{"id":3368,"date":"2015-05-06T19:19:31","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T02:19:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=3368"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:56","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:56","slug":"129-you-killed-zat-duck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/129-you-killed-zat-duck\/","title":{"rendered":"#129 “You killed zat duck!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

Written 4-21-15 Posted\u00a05-8-15<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Montaine Mallet, with her husband, Daniel Heligoin were among the finest aviators to perform in front of airshow crowds.\u00a0 With formation aerobatics as their specialty, some might say they were doomed by fate.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 I do know that, like so many of their colleagues, I was very much affected by their tragic deaths.\u00a0 I immediately flashed on my own experiences with them.\u00a0 I thought of Daniel\u2019s expertise and advice when I had mechanical issues with my Cub in Oklahoma City.\u00a0 I thought of their warm hospitality when Earl Cherry and I were flying together at the Daytona 500 and enjoyed a wonderful dinner at their home near the Flagler Airport.<\/h3>\n

With all the preparatory work that my comedy act required, I found that I ignored many acts when they were up flying before my cue.\u00a0 But not \u201cthe Frenchies\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 I almost always stopped what I was doing, particularly when they performed their canopy-to-canopy aerobatics, which required<\/h3>\n

\"Daniel<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Daniel and Montaine as “The French Connection”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0so much skill and precision.\u00a0 I also enjoyed their soundtrack, consisting of music mixed with Montaine\u2019s own narration.<\/h3>\n

But the memory on which I looked back the most fondly was also the one which caused me more of a grin than any other.\u00a0 It was brought about by one of the worst mistakes I ever made as an airshow pilot and also about how that mistake triggered the love for animals that Montaine carried in her heart.\u00a0 Montaine and I shared something that day at the Sussex, New Jersey airshow.\u00a0 We were both wrong.<\/h3>\n

I was doing my airshow comedy act.\u00a0 At the end of the act, my character, Krashbern T. Throttlebottom, has crashed his airplane into the giant box of ducks, scattering the quackers over the ramp.\u00a0 His faithful sidekick, \u201cAce, the Wonder Dog\u201d, has rounded the ducks up and herded them into a little cage produced by the Duck Delivery Lady.\u00a0 Then Krashbern<\/h3>\n
\"Duckbox<\/a>
The Duck Box Crash leaves the ducks to wander on the ramp until herded into a little cage by Ace the Wonder Dog<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n


\n<\/a>admits to the Duck Lady that he has no money with which to pay for the birds, but offers to give her a ride in his airplane \u201cin lieu of payment\u201d.\u00a0 She accepts, the Duck Lady, Krashbern and Ace all hop in the plane and take off to close the act.\u00a0 But this day I made a critical mistake.\u00a0 I failed to note the position of the little \u201ccatch-cage\u201d full of ducks.\u00a0 I opened the throttle to roar off and \u201cSMACK\u201d, I crashed right into the cage, which was in front of my blind taildragger Cub.\u00a0 It was a sickening sound and feeling.\u00a0 The cage was pretty much destroyed.\u00a0 The seven ducks were scattered and a couple of them were lying, unmoving, on the ramp.<\/h3>\n
\"Krashbern<\/a>
Jessie and me as Ace the Wonder Dog and Krashbern T. Throttlebottom<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

The show must go on, so I leapt out of the plane, grabbed the ducks one at a time and quickly tossed them into the Cub.\u00a0 The two who were unconscious were put in the Duck Lady\u2019s lap.\u00a0 Then I fired up the plane once more and, instead of flying off into the sunset, taxied rather ignominiously down to my pit area where my truck with a big duck cage awaited.<\/h3>\n
\"ROll<\/a>
Ace the Wonder Dog rounds up the Acme Ducks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once at the pit area, we examined the ducks.\u00a0 All were okay.\u00a0 Of the two who were unconscious, one perked right up and seemed to have no visible injuries.\u00a0 The other had a little cut on the top of his head.\u00a0 We put a band-aid on it and he joined his colleagues in the pen, dipping into their generous \u00a0water tank and recuperating from the shock of their collision with the plane.\u00a0 The plane, by the way, had been dubbed \u201cThe Quacker Smacker\u201d by a colleague and the name was certainly fitting this day.<\/h3>\n

But I owed the large audience at Sussex a true d\u00e9nouement<\/em>, so I headed on my little GoPed scooter to the announcers\u2019 stand.\u00a0 Sonny Everett, the show\u2019s announcer, introduced me to the crowd and I quickly explained that the climax of the act had gone wrong and a collision with the catch cage was NOT supposed to happen.\u00a0 But, I explained, all the ducks were fine.\u00a0 I apologized for the mishap, thanked everyone for their concern and hopped off the stand, thinking I was done.<\/h3>\n

But I\u2019d failed to realize that there was a duck-lover in the house.\u00a0 Montaine Mallet, wasted no time getting in my face.<\/h3>\n

\u201cYou killed zat duck, didn\u2019t you, Brian,\u201d she accused in that wonderful, thick French accent.<\/h3>\n

\u201cOh, no, Montaine,\u201d I explained, \u201cthe duck is fine.\u00a0 Just a little bump on the head!\u201d<\/h3>\n

Montaine went with me down to the pit area, where I showed her all seven ducks in fine fettle, one with the little bandaid on his head.\u00a0 But Montaine wasn\u2019t having it.<\/h3>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t fool me,\u201d she said, shaking her head, \u201cYou had a spare duck!\u00a0 What did you do with zat dead duck?\u00a0 I\u2019ll bet you\u2019re having duck l\u2019orange<\/em> for dinner tonight, you fiend!\u201d<\/h3>\n

As much as I explained to Montaine, she never did accept my account of the events.\u00a0 Within a few years, in May of 2000, she and Daniel had their tragic midair while rehearsing their act.\u00a0 The talented aeronautical engineer-turned airshow pilot was gone. \u00a0And, while I\u2019m quite sure that she had other things on her mind when that tragedy occurred, I\u2019m also sure that she went to her death, firmly believing that I had killed that duck.<\/h3>\n
\"DM-1977\"<\/a>
Daniel and Montaine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

I miss Montaine and Daniel.\u00a0 I think they brought a wonderful quality of airmanship, poetry and showmanship to the airshow stage.\u00a0 And they also demonstrated to me a genuine concern for the well-being of all airshow performers, including the feathered ones.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Montaine and I shared something that day at the Sussex, New Jersey airshow. We were both wrong.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3385,"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":[18,35,51,74,109],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3368"}],"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=3368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}