Power To The People
Big storm last night. Wind came up. Lightning crashed, thunder bashed. Even rained a little. So, naturally, our power went out. Unfortunately, this is not extraordinary. Dragonfly lands on an electric line, power goes out. Sunspot level rises a trifle, power goes out. Rains in a neighboring state, power goes out. And when it goes out, it stays out.
We don’t mean to imply that our power provider, Clay Electrical Coop, is not especially progressive. We understand that it does take time to get the horses hooked up to the covered wagon that serves as repair truck. And we’re generally very tolerant about Clay’s shortcomings. It’s just that last night we missed Men Of A Certain Age, an unforgivable offense. Maybe the Clay guys could set up one of these booths in front of the Wal-Mart, like the Girl Scouts do, and hustle money for new equipment. Or have a bake sale or a carwash, whatever. Just don’t let this happen again. You don’t want to get us angry.
A Candle In The Pie
We’ll bet you didn’t even notice that it was our birthday, or almost. Last June 17, the first exciting episode of The Flying Pie went skittering across the airwaves. Or whatever. Think of everything that happened in the last year. We followed, after a fashion, Bill’s long voyage from Catholic high school to college in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and the birth of the Charlatan. Then on to Austin and the memorable Ranger days with Gilbert Shelton, Lieuen Adkins, Pat Brown and a cast of thousands, not forgetting a pre-famous Janis Joplin, just then starting her career as a folk singer and Pancake House waitress. Back across the country we came with Bill and Marilyn Todd as they careened around the USA, avoiding the cops and other minions of Marilyn’s father in the service of True Love. Whence down to Florida to restart the Charlatan, create a sensation in Gainesville with the notorious Naked Coed Issue, bringing Walter Cronkite to town and generating enough revenue to open, albeit on a shoestring, the world-famous Subterranean Circus. We travelled through the hippie days, entering the thoroughbred horse era in 1975 and seeing it through to the present day. We bid adieu to old amigos Dominic Imprescia and, just recently, Stuart Bentler, whose battle with amyloidosis was chronicled in many chapters. We’ve talked about all the girls we’ve loved before. We’ve gone on vacation to colorful locales. We’ve introduced you to the horses we spend our days with.
Last year, at this time, we didn’t know we’d still be doing this a year later. And we don’t know whether or not we’ll be doing it a year hence. After all, sooner or later the stories run out, the pot is empty, the notepad lies blank. But your reception to our efforts encourages our continuance. Some weeks, it even seems important to tell the story. And, despite the fact we continue to send this out to just a few more people than last year, the number of people viewing our weekly missives has quadrupled. We don’t know who you are out there in Seal Rock, Ore.,Tunkhannock, Pa., and Southern Pines, N. C.,, or how you found us, but we’re glad you’re checking in. So we’ll keep on trucking, sharing the good news, lamenting the bad, rooting for the horses (and the Gators) (and the Red Sox) and keeping everyone apprised of critical information indispensible to your wellbeing, like warning you about all the nefarious new plots the despicable Tea Party is brewing up, or sharing new answers to old mysteries. It’s been a long time now and we still don’t know for sure Who Wrote The Book Of Love.
An Unsolicited Testimonial
You might want to saunter on down to your local moviehouse and check out Woody Allen’s new film, Midnight In Paris. It’s got romance, it’s got Paris in 2011 and Paris in the twenties. It’s got Hemingway, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein. It’s got great music, assuming you’re not a high-school kid. Yeah, I know, it’s also got Owen Wilson, but he’s actually very good in the role Woody is now too old to play. And, believe it or not, there are no car chases or giant explosions. As an added bonus, these movies do not bring out the plethora of cell phone texters and message checkers which now cover the earth. As the old song wondered, Who Could Ask For Anything More?
Ghosts
Ever since the untimely death of our old pal, Stuart Bentler, we’ve been looking at Afterlife possibilities. If there IS an afterlife, Stuart will be wanting his hats, after all. But after rummaging through several possibilities, after exploring the afterlives promised by various religions, we’re not convinced we’ll be seeing Stuart any more.
Well, Bill, you may ask in your most sarcastic manner, if you’re so smart, what about ghosts?
What about ghosts, indeed? Obviously, if there are ghosts there is some kind of afterlife, right? And lots of people swear they’ve seen ghosts. But what the hell ARE ghosts, anyway? Nobody seems to know, exactly, even though they show up in all eras and all societies.
The traditional view of ghosts is that they are the spirits of dead people which, for some reason, are stuck between this plane of existence and the next, often as the result of some tragedy or trauma. Many ghost hunters and psychics believe that such earth-bound spirits don’t know they are dead. According to Paranormal.about.com, veteran ghost hunter Hans Holzer says, “A ghost is a human being who has passed out of the physical body, usually in a traumatic state and is not aware usually of his true condition. We are all spirits encased in a physical body. At the time of passing, our spirit body continues into the next dimension. A ghost, on the other hand, due to trauma, is stuck in our physical world and needs to be released to go on.”
Ghosts exist in a kind of limbo in which they haunt the scenes of their deaths or locations that were pleasant to them in life. Very often, these types of ghosts are able to interact with the living and react to being seen on the occasions that they materialize, whenever those are. Some psychics, as we know, claim to be able to communicate with them, often for a profit. Other more benevolent psychics try to help these spirits to understand that they are dead and to move on to the next stage of existence.
Yeah, well that’s all well and good, but I think we need to actually SEE one to believe. When I was in my twenties, I was fascinated with UFOs, too. I probably read a hundred books about Flying Saucers, books offering varying degrees of believability, everything from “Gee, that sounds possible!” to “Is this guy writing on laughing gas?” But the bottom line is that no flying saucers ever showed up in MY little life so they became irrelevant to me. If they don’t affect anything in my existence, they are personally of no consequence. Same with ghosts. Although I will be glad to listen to a good story. Like:
The Ghosts Of Flight 401
In December of 1972, an Eastern Airlines (remember them?) Tri-Star jetliner, Flight 401, crashed into a Florida swamp. According to Near Death Experiences & the Afterlife, the pilot, Bob Loft and the flight engineer, Don Repo, were two of the 101 people who perished in the air crash. Not long after the crash, the ghosts of Loft and Repo were seen on more than twenty occasions by crew members on other Eastern Tri-Stars, especially those planes which had been fitted with parts salvaged from the Flight 401 wreckage (and could I, right now, tell the nice airlines that on future flights I might be making I would like to be excused from the “salvaged parts” planes). Anyway, the apparitions of Loft and Repo were invariably described as being extremely lifelike. They were not only reported by people who had known Loft and Repo, but their ghosts were also subsequently identified from photographs by people who had not known either man.
The strange tales of the ghostly airmen of Flight 401 circulated in the airline community. An account of the paranormal happenings even appeared in a 1974 U.S. Flight Safety Foundation newsletter. John G. Fuller, the best-selling author of The Ghost of Flight 401, carried out an exhaustive investigation into the haunting with the aid of several cautious airline personnel. A mass of compelling evidence was produced as a result. The website (Flight 401—The Black Box Story) provides an account of the crash as told using material from the aircraft’s Black Box. It highlights how poor cockpit resource management caused a tiny light bulb to distract the pilots and bring down a Tri-Star jetliner.
The cause of the crash was found to be a couple of minor design faults in the controls, and Lockheed rapidly corrected them. However, it was after some of the undamaged parts of the aircraft were subsequently recycled onto other planes that the mysterious incidents began to be reported.
Although Eastern Airlines refused to discuss the matter, researchers interviewed numerous individuals claiming to have encountered the ill-fated pair. As the reports would have it, Loft and Repo have devoted their afterlives to watching over the passengers and crews of these Lockheed passenger planes.
Many of the testimonies are extremely persuasive. Many come from people in highly responsible positions—pilots, flight officers, even a vice-president of Eastern Airlines, who allegedly spoke with a captain he assumed was in charge of a flight before recognizing him as the late Loft.
Other sightings are convincing because they have multiple witnesses. One flight’s captain and two flight attendants claim to have seen and spoken to Loft before take-off and then watched him vanish—an experience that left them so shaken they cancelled their flight.
One female passenger made a concerned inquiry to a flight attendant regarding the quiet, unresponsive man in an Eastern Airlines uniform sitting in the seat next to her, who subsequently disappeared in full view of both of them and several other passengers, leaving the woman hysterical. When later shown a sheet of photos depicting Eastern flight engineers, she identified Repo as the officer she had seen.
Another incident occurred when one of the L-1011 passenger planes that had been fitted with salvaged parts was due for take-off. The flight engineer was mid-way through carrying out the routine pre-flight inspection when Repo appeared to him and said, “You don’t need to worry about the pre-flight, I’ve already done it.” (Near Death Experiences & the Afterlife)
These anecdotes go on and on, often reciting incidents where the two ghosts seem to be checking on the status of some aspect of the airplane or actually making repairs. One significant incident had Repo warning three colleagues to “Watch out for fire on this plane,” not the kind of message you like getting from your friendly, neighborhood ghost (or anybody else, for that matter). The plane later encountered serious engine trouble and the last leg of its flight was cancelled. It is interesting to note that the galley of this particular plane had been salvaged from the wreckage of Flight 401.
There are so many convincing stories from so many people about this particular ghost duo, it’s difficult to dismiss at least the possibility of ghosts, even though we don’t know any personally. Skeptics contend that ghosts are merely psychic phenomena—we see them because we want to or expect to see them, but this certainly doesn’t explain most of the Flight 401 sightings. There have been many incidents also of ghosts appearing—usually to loved ones—and delivering warnings of impending doom, some apparently life-saving. We’ll get into a few of these next week.
Stayin’ Alive
You’ll be happy to know that Ocala now has its very own Scientology Mission. It’s down on First, about a half-block from Harry’s and it’s very cute with its yellow and white awnings and its whited-out windows which prevent snoops like Bill from peeking in. This all comes to you thanks to Anthony resident John Travolta, who has been a Scientology practitioner for lo, these many years. Living out in the ‘burbs is really convenient for John, who can pilot his giant airplanes right up to the door of his house or hop over to Scientology headquarters in Clearwater at the drop of a hat. Everybody around here seems to like Travolta even though he sometimes makes movies like Wild Hogs because he is a gentleman and a benefactor and because, well, we’re easily starstruck in little old Ocala.
Anyway, the Scientologists promise they are not imposing themselves on us and they are not trying to convert anybody to their way of thinking. They are just providing a little mission here. If you have any questions or problems (say you are unduly concerned with the exploding weevil population), you have merely to go up to the desk and ask for a counselor and you will be taken care of. Just leave your checkbook at home.
What Happens Now?
Is what you’re asking yourself in light of the Belmont’s confusing result which gave us three different winners of the three Triple Crown races. Well, first of all, everybody takes a step back for a little break, especially Shackleford and Animal Kingdom, who have been on a heavy schedule. With the three-year-old championship up for grabs, look for all the contenders to meet in the Travers Stakes at Saratoga in August and some of them to appear earlier in the Haskell at Monmouth. If things haven’t been sorted out by then, there’s always the Breeders Cup races in November. As for next-year’s Belmont winner, Wilson, he’s working a half-mile with another horse tomorrow in Ocala. We hate to cast aspersions, but there is some thought that Wilson might be a trifle lazy and we’re hoping he’ll pick it up with a little competition. Maybe we’ll wave carrots at the finish line.
That’s all, folks….
