w i n t e r
matchsticks
It rained like hell last weekend in Southern Pines. I figured it would 'cause there was a band of weather falling all the way down the East coast from Maine.
That, and I was supposed to fly.
I got there early anyway and looked over the Stinson in her hanger and realized she wasn't going anywhere. It looked like Fred had been up to some more work and from the looks of it the fuel leak was back. Half the fabric on the left wing was removed and a small line ran up to the release valve and from there I could see an small hairline of a crack. The whole setup looked a lot like an I.V. really. The cowling was off too and there I saw that the oil was drained and laying on a stray 55 gallon drum was a pressure test and I could tell that number 1 cylinder was low and we'd have to pull the jug.
I started loosening the manifold when Ed arrived.
He's a buddy of mine that was sunk on D-day+1. Went down with the USS Rich. She hit two German mines and most everybody on board was killed. Ed wrote a book about it when he woke up 6 months later in England. He'll be 76 next month and he had just bought himself a '79 Corvette, bright red.
Wasn't but a few minutes later when I was washing up that Frank came in. I hadn't seen Frank in months, maybe a year, but he's a rare one. He and Ed starting talking and soon they may as well have been in a hanger in England back in '44 or '45. He hadn't seen Ed in a long time either and Ed was asking about Frank's Dakota flights. (Frank flew Dakotas in the war, the British version of the C-47, otherwise known as the DC-3.)
I was just standing there, an observer, though they'd both said hello and said they we awful glad to see me. Ed had brought me some flight books, but he hadn't realized I'd already finished ground school. Frank let him know I had and said he'd even flown with me (which is true) and then the conversation went back to to a slip of paper in Frank's hand. Normandy, Sicily, Rhineland, European Theater, France, Germany.
"Been to all those places have ya' Frank?" I was wiping grease off my hands with an oily red rag.
"Yeah, sometimes I don't know what I'd have done if the war hadn't come along, do you Ed?"
"No, but we lost 'em didn't we."
"Yeah, I never seen nothing like it ever since. Not when I was in Korea or Vietnam, nothing like it."
Frank was leaning on the Knollwood hanger door. It's lucky we got the hanger in the first place, an old wooden timber and sheet metal thing. The only reason it's still on the airfield is Amelia Earhart once stopped by and used it for a day or so. Back then it's all there was, the grass field and the Knollwood hanger. Think, I work on planes in the very hanger Amelia Earhart once stood.
But Frank, he was leaning on the door trying to light his pipe, looking out over the grass strip. He gave up for a second and looked in his hand, "Yeah Ed, they went up like matchsticks."
goodnight 3.06.00