This is one of the last of the color slides.
Dave Morris was my stereo equipment and record album buddy who lived in the former two-man room BOQ. However, as with so many of my friends in Minot, the time would inevitably come when they transferred from Minot to somewhere else, or left the Air Force entirely, like Tim McConnell.
Dave got a new assignment outside of St. Louis, MO. Another friend, Chuck Gover, left the Air Force and returned to Morgantown, West Virginia. Darryl Butler was then attending graduate school at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. David Zito was living near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, having left the Air Force. Dennis and Beth Zito were not far away in New York, having gotten out of the Marine Corps.
I decided to undertake an insane trip to meet up with all of them on one big swing east in the fall; and then I would end up in California, to visit mom. When I bought the ticket at the Minot Airport, I recall that it came to approximately $728.00.
I flew on a North Central DC-9-30 from Minot to Fargo, ND, and then on to Minneapolis, Minnesota.
From there, I caught an Ozark Airlines DC-9 to St. Louis. The plane may have stopped in Des Moines, Iowa, en route.
I spent a couple of days with Dave Morris, exploring St. Louis, where we went up to the top of the Arch. We also saw the film DAMNATION ALLEY, about a post-nuclear-war United States.
Unfortunately, my ticket was incorrect as to when my TWA flight to Indianapolis, Indiana, was to take off, the time having changed since my ticket was issued several weeks earlier. When I checked in at the front counter, the woman did not impress upon me the need to immediately run to my gate to catch the flight, which was to connect with a puddle jumper to Bloomington. Dave and I said goodbye, but I took my time walking to the departure gate, only to see my TWA flight disappearing in the early morning darkness for the runway, having pulled away from the gate only moments before.
I had to catch a later TWA flight, but there was then no connection in Indianapolis to Bloomington. I called Darryl, who reluctantly agreed to drive to Indianapolis to pick me up later that day, that being a Saturday during an Indiana-Purdue college football game, and he was worried about the traffic.
We actually missed any football traffic, fortunately. I spent a couple of days there, visiting him and his wife. We played pickup basketball at the field house and walked the campus, much of which I would see later in the film, BREAKING AWAY.
From Indianapolis, I caught an American Airlines BAC-111 that stopped at Canton-Akron before proceeding on to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
When my twin-engine commuter flight approached the Morgantown airport, merely a top of a mountain sheered off with a runway paved upon that sheered off peak, the rain and wind were so strong that we definitely crabbed almost sideways onto the runway for the landing. Chuck Gover informed me that a similar commuter plane crashed when it tried to land in similar conditions on another West Virginia mountaintop airport.
My commuter flight back to Pittsburgh was cancelled, with a twin four-seater Beechcraft substitute for the return flight. We landed amid a few jumbo jets, taxiing around us, making us look even more dwarfish. While sitting in the airport, awaiting my next flight, a plane from Denver, CO, disgorged a huge number of Academy cadets.
From Pittsburgh, I took a Northwest 727-200 to Philadelphia, to meet up with David Zito. We toured Philadelphia, seeing all of the major sites there after having Thanksgiving with the entire Zito family, meeting Den and David's father and mother. Their dad showed me his leg and the war wound that he got from WWII that still seeped all of those years later.
Unfortunately, the long fall trip finally caught up with me; and I started to come down with a terrible cold--the dampness of Philadelphia feeling even worse than the dry cold of North Dakota. I took whatever medications I could find in the Philadelphia airport before boarding my American Airlines 727-200 flight for LAX via Dallas, Texas. I felt miserable and hated being so sick and potentially spreading my germs to my fellow passengers on this packed aircraft. I think I even had the middle seat in the row, making my flight even more uncomfortable for everyone around me.
When we landed in Dallas, I saw a parked Concorde as we taxied toward the terminal. Not long after that, we departed for LAX, where mom picked me up at the airport. I was happy to be able to stay with her for several days and recover from my cold before I had to return to Minot.
I took a Continental DC-10 to Denver. Unfortunately, the Frontier flight to Minot had been cancelled. I was put on another 737-200 Frontier flight to Fargo, North Dakota, instead, where I caught another North Central DC-9-30, into Minot. I had been gone for almost three weeks, having been to, or through, 14 or more airports and almost that many cities.
Two more Arch slides follow before I return to photographs of my final two years at Minot, 1976-1978.
No comments:
Post a Comment