 |
Son of a Pioneer | |
| the stories of G.V. (Gerry) Stauffer |
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Snowed In But airplanes can do the job. |
| We did a lot of emergency flights. What a
job to go off in the middle of the
night,
to find an airstrip! We'd go down at
Estavan
and land. Some doctor had driven a
car over
a half a mile piece of sod and said
well
"Yeah, he drove the car at thirty
mile
an hour and we didn't fall out".
You
know that's good enough. That's a good
landing
strip. "Oh did you hear? The 195's upside down, laying up here on the airstrip. Did you see it?" "No." "Well, they landed in there at night, they hit something and flipped over." Those airplanes spent more time on their back, or wheels knocked off them, or skis knocked off. This is what we'd do. Go in and land there. Have cars lined up alongside the runway with the headlights shining. It's amazing they didn't kill somebody, or have more accidents. Oh it was a wonderful service. These planes and pilots served like 50,000 people. Today its useless because they got roads and highways now to drive. In those days the roads were closed, nobody could go anywhere. Towns were completely snowed in. A lot of the trips were only 30 miles out of Regina, or Saskatoon. (Marjorie) Or just stop to think Gerry of the winter the snow was so bad here in Calgary. We flew to farms and brought in turkey eggs, we brought in pregnant women. The roads were absolutely impassable. Today they have snowplows. (Gerry) There was a store down by Empress. Phoned up and said, "Can you guys deliver a propeller down here?" "Sure, we can bring it down, you bet!" Guess what it is? It's a wind charger propeller. It's as long as here to over there. So we tied it onto the undercarriage, from the tailwheel to the main gear and strapped it on good and tight. Flew it down. Where do you land down there, Norris? Right on main street. So we landed on main street. There was one car sitting in front of the hotel. Snowed in. The whole town is in darkness because the windcharger has failed. We take that propeller off there. It came from that area down by the railroad track, by Mewata. |