Anyone for a story of an old hippie flying cargo in an old DC-3 to ACDC tunes

I do a lot of writing but do not do so much nonfiction. When I do, it is as a diversion from my normal writing--something for me to have fun with. It is usually just the start of a story, enough to give me a laugh. This is one of those stories that I did a few years ago.

The idea of this one came to me as I was driving home from some hot springs late one night. I was playing an AC/DC CD at high volume, and was thinking about some of the odd Japanese comic books I had seen in Japan. I got to thinking about the one thing they never have really done is a hippie. They needed someone like me to write the story if they were going to give it any justice. Driving over the mountain passes I thought of a hippie freelancer flying cargo for the CIA.

If you are a baby boomer, or older, and someone mentioned a cargo plane or a small local commuter airliner, or talked about planes flying through the jungles carrying passengers or cargo, or spies, for a good part of your life the iconic plane that would come to mind would be the two-engined propeller plane, the DC-3, or as the military called them, the Dakota C-47 or the Sky Train. I always thought them to be very beautiful airplanes. The last time I actually saw a DC-3 flying around was while in the Philippines in the 80's. A cargo company flew them out of Manila's Ninoy Aquino International Airport, and their flight path regularly took them over our house. As I understood, they had several DC-3's one of which was just used for parts.

I'll post the story, or I should say, the beginning of a story, on the next post in this thread. But first I thought I'd point out a few things. There is an actual airport in the Philippines where the landing strip is right next to a heavily used road, and as planes approach, gates are swung down, like on train tracks, to stop people on bicycles, pedicabs, cars and trucks, and pedestrians as big airliners come in just a few feet above them, and a barbed wire fence, before landing in the runway close by.

I did have a girlfriend named Teresa who looked just like Brigette Bardot, and we did meet over a bag of mushrooms, and got high and her hot friends joined in a few times. No girl ever compared to her until I met my current Filipina wife.

And finally, the Philippine beer, San Miguel, is pretty good...

Any way---here it is:

 

He was the only pilot I ever knew who had two amplifiers very loudly drowning out the twin Pratt & Whitney engines with the hard rock of AC/DC, shaking a rattle in one hand to the beat, or skillfully throwing it to his other hand, in beat, in order to grab a throttle, or flaps, or the wheel, depending on which hand he had it in, all while flying an elderly DC-3 cargo plane. Empty beer bottles would roll around the cockpit floor with every bank, or turn, or change in altitude.


More than once I was surprised by a bewildered hooker or bargirl, half dressed, if at all, stumbling out of the forward cargo bay. He’d turn, wipe his long blonde hair from his face, and yell over the music, “Oh… Sorry babe. I’ll, like, have you back in town by sundown. Like, get somethin’ from the fridge and enjoy the view.”

As she turned to look for the fridge, he’d add, over AC/DC’s Brian Johnson’s hoarse voice, “Oh man! I knew I shouldn’t have tried to fly this bird after taking all those mushrooms! The sky’s moving in waves, man!”


His shanghaied passenger usually didn’t speak enough English to understand, but I would give a nervous laugh, not sure if he was really joking or not. Once I said I had a headache three-quarters through a flight. He gave me a pill and took one too, washing it down with a San Miguel Beer. I’m not sure what it was, but the strong high it gave me had opiate written all over it.


I’ll tell you what—an hour later I was as loopy as a kidnapped teenage runaway drugged by her soon-to-be pimp. We were coming into a field in the Northern Philippines where the edge of the runway sits right next to a fence and a busy village road with makeshift gates that would close to stop traffic when planes approached. The flight path took you a mere foot or two over these obstacles to land on that short runway. I was too high to know if he came in too fast or too low, as he liked to skim the jungle canopy on landings, or whenever he felt like it. But the gates were not closed and people, bicycles, and pedicabs, maybe a small truck, were dead ahead of us on the road, and approaching fast.


Panic raised its head through my stupor with a wrenching of my gut. But not him. In a whirl of motion, he pulled back the fuel mixture controls, the prop controls, the throttles, pulled back on the wheel, and I swear he didn’t miss a beat of AC/DC. Empty bottles hit my feet and I could literally feel the old engines whine behind the music, as we climbed through his aborted landing. I listened for a thud from someone hitting the landing gear, but there was only Angus Young’s guitar. Then he banked and as he circled the field he looked at me calmly and said, “Man, did I radio the tower?”


And AC/DC wailed,


‘Hell’s Bells,

Across the sky,

Hell’s Bells,

They’re taking you down

Hell's Bells...


Then again, it could have been Quaaludes. He had a secret stash of hundreds of them hidden in the cockpit, what he called, ‘the last known cache of goodies in the Western world.’


The airplane was his. The story goes that he won it in a poker game from a person who didn’t actually have authority to hand over the title, but he quickly flew off with it before anyone was wiser, and within hours repainted it and switched serial numbers with a junked out DC-3 in an old hangar that he owned. The forward cargo bay looked like a Haight Ashbury crash pad with a mattress on the floor, colorfully died blankets from India hanging tent-like on the walls, and an ever-present smell of women’s cheap perfume, sex, and a bit of incense-masked weed. But the rest of the plane was just like any other cargo plane that flew the skies of South East Asia.


He was for hire, and he was happy to move just about anything. Which is where I came in. I was his handler whenever he would move something for the Agency. There was no questions asked, he got paid regularly and very well out of one of Washington’s Black Funds, and in turn, we promised to keep him out of trouble if any should come up. In my line of work, you’d expect someone like him to be a veteran from Nam, or a former spook. But if you suggested it, he’d hold up a peace sign that hung around his neck, or from his overhead console, and give a speech about how he could never support a war to oppress the Viet Cong who were simply victims of French Colonialism, and who were promised their land back, and that Diem was just a US puppet… And if he was in a good mood he would always add that he would have fucked Madame Nhu so good that she would have seen the light.

”…and she probably would’ve tried to have my baby, so that I would be hers, and she’d make my bird her home,” He’d add, referring to something that has apparently happened to him multiple times in various village airfields in many of the countries within range of his DC-3.


No, if anyone was going to share his bird with him, it was Teresa, some girl he knew back home. On a Manila to Bangkok run, he switched the music over to Janis Joplin and after a few minutes of making sure the autopilot was good he turned to me and told her story.


“We met over a bag of mushrooms in a bookstore in Boulder. I turned and saw her, and she looked just like Brigitte Bardot. And I LOVE Brigitte Bardot.” He looked me in the eyes. “Have you ever had sex on mushrooms?”


“No,” I responded, feeling overly innocent and inexperienced.


“Oh man! At the right dose it’s so heavy! You can feel everything with such an intense level of perception, man. You feel her muscles and tendons move under her skin, you smell everything, you feel every contour in and on her body. I mean, literally, INSIDE, and ON, her body… Yeah, I’d share this bird with her.”


“Come on man!” I laughed, You’re addicted to these Asian girls. You said it yourself.”


He laughed back, “Yeah, but dig this, Teresa likes to watch.”


“Seriously?”


“Yeah man, she’d share me with her friends.” He turned back to the controls. “Man, that chick is outtasight…”


We both knew he wasn’t addicted to Asian girls. He was simply addicted to girls. Months before we flew a package to the Arab Peninsula. The next morning three Bedouin girls emerged from the forward cargo bay, resulting in a four hour flight back to their town. He declared that he would be forever addicted to Arab women. And then added, “Did you know that if you are an infidel, it is not really adultery?” I didn’t push him on that, quickly deciding that the less I knew the safer it was for me.


I thought for a moment. “You mean those pictures, in your crash-pad cargo bay, are Teresa? Not Brigitte Bardot?”


“Yeah, man, amazing huh?”


I could’ve sworn he had photos of Brigitte all this time.


“And she can fake such a cute French accent…”


He then switched the music over to Jefferson Airplane, and Grace Slick’s voice flooded the cockpit.


One pill makes you larger,

And one pill makes you small,

And the one pill that mother gives you

Don't do anything at all...


I grabbed my arm to feel my muscles and tendons move under my skin.


…And you just had some kind of mushroom

And your mind is moving raw...

Maybe one day I’ll meet a Grace Slick, I thought leaning back into my flight chair.