One of the people I haven't written about before is MamaCharlie's dad. I think I will tell you a thing or two about him...he has accepted me as one of his own and has treated me very well over the years. He is a very interesting man.

Late one evening in Phoenix, summer of 1967, the sun was down and the temperature was actually up. We sat out on his sister's patio and just chewed the fat for a while hoping for a cool breeze.  It was one of our first real conversations.   He was the quality control manager at the Black Canyon Honeywell computer assembly plant. He had spent his whole life in electronics, starting in up-state New York in a television station, he moved through Hughes Aircraft working on anti-aircraft missile systems and then wound up in computers. I made the comment that I could never understand how a computer worked. Keep in mind that 1967 was very early in the development of computer science...the Univac at NASA was still filling up a whole room. Well, telling Grandpa (as we lovingly refer to him nowdays) that you couldn't understand something that was so simple to him was not wise. So on until well past 2 am, I received a lecture that was probably worth thousands of dollars to a scholar but wasted on my inadequate little mind. It ended with something like, "...and that is how the whole thing works...couldn't be any simpler". All I got out of it was that there are these wires stretched in a grid with little donut wires at each intersection that open and close a circuit...see? I didn't get it, either. But it was worth the time spent listening, if not for content, for the pure love and energy he put into it...the man passionately loved his work.

Grandpa, like so many of his generation, was a WWII vet. He was in the Army Air Corps and served three years in India as a weatherman at an air base. The only real action he saw was when he shot an Indian national in the butt with a .45...I'll have to flesh that one out for you at another time. While his service was invaluable to the supply mission the Air Corps flew "over the hump", it was not the kind of job that was glory with gory. But it did afford him to be up close and involved with the other professional passion of his life, airplanes. He has told us story after story of incidents involving aircraft that came in and out of the base he was at. It took him many years, but he finally attained his dream of becoming a pilot...and he bought an antique Taylorcraft hi-wing (visualize a Piper cub) which he personally rebuilt and got certified and flew for many years. Later he got a hold of a Mooney that was larger and nicer and he flew that all over the place...out to Texas to visit when Humbordt was born...to Oshkosh for the experimental aircraft show and rally...and to lots of other places just because he loved to fly.

One of his best qualities is his subtle humor and his ability to "read" a person to see what kind of humor will work best on them. Like the time he sat down next to Mum (his wife) and say, "You know, the trouble with most women is that they take things too personally." Mum stood up, crossed her arms with a harumphing gesture and said, "Well, I don't" as she stomped away, leaving the rest of us cracking up. Or the time one of his co-workers got a promotion. Grandpa went out and bought a hat exactly like the co-workers, only two sizes smaller. He just switched the hats and when it was time to leave for the day, Grandpa and a few others watched with straight faces as the new manager tried to fit the hat to his head with no luck. Finally Grandpa wondered out loud if it just went with the new job.

On another occasion, one of his co-workers bought a new VW bug. This was in the middle fifties when they were first coming to America. The co-worker bragged about what wonderful gas mileage the bugs got. Grandpa told him that his mileage would be great at first but would taper off to really bad in a short time. Big arguments ensued over the merits of German engineering. You need to know that early bugs didn't have a gas gauge, they had a one gallon reserve tank that you opened when the main tank ran out. One gallon in a bug was more than enough to get you to the next gas station...even in the Mojave. So Grandpa and his cohorts began a campaign. Every day or so they would sneak out to the parking lot and add a gallon or two to the bug. The proud bug owner would brag about the amazing gas mileage he was getting...better than advertised, even. After a couple of months, they began to reverse the process, syphoning gas out every couple of days until the once proud, now furious new bugman would come in grousing about the lousy mileage he was getting. He was on the verge of taking it back to the dealer before they let him in on the gag.

One of the gags he pulled on me I can laugh at now, but at the time didn't find too funny, had to do with flying. He invited me to go up in the Taylorcraft with him. We got all lined up on the runway and he began to start talking to himself ...frantically...reviewing takeoff procedures...correcting himself...wondering if that was the right answer...well, the back wheel is up...is it supposed to do that?...whooaaa...hear we go...and on it went until we were two or three thousand feet above the Valley of the Sun. I have to tell you...it was un-nerving to say the least. But we flew around and enjoyed the view. The firewall on the little Taylor was just a sheet of aluminum and there were no mufflers on the little motor so it was loud in the plane. Very loud. The plane started to roll to the left, very slowly. When the angle was so severe that it seemed like the wings were vertical to the ground, he looked at me and said, "Stop it". I said, "What?" He said, "Stop whatever you're doing...I want to get it level again" After he had enough of the terror-stricken visage I presented (I wasn't doing anything), he laughed, righted the plane and headed back to Deer Valley. A little later the motor stopped. All you could hear was the wind rushing by, getting louder as the plane started dropping out of the sky. He smile and said, "Ahh...that's better...it was so loud". More panic on my part until he pointed out that that was the fastest way to get back to the ground. I told him slower was okay with me if it was safer. Turns out that the engine was idling but my ears were so shot from the noise before that I couldn't hear it. He still had a thing or two for me...as we lined up for landing, the left wing dropped a few degrees, very quickly. He said, "Oops!" and made a big show of getting it back to normal. That was good a couple of times. Then we had to have the running commentary again...landing procedures and the self-arguing and doubts and all. Just before touch down he looked at me with a stricken face and asked, "Did you put the wheels down?" I was in mid panic as the undercarriage touched the ground...the wheels on the Taylor are not retractable.

I watched in awe one day as he took apart the quadajet carb on my '69 GTO and fabricated a replacement part. There is a little nylon cam that controls the metering valves for the secondaries...this nylon piece is notorious for breaking and leaving you with no "ZOOM". When he took the top of the carb apart and saw what the problem was, he rummaged around on his work bench and came up with a piece of aluminum flatstock that was the right thickness, drilled it a couple of times and used a halfround file to finish the hole to fit the half round shaft that passes through the cam. He cut the aluminum, using the broken cam as a guide, then finished it with a small file until it was just right. Then he looked it over and started filing again. He told me he had changed the curve of the cam a little to give it a quicker lift...which should improve secondary throttle response some. He put it all back together and sure enough, I had a noticable improvement from the new metering rod cam. The whole process took less than an hour. I wish he were here in the Swirling Epicenter today instead of Phoenix, my current '68 GTO has the exact same problem right now and I am too chicken to tear into it.

There's more...a lot more. This article runs on because the more I think about it, the more I realize how much I owe this guy. He is one of the genuine heroes in my life. Thought you should know that.