"YOUR OLD PILOT"

Honestly, Your Old Pilot is a ghost…

He says, "Some time ago, I was quoted as saying,

"Well, they’re pretty words for an old desert rat like me. I must have gotten hold of some double X or somethin'.  And I think I remember hearing a 'satisfied' passenger complain about 'no toilet, no nothin' one day when he got off a Standard Air Lines Fokker back in '28 or '29, so let’s give him credit for that notion.

"But my words are as true today as when I said them.  Recently (was it yesterday?), I was resurrected and channeled through this website to tell you my story.  Please believe me when I tell you, I’m kind of nervous about all this.  The best I can see, this new internet stuff is sort of like the party line we have at the old airfield. I talk to you, but the whole world listens in.  Busy-bodies are timeless, I guess.  So be it."

True, “Your Old Pilot” is an outspoken ghost who rattles hangar doors on southwest winds whenever and wherever fellow spirits of the old Davis-Monthan Airfield are out and about.  Gone west long ago, he sighs through these old hangar doors now on every breeze.  He traveled the old, bumpy airways from the east coast to El Paso, through Tucson, and on out to California.  He is at once eloquent, ornery, overbearing and long-winded.

YOUR OLD PILOT

He is a regular correspondent at this website, representing, celebrating and providing laughs about the Golden Age of Aviation.  He comes providing commentary and observations about Golden Age things.  Sometimes he has a hard time understanding our modern times, and our modern ways.  The webmaster of this site is not responsible for what he thinks or says, then or now.

But what he says is worth a rankle now and then. He is become stories of old pilots and old airplanes, and the stuff they used, and the attitudes they kept.  He is the time machine that channels you tales and goods from the Golden Age of Flight.  His intention is for you to have fun with the stories and goods he offers at oldairfield.com.

He may say things that might surprise you today.  But that’s all right, he means no harm.  You might not believe some of his tales, long winded or not, to be true.  But they are.  If you allow them to be...

He says, "So begin the Hangar Tales from the Old Airfield.  Come back here and visit time and again and sit a spell (I guess you say add this page to your “Favorites” list).  As I get time and inklings, I’ll tell you more.  Of course, the folks at oldairfield.com want you to know that what I say here is subject to our federal copyright laws.  And well it should be, because believe me, if you steal our words you’ll have me and my buddies haunting you.  That’s not a pretty thing by any means."

---o0o---

TALES FROM THE OLD AIRFIELD

Chapter The First

"The Old Airfield is a place where 'I', 'me', 'who', 'where', 'now', 'then' and 'they' really have no meanings, except to help you understand how it is back then, and to help me put a hook on information that I thought you might be interested in, then, or now. I have a hard time keeping track of then or now; tenses mean nothing sometimes, and my memory sometimes failed a little, and what I know as facts might have seemed slightly curved to you across the warp of time. See what I mean?

"It was a time of dust, leather, nitrate dope, tight-weave cotton and singing strut wires. Barnstormers have pretty much done it all, but they still roamed the land. And 'round the world flights by military types were done with much fanfare. Nobody, and I mean nobody, has flown across any of the oceans. The first guy to do it, I predicted, will be a hero.

Victrolas are all the nuts, and rayon was relatively new to us. If fact, I had a rayon necktie that I'm pretty proud of. Here's a photo of it on your right. The 'P' was me Your Old Pilot."

One day in October, 1925:

“Our buddy and airfield manager Sergeant Simpson was in the other day and plopped a giant, brand-new, leather-bound book on the desk over in the corner.  He didn’t say much about it, except to mumble something about a new rule thought up by some DOC bureaucrat.  'Probably the same bureaucrat that’s gonna make pilots take tests and get licenses now to fly.' he said.

“I went over to the book and opened it.  Believe me, there was just a bunch of blank pages in there.  Simpson flipped me a small piece of paper on his way out.  Looked like it was torn from a magazine.  'Read it for yourself.' he said.  You read it too, over there at the right.

“I thumbed through the big book.  I counted 218 blank pages total.  At the top of each blank left-hand page was printed in black, 'REGISTER, Davis-Monthan Aviation Field, Tucson, Arizona.'  Each pair of facing pages was divided into fourteen columns and sub-columns, headed 'Pilot', 'Passenger”, 'No. Plane' and so forth.  The last column was headed 'Remarks', just like the DOC suggested. 

At the bottom of each left-hand page it said, 'NOTE: A Courtesy Card, if desired, Will Be Issued to All Officers of the Air Service at the Office of the Secretary, Tucson Chamber of Commerce, on Behalf of its Aviation Commitee.' A nice touch for our Air Corps and Navy friends. They land here quite a bit. But, I thought to myself, this book has a snowball's chance in hell of being signed by any of the pilots I know, especially the civilian ones. They'd sneer and snarl at it as being one more chore laid on them by the government. Everybody is pretty sore over the government's plans to start regulating flying. We'll see what happens. This was sometime late in ’25.”

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NOTE: TO FOLLOW ALONG WITH YOUR OLD PILOT

CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR OWN COPY OF HIS REGISTER

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Early in 1926:

“Well, Christmas came and went in 1925.  One day, early in January of ’26, I reviewed our new Register and counted 46 signatures between November 4th and December 30th.  One other guy, Al Gilhousen, got his name stuck in the book by writing it on a slip of paper and claiming he landed here on February 6, 1925.  Fair enough, we’ll include him in the count for a total of 47 visitors for 1925.

“Most of the traffic I saw listed was military guys in here on cross-country navigation training or ferry flights.  I wonder if they took advantage of their Courtesy Card. One of the ‘personalities’ to land was Les Arnold.  He was a member of the ‘Round the World Flight’ back in 1924.  The World Flight ships came through Tucson back then.  But the Register wasn’t here so none of the pilots signed their names then.  Arnold flew as 'mechanic' on the Douglas ship they call the ‘Chicago’.  And, boy, were those airplanes exciting! Noise and dust and oil all over the place! You should have been here!

“Back on November 4th last year, though, Arnold and his passenger Lochner stopped in. They were flogging a DH-4 westbound.  While they were gassing up, with a wink and a grin his way, Arnold called Lochner a ‘modoc’.  He was quite a joker, as I recall.

"A captain name of Eaker landed twice.  He must be a hack pilot, because one time he carried a General Bellinger with him just before Thanksgiving.  They were headed for Washington, DC.  Hack pilot or not, I talked with Eaker briefly about the weather to the east.  He was a straight-forward, no-nonsense kind of guy.  Not a loafer by any means.   Maybe he’ll get promoted someday."

---o0o---

Late Winter, 1926:

YOUR OLD PILOT

“There’s no better way to spend a day than to hang around on a cool day at the old airfield.  Airplanes land in dribs and drabs.  Sometimes no traffic all day.  That makes it ‘specially swell when you hear an engine in the distance, go outside the hangar and just stand there with your neck cricked looking for him.  You could always tell a pilot.  They’re the ones that stop whatever they’re doing, go outside and look up when an airplane flies overhead.

"Most days I see three or four landings here at the old airfield; sometimes as high as six or ten on a busy day. Lemme tell you, it's hard for you modocs who trot terra firma to imagine the game of flying that passes east to west and west to east here through Tucson. Most of those pilots have done everything a creative mind and skilled body can do. They've flown the Great War, barnstormed, won the handsome silver trophies, burned a lot of gas and they wrinkle a few ships doing it. There's nothing stinko about this game. All you need to do is look into their eyes and you'll know they're a different brand of people. Try it some time, you can almost tell a pilot by just looking them in the eye, and that goes for the girl pilots, too. If you don't believe me, ask me.

"Cloudy or bright, most pilots are in a hurry.  They jump down off the wing, ask the direction to the latrine, order some fuel and oil, then disappear for a few minutes to do their duty.  Most of them sign the Register for us, but some don’t. If it's late, some of them get rides to town and stay at the Pioneer Hotel. They're usually back here bright and early the next morning for departure to where ever they're goin'.

"The truck pulls up and filters gas through a chamois to catch water that might be in the fuel.  Knock wood, we haven’t had any problems with that.  This being Tucson, we don’t get a lot of rain, and whatever condensation happens inside the fuel truck overnight probably is small.  Some pilots prefer their gas to be transferred to a can through the chamois, then into the tanks from the can, again through another chamois.  'Can’t be too careful!' they say.”

---o0o---

“All in all, 1926 is starting slow.  Had a military guy land late in January carrying a Pvt. Castro as passenger.  As we were fueling up I talked with the pilot.  It seems Castro was substituted for a mechanic sergeant that was supposed to be on this ferry flight from Rockwell Field in San Diego to Rantoul in Illinois.  When the pilot asked the private why the substitution was made, the private said that the sergeant had injured his foot.  When asked how he injured his foot, the private replied, 'He dropped his wife on it, sir.'  I do not make these things up.”

---o0o---

Fourth Week of February "There's a dozen signatures this week.  I’m reminded of a funny story from a couple of years back.  I won’t mention names, but it’s about one of the pilots who landed and signed the Register this week.

"Seems our pilot met his girlfriend in Nogales for a frolic over the weekend.  They got drunk early one night south of the border, and decided to go to the nearest hotel.  His girlfriend was Margaret (he called her “Willful Peggy”).

"When he got to the hotel, word has it that he lost his keyhole.  As he searched and searched for it, and even though he had his Ever-Ready flashlight, he was unable to find it.  Peggy was not amused.  They decided to leave.

"Under the circumstances, he became disorderly when he got to his airplane at the airport when somebody asked if he was 'really capable of flying' that evening.  One thing led to another, the policia were called, and he didn’t get to fly.

"Next day I heard from him from the jail in Nogales.  Peggy, meantime, sobered up and drove to Tucson with a couple of her girl friends to wait at the Pioneer until he straightened things out and got back in town. 

"His telegram mentioned nothing of the situation at the Nogales airfield.  He simply said that Willful Peggy and her girlfriends needed to be shown around town a little, and he asked me to help him out.  Me being an escort, that is.  He gave me her room number at the Pioneer and asked me to call.

"I, of course, rubbed it in a little in my telegram back to him.  I said, 'I tried twice to get her on the telephone at the room number furnished in your telegram but both times the telephone was answered by a man who refused to give me any information about her [STOP]'

"Honest, it would have happened with or without Prohibition, as they were pretty wild in their ways."

---o0o---

March sometime “The damnedest thing happened today.  I was sitting in the swivel chair with my feet propped up on an engine case and I guess I went to sleep.  I woke up to what I thought was the sound of an engine and, as usual, couldn’t resist going outside to gape. 

“Don’t ask me why, but I took my box camera with me.  And I’m glad I did, because you wouldn’t believe me on this one.  Out of the east, from Lordsburg way comes this biplane towing a banner.  He is really, really low.  As he comes by he turns his head to the left and I see his goggles, but couldn’t see his eyes.  He shouts something, but I couldn’t hear over the engine noise. 

Mystery Banner, ca. 1926

“He jerks his thumb aft, as if calling my attention to the banner.  He had on red gloves. He starts to laugh and hauled back on the stick.  The banner went by and I shot my camera from the hip and got this.  I sure wish I coulda’ heard what he said.

"He gained some altitude and headed between the mountains toward Casa Grande, flying west.

"I still can’t figure out if I was still asleep or not.”

---o0o---

NOTE: TO FOLLOW ALONG WITH YOUR OLD PILOT

CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR OWN COPY OF HIS REGISTER

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TO BE CONTINUED (add this page to your “Favorites” list)....

TO FOLLOW ALONG WITH YOUR OLD PILOT

CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR OWN COPY OF HIS REGISTER