FLYING NOSTALGIA

It was so cool living on Narramore in the late 1950s. Our house was on the glide path to the Buckeye Airport which, at that time, was south of the canal about a half mile west of town. Paul Pierce was the owner/operator of the airport and – how exciting it was - he lived next door! He also had a beautiful daughter who was my age.

 I kept bugging him about wanting to ride in an airplane. So one day he took my dad and me for a ride in his Piper Tri-Pacer, similar to the one shown in the photo. Wow, I got such a thirst for flying that I eventually became a private pilot.

That summer of 1960 I worked for Pierce Aviation as a “flagman,” helping the crop dusters get lined up on the right rows. I had to get up about 4AM and be at work before the sun came up. And I’ve got a scar to prove it – but that story will have to wait for another time.

There’s also a not so pleasant aspect to these flying recollections. Stored at the airport was the wreckage of a helicopter. I never knew the details about how it crashed. What I remember vividly to this day is the smell of death. A person had died in the accident and their body had burned. It was a profound and sobering experience for a 16 year old.

Teenagers tend to think of themselves as invincible. Nothing can hurt them. Then something like the smell of that helicopter comes along and it forces one to come face-to-face with their own mortality. And they begin to face all the related issues of God, religion, and life after death. Hopefully we all take the time to ponder those issues and deal with them in our own lives.

A SHOCKING EXPERIENCE

When I was a kid growing in Buckeye’s halcyon days of the 1950s, the rodeo grounds were north of the canal and east of Fourth. My dad’s business as the Wholesale Distributor for Standard Oil of California was nearby. The east/west road (Arizona Eastern Ave) was dirt.

Dad had helped my brother and me build a go-kart with a lawnmower motor. We kept it at “the plant” and, when no one was around, ran it up and down that dirt road. We hadn’t gotten around to buying a friction clutch so it had a chain drive direct from the motor to the drive wheel. So, in order to start it, you had to push it.

That wasn’t a problem if one person was in the kart while another pushed. But what if you wanted to take a ride and there was no-one to push? I got the bright idea to push the kart myself until the engine kicked over and then jump in.

That all worked great – except for one slight miscalculation. When I jumped into the kart, I ended up sitting down on the spark plug! At 40,000 volts, that spark went right through my Levis and into my posterior thus killing the engine.

So what’s the moral to this story? Plans for fun and excitement can sometimes end up with unexpected shocking consequences.

THE GOOD OLE DAYS

Does it drive you crazy when the people of my generation (make that OLD!) start talking about the “good ole days?” I don’t know if our memory gets clouded or if we just prefer to focus on the nice things that happened and tend to overlook the not-so-nice things we did and said.

Things weren’t always so good in the “ole days.” The memory that brought this to mind was a playground incident at Buckeye Elementary when I was in fifth or sixth grade. Most of the kids were teasing someone because she “had fleas!” There were other ways we were nasty to our schoolmates, calling them names like “blubber gut, bean pole, four-eyes, etc.”

Looking back from the vantage point of almost 60 years, I can see how deplorable these incidents were, how injurious they must have been to those on the receiving ends of those taunts. As parents and grandparents, let’s make a special effort to try to teach our young people the value of respecting all people. If they grow up without making these bad behaviors a part of their lives, the world might really be the “good ole days.”

BURNING RUBBER

How many of you have been around Buckeye long enough to remember the root beer stand that was once where the Sheep Camp Cafe is now? Was it A&W or some other brand? When I was in high school at BUHS (1958-1962), the root beer stand was a great place for all the local teenagers to hang out. Before that, it was the Dairy Queen that Gene Ray operated. What great pinball machines he had!

This story is about my first “ticket.” I was there one evening with my girlfriend. After we finished our root beers (in the frosted mugs!), I backed out. Then, to show off how “big and powerful” my straight 6 ’53 Studebaker was, I “burned rubber” when leaving. See the photo below of a similar vehicle that I found on the web.

I hadn’t gotten a quarter of a mile away when I got pulled over by one of Buckeye’s “finest” who proceeded to write me a ticket for “Burning Rubber.” To this day, I don’t believe there was anything in the traffic code about burning rubber but I paid the ticket anyway.

What did I learn? That there are consequences to irrational and irresponsible behavior. We should think before we act. Stupid decisions can have results we didn’t anticipate.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD BULLY

As kids will do when moving to a new location, one of my first objectives upon arriving in Buckeye was to meet all the neighborhood kids and make friends. In fact some of those I met that summer of 1954 are still friends today. This story isn’t about them. It’s about the kid who was the local bully.

Jacky lived across the street. He was in my class but was bigger and a year older than me because he’d been “kept back a year.” It quickly became clear that one of his goals was to make my life miserable by bullying me every chance he got. Having never encountered this before, I was at a loss for how to deal with it.

One evening after watching the “Wednesday Night Fights” I convinced myself that I needed to defend myself the next time Jacky bothered me. Well it happened the next day. So I laid into him with swinging fists, only to end up with a bloody nose and the worse end of the fight. The funny thing was, though, that he stopped bullying me after that.

Please understand that I am not advocating physical confrontation as the only way to deal with a bully. However, there are times, whether dealing with the bad guy in the neighborhood or the bad guy (country) around the world, that we must confront unwarranted aggression with physical force. I recently read Navy Seal Eric Greiten’s book The Heart and the Fist. He makes the same point. You might want to read it.

FIRST LOVE

My family moved to Buckeye in the summer of 1954 from Ajo. I was ten and ready for the excitement and adventure of a new place. Little did I know that one of the first, and most lasting experiences I would have, would be when I met that beautiful girl who lived down the alley.

Mary Ann Latham stole my heart. At least as much as a ten year old can have his heart stolen. She was so pretty. When she smiled at me it made my heart melt. I remember thinking she would be the only girl in my whole life that I would ever love.

She and her mom moved to Phoenix shortly after that. I wrote to her frequently but she never wrote back. My dad agreed to stopping by their new place and we found lots of mail piled up, including all my letters. I guess they had taken an extended trip.

I’m not sure what ever happened to Mary Ann. She never wrote back and I soon got over my “first love.” Life went on. I did find other loves, including my wonderful best friend and lifemate Jacquie.

If you’ve got a special person in your life, do a little something extra to let them know how much you value and cherish them. Put a love note under their pillow or write them a poem. Maybe they will “write back.”