This old, retired pilot still remembers the sound of only rushing air when the single engine on my high-wing airplane ‘iced up.’ Usually happened when you got temperature change because you changed altitudes. And I remember where…. Ruidoso, New Mexico. Passenger A.R. (Red) Elam, my Dad. Cool morning. Took off early in morning. Approaching sixth hole of golf course, pulled on carb heat lever to increase power, rise above hole with limp flag in cup.
Category: Abilene
SRO in Stamford
ACT. Abilene Community Theater. The name we chose back in the 1960s when we organized local thespians. For our first performance, we called on Harley Sadler to revive and direct one of his tent-show melodramas. Harley’s shows entertained families across Texas during the depression. Everybody loved Harley. He was even elected a state Senator. I remember, around harvest time when folks had a little money in their overalls, my parents took me to the tent show.
Dr. Storey Story
The Paramount Theater in Abilene offered a live, closed-circuit showing of the heavyweight boxing championship. A rematch between former world champion Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay, a newly declared Muslim who took the name ‘Ali.’ I called John Storey, MD, one of my favorite people. He was the youngest doctor in town. Patients applauded Dr. Storey for his smarts and honest diagnoses. When John could find time, he even crewed for me on my 18-foot sloop.
The ‘Phantom Lady’
She was weathered, in need of more than cosmetic repair, a 18-foot sloop that we Abilene Sea Scouts received as a gift from her owner. Year 1945. We sanded, repaired, painted the old lady. While she was upside down the owner, a builder, came and inspected her bottom. With his finger he compressed our smooth white lead filling between the bottom wood. We found out why when we launched the ‘Phantom Lady.’ For the launching
Back to Sleep
Pop’s story entertained the drivers spending a rainy day indoors at Red Elam’s Abilene trucking lot. You can’t dispatch trucks to move a drilling rig when the farmer’s field turns muddy. Fellow drivers called him ‘Pop’ because he was the oldest. Pop also had logged more interstate miles—he once drove his truck twice-a-week between Texarkana and El Paso. Back when Pop said he had a wife in both cities. Back when Pop had a wreck
Keep Her Turning….
Everybody who ever worked, or ‘sweated,’ a 24-hour rotary drilling operation heard this admonition from the crew leaving after their eight-hour shift: “Keep her turning to the right.“ ‘Her’ was the rotary table that spun the pipe in the hole. For the record I was a ‘sweater,’ an observer watching the four men–sometimes five–send drill pipe down the hole to spin the drilling bit. Sometimes I visited the drilling rig to sell the drilling mud
The Supper Club
Each month our wives discovered, and cooked, a new gourmet recipe. They tasted at their monthly luncheon meeting. Then the ‘Supper Club’ cooked their best discoveries for their husbands to taste. The eight, lovely mothers from the same Sunday school class dressed for show, hired baby sitters, and scheduled their eight husbands for the in-home evening dinner. Coach, contractor, broadcast evangelist, trucker, mercantilist, journalist, mechanic, teacher—we were summoned to eat ‘something better’ than what the
‘Frightening’
If you studied your Colonial history, you’ve read about a Plymouth Rock outside Boston. Not far south of South Bend, home of the Notre Dame ‘Fighting Irish,’ there’s a Plymouth Indiana. I scoffed when I drove by the high school football stadium that labels itself ‘Home of the Plymouth Rockies.’ Didn’t sound like a ferocious name. My Abilene high school chose a belligerent mascot, the Eagle. Of course, we weren’t original. And I have no
“Abilene Forever” Lawyer
As far as I know, the lyrics…and what passed as a tune…belonged to Abilene lawyer named Homer Montgomery. Homer and I arrived at The University at Austin Texas, after World War II ended. I was an 18-year-old undergraduate working on the student Daily Texan newspaper. Homer was enrolled in Law School, cashing in his GI Bill-of-Rights something less than $100-a-month scholarship money. We were both from Abilene, and his song-writing fame preceded him. When we returned home
Science Fair Family Feud
The Elam and Crutchfield families were the best of friends. But once a year friends became the worst of enemies—when the Abilene city schools sponsored the Science Fair. On the run-up to that annual event, the Crutchfield father of five let his chicanery slip. While sharing a libation or two, John bragged he and son Joe had installed laboratory equipment to help grow experimental ‘cultures’ for the upcoming Science Fair. Holy Pasteur—what were the odds my