{"id":1838,"date":"2013-05-23T11:42:31","date_gmt":"2013-05-23T18:42:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=1838"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:58","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:58","slug":"64-looks-aint-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/64-looks-aint-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"#64 Looks ain’t Everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

\"DSC06169\"<\/a>
Tom and his Cherokee<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My friend, Tom, loves to fly.\u00a0 To be able to afford it, he\u2019s always been creative.\u00a0 A while back he decided to buy an airplane.\u00a0 Of course he had to be careful not to spend too much.\u00a0 In fact, what he had in mind was far less than any airworthy craft would cost him.\u00a0 Tom found a Cherokee 140 that had been sitting on the ramp at the Christmas Valley Airport since Christ wore short pants.\u00a0 I knew the plane.\u00a0 Everyone knew the plane.\u00a0 It had guarded that ramp for years.\u00a0 The sun had beaten on it, yellowing the Plexiglas and rotting much of the interior.\u00a0 The paint was victimized, first by the hot sun, then by the snow, hail and frost.\u00a0 As a result, much of it was worn away.\u00a0 No one knew what kind of shape the engine was in.<\/p>\n

Tom got the plane for a song.\u00a0 He took the wings off, lashed the thing to a trailer and hauled it home like a dog trotting back with a choice bone.\u00a0 It would be a project and Tom knew that.\u00a0 He would take his time and learn a lot while re-building it.<\/p>\n

When I wandered into Tom\u2019s hangar and saw the old Cherokee sitting there, I couldn\u2019t resist declaring, \u201cMan, you\u2019ve sure got your work cut out for you, don\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n

(now insert a harp arpeggio as we flash back about twenty-five years)<\/b><\/p>\n

The first year that I used a Piper Cub in my comedy act was also the year \u00a0I realized that if I was going to perform this act all over the U.S. and Canada I\u2019d have to trailer it.\u00a0 After all, my comedy act, which incorporated seven ducks, sound equipment, a dog and a duck delivery lady had to travel.\u00a0 It was a lot better for all of us to travel together, cut the expense and share the driving.<\/p>\n

\"Cub<\/a>
The Cub at work in front of an air show crowd.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our first trailer was open.\u00a0 The Cub sat on the trailer with its tail forward.\u00a0 Two \u201cA\u201d frames straddled the fuselage and held the wings to each side.\u00a0 We\u2019d only use that arrangement for one year.\u00a0 After that, we built an enclosed trailer which had a cage for the ducks and lots of space inside for props and gear.<\/p>\n

I always said that the act was like a live-action cartoon.\u00a0 My character of Krashbern T. Throttlebottom was a disreputable character who operated on a shoestring.\u00a0 His flight suit was tattered and patched and his airplane was a mess.\u00a0 This was a calculated move.\u00a0 Each removable part of the airplane was painted a different color.\u00a0 That alone made the plane look like something Krashbern had salvaged out of a wrecking yard.\u00a0 But the plane was used for aerobatics and was well-maintained.\u00a0 It had a beefed up tail section and added strengthening attachments on its lift struts.\u00a0 In order to be quickly disassembled and reassembled, the aileron cables were equipped with shackles on each side and a special tool had been designed to supply tension on the aileron cables in order to put them back together properly.\u00a0 So basically, the Cub was a disreputable looking airplane that could be assembled in forty-five minutes and be up doing aerobatics in front of an air show crowd.<\/p>\n

It was that airplane on its open trailer that was behind my truck as I pulled into a little country store and gas station in the Louisiana countryside one summer afternoon.\"Louisiana-Gas-Station-300x199\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Moss hung from the oak trees which supplied shade to the clapboard building.\u00a0 Paint peeled on the side of the building.\u00a0 There was an old Coca Cola chest dispenser out front next to a rusting ice storage freezer.\u00a0 Inside, a bare wood floor had been worn smooth by generations of locals coming in to pick up a quart of milk, some chips or to pay for their gas.\u00a0 The proprietor was an old, unshaven geezer, who leaned on the counter and probably valued his customers as much for their companionship as for their business.\u00a0 Some of those customers were usually parked outside on a creaking wooden bench under the lean-to roof.\u00a0 My friend George DeMartini would have referred to that bench as \u201cthe Group W bench\u201d, referring to the bench at the draft board where the rejects sat in the old Arlo Guthrie song, \u201cAlice\u2019s Restaurant\u201d.<\/p>\n

One of the geezers on the bench perked up as we rolled to a stop in front of the gas pump.\u00a0 He slowly raised up off the bench and limped slowly over to the trailer, his gimpy leg causing him to lurch a bit like Walter Brennan.\u00a0 Nearly worn out brogans and soiled overalls over a torn tee shirt made up his outfit which is pretty much de riguer <\/i>for old guys in those parts.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019ve noticed an interesting thing about most old guys when you put them next to an airplane.\u00a0 Most of them love airplanes. Most of them claim to know far more than they actually do.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost like some kind of flying background is an affirmation of manhood for a whole cross-section of America\u2019s geezerhood.\u00a0 This guy was no exception.\u00a0 He slowly moved around the plane.\u00a0 He reached out and poked at the tires.\u00a0 He ran his fingers over the propeller and moved it back and forth, proving that he really wasn\u2019t an aviator.\u00a0 He looked at the multi-colored wings and the cowl of similarly mis-matched colors.\u00a0 He shook his head as he wandered over to where I filled the Duckmobile\u2019s tank.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowdy\u201d, I greeted him.<\/p>\n

He ignored the greeting.\u00a0 He jerked a thumb toward the plane and advised me, \u201cboy, you\u2019ve sure got your work cut out for ya there\u201d.<\/p>\n

Happy Swooping,<\/p>\n

Brian<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“One of the geezers on the bench perked up as we rolled to a stop in front of the gas pump. He slowly raised up off the bench and limped slowly over to the trailer, his gimpy leg causing him to lurch a bit like Walter Brennan.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[18,35,100,170,173],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}