Another Man`s Gold

Chapter 23

Just as Anne had thought, the combination to the big floor safe was exactly where she thought. Years before one evening, as a little girl sneaking around in the shop behind the house, she spied her father moving a shelf to the side revealing a secret narrow door in the wall. For months she was terrified to tell him about it. Finally though, she did, and her father wasn’t nearly as mad as she had feared. In fact, when she finally mustered up the courage to tell him, he was thrilled to have someone to share the secret with. It became their little secret together; something that connected them for all the years to come.

And it was in that secret little room just large enough to contain a desk, a small workbench and her fathers favorite chair, in the top left drawer was an old yellowed, dog-eared piece of paper.  A combination with the numbers R45-L9-2R39, and nothing else. No safe name, location or anything else could connect it to its purpose.

But it could be only one thing; the safe that her father and Rudy had at the shop. And when Rudy left town, so did the safe.

David was dozing off in the passenger seat as the approaching evening sun began peeking through the turning leaves on the horizon. Anne’s energy was exhausting.

“So,,, you going to make it?” She asked in a rousing voice.

“Huh?” David responded groggy from his nap.
“What time is it?”

“7:10.” Anne answered. “We will be there in less than 20 minutes, if the traffic lets us.”

David rubbed his tired eyes and sat up straight in the soft leather seat that had lulled him so easily away.

“So uncle Al,,, that’s what I should call him, right?” David asked rhetorically.

“That’s fine. He likes that.”

“OK, so uncle Al is a pilot and he and his plane is waiting for us to fly to Fort Myers. Tonight.”

“Yup. I hope so anyway.” Anne said. “He said he would be ready. He mentioned that he wants to go with us to the shop too.”

“What?” David said.

“He’s worried and,,, curious. He knows Rudy too you know.” Anne said.

“No actually I didn’t know, but I do now. It seems everyone has some connection to Rudy.
What’s he think he’s going to do? Fight him?” David said sarcastically.

“He offered to help, OK?” Anne said. “He very chivalrous.”

“OK, I guess.” David said realizing the sacrifice Al was making just flying them 1300 miles.

The open fields on the side of the road gave way to some commercial buildings, as they approached the small town of Poplar Grove, population 750. A sense of small town camaraderie grew in David’s mind as he reminisced about the small town in South Jersey he grew up in. The terrain and climate was not at all that different, and the excitement that they would soon know, to be airborne in some unknown airplane, struck a lump in his throat.

“Almost there.” Anne sang with excitement that brimmed with the confidence that only someone who had been here before could have. David’s excitement was completely different.

The sign for Poplar Grove Airport gave them both reason to sit up straight and alert in their seats. A large red and blue hot air balloon could be seen just above the runway, slowly deflating in the failing light. Anne turned into the gated entrance and expertly crept the car up to the front office, but parking it far aside from the front door.

She turned off the car and reached into the back seat to grab the small bag she had retrieved at her fathers house a half-hour before. “Are you ready for this?” She asked.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.” David responded.

As David got out of the car, there was an air of energy sweeping over the two of them. The sights and sounds of a municipal airport like Poplar Grove has to be seen to be appreciated. The distant roar of an old propeller driven bi-plane caught his attention, as it grabbed the air for take-off at an impossibly slow speed.

A white pickup with the logo of the airport and the word SECURITY crept up behind the car. The window rolled down and a man in the drivers seat smiled at the couple. “You looking for someone?” He asked in a friendly tone.

“Hi! Were looking for Al from the jump school.”

“Oh! I just saw him over by his plane. You going out that way?” He offered.

“Can you take us out there?” Anne asked.

“Yeah, sure. Give me a minute though. I’ll get the van.” The security truck pulled away, and a minute later the man returned with a new looking step van.  Once out of the van and offering a hand with their things he introduced himself, “You can call me Bud.” He said politely.

The two of them wasted no time accepting the ride, and David presented the front seat to Anne. “We really appreciate this.” He said graciously to Bud.

“Don’t mention it.” Bud said. “I’ve known Al since the sixties. We’re both ex-pilots from Korea you know.”

“Wow, you guys fought together over there?”

“No, but I knew about his air group at the time. I was flying transport. He was the one who was duckin’ lead, as they say.”

Pulling away in the van they headed up to a security gate where Bud pressed the button of a remote door opener causing the gate swung to open. It was getting dark as the van drove by dozens of planes along the side of the tarmac, carefully avoiding areas where airplanes could be taxiing. In the fleeing light the distinctive silhouette of a DC-3 came into view, its characteristic tail down on the tarmac, and the nose praying skyward. A large flood light illuminated the area around the side of the plane as several figures were passing containers up into the cargo area. David and Anne peered through the windshield trying to make out what was going on.

“There it is. That’s uncle Al’s plane.” Anne said excitedly.

David squinted in disbelief at the sight of the old tail-dragger.

“I don’t believe it! How are we going to get to Fort Myers in that?”

“Oh, if Al is in the mood to go somewhere, you will definitely get there.” Bud said. “So I understand you are all going down to Florida tonight.”

“Yeah, and we’re pretty excited about it.” Anne replied.

Bud looked over at Anne and then glanced at David through the mirror. “What are you two up to? Eloping or something?

David looked at Anne and laughed. “Do people still do that?”

“Sure they do. They get married in mid-air too.” Bud replied. “He’s actually done marriages in freefall,,, more than once.”

“Wow, what a way to get married!” Anne said.

“Yeah, it would be all downhill from there I guess.” David snapped as Anne slapped his thigh through the center console.

“I think that would be a really cool way to get married.” She cooed.

The van approached the nose of the plane, as a short stout man, with totally white, impossibly thick flat top haircut walked up to the passenger side.
Opening the door he greeted his lovely passenger. “Oh, Anne.” He said as Anne slid out of the seat into his embrace.

“It’s so nice to see you uncle Al.”

“Likewise.” Al said as they broke away from each other. “So this is David I assume.”

“This is David. David, this is Uncle Al.”

“You can call me Al,,, or Cornel if you want.” Al said offering a hand.

“Pleasure to meet you sir.” David replied accepting the gesture. I want to thank you Al. Look,,, we really appreciate this,,,”

“Don’t you say a thing. This is my party and its my plane.” He said confidently in a strong mid-west accent. “If there was ever anything I would do for this little lady, you can bet your bottom dollar I would. And that’s what I’m doing.”

“Well I just wanted to thank you anyway.” David said.

“Well you can thank me when we get there. Anne, are you ready to go?”

“Absolutely. Lets do it.” She said with a lilt in her voice.

Al scanned David from his feet to his face in a once over review. “So you know Rudy?”

“Yes sir. I know him and so far I don’t like him, I don’t trust the SOB.”

“Damn!” Al declared. “I already like you, son. I can’t stand the son-of-a-bitch either. OK! Get in the plane and let’s get this party started!”

The left side of the legendary DC-3 has a wide hinged double door, to allow large cargo in or a large number of parachute jumper out in a hurry. The doors are usually removed for jumping but for this trip Al had reattached them. The two young men who had been helping Al load the plane had finished their task, and were preparing to leave. As they stood chatting with Al and wishing him a safe trip, David grabbed his luggage and Anne’s hastily prepared overnight bag from the van’s back gate. A simple wooden, two step ladder is all there was to assist their boarding the plane. Anne was first up the ladder and in the plane, and once inside the spacious open fuselage she turned to look at David with a smile. “They’ve thought of everything!” She said giggling like a school-girl.

David stepped up the first step of the ladder, lugging the baggage ahead of him. Ducking the low door-opening, he peered into the darkened chamber. To his horror what he saw was not what he expected.

“Lawn chairs? We are going to sit in lawn chairs?”

“Hey, at least they go back.” Anne mused.

“They’re chaise lounges!” David dropping the luggage and fingering the lightweight construction. “They’re lawn chairs. I have this in my back yard. And they’re not even screwed down!” David said

“Keep your head on young man!” Al said as he climbed aboard behind David pointing to the row of tiny folded jump seats mounted to each side of the fuselage. “You sit in those when we take off and land, or come up front with me if you choose. These are so you can relax and be comfortable during the ride. It going to be seven and a half hours you know, give or take a few. I don’t think you want to sit in those the whole time, do you?”

“Ok, that’s fine.” David said faintly trying to hide his dismay with the spartan accommodations. “Is there going to be a meal served?”

Al smiled, approving David’s dry sense of humor and remembered his remark about Rudy. “Right after the cocktails and movie I think.”

Looking at Anne he chuckled. “I like this guy.”

Al excused himself as he pressed past David and Anne climbing the steep 20 degree incline towards the front cabin of the plane.

“Both of you can sit up here with me if you like during the flight. There’s two extra seats up here.” He called back inviting.

Anne waved David to follow as they trudged their way up to the front of the plane. David stopped and noticed there were about a dozen five-gallon jerry cans on the floor strapped to the side of the fuselage ahead of the jump seats.

“Are we going to stop for gas or something?” He asked wondering what the cans were for.

Al stopped just short of the narrow entrance to the cabin and turned looking back at David with a smile. “That IS the fuel. What we’ll need anyway, the way I figured it.”

“We refuel in flight!?” David said in horror.
“Well,,, if we need to. It will be close anyway, so I brought that extra fuel along.”

David stepped back for a moment considering the situation. “What!? We are going to pour it in somewhere? Where do you pour it in?”

“Oh,,, its under that floor panel. Don’t worry about that now. I’ll show you when we need it. If we need it.” Al reassured.

David shook his head in amazement and smiled.

The pilot and co-pilot seat of a DC-3 is nearly as void of personal comforts as is the rest of the plane. There are however, a dizzying array of dials, switches and large levers to control the ‘pre-digital age’ airplane. The most striking feature however is the fact that there is absolutely no view through the front windshield, due to the severe angle at which the tail-dragger style airplane rests.

“How do you see where you are going?” David asked peering into the cabin.

Al settled into an obviously familiar position in the pilot seat and looked back at David. “You don’t. Till you get going that is. Don’t need to really. I can see the runway just fine down there.” Pointing out the tiny side window. “Once we get going the tail comes up and we level out. You can see just fine then.”

Anne was squeezing into the co-pilots seat and looked back at David with an excited look on her face. “Oh,,, I love this! Don’t you? Sit there,,, in that seat,,, there.” She excitedly pointed to a folded jump seat just behind the co-pilot seat.

“You can be the navigator.” Al said with a laugh.

“You want me to navigate?” David said now with a ring of dry humor. “Oh sure,,, I’ll navigate alright. Yeah go left ahead at the light and then go three miles till the next intersection,,, yeah right.”

“That’s where the navigator sits, just wanted to tell you that.” Al corrected himself. “Anyway, don’t worry about that. I know exactly where we’re going. Just leave it to me. You ready?”

Just as those words left Al’s mouth, his hand turned the engine start switch bringing a whine of an electric starter motor screaming into their ears. Looking out the window the right engine’s propeller began to turn. Suddenly, a horrendously loud sputtering sound filled the air as the thousand horse-power Pratt-Whitney engine roared to life.

Less than a minute passed before Al commanded the left engine into the same sequence, as now the 100 decibel roar of two engines filled their very souls. With the sound and feel of immense power coming from the huge engines filling David and Anne’s senses, the level of excitement mixed with danger nearly overwhelmed them both.

A minute or more passed as Al reviewed his clipboard and checked some of the gages.

Placing the clipboard in a well worn spot between the seat and the consol he piped up, “OK, let’s go.”

His right hand gently bumped the two large throttle levers just a bit, and the engines responded obediently with increasing noise and power. The huge propellers pulled the plane forward, as Al’s face peered out of the tiny side window on the left, then turning and craning his neck to get a view across the cabin to the right.

A man with red flashlight markers on the tarmac waved up to him, pointing to the right, and Al complied with a turn of the corroded aluminum steering wheel controlling the rudder. The plane responded like a charm.

A smile danced across his face, pleased at the prospect of the trip that lay before them. “You know when this bird was built?” He yelled to the two of them over the engines.

“I’d say, the sixties?” David yelled back.

“Try 1943. What do you think of that?”

“1943? Are you kidding?” Anne asked. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No really.” Al replied loudly as the plane sped up to a few miles an hour, and began the bumpy taxi down the taxiway. The rattles and groans of the aging fuselage penetrated the roar of the monstrous engines, offering an unsettling distraction.

“They first built them in the late Thirties. There’s almost 2000 of them still flying around the world!”

“Wow, how is that possible?” David yelled now as the engine’s drone blotted out almost all conversation.

“Five-hundred-thousand rivets is how.” Al responded now yelling himself. “During World War Two a DC-3 was making a run over somewhere in the Pacific arena. A Japanese Zero spotted it and tried to shoot it down. The Zero ran out of ammo,,, so the story goes, and tried to ram it out of the sky, like a kamikaze or something. Anyway the Jap hit the DC-3 and bounced off. It ended up falling into the water. The pilot of the DC-3 landed safely and was credited with a kill. True story.”

David smiled at the incredulous story of a plane, any plane, being that tough.

“You know there’s only one thing that’ll replace a DC-3. Know what it is? Al asked at top of his lungs.

“No. What?” Anne screamed.

Al’s prepared response came with a wide smile. “Another DC-3!”

The big plane now had reached the end of the runway, and with an exchange with the tower through his radio headgear, Al placed his ever-ready clipboard to the side of the seat again. As he reached down to crank the manual flap control, he warned, “Check your seatbelts. Here we go!”

David and Anne both checked the tightness of the old canvas belts and grabbed any surface near them that wasn’t movable.

Al grabbed the two throttle levers and expertly rolled them forward to the full throttle position as the engines responded with a deafening roar.

For as large a plane as the DC-3 is, David was impressed that it felt so remarkably nimble. The plane effortlessly accelerated forward to 80 miles an hour, and true to Al’s word, the tail came up off the tarmac revealing the illuminated runway before them.

The faster the plane went, the more the rattles and shaking noises settled down. Just as the speed dial hit 140 miles an hour, Al pulled back on the steering wheel and the big plane’s engines grabbed the evening air, like the king of the sky that it had been for so many years.

Al looked at Anne and then peered back at David. “Grab that lever down there, will ya’?” He said with a laugh as David looked down at a lever near his feet.

“What?!” He gasped.

“Pull that lever up, will you?” Al repeated. “That’s the landing gear. We won’t make any time with that down, now will we?”

David reached down and grabbed the three-foot lever marked LANDING GEAR and releasing its lever lock on the handle, pulled up hard on it. The wires connecting the lever to a mechanism in the center of the plane let out a thump that could be heard and felt in the center of the fuselage. The big airplanes’ cacophony of sounds suddenly settled down to only a bare and distinguishable few.

The sight of the city of lights came into view, with streets and porch lights for miles now in plain sight. It was a starkly beautiful scene, as the three occupants sat silently gazing, hypnotized, out through the windows of the old plane they looked, just taking it all in.

“Wow, it’s incredible, isn’t it?” Anne commented realizing that her voice may not be heard but that all three of them knew what she was saying.

“Yes it is.” David replied not caring if he could be heard either over the drone of the planes monstrous engines.

For fifteen minutes Al kept adjusting levers and flaps and playing with trim tabs, as the DC-3’s huge propellers grabbed and pulled for the darkening evening sky, the natural light now just visible on the disappearing horizon. Climbing in altitude, the lights below slowly faded into indistinguishable blots, and then disappeared completely behind them, as new illuminated towns and highways came into view ahead of them.

Fifteen minutes of silence from the three passengers turned into thirty minutes, and then an hour, as the sights and feeling of the freedom of flight settled into their senses.

“Why don’t you two go back and relax for a while. I’ll check on you in a while.”
“Sounds good.” Anne accepted the offer, as she extracted herself from the confines of the co-pilots seat. David took the cue as well and unfastened his belt and staggered to his feet, gaining his balance on the unsure footing of the bobbing plane.

“I want to check out those chaise lounges.” David said with a failing and drained voice, tired from the day’s experience.

David and Anne made their way back to the now inviting chaise lounges, and in short order the two had settled down into them, after unfolding and laying out some blankets that Al had been so thoughtful to bring.

Laying back in the chairs, as the two prepared to get some much needed shut eye, Anne with the blanket just up to her eyes, looked up at the exposed frame of the stripped out inner fuselage. David could see that she was smiling underneath the cover.

“What?” He asked.

Anne pulled the blanket down to her chin revealing her face with an expected smile, and looking over at David, she said, “It doesn’t get any better than this. Does it?”

Vetting the facetious remark, David leaned back and closed his eyes, himself smiling, preparing to doze off, determined to disregard the simmering sounds and vibrations of the old war horse in which they were riding.

“Nope.” He said with complete confidence. “It’s like heaven on earth.”