A dozen or so Buckland high-schoolers “commuted” to Selawik for school flying home on Friday afternoons and OVER on Monday mornings.
decides that he will offer to take them back and forth for 75% of what the families HAD been paying. “Just doing a little Part 91 flying and SHARING EXPENSES dontcha’ know?” he would say when confronted by one of us. 
So aside from stealing our customers and MONEY he was MORE than covering his full ownership costs and making a tidy profit too!
It didn’t take long.
....ol’ numbnuts throws three kids in the airplane on a Friday after school all set to take ‘em to Buckland. Snapping on the master switch he is immediately perplexed 
to note that BOTH fuel gauges register zero. Well!! Something must be wrong with a fuse somewhere but I know there’s gas in the plane he told the boys and he fires up the engine which promptly dies. About the time the battery gives it’s last, birdbrain birdman decides to dig out his flashlight and check the gas tanks visually only to be unable to SEE any motion lotion sloshing around in the tanks...but ....wait.......what are those dark STAINS.....? 
to the point of being able to coherently string together words....if I am reduced to drinking WELL rum!! 
Is it personal??
as well.
at preCISEly the same moment.....I would appreciate very much if you disPENSE with subtleties, respect for elders or deferring to 'Captain's Authority' as the case may be if necessary to get my attention. 
may well need to 'brush up" on my 185 stuff any week now. 
And TWO and MOST important of ALL I MUST advise Bounce that if he has the opportunity to SLEEP SOMEWHERE ELSE Friday night...I would sure appreciate it. Hey. We have to make occasional sacrifices for each other from time to time. We have EACH spent nights sleeping in the combination Quonset Hut / Office at the airport. Advance “private Bedroom” arrangements ARE permissable, and in the occasional cases where we both just happen to get ‘lucky” on the same night; a ‘Do Not Disturb” sign (filched from the Anchorage Hilton) is hung on the doorknob to the bedroom by the first to arrive home and claim it.
