STRANGER IN THE NIGHT AIR

STRANGER IN THE NIGHT AIR
I had made some plans to go visit a guy I served with in the Army. The night before I took off, I put my money into an envelope in my desk drawer. I was thinking that I would get it before I left the house the next morning. It was a nice day. It was a Saturday morning in the early fall of 1964. I took off in my pride and joy, an Aeronca L-3 WW II era observation aircraft. I was bound for Circleville, OH. I was going over to show off my neat toy to a guy I served with at Fort Knox. I took him a ride "around the patch". I planned on refueling my plane for the trip back. These things didn't carry a lot of fuel. When I got ready to leave, I reached into my pocket to get my money out to buy 80 octane Avgas. To my disdain, my money was home in an envelope in a drawer. Here I was, a long way from home with a plane in new condition and no dough for gas. Really bright, huh? I had a gas credit card. The airport wouldn't take my card. Wrong brand of gas. My buddy owned a gas station in town that would take my card. We went over to his station. I got 10 gallons of low-grade auto gas in a pair of 5-gallon capacity cans (one of which I bought). When we got back to the airport, I poured one can into the fuel tank over the top of the pilots seat. I strapped the other into the back seat with the seat belt (just in case something went wrong). I pulled the prop through and was soon in the air flying west against a good stiff wind. I was happy as a lark and tooling through the sky bound for home. When I was approaching Washington Court House, something went wrong. On the local broadcast radio before I left home, they reported that we would have good weather all day. Why then, was there a wall of black? It ran from the ground, straight up into the sky, higher than I could see. It also was running north and south, right over the middle of Washington Court House. It was running further than I could see in both directions. This was definitely bad. But hey, I had to get home. I had to go to work that night. I needed to get some rest before I went in. I can�t stick around here. Famous last words! With foolish choices made, I plowed into the wall of black. Boy was it dark in here. I couldn�t seem to see much in the plane either. I didn�t have any lights or instruments for flying blind. I had a real bad feeling about all of this. I decided that I had better try to get out of here. I shoved the left pedal to the floor and buried the stick into the left wall. When I thought that I had made a 180-degree turn, I straightened out the controls. I started counting the seconds to see if I was on the right track. Suddenly, I was in beautiful sunlit skies over Ohio farm fields. I tried to find a place to get down and ride out the coming storm. I tried to find a place with a nice house close by in case I needed some help on the deck. Bingo. There was just the ticket with a huge cornfield that had already been harvested. Just like a big bird, I dropped in uninvited. I shut the engine off, got out and started walking to the house I saw as I was coming in. I heard a shout, looked around and saw a couple waving at me from the country road. When I got to them, they took me over to their house. I told the couple I wanted to get an updated weather report. I needed to get back into the air and be on my way. She suddenly said, I�ll call the Ohio Highway Patrol and tell them we need a weather report because we have a plane down in a field. I felt a shot of panic. I said that really wouldn�t be necessary. Is there an airport nearby where I could go to ride out the weather tonight? They said yes, over at Sabina. I asked if I could phone over there and get some information. They were nice and obliged. I spoke with a guy who was �babysitting� the airport that evening. He said the weather was going to turn really foul later on. He would have the runway lights on for me. He urged me to get going. I told the couple and they rushed me back to the farm field. It started raining before we got there. I �boogied� back to my �bird�. I unbuckled the seat belt. I freed my can of gas out of the rear seat. I climbed up on the wing strut, struggling with 30 plus pounds of gas in the can. I twisted the gas cap off, laid it down and poured this liquid gold into the tank for a little extra security if I needed it. I replaced the cap and secured the empty can in the rear seat. I flipped the �mag�s to �both� and swung the prop through. It roared to life instantly. In a hurry, I dashed back into my seat, fastened my seat belt, pulled the door closed and powered up. It was a good feeling when this antique lunged forward. Normally, this L-3 with an almost new engine would lift off the ground in short order. But the rain had been coming down and really soaked this clay soil. No worry, I have lots of room in front of me. I wasn�t concerned about the distance. I could not get up to flying speed. I was close, but close isn�t good enough! I looked over the side and saw that the wheels were actually getting bigger. It was not a figment of my imagination. The mud was attaching itself all over the plane. The V struts on the wings were now solid mud; the wheels were huge with packed mud. The windshield had more mud than I care to think about. The rain was keeping a peephole open for me to see out. I was very angry at my predicament. I was so mad I jammed the stick all the way forward. I then jerked it all the way back and repeated it again. The L-3 bounced a little bit. I noticed that in the bounce, it actually picked up a miniscule amount of speed. Suddenly, I had some hope. I began bouncing this bird like a pogo stick. Every bounce gave me a very slight increase in speed. When I thought I had a very slight chance of skidding into the air I tried it. I was skidding on the mud like water skis. Some of the mud was washing off and more was coming on. I greased this thing into the air. It had to be way over gross weight with all of that mud. I yelled with joy as slowly I was climbing into the sky. There was still a tremendous amount of room on the ground. Room that I never had any need to use for getting this bird aloft. I looked over the side and the wheels looked like the roots of a balled tree from a nursery. The struts were still packed full of mud. I pulled my air chart out and studied my next move to Sabina. There was a fork in the road. I took the one that matched the chart. It began getting very dark. There was very little light coming through the top of the windshield. Cars on the road below had their headlights on. After awhile an outdoor movie theater was coming by below. I looked at my chart. It had drops of dried mud splattered around. There was no symbol for a drive in theater. Did I take the wrong road? It felt like a five pound lead ball lying in the bottom of my stomach. I looked frantically again at the chart. I started scraping with my fingernail on a speck of mud. There was the symbol for the �passion pit� (drive in theater). What a relief! I continued flying, looking for the landing lights. I had a problem with that because I had never seen landing lights at a small field from the air at night. Sometime later, why, I really don�t know, I slowly looked around to my left. Something had me look even further to my left rear. There in the distance were the Lower lights burning. However, they burned dimly in the dark. But burn they did. I had missed the landing strip completely ! As I look back on all of this, these many years later . . . There is a song we sing on occasion at the local new testament church that I have attended for many years. It has a tendency to derail my thoughts when I hear it being sung or played. It brings a full blown, vision like experience from the fall of 1964 to my forefront. I know the song was written from the experiences of sailors on the sea. They are looking for the lower lights that would lead to safety. They vitally need the harbor and safe haven. Click on this link and the midi file, "Let the Lower lights be burning", will play as you read the rest of this: MUSIC WILL PLAY Minimize your audio player. I recall breathing a sigh of relief as I swung around to the left. I lined up with the runway. I was wary of the possibility that they may have wires on poles going past the end of the runway. Where I learned to fly, we had some high wires to go over. I did not wish to be hanging in wires tonight or on any other night. Once past the first landing light I kicked the L-3 into a sideslip and dropped fast close to the deck. I straightened out and was floating in slowly. I greased the wheels onto the turf, still more in the air than on the ground. I was very unnerved when the nose barely floated up free from the ground. Had I run off a cliff? Your mind gets very active when something doesn�t go well. I figured I could never get airspeed to recover from this. I decided to ride it down and take what was coming. I was anticipating an unwanted tree in my face. The L-3 floated back onto smooth turf. The designers at Aeronca made a really great flying machine when they came up with this one. What I didn�t know and the airport �babysitter� forgot to tell me was that they had a ditch across the runway. The ground rolled over this ditch and then dropped down a little ways. In the dark, things seem worse than they may really be. It rattled my cage. As I was rolling out, a white Chrysler convertible pulled up along side me with the top down. Yes the rain had stopped at this point. He yelled, �follow me�. That was the best looking sight I had seen all day. I taxied back to the line up and took an empty slot. I tied up my bird. I looked at my trusty, faithful, old WW II bird. How good she looked sitting there in the lights by this little grass airport in a rural setting. I went in and had a good conversation with this fellow. I got a ride later back to my neck of the woods. I returned the following day to retrieve my flying chariot. © F. L. Dooley, Jr. My L-3 - N9948H - from long ago. As she looked back in World War II Manufactured at Aeronca Aircraft factory. Middletown, OH LYRICS OR WORDS TO THE SONG LOWER LIGHTS ANOTHER AVIATION ACCOUNT FROM DAYS AGO
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