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Son of a Pioneer | |
| the stories of G.V. (Gerry) Stauffer |
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Wake Up! We're Here. Revenge is sweet. |
| Porky had lifted up the blankets and thrown
snow on my butt. That's unforgiveable,
but
I didn't tell him. I told him I'd get
even,
but he told me, "There's nothing
you
can do in that airplane to scare me."
'Cause he spent hundreds and hundreds
of
hours riding with me. But he was one
of those
guys who fall asleep while they're
flying. Now, we were coming into the camp, and he's sleeping, got his head over here and he's sound asleep, he's snoring. So I just left the power on, trimmed the nose up, climbed and climbed until I came over the camp. It was that time of evening that the lights had just come on in camp and the cars coming down the highway were lit up. So I end up on top of the camp, right in the middle of the camp at about 6000, 7000 feet. The guys all came out of the camp and they're standing out in the field looking to see why I was up so high. I'd never done this before. And they're all standing there watching see, and they thought "Gee, there's something wrong, there's gotta be something really wrong." I just kept it going, I just gradually got the nose up higher and higher and higher until she's finished and I finally had to pull the throttle off and kick that rudder and it went into a beautiful spin and I yelled at Porky (he's sitting beside me), "Porky, we're in a spin and we're going to CRASH!". He got ... 3 times he got his beads counted ... he's Catholic ... he got 'em counted 3 times as we rode down. We recovered, and poor guy, he couldn't pick up a cup of coffee. Had to use both hands. That was a terrible thing to do. I'd shouldn't have done it. But I did and I'm glad. He never bothered me after that. Well we signed a peace treaty. I used to fly him to church Sunday morning. He wasn't sure he really wanted to risk going to church with me. |