i'm writing a book - right here!

[AAC Cadet Leader]

Day 22
Saturday, June 18
Texas
Jim Wildharber—1955 Cessna 170B, Alan Gillis 1941 Piper Cub
Martha called from Best Western Sandpiper Inn in Ft. Worth where she was waiting for her ride to Grand Praire, Texas. Gary Gable, restaurant owner is treating her to brunch at the Airport Café at Grand Prairie 15 minutes by air from Fort Worth. Then she is flying (Sunday, 6-19-88) to Albuquerque, New Mexico in a 1947 Bonanza with Luis Cowley. John Forman and friend and his daughter and Mrs. Dorchan Forman, of Richardson, Texas visited 10 different airfields and approximately fifty people. Martha stayed at the Forman’s home overnight. Had breakfast in crowded restaurant with John Forman and his friend, Del _ __ _ Forman’s friend this morning at Addison Field.

[AAC Cadet Leader]

Mom's Log
Day 23
Sunday, June 19
Texas to New Mexico
At “Aerodrome,” met 20 skydivers—no time for Martha to skydive! [One of the jumpers offered to take me on a tandem jump but dusk was approaching.] Luis Cowley flew M to Albuquerque, New Mexico and to Tom and Elise Baker’s home in Tijeras, a suburb. Tom worked on his Piper Super Cub but did not get it ready. He deposits ashes from cremations up on the Gila Cliff Dwellings (thousands of years old). Martha tried to go up to the dwellings in her motor home on her previous trip out west in 1985, but the motor home could not handle the altititude.

Martha went into a Spanish town with Elise and bought lightweight, beige cotton fabric and sewed a pair of summer jodhpurs for herself using Elise’s sewing machine. Stayed on Sunday night and Monday in their log cabin home in the beautiful mountains. [Tom played Scott Joplin tunes on their upright piano. In the morning the two peacocks on the porch made a loud screaming racket—a morning ritual. Both are talented creative people, and did beautiful calligraphy.]

Day 24
Monday, June 20
New Mexico
[Did not fly today. While Tom worked on his plane all day today, Elise took me on a great driving tour of some of the outskirts and little towns near Albequerque. She and I became fast friends - we had a really great time together.]

[AAC Cadet Leader]

Mom's Log
Day 25
Tuesday, June 21
New Mexico
The Piper was still not ready to fly so Tom Baker took M up in their 1932 replica of Pietenpol Air Camper to Santa Fe. Bakers are 35 years old—artists and pianists. It was the first time they flew the Pietenpol into a major airport [We were first for clearance.] It flew 55 mph—has big antique tires and open cockpit. Channel 7 news took great footage from a helicopter flying alongside—will send to us—Elise and Tom had on Martha’s extra goggles and scarves. 15 people on ground took the pledge. They flew out of Albuquerque over desert [over 2 ancient Native American forts], down highways—between mountains at 55 mph and arrived at Santa Fe on a 10,000 foot-long runway. “ New Mexican” newspaper took photos.


At Santa Fe Martha met Harry Oliver III who owns a 1943 DC-3 old transport. The maintenance man put 19 quarts of oil in each engine and Mr. Oliver’s secretary and 7 people (40 capacity) flew to Taos, New Mexico. Martha took the controls which felt very heavy and needed strong muscles to handle without using trim. Martha took great photos of the plane taking off-sun shining on red plane and sunlight on white wings. Clouds and shadows—mountain Summer afternoon thunder storm approaching Taos Airport quickly.

Stayed at youth Hostel ($10.00 night) at Taos, North of Santa Fe. Beautiful mountains-Indian Dancers.

Day 26
Wednesday, June 22
New Mexico
[No flights today.] M made four hours of phone calls [from the payphone at a rundown laundromat near the youth hostel] for arranging to leave for Colorado. Did much paper work and also rode to the Rio Grande Gorge by two other women. The driver was not very reliable and M will not take this kind of recreation in the future.

[Actually, the driver of the car from Taos to the gorge was not two women, but a man who was a terrible driver and may have been a little tipsy.

The two women were at the gorge in the hot springs. I was glad to see them there when we got down to the river. I asked them if they’d be driving back to Taos when they were done soaking, but they said they’d be headed in the other direction. As much as I would have loved to soak in those hot springs, I did not want to get in the water with that creepy man who drove me there. So while he got in the water, I made up some excuse why I was changing my mind about wanting to soak in the springs.

Angels were again looking out for me, as just a few minutes later, a nice family with kids on a driving vacation from Ohio came along to look at the springs. I asked them quietly and with fair urgency if I could please have a ride back to Taos with them.

They kindly obliged, and on the ride back to Taos, I explained that I did not feel safe in the presence of the drunk guy that brought me there.]

[AAC Cadet Leader]

Day 27
Thursday, June 23
New Mexico to Colorado
Margaret Lamb, an aviation attorney who is an instructor in mountain air freight and has 9500 hours in the air is taking Martha from Taos, New Mexico to Walsenburg, Colorado in her 1948 Ryan Navion at 12 p.m. to arrive at 1 p.m.

Larry Ruggerio, a high school classmate of Martha’s, who now lives in Pueblo, Colorado, is picking Martha up at Walsenburg and taking her to Falcon, Colorado, a suburb of Colorado Springs. Larry’s plane in a 1959 Ercoupe Forney.

At 3:45 p.m. at Falcon, Meadow Lake Airport, Dean Smith, in his 1947 Stinson Station Wagon is taking Martha to Golden, Colorado, just west of Denver where she is staying the night in Eugene Horsman’s guest room. Martha (see letter 6-30-88) from G. Horsman. Gene gave Martha a tour of Denver-then to Boulder - He was probably late for work! 1940 Luscombe 8A. [Mrs. Horsman, Lila (pronounced like a lilac), was the best cook on my whole journey!]

[I'm sure glad my mother wrote all the details down when I called her, because I would've forgotten most of them by now. Here's just one of the 67 pages from Mom's Telephone Log:]



Day 28
Friday, June 24
Colorado and Wyoming
Eugene Horsman took Martha to Van Aire Airport [in Brighton, Co.] his silver Luscombe and another pilot in a Super Cub flew side by side and Channel 7 helicopter flew overhead and taped them.

Gene Horsman flew Martha to Boulder where Pat Mosier (Cessna 150) flew her to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and from there to Laramie, Wyoming. It was necessary to go to Wyoming at this time, since the air is too dry [no, hot] and it would be difficult to navigate [no, climb over] the mountain ranges.

Martha had two more rides at the airport [Boulder]. One with Steve Stearns (1949 Taylorcraft taildragger) Martha was his first passenger. Aerobatic pilot Ackley Smith, Steve’s instructor, took Martha up. She got queasy.


The scenery is beautiful, spectacular clouds and sun and rain in distance - rainbow - could see mountains 200 mile distant. Passed over mountain tops at 25’ (8000 feet above sea level).

Twenty miles out of Denver there are no trees - just flat ground and nothing in sight. Every now and then a herd of cattle would appear with nothing near them. There were holes in the ground everywhere from prairie dogs.

Martha called in afternoon from Cheyenne and said Pat Mosier and she were going to a cowboy saloon this night.

On page’s left margin: Ch 7 KMGHTV Denver, CO. tele (303) 832-**** Peter Peelgrane and Scott Wright photog. M gave Scott a silver pin in exchange for the a copy of the tape. I called Scott 7-7-88 for the tape and he said he would dub it over and mail it to me but he never sent it. Said he was incredibly busy!

The line guy at General Brees Field, Pat and Martha went to Laramie, saw cowboys, bought some books at a neat old, bookstore and went to the Cowboy, Grill & Dance Hall Saloon. Had a great time and did a lousy two-step.

They hopped a slow moving coal train at 10:30 p.m. when they got off ran along side the caboose. The old black man on the caboose yelled “Where you goin?” They said anywhere! They walked back to town 7 or 8 miles with wind blowing 30 mi/hr and lightening flashing in the distance. At the airport there was a huge old limousine with five rows of benches [benchseats, not benches] on each side [inside of it]. They slept the night on the benches.

[AAC Cadet Leader]

Islands in the Prairie
Day 28, June 24, 1988, 8 a.m. Written in the lounge of the FBO at Brees Field, while waiting for Alva Jones to arrive in his 1941 Interstate Cadet to take me to Rock Springs, Wyoming.

From Boulder, Colorado my immediate goal yesterday morning, was to get on the west side of the Rockies, into Utah. If there's one thing I've learned about mountain flying on this trip, it's that there aren't very many old aeroplanes with enough power to get over them in the heat of the summer.

It was my umpteenth phone call of the day to try to find my next ride, hopefully into Utah, the next logical state to check off my list. My almost permanently crossed fingers gripped the receiver on the payphone inside the FBO lobby.

"Fly you to Utah? Can’t do it," the voice of Pat Mosier told me, "Not in my airplane, anyway. But I can take you up north to Wyoming where there's a low spot in the mountains to cross."

“Wonderful!” I said.

Four hours later, after Pat got off work, we were on our way northbound in his twenty-nine year old, Cessna One Fifty, circumnavigating 40,000 foot-high thunderstorms, clearly defined within huge cylinders that stretched from the earth, upward to the top of the sky—something that you don't see in the east. The humid air that surrounds the storms out east never allows for such clearly-defined storms as does the dry air out here in the west.

There was a tall storm cylinder to the northeast about twenty miles away, one due north—maybe fifty miles off, and one to the west—a guess of eighty miles away. Between them you could see two or three hundred miles into the distance. Maybe it wasn't quite that far, I don't know. But anyway, over northern Colorado and southern Wyoming, I saw farther than I've ever seen before in my life!

An hour into the flight, just northeast of the town of Laramie, Wyoming we found a low spot of the Laramie Mountains. Pat’s 100 horsepower Continental engine put-putted us steadily toward the crevice in the ridge. The altimeter showed that we were 8000 feet above sea level. We judged our altitude above the ground through that mountain pass in the ridge to be maybe a hundred or two hundred feet even if it looked like only 25 feet. It was a thrilling sight as we approached and passed over the crevice in the steep, grassy mountain ridge.

Just over it, we could see Laramie ten miles to the southwest, lying there on the flat ground like an island in the vast, desolate sea of prairie land. The visibility was still incredible as we began our descent in towards the town. It was unsettling to be able to see so far in all directions, yet unable to see any other towns or settlements within that vast picture that had just availed itself to us on the west side of that ridge. The reality of the isolation of Laramie was unexpected and somewhat alarming.

The long, newly-paved black and white asphalt runways of Brees Field stood out from the surrounding dust-colored prairie and we noted how far away it was from Laramie, the town it served. The airfield also looked like an island, located about five miles west of the town. There was nothing in between it and the town, and nothing past it on the other side—nothing except the two-lane road that connected the airfield to its town. The road reminded me of the long bridges in the Florida Keys that connect the otherwise isolated islands to one another – only no water here. From above we could see cars and semi trucks heading out of downtown Laramie, past the island airfield and down that road into due west nowhere.



Our landing was at sunset. While tying down the little silver and red One Fifty, we watched beautiful, silent lightning activity from the storm that chased us on the other side of the mountain we'd just crossed. In the opposite direction, the dark red sunset and high white pink and yellow cirrus clouds put on another show. Looking at the worsening weather all around, Pat opted to stay overnight on the ground in Laramie, and head back to Boulder in the morning.





The young line crew guy, whose name was Victor was reading the av-gas pump meters and locking up the airport office doors. We asked him if he’d give us a lift into town and he gladly obliged taking us in his girlfriend’s hot rod. Down the nearly empty two-lane, five-mile drag strip into Laramie, Victor demonstrated the power of 440 cubic inches on foot-wide tires with no sheriffs or deputies in sight. What seemed like 14.68 seconds later, we were downtown and dropped off in front of "The Cowboy Bar and Dancehall."

At 8 p.m., still light out, it was too early for much dance activity, but we could see that "The Cowboy" was a good honky-tonk to return to later. In the meantime, we explored the rest of downtown Laramie and found amongst other great old-style stores, what had to be the best used bookstore anywhere. The deep and narrow, old store was packed full with treasures at bargain prices.

Pat, being a scientific type, became fascinated with a turn-of-the-century engineering manual he found tucked away on a shelf. He paid the man a mere $4 for it and looked for more finds. I found a beautiful, tall Victorian oak cabinet with drawers filled with antiquated maps and charts, but couldn't figure out how I'd fit the cabinet in my luggage, so I had to pass it up. We stayed as long as we could, enjoying the store until the owner said that he'd need to be getting some sleep before the morning, so we took the hint and left.

continued...

[Kilian]

Wonderful...this is very inspiring to me I just remembered a funny detail of my 1999 journey through Wyoming that i had almost forgotten about. I think i will make something like a 10 year tribute webpage in 2009 until then i should have managed to scan in all the 288 photos i took and put the story in chronological order

Im also looking foward to your next chapters as usual

[AAC Cadet Leader]

Islands In the Prairie continued...
Pat and I were famished, so began a ten p.m. hunt for a place to eat, but found that most of the eating establishments in town had closed down at nine. The bars and saloons in the neon light district were just coming to life, but they looked a little intimidating. Neither of us looked rough ‘n tough enough to blend with the clientele in the bars, nor did we figure they’d have much to offer in the way of food beyond beer nuts and popcorn. As we searched on foot through the town for a place to eat with local color, our higher priority became the first place that we wouldn't worry about taking stray bullets or get poisoned.

Pat peeked into a saloon along our stroll and asked the bartender if they served food. He came out with a "no, but there's a place called 'Shari's' another three blocks down." We quickened our pace, passed two more bars on the dark that looked like movie sets for “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” then came upon Shari's Restaurant, glowing brightly, emanating white light like a K-Mart in the night. Although we had hoped to find a place that reflected more of the local color—we decided we'd seen enough of it and didn’t need it mixing with our food so Shari's looked fine.

Shari's reminded me of any Big Boy’s Restaurant, a reliable safe haven any hour of the day and night for wayward truckers and lonely souls to eat, read the paper and find a friendly waitress to ask, 'how was your day and what can I get ya?'

All refueled with soda pop and black coffee, toasted cheese sandwiches and big bowl of hot canned vegetable soup with macaroni bits, tasted pretty darn good. We started our walk back through Laramie toward "The Cowboy Dancehall & Saloon" ready to try out our lousy two-step techniques.

"Look Pat—a train! Wanna go for it?" The train was moving slowly just beyond the back streets and it looked like it would be a piece of cake to hop on for a ride.

"Sure!" he said, not giving it a second thought.

Moving only at a fast walking pace, it wasn't much of a contest to get on it and had no box cars to crawl into for a real hobo ride, but it was still exciting for first-time train hoppers.

I jogged slowly alongside the train, and grabbed onto the black iron ladder on one of the coal cars. Pat grabbed onto the ladder on the next coal car and we climbed our way up the to the top of the cars where lit by the moonlight we could see the payloads of dirty coal all the way along the long stretch of coal cars ahead.

Gradually, the train began speeding up and Pat called me down, warning that we'd better jump off before it got going too fast, so I climbed down and we both jumped off onto the gravel and railroad ties. We dusted ourselves off and looked toward the back of the train, approaching and saw the caboose coming. I wanted to try hopping on again onto the now faster-moving train. "Pat! The caboose! I've gotta try—just to see if I can. I won't go far..."

As the caboose caught up to me, I sped up my pace and ran beside the front of it as fast as I could, thinking about jumping on and wondering where it might take me.

I coached myself, "I can make it if I just grab on and don't loosen my grip." But common sense prevailed and I abandoned my attempt. The rest of my bags were back at the airfield and more importantly, I had my friend, Pat, to consider. If he didn't have his plane to get back to at Brees Field, I think he would have jumped on that caboose first, grabbing my wrist to help me aboard.

As the rest of the caboose began to pass by, to our surprise and delight, an old black man leaned out of a window in the back of the caboose and yelled to me, “Where are you going?”

I thought for a second and called back to him, "Anywhere!"

"C'mon, you can make it!" he encouraged.

It was straight out of a movie. Pat and I waved to the man.

Our adventure didn't end at the tracks, though. It had only begun. Our train hop had taken us conveniently nearby "The Cowboy" and we went inside to join a lively, packed house of real cowboys and cowgirls, not the glittery kind you find in the big cities. These folks had their own Wyoming version of the two-step that looked to be a bit rougher than it looked in Tulsa and Orlando. Pat and I noted that some of the men had bowed legs, we presumed from riding their horses all day, every day.

Most were wearing worn out jeans, ones with real wear on them, not the stone-washed kind, and they had on ten gallon hats and well-scuffed riding boots. The women had on pretty western dresses, or tight fitting jeans with lacy blouses and cowboy boots with colorful, fancy stitching all over them.

Pat and I didn't exactly fit the unwritten dress code. In a way we felt like foreigners in hometown America. He was wearing tennis shoes, a short-sleeved sporty red shirt and shorts to fit the 105 degree Boulder, Colorado heat. I had on my weird jodhpurs and high laced boots and must say that our citified novice version of the two-step lacked at best. We were an odd spectacle to the locals, but didn't care.

After bruising each other’s toes, we sat it out on the sidelines and quietly shared made-up versions of the life stories of some of the dancers. We figured we were right on the money with most, but one cowboy had us puzzled.

The man was by himself about ten feet away from us, leaning up against a post with a beer mug in his hand. His attention was split between the pool game and the pretty girls in the room. He looked normal enough with a scruffy beard, tipped hat, snakeskin boots, hand-tooled leather belt, and a pinch between his cheek ‘n gums. But his t-shirt threw off the whole picture.

On the front of it, in big red letters was the logo for the famous play, "CATS."

This man didn’t look like a patron of Broadway. We guessed he was a trucker who had unloaded a shipment of Wyoming beef at a packing plant in Manhattan and someone had been handing out "CATS" shirts the day he happened to be there. I just had to know his real story, so I walked over and flat-out asked him, "Did you see the play?"

"What play?" he said.

"'CATS,'" I said.

"Oh, my shirt – yeah, I seen it, " he said. Then he stuck his finger in his mouth and repacked the lump of tobacco into his cheek, “I seen it in London."

I turned around to see Pat smiling and laughing about it. I turned back to the cowboy, "In London. Really?"

"Yep, I won a trip there at a plant I worked at a couple of years ago in Kansas City."

There’s our meat packing plant, I thought to myself turning again towards Pat, hoping he was catching all this. Then the cowboy moved a little closer and asked me with tobacco and beer breath, “You wanna dance?”

Oh, great, he thinks I came over to pick him up.

"Uhh, well I can't—see, I'm with a date." I pointed at Pat and waved to him, with a stiff smile then turned back to the cowboy and brought the subject back, "How'd you win the London trip? Was it a sales promo contest?"

"Naah. They just had a little drawing at the plant, and I just won it," he stated, starting to lose his patience, "Listen, why don't you stop worrying about your date and come dance with me?"

"Uh, well, he's really a good friend and besides I, uh, don't know how to dance," I said nervously, backing up a little. With my index finger behind my back, I motioned Pat to come get me out of this.

The cowboy persisted and started to reach for my hand, "All you need is a good dance instructor. I could show you..."
"Yep. I seen it in London..."

The whole conversation repeated between the two. Pat asked one more question of the cowboy.

continued...

[AAC Cadet Leader]

Islands in the Prairie continued...


Pat walked up just in time and asked, "You saw 'CATS?' Were the tickets part of the prize?"

"No, I read the play and always wanted to see it, so when I got to London and saw it on a marquis sign, I just went and bought a ticket."

Well go figure. Guess you can't judge a theater patron by his chewing tabacco.

~THE LONG WALK BACK TO THE AIRFIELD....
Pat and I left The Cowboy Dancehall & Saloon without ever discussing the two imminent questions of the night: One — How would we get back to the airfield? Two — Where would we sleep?

I never worry about such details until necessary, and apparently Pat had the same lack of concern. Ground transportation and lodging are foremost on most air travelers' minds and they can't begin to explore a town until they have keys to their rental cars and have settled into their reserved hotel rooms. I was expecting Pat to bring up the subjects but he didn’t and I wasn't going to. I thought it was kind of funny, but pretty neat at the same time, that neither one of us felt the need to discuss our circumstances, what others would consider a predicament.

We knew the situation: It was two in the morning and we were in downtown Laramie, without transportation back to the airfield. We were both exhausted. Chances were slim that Laramie had taxi service, especially at two in the morning. The few patrons that were left in the bar looked too drunk to even think about catching a ride with any of them. And between the two of us we had about five bucks left on us, having locked our wallets in Pat’s Cessna, so that ruled out motel rooms.

Without a word about it, we began the five mile walk back to the airfield down the long pitch-black road west. To keep awake and to take our minds off our aching feet, we told each other ghost stories and Pat warned me not to step on the rattlesnakes that come up to sleep on the warm asphalt at night. That comment woke me right up and kept my feet moving.

In the far distance to the south, silent heat lightning from a thunderstorm flashed often, looking like bomb explosions on the horizon. We guessed that storm was at least a hundred, maybe two hundred miles away. During our long walk back, only one car passed us.

We made it back to the airfield at three-thirty in the morning. Now where would we sleep? Again, without a word about it, we walked over to the huge, 1950’s airport limo that was parked on the ramp. It had four, long vinyl bench seats. The driver's front window was open. Pat reached in and unlocked the back doors and we found our home for the night. Pat took the second bench seat. I took the fourth.

~

[cfgray]

Martha,
This is so wonderfully written and the stories are so interesting it is difficult to understand why this has not been published already.
Keep at it... there's a reward down the road, I think.
Best,
cfgray

[AAC Cadet Leader]

Mom's Log
Day 29
Saturday, June 25
Wyoming

Martha met a pilot flying a Mooney at the airport who was on his way to Florida. He offered her free film developing at his connections [film labs he owns] in Idaho Falls, Montana and Richmond, VA. He spends two weeks each year in Dallas and two weeks in Pensacola.

At General Brees Field Airport, Martha arranged for Alva Jones of Rock Springs, Wyoming to fly her to Idaho Falls on Sunday.







Martha called at 9 p.m. Cleveland time from Alva Jones’ home in Rock Springs, Wyoming. 1941 Interstate Cadet. He has a wife (w/ same birth date as Martha’s?) and four small children: Sarah 9, Rosie 7 ½, Rebecca 5, Elizabeth 1 ½.



Day 30
Sunday, June 26
Wyoming
Stayed with Alva Jones’ (weather threatening). [I had a great time with this fun family! Such happy, joyful, little Jones girls!]