Portland Turnaround

During Christmas break from Mizzou in 1967, my mother and I were visiting my grandmother in Montier when her telephone rang (by then, she had one). Surprisingly, the call was for me. Lynn Spence (WSHS, 1964), my college roommate the previous year, wanted to speak to me. 

Lynn had departed Mizzou after his sophomore year and enrolled at Burnside Ott Aviation Academy in Opa Locka, Florida, to pursue an aviation career. After completing his training there, he returned to Columbia to work as a Certificated Flight Instructor (CFI). Why had he tracked me down in Montier?

Lynn and I were friends at WSHS, so as a freshmen at Mizzou, it helped a bunch having a dormitory roommate who knew the ropes . . . and had a car. Not just any car—a brand-new, blue 1966 Pontiac GTO, with a “four-on-the-floor” transmission and Pontiac’s “riding and handling package” (tighter steering and beefed-up suspension), which had been specially ordered from Bailey Pontiac in Willow Springs. 

The GTO “muscle car” as a choice by Lynn was not surprising. In high school, when he wasn’t riding his Honda 50 motorcycle, he cruised about town in his parents’ high-performance Pontiac sedan equipped with “three duces,” factory-installed. For non-motorheads, that’s three, two-barrel carburetors. Although a safe and accomplished driver, Lynn wasn’t the slowest person on the highways.

I’ve written about Lynn’s ping pong ability in games against Bill Tandy at Baptist church camp. Our dormitory had a ping pong table in the basement, and Lynn and I had competitive games against each other and some success against other students. But we were both ridiculously outmatched by Veejay, an engineering student from India who lived down the hall on our floor. His roommate, also from India, told us Veejay had been the champion player in Bombay. Holy Cow, there must be a ton of ping pong players in Bombay.

The results of playing against Veejay are still etched in my mind. On the other end of the table, he moved with the ease and fluidity of a Bengal tiger, swatting away any ball I got over the net—and that was only when I served—because when he served, nothing went back over the net. A better man than I (apologies to Rudyard Kipling), but a good guy who assisted me in college algebra—and I would have gotten a “B” if I hadn’t overslept and missed half of a midterm exam.

Years later, I should have recalled my experience with Veejay as a cautionary tale when it came to racquetball. In the 1970s, the popularity of racquetball soared and legions of courts sprang up. With an easy learning curve that required less skill than handball or tennis, multitudes of men, women, and children took up the game for fun and exercise. I played fairly often and imagined myself to be a competent player.

I had a client in those days who was the third-ranked racquetball player in the country for men over thirty-five. As part of my fee, I told him I’d like to play a match with him, and he agreed. I was Daniel in the lions’ den without divine assistance. He spotted me 18 points and first service. He won—21-19. For the second game, he took serve and spotted me 20 points. He won—22-20. I couldn’t believe it. This “older” guy had skunked me.

At the time, Marty Hogan (from St. Louis) was the U.S. indoor professional racquetball champion, with a serve that had been clocked over 140-miles-per hour. I asked my client how many points he would score against Marty. He said he wouldn’t score any. That flabbergasted me. To underscore his point, he asked me how many hits I would get against famed St. Louis Cardinal pitcher, Bob Gibson. I told him I wouldn’t get any. Then he told me that as much better Bob Gibson was compared to me was how much better Marty Hogan was compared to him. 

Now, back to Lynn’s phone call to me in Montier. Lynn told me he planned to deliver a car from Willow Springs to Portland, Oregon, to his cousin Jacie Spence (WSHS, 1962). His aunt and uncle had a 1960-something Ford Galaxy they wanted to give to their daughter. Lynn wanted me to ride shotgun on the trip. The plan included connecting with his colleague, a CFI from Columbia, in Portland and flying back to Missouri. He said they could land at the Willow Springs Airport before heading back to Columbia.

Sinister weather reports of snow storms in the West convinced my grandmother and her daughter the trip was too dangerous. I called Lynn back and asked him if he had seen the weather reports. He had and was going anyway. With some trepidation, I told mom and grandma, “I can’t let him go alone.” So, they packed sandwiches, and I drove to Willow to meet Lynn.

Our road trip was uneventful until we got to the barren flatland of Kansas, and then it got boring. Driving across Kansas seemed to take forever. And even after crossing the Colorado state line, the topography still looked like Kansas for another hundred miles. Finally, the Rocky Mountains appeared as a dark cloudbank on the western horizon. 

We hit the snow predicted by the weather reports and inched our way through the mountain passes. We paused in Loveland Pass, to take in the view at the Continental Divide, and forged onward. We didn’t stop for lodging until Brigham City, Utah, north of Salt Lake City. 

The next day, I drove, negotiating a snow-packed route through the desolate landscape south of the Craters of the Moon National Monument. Lynn apparently thought my driving was too cautious (or it made him nervous), and he took the wheel again. 

I still recall the raw beauty of eastern Oregon before our arrival in Portland. We spent the night in Jacie’s apartment, and the next morning met Lynn’s pilot friend at the airport. The three of us boarded a Piper Cherokee, a single-engine, propeller plane. Both pilots were instrument qualified, which was fortunate, because we would be flying through clouds over mountains. 

With the two pilots at the controls, I settled on the small bench seat behind them. After takeoff, the flight was smooth until we hit turbulence over the mountains, and the airplane abruptly lost altitude and my head the ceiling. “Yikes, what was that?” In a calm voice commercial pilots all seem to have, Lynn said, “Just a little bumpy.” I noticed ice on the wings and told them about it in case they hadn’t noticed. Again, they had no concern. Nevertheless, I secretly thought a high-altitude prayer might be in order.

Other than a fuel stops, one in Laramie, Wyoming, my feet didn’t touch the ground until sometime before midnight on New Year’s Eve, when we landed at the Willow Springs Airport, a mile from my house at the corner of Pine and High Streets. Little did I know the adventure in the Piper Cherokee would years later inspire a scene in my novel, Soda Fountain Blues.