Page 26 - October21T_REV

From the Flight Deck
by Kevin R. Dingman
Pilot Changeling
A professional flying career often
follows a circuitous and uncertain course.
Doobie Brothers
It was the early 70s, and I didn’t fully appreciate the dynamics or tension between hippies and The Man. If I had, better judgment might have prevailed that night. The airplane to which we were walking toward briskly was a 90 hp Mooney Cadet. With the two of us on board, we may have been able to carry a load of pot if we lightened the 24-gallon fuel load and left behind our love beads and 10-pound platform shoes. But we were geeks – well, geeks hadn’t been invented yet. We were nerds, maybe not even nerds. Chronologically speaking, we were somewhere between dorks and nerds. And we wouldn’t have recognized a “doobie” if Cheech and Chong had stuck it in our eye. I was a brand- new private pilot, and it was the first and the last time my friend ever flew with me. Perhaps the evening’s invigorating reenactment of the O.K. Corral was an influence.
HWigh School hippies Kevin Dingman and Kevin Davis.
alking with a Wyatt Earp saunter, one hand hovering over his holstered pistol, the police officer would soon be within voice (and pistol)
range. No challenge had been issued earlier that evening, so our nonchalant bravery toward the gunslinger seemed appropriate. But our emotions would soon change from arrogance to anxiousness as the confrontation unfolded.
The encounter happened shortly after a high school friend and I pushed open an unlocked gate and walked across the terminal apron towards the airplane. Our bell- bottom pants, shoulder-length hair, platform shoes and 17-year-old demeanor had likely convinced him that we were trouble-causing hippies. We did provoke him a bit I suppose, witnessed by the hurried walk that we had agreed to present, just to see what would happen. One hand hovering over his pistol, that’s what would happen. It’s after dark; why are they hurrying like that? They probably have a load of pot and are headed to a stoner party; with girls the same age as my daughter – damn hippies. I’m going to shoot one of them right here.
24 • TWIN & TURBINE / October 2021
Hippie Bloodstains
We had flown from Kalamazoo to Grand Rapids for dinner in the terminal – the airline terminal. We enjoyed a celebratory $50 hamburger (inflation now makes it $100 to $1,000) for my new license, and it was a different time back then. We walked to and from our airplane not far from a North Central Convair 580, unhindered and unchallenged. Until now. “What are you two doing out here?” belched the cop. I arrogantly raised my peach-fuzz speckled chin ever so slightly. “I’m a pilot, and we’re going out to that airplane.” I pointed to the Mooney Cadet.
“Have some ID and a pilot’s license.” His words were not spoken with the inflection of a question; they were a statement. Used in place of: “Show me some ID you hippie before I shoot some of that hair right off your head.” I guess the brisk walk and raised chin had worked, and now we knew what would happen: the G-Man would shoot us. However, following the example of Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne(survivors of the O.K. Corral), my courageous friend and I acquiesced and became meek little kids. I think the lawman was disappointed that we left the ramp free of shot-off hair and hippie bloodstains.