{"id":3810,"date":"2016-04-15T20:38:02","date_gmt":"2016-04-16T03:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=3810"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:55","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:55","slug":"153-oh-im-sorry-sir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/153-oh-im-sorry-sir\/","title":{"rendered":"#153 Oh I\u2019m sorry, Sir!"},"content":{"rendered":"

An acquaintance of mine recently posted a video on Facebook.\u00a0 On the video, Jack Nicklaus is driving into the country club at Augusta to attend The Masters Golf Tournament.\u00a0 Ol\u2019 Jack has aged quite a bit and wasn\u2019t real familiar to several of the rentacops and sheriff\u2019s deputies running security.\u00a0 But as soon as they recognized him, they bowed and scraped, apologized for not recognizing him, blew off any thoughts of checking his I.D. and waved him through.\u00a0 Mister Nicklaus was gracious.\u00a0 At one time, he said to one of the security guys, \u201cDon\u2019t apologize\u2026 you\u2019re just doing your job\u201d<\/h3>\n

Watching this famous golfer enter this prestigious golf club made me remember another famous performer of equal class and talent.\u00a0 Many years ago, Tommy Jones was the director of the Oklahoma City Airshow.\u00a0 He was the world champion<\/h3>\n
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Tom Jones poses for a publicity picture with Krashbern T. Throttlebottom when the two had an airshow act called “The Champ and the Chump” Tom is wearing what he wore the day of his altercation with airshow security.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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aerobatic pilot to boot.\u00a0 On the day of the show at Oklahoma City, Tom had been pretty busy.\u00a0 As a result he was running a bit late.\u00a0 He figgered he\u2019d just drive in the back way and didn\u2019t anticipate any problems.\u00a0 It should be pointed out that, at that time, Tom drove a cool little pickup truck with a jet black and shiny paint job.\u00a0 Under the window in elegant gold lettering, it proclaimed him to be \u201cTom Jones, Famous Stunt Pilot\u201d. Perhaps it should also be pointed out that the Oklahoma City Airport was pretty democratic.\u00a0 Ever since it\u2019s founding, unlike Augusta, it had allowed women and black fliers to swoop on in.\u00a0 But I digress.<\/h3>\n

Well, evidently a few other people had the same idea and Tom was held up on a dirt road as traffic slowed to a crawl.\u00a0 Tom fussed.\u00a0 He drummed his fingers.\u00a0 His tension rose as he realized how much he had to do, preparing his plane, conducting the briefing and finally performing.\u00a0 Eventually he got to the cop who was directing traffic.<\/h3>\n

\u201cMay I see your pass, please,\u201d the cop inquired.\u00a0 I can\u2019t say that I blame Tom.\u00a0 He probably didn\u2019t expect the same treatment that Jack Niclaus got years later at Augusta, but it\u2019s safe to assume that he was surprised at being stopped.\u00a0 After all, he was driving \u201cThe Stunt Truck\u201d, he was attired in his nomex flight suit with sponsor patches all over it and wearing his AAR Oklahoma hat.\u00a0 However, he didn\u2019t have a pass.\u00a0 He never thought he\u2019d need one.\u00a0 The cop thought differently.\u00a0 Tom explained who he was and the fact that it was kinda important that the Airshow Security guy let the Airshow Director through.<\/h3>\n

Well, I wasn\u2019t there, but I\u2019ve been in the same position enough times that I can pretty much guess why things came to the head they did.\u00a0 Tom, realizing that time was wasting, told the cop that he didn\u2019t have time for all this badge foolishness.\u00a0 He took off.\u00a0 The little truck bounced across the field as Tom made his way to the hangars.\u00a0 The cops were in hot pursuit.\u00a0 As I understand it, the chase actually ended when an officer leveled a shotgun at Tom and ordered him to stop!\u00a0 They may have even \u2018cuffed him!<\/h3>\n

Thankfully, one of the big shots with the airshow scrambled to the scene and smoothed all the ruffled law enforcement feathers.\u00a0 Tom was allowed to continue, grumbling all the way.<\/h3>\n

But maybe in a way these two venue arrivals, both Jack Nicklaus\u2019 and Tom Jones\u2019, illustrate the difference between two entertainment venues.\u00a0 I guess that champion golfers will always be more well-known and famous than champion pilots, who in so many ways have so much more to lose.\u00a0 And Jack Nicklaus didn\u2019t even have \u201cJack Nicklaus, Famous Golfer\u201d emblazoned on the door of his car!<\/h3>\n

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“Tom, realizing that time was wasting, told the cop that he didn\u2019t have time for all this badge foolishness. He took off. “<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3815,"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":[171,173,174,178,186],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3810"}],"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=3810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}