Where We Came From. Who We Are. Part V

This flight is from Marble Canyon AZ to Mesquite NV and was flown back in 1985 or so. I just found the picture folder from that time.

Back in something like 1985 I was working for a small charter service in Albuquerque New Mexico. I had done a few flights for some jack leg lawyer named Saul Goodman--if you lived out that way back then you couldn't miss his really tacky TV commercials--and about that time I got to thinking about hanging up the high & wild life. Marla was gone, she was three or four, well maybe five or six, women back. My first wife had left and we'd gotten a reasonably amiable divorce and I'd met a woman named Joyce, who was..well...different from the others.

I'd been down the road with flying drugs and whatever else the cartel group I would later find out was a CIA front wanted flown to (?).

Along with El Segundo I'd crash landed a DC-3 loaded with 4 1/2 tons of prime Colombian marijuana in the New Mexico desert and watched in amazement as El Segundo doused the whole thing with avgas and set fire to it.

I've still got a limp and a metal plate (or two) in my left leg from that adventure. I can forecast the weather by the way that leg feels at times. Winters are sometimes uncomfortable and as I get older it seems to get worse.

I'd even sat helplessly and watched a guy take a dive from 200 feet above the ocean so that the wounded Cessna 182 I was flying would limp along long enough to get his crying and nearly hysterically family to safety.

He was a political prisoner of an extremely corrupt Central American government who had escaped and who the CIA wanted transported to safety. Didn't quite work out like the CIA wanted.

I'd even found myself flying in Southeast Asia for a while and still try to forget a lot of what went on there around the time of Khmer Rouge.

When I drink too much I remember the woman who said "will you kiss me before I die Johnny?" Or maybe I drink too much when I remember her. Joyce helps me then.

I'd made a nice pile of money. I didn't spend it all either, unlike most of the guys I flew with. Because of the way our payments were set up, most of it was clean and clear with the IRS. For some reason a lot of the ways that money gets burned up never appealed to me. Believe it or not, I was known as a quiet and homebody type guy, not the one to invite to all the weekends that are better off forgotten about.

I flew airplanes. For better or worse, that's what I did--fly airplanes.

One thing about West Virginians, they all want to go home. There's a joke about St Peter showing a new arrival around Heaven and they come to a gated and fenced area. The gate is heavily locked. When asked why, St Peter says "that's where we keep the West Virginians. The new arrival asks why and St Peter replies "if we don't lock them in, they all go back home."

I guess I was getting older and now I wanted to go home. And I got to thinking about starting a little flying service of my own.

The shot above shows me starting my downwind leg at Mesquite for a visual landing. This is a view of the long taxi in. Below is a shot just prior to shutting down.

I think I was ready to head home to West Virginia. Now all I have to do is sell Joyce on the idea.