The Miracle at Cortez

Note: If you click on the link toward the end of the column, don’t turn off your volume. Even though the video starts in Chinese with English sub-titles, it soon goes to English with Chinese sub-titles, the only one I’ve ever seen to do that.

I’m going to take you back to the year 1959 to introduce today’s column.  Some of you were alive at that time and some weren’t.  And even those who were might never have heard or read this story.  I know I hadn’t until very recently because I was over in Korea at the time.  Besides, the incident was classified for many years afterwards.

Okay, August of 1959… The U.S.S.R has launched their Sputnik two years earlier, and we are on a fast track to try and catch up in the space race.  Everything is, however, top secret, and nobody knows the names of the astronauts, or that there are astronauts, or even that the term “astronaut” exists. Communist China is threatening to attack two islands off their coast called Quemoy and Matsu, which are held by the Republic of China on Taiwan.  It is still a secret that we have a spy plane designated U-2, or “Dragon Lady,” and Gary Powers is not a name anyone knows, because his U-2 will not be shot down by the Soviets for another few months.

That U-2 is the focus of the column, because we were testing it with American and Republic of China pilots.  We were doing so with a terrible loss of aircraft and pilots.  On one of those test flights a ROC Major, Hsichun Mike Hua, took off from Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas on a U-2 mission.  He was to fly a trapezoidal pattern up to Ogden, Utah and back. The flight was designed to test celestial navigation, and therefore, it was conducted at night.

All went well until Major Hua reached Delta, Utah on his return flight.  Then, at an altitude of 70,000 feet, his engine suddenly flamed out.  The time was 10:28 PM, so it was pitch black outside.  And if you have ever driven or flown over the Wasatch Mountains in Utah, you will know that there are several peaks in the range that top 10,000 feet.  Beyond the mountains there is a canyon- and mesa- filled land.

Major Hua tried several times to restart the engine after he glided to a lower altitude, but his efforts were unsuccessful.  Fortunately, the U-2 has a great glide slope, so the plane was kept high for a considerable time while major Hua assessed the situation.  But finally, he was down to about 15,000 feet and things were getting dicey.  He was in danger of becoming the 18^th casualty and the 12^th fatality of the U-2 program. As he was preparing for a forced night landing, possibly in those rugged mountains, he spotted runway lights in the distance. 

Southwest of the little town of Cortez, the gateway to Mesa Verde in extreme southwest Colorado, there was a municipal airport not even shown on Major Hua’s aviation maps.  The town council had been debating for months the practice of leaving runway lights on overnight.  No decision had yet been made, so they were on that night while Captain Tom Johnson finished up some paperwork in the flight shack.  Little did he know the events that were unfolding far above him.

Major Hua was able to turn the craft while still on a glide path and line up with the runway, though he had no idea in which direction the wind was blowing or what the altimeter setting would be to touch down on the runway.  And since the U-2 doesn’t have the typical tricycle landing gear, but rather a in-line bicycle configuration, he would have to land it very precisely while totally unable to see the ground and with a dead stick—no power.

Not only was Major Hua successful in bringing the U-2 in on the runway; he was able to turn it off to the edge before the wing touched down.  He climbed out of the craft and proceeded to the flight shack, walking in on Captain Johnson in what must have appeared to be a totally alien “space suit.”  It was later suggested by Captain Johnson that he fully expected the alien to say the words, “Take me to your leader.”

Major Hua, who later retired with the rank of General, was awarded the “Distinguished Flying Cross” for his achievement on the night of august 3, 1959.  And he was in Cortez on August 2, 2009 for the celebration of the 50^th anniversary of the feat.

On my recent trip to the Four Corners I stayed three nights in Cortez, and I was able to drive over some of the country that Major Hua had traversed in his crippled airplane.  I also visited the airport at Cortez. It has a wall of fame inside the passenger terminal that recounts the “Miracle at Cortez.” 

The runway at Cortez, barely visible in the middle running center to right edge, is just below the Mesa Verde National Park in the background.  On the other side, behind the photographer, is Sleeping Ute Mountain, an even higher obstacle.

A modern passenger terminal has since replaced the crude flight shack that existed in 1959 and Cortez is a commercial airport today with commuter flights to and from Denver.

Here is a 2-minute video that shows how difficult it is to land a U-2 even with a chase car to relay height above the runway to the pilot. Chase cars are always used during landing the U-2 night or day, so Major Hua's feat was even that much more challenging.

Bacterial Alerts

In a recent column I made an issue of all the tests that the "health professionals" want us to take and how expensive and threatening those tests might be.  I also opined about how tests seem to lead to further tests, which lead to positive results, which lead to full-blown diseases, which lead... Well, you know where this is going.

Last week I heard a news item about a clinic in Atlanta that was alerting some 486 people who had had colonoscopies that they might be at risk for HIV.

Yeow!  Talk about the proof is in the pudding (no pun intended, but that just came to me).

Of course I had to do some research on the news report when I got home, so I did the old Google search and, lo and behold, that warning was only one of many that have gone out over the past couple of years.  Atlantans weren't the only ones in jeopardy; there were alerts for several communities.

It seems that the equipment used for the rectal exams is not being cleaned properly.  That is not to say it isn't being cleaned at all, but plain soap and hot water is used prior to the sterilization process.  Turns out that antibacterial soap is prescribed to kill bacteria.  Well, who'd a thunk it?

You see, I was absolutely correct in refusing to get a colonoscopy.  It might have saved my life.

Since I'm on the nasty subject anyway, here's another alert I saw this week.  We have had a shortage of cucumbers lately, and when we finally did get some in the produce section they were from Greece.  I cannot recall ever seeing European produce in our stores, but there it was.

later that same day I got an email alert with an article about the high incidence of salmonella in 18 states.  The bacteria was traced to imported cucumbers from (wait for it) Mexico.  The article pointed out that the main difference between Mexican fields for vegetables and American fields for the same produce is the lack of porta-potties in the "South of the Border" fields.

I don't know about you, but I'm going to start checking those little stickers on all produce from now on.  If it says anything like "Crecido en Mèxico" it doesn't go in my cart.

Stayin' Alive

I'm going to borrow the title of that famous Bee-Gees song for my column this week, and I'll tell you why in a moment.

By the calendar and the clock, I should not be here.  Sometime last year I should have run out of time, yet here I am, still kicking and enjoying life.  I have a reason for believing that negative scenario and you may call it superstition, but I call it the natural order of things.

Modern medicine has kept me going far longer than I have any right to stay on the green side of the grass.  There have been several close calls in the past few years, but good old Doctor Clark has performed his miracles on me and, like that Timex commercial used to say, (and my wife echoes it) I... "take a lickin' and keep on tickin'." 

The calendar/clock reference above is to the fact that I lost my oldest brother in 2003, my brother-in-law in 2006 and my other brother in 2009.  Hmmm, every three years one of us kicks off.  Since I'm the next oldest of the family I should be next to go, and the cycle of three years should apply. I feel like I'm living on borrowed time.

When I took my solo car trip to the northwest in 2009, I was convinced that it would be my last long road trip, and I tried to do as much as possible while I was out there.  Heck, I've taken ten road trips since then and I'm already locked and loaded for another one this month.  I keep thinking "this is my last," but then time keeps passing and I get to go on  another one.

Along the way I've crossed off a lot of my "bucket list" items, but I have also added a few to make life more interesting.  One that we'll accomplish in June is to ride on the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.  That one has been on there for almost twenty years, and I sure hope I finally get to do it.

You might be justified to ask what happens if I "meet my maker" while on the road.

Well, I've thought about that, and I think the solution is cremation.  Judy can transport my ashes back to Georgia, or she can take me wherever she wants to inter me.  You may recall that when I took my trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with my friend, Tom, we transported his father's ashes to Wisconsin.  Hence, I titled the trip "Urban's Ashes."

I prefer my ashes to be interred in the nice Bellevue Memorial Gardens right across the road from our subdivision, but I won't be around to protest if Judy chooses another location.  Of course, she could take the easy way out and just scatter them along the road to commemorate our many road trips.

Cicada Symphony - Brood II

I saw a recent news report regarding the emergence of the 17-year cicada in the Northeast and it brought to mind the column I wrote two years ago about our 13-year cicada invasion here in Augusta.  I believe it calls for a revisit to that topic.

I won't repeat the entire article, but you may read it for yourself if you care to click on the highlighted link for Brood II, the name being given to the huge event.

The article really downplayed the scope of the cicada lifecycle that people will be plagued with in eastern states all the way from North Carolina to Connecticut.  And there is nothing to keep them from spreading to other New England states as well.

As I detailed in my former column, these critters make one heck of a racket.  The males sing to attract the females to engage in the only activity they are there for, S-E-X.  The noise is loud and long, and with as many as 1-million-bugs-per-acre, that sound will be multiplied enough to drive a sane person crazy. 

If you happen to live in one of the affected states, you are in for a serenade the likes of which you can hardly imagine.  Or maybe you can imagine it, if you think about a high-pitched scream and then hear it at about 90 decibels.  Cicadas love to sing in the morning and evening, so don't plan on any early or late patio sitting this spring. 

The article also states that most people will not even see the cicadas, but I don't believe that for a second.  They are about an inch long, and they all have one thing in common: after they mate the males die.  The female gets to lay her fertilized eggs--up to 600 of them--and then she also expires.  Birds are pretty good scavengers, but I doubt that they can consume that many carcasses.  Yes, folks, there will be bodies galore!  Be prepared for the crunch-crunch of carapaces under your shoes.

I thought the stink bugs I encountered up in Maryland and Virginia a few years ago were bad, but at least they didn't make any noise.  They were just ubiquitous and a nuisance.  The cicadas threaten to be a real hazard to your mental health.

It would be nice if I could avoid the northeast for the next couple of months, but I have made plans to visit my son up in Maryland later this month, so I'm afraid I'll be caught up in the middle of the invasion.  Hint: I'm taking earplugs with me.

Oh, in case you want to see what the cicada looks like, and you don't want to take the time to click on the link above, here is a picture of one.  Nasty looking, aren't they?

The Zebra Plant (Not)

My wife and I have some wonderful and long-lived house plants, one of which I thought was a zebra plant, or aphelandra squarrosa.  Ours has been with us for many years, and has outgrown a succession of pots until it now resembles a small tree rather than a potted plant.

I wouldn't be writing about the zebra plant except that ours is significantly different from those I've seen pictured.  Why?  Because it has recently grown a flower stalk, and the flowers do not even come close to looking like those belonging to zebra plants.  Add to that the fact that the flowers bloomed twice from the same pods, and I believed I had a mutant species.

The research I've performed states that only the fortunate homeowner will get the zebra plant to produce flowers.  That was my second clue that something was wrong with my classification of our plant, because we rarely get blooms on any plant we grow.

First I show you the common zebra plant with the typical flowers, yellow and reminiscent of the flower produced by a bromeliad, only with shorter petals.

  This is our plant with its flowers.

 And, finally, above are the two separate bloomings of our plant which occurred over a two-week period.

You can see that the stem had a right curve to it the first time it bloomed, but then it straightened out and bloomed a second time from those same little buds.  The leaves look different from the zebra, as well, so now I had my third suggestion that I must be mistaken.

I got on the Internet and searched for house plants with serrated leaves.  It took some time, but I eventually got to the true name of the plant.  Voilá!  What we have is a croton. 

I suspect our croton will bloom again, too. It is getting new "buds" on that stem, so we might yet have a third generation of flowers.  I guess that makes it a floribunda plant, though I did not come across any indication of that in the research I performed. It is still a miracle for us that we got it to bloom at all, and it is a really neat plant.  I like those little white, spikey flowers.

KILROY WAS HERE

I recently learned that there is a iconic symbol hidden within the WWII Memorial on the Mall in Washington, DC.  It is one that is likely familiar to anyone who was born prior to about 1950. The symbol is that long-nosed half-head peeking over a wall with his fingers shown on either side and the inscription, "KILROY WAS HERE" in upper case printing underneath.

I received an email earlier this week that described the origins of the Kilroy was here drawings and I decided that I might write a column about it, especially after I did the research and found that there are several versions of the tale.  Here is the one I received,  probably the most accurate one.

In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, "Speak to America ," sponsored a nationwide contest to find the real Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article.

Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax, Massachusetts, had evidence of his identity.

Kilroy was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war who worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy.  His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed.  Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet. 

Kilroy would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice.  When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark.

Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters.

One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office.  The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate.  It was then that Kilroy realized what had been going on.

The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk.  He continued to put his check mark on each job he inspected, but added 'KILROY WAS HERE' in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message.  Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks.

Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint.  With the war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them.

 

As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced.  His message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific.  Before war's end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, and everywhere on the long hauls to Berlin and Tokyo. 

To the troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that someone named Kilroy had "been there first."

As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.

Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always "already been" wherever GIs went.  It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the underside of  the Arc de Triomphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon).

As the war went on, the legend grew.  Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there).  On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo! 

In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference.  Its' first occupant was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?"

To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters.  He won the 50-foot-long trolley car, which he attached to his house to accommodate six of his nine children, thus solving a housing crisis for the family.

So, now you know the rest of the story.

Well, not quite... Some of the other tales of the origins are included in a website called

kilroywashere.org,  which details them all.  Even the urban legend truth checkers, snopes.com, straightdope.com and truthorfiction.com have given their opinions of the authenticity.  I guess Kilroy will be 'here', wherever 'here' is, forever!

Even Ugly Dogs are Cute

My daughter recently bought a new puppy, company for our wonderful grandpuppy, Abby.  The new one is a French Bulldog, while Abby is a Dachshund.

The French Bulldog is part English Bulldog and American Bulldog, is a miniature breed, and has the typical flat face the all bulldogs exhibit.  I could tell you that the new pup, Genevieve—a.k.a. "Vivie"—is a pretty little thing and I'd be justified to say so, but let's face it, bulldogs are not bred of their good looks.

The term "pug ugly" didn't originate without good reason, and the bulldog has that same pushed-in face as a pug.  It is a little known fact that these dogs, though they love water, are not able to swim any distance and are subject to drowning.  That's because their short faces make it impossible to swim and breathe at the same time. 

We went over to the daughter's house for our Sunday dinner and to meet the new girl, and, of course, we fell in love with her immediately.  She is soft and gentle and gets along very nicely with her big sister.  And Abby is equally playful with Vivie, the two of them tearing around the back yard with their doggy toys.

One activity that Vivie has introduced Abby to, one that we don't understand, is 'worming', where she gets her little face right down on the ground and apparently pulls earthworms up into her mouth.  We don't know how she senses their presence, but she has uncanny skill in finding and getting them.  Now, if it were truffles that would be a good thing. Abby isn't as proficient at 'worming' and I don't think she likes the taste of them, since she quit the game after a short time.

Little dogs are thought to be feisty, but these two have, so far, been playful with each other.  They both will nip the other's ears, and the occasional growl signals displeasure, but they don't fight at all, and seem to be the best of buddies right from the get-go. We hope that lasts.

Here are a couple of pictures of our cute little grandpuppies.

Abby

Vivie