The Master Works His Trade

The time spent as chief pilot for Business Aircraft, and later when the company changed its name to Houston Beechcraft, under new management, was probably the most enjoyable time I spent as a pilot. Not since those early days when I first learned to fly and again when I was flying the smaller airplanes at Teague, had I felt the real thrill of flying. There was no pressure on me to fly in all kinds of weather, at any hour of the day or night, and I could make plans for a weekend ahead and expect to do what I had planned.

My primary duties at Business Aircraft were to assign pilots, under my supervision, to charter and demonstration flights. I had the choice of taking the flights I wanted and flying the airplanes I liked. We furnished different companies with pilots to fly vacation relief for their regular pilots. It gave me an opportunity to meet lots of people in high places, and afforded opportunities for a better job later if I wanted to change.

I flew vacation relief for Schlumberger Oil Field Service on their De Havilland Doves, for Baroid Division of National Lead on their DC-3 and Twin Beeches, Wanda Petroleum on their Aero Commander, and Mc Collough Oil Tool on their Lodestar and Twin Beech. Most of these assignments were for two weeks and seldom required being away from home more than one or two nights. I had a chance to get acquainted with my family again.

While I was flying for Business Aircraft, Lois' mother and daddy came to visit us. Neither of them had ever flown in an airplane and I offered to take them for a tour of the area. Mama declined but Daddy was ready to go. I was amazed how well he could spot different things from the air. We flew down over Galveston Bay and up the ship channel to Houston past the San Jacinto Monument and the Battleship Texas. He recognized them and pointed them out to me and then recounted the whole trip to the family when we got back to the house. It was such a pleasure to see him enjoy his first and only airplane flight so much.

I made a number of flights to Mexico on chartered fishing trips with various companies. One of the groups I took to La Pesca, on the East Coast of Mexico just above Tampico, was from American General Insurance Co. Among the six gentlemen I took on the trip was a gentleman in his seventies. He had retired from an active roll with the company but because he had been an outstanding salesman, they took him along. He turned out to be a practical joker, and had something going on all the time. When we started back across the border at Brownsville after being in Mexico for about ten days, a woman Border Patrol Officer greeted us at the airplane. She opened the door about three inches and sprayed inside the cabin with some sort of insecticide and then closed the door for about five minutes.

As we waited for her return to open the door and let us out, the old gentleman cracked jokes about being debugged and said he hoped that it didn't ruin his marijuana. Everyone laughed at his wisecracks, but not for long. When the lady returned and opened the door, she asked each of us what we were bringing back from Mexico if anything. When she asked the old gentleman, his reply was "Nothing but a little marijuana and some rum and Coca Cola." The joking was over. We spent the next four hours waiting in a hot Border Patrol waiting room while a crew of inspectors went over the airplane and our entire luggage with a fine tooth comb. The remainder of the trip home was in silence.

Marvin DeWoody had been the personal pilot of Harry Crutcher, one of the owners of Crutcher, Roth, and Cummings Pipeline Company before going to work for Business Aircraft, and when Crutcher wanted to go to Mexico and take his family, he called Marvin to fly his Twin Beech for him. He also chartered a Beech Travelaire to take part of the family and some of the luggage. I agreed to go along and fly the Travelaire. We were to leave the CRC strip, which was located on the northwest side of Houston, around seven o'clock in the morning. Marvin would fly Crutcher, his wife, and their daughter. I would fly the son in law and all the baggage except for two small registered pigs Crutcher was taking to a friend in Mexico. They were stored in the baggage compartment of the Twin Beech in a cage.

Marvin took off first from the dirt strip and as he turned out of the traffic pattern, I followed. I soon caught up with him and took a position slightly behind him and off his right wing. We had reached an altitude of about four thousand five hundred feet and just leveled off when I saw a puff of blue smoke come from the exhaust of the right engine of Marvins' Twin Beech. I picked up the microphone and called him on Unicom to inform him of what I had seen. He replied that he knew something was wrong because he was losing power on that engine and was going to go back to the strip to land and check out the problem. He asked me to go back to the field and buzz the strip to let everyone there know we were coming back. He knew that it was not uncommon for them to string pipe out across the runway when the company plane was out of town and he wanted to be sure the field would be clear because if he lost that engine and had to go around on his landing approach, he knew he would never make it.

I buzzed the strip and saw that the field was clear of workers. The only thing that I saw near the runway was a Cessna 310 and a Piper Apache parked along side, but well out of the way. I told Marvin that the field was clear. He informed me that the engine had quit, he had feathered the propeller, and was flying on one engine. I pulled up to about a thousand feet to stay out of his way as I saw him approach. I saw him lower his landing gear and as he crossed the end of the runway I saw a puff of what I thought was smoke come from the airplane. He touched down and as he rolled out, I saw him hit the Cessna and the Piper a glancing blow. The Beech then came to a stop at the right side of the runway. He called me on Unicom and said, "Okay now, Ole Buddy, you can land, we ain't hurt, and don't worry about the high line at the end of the runway, it ain't there any more." The puff of smoke I had seen as he crossed the end of the runway had been the power line wires sparking. An assessment of the damages done revealed one downed power line, three demolished airplanes, four passengers thankful to be alive, and two scared pigs. Needless to say, the trip was cancelled.

During the time I was flying for Business Aircraft Lyndon B. Johnson, one of the owners, was a United States Senator. He also owned Texas Broadcasting in Austin and was using a Convair airplane, which belonged to John Meachom to fly to and from his ranch at Johnson City and Washington, D.C. He had taken two of my pilots, Harold Teague and Windy Williams, to fly his Convair and kept them busy most of the time. They had moved to Austin and kept the airplane at Mueller Field. They would pick up the Senator at the ranch when he called and fly him where he wanted to go.

He called them one night about eleven o'clock and told them to come pick him up at the ranch for a trip to Washington. He had to be there for a very important vote the next morning. When Harold told him the weather was too bad because of fog to pick him up at Johnson City and suggested that he come to Austin, he went into a rage and told Harold to come pick him up or look for another job.

About one o'clock in the morning, while Windy was on the mobile phone in the airplane talking to Senator Johnson, Harold flew into the side of a hill trying to make an instrument approach to the Johnson City Airport. They were both killed.

I was awakened at six by Jack Spillman, the bookkeeper, and told about the accident. He said that John Meachom wanted me to fly an envelope to Johnson City, give it to Senator Johnson, pick up an envelope from him, and bring it back. Both envelopes were sealed and I did not learn until years later, when I read a book written by E. Everetts Haley named "A Texan Looks At Lyndon", that I had delivered a title to the airplane to Johnson and returned with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash for Meachom. It would not have been good for the public to learn that John Meachom was furnishing Senator Lyndon Johnson with an airplane.

Some of the flights I made for Business Aircraft were of a more or less secret nature. Cuba was in revolution to overthrow the government of Batista and replace him with Fidel Castro and the United States Government was backing Castro, who seemed to be a natural leader of his people and an ally of ours. He needed arms and the C.I.A. was furnishing them to him by flying them into the mountainous Oriente Province airstrip controlled by him at night. I made several trips to Oriente at night carrying loads of "oil field equipment." All concerned would soon learn that we had supported the wrong cause in Cuba. Castro was a communist.

The weekend of January 9, 1960 Lois, Loraine, and I went to Waco to visit Una and Les. We got home about 9:00 p.m. and found a note on the door to call the Houston Police Department for a message. We knew that someone had been trying to get hold of us and that there was probably a death in the family. When I called them I was told to call Lois's brother Gene in Alabama. As we expected our worst suspicions were true, Lois's daddy had died. Gene said that he was sitting at the dinner table and after he had offered thanks for the food, fell over with a heart attack. He lived for about two hours after the attack. The date was January 10, 1960.

We took our dirty clothes out of our suitcases and put in clean ones and left for Alabama. We drove all night in heavy fog. When daylight came we were in Poplarville, Mississippi and I let Lois drive the rest of the way home.

Daddy was buried at Free Home Cemetery near Grant where Little Grandma Hayes and other members of the family were buried. He was a well-liked and respected man in the community. Although we did not get to visit him as often as we would have liked to, we still miss him.

After Lyndon Johnson became Vice President of the United States in 1960, he gave a "Texas Style Barbecue" for the President of Pakistan and invited people from all over the state to his ranch near Johnson City. Among those invited from Houston were Pat Corley, Jack Valenti, and Stanley Woods. Because Pat Corley was one of the owners of Business Aircraft, he arranged to use one of our Twin Bonanzas, and asked me to fly them to the ranch. Jack Valenti was a columnist with the Houston Post and Stanley Woods was a lawyer from Houston that was being mentioned as a possible candidate for Governor of Texas in the next election.

As we flew to the ranch from Houston, Stanley told Pat and Jack how well he knew Lyndon Johnson and I became convinced that they were old buddies. However, when we landed at the ranch and Vice President Johnson met the plane in his golf cart, which he used to move around the ranch, I lowered the door to help them off the plane, the Vice President spoke to Pat and Jack, calling them by name. Stanley held back to come down the doorsteps last and when he did, he extended his hand and said, "Hello, Mr. Vice President, in case you don't remember me, I'm Stanley Woods." I did not vote for him when he ran for Governor of Texas the next year.

Business Aircraft was sold to Beechcraft Corporation Inc. of Wichita, Kansas and the name was changed to Houston Beechcraft. Stewart Ayton became general manager and I continued with them as chief pilot. The only real change in operations was that we got all new airplanes and they were all Beechcrafts. We did a lot more demonstration flying because the new owners were more interested in sales than service.

Working for "Stew" Ayton wasn't the same as working for Marvin DeWoody, the whole atmosphere at Houston Beechcaft was different from Business Aircraft. I was not as happy as I had been before, and Wanda Petroleum, one of the companies I flew vacation relief for, made me an offer. The owner was Nick Morrow and he owned an Aero Commander and a Twin Beech. He was going to buy a DC-3 and asked if I would be interested in flying for him. He had one pilot, Bob Karnan, and needed another. I would be flying all three of the airplanes and would not have to do any maintenance on them. The salary offer was good and I accepted.

It is rare for both engines to quit on a twin engine airplane on the same flight, but I had it happen to me. We had changed out both engines on the DC-3 for new ones and the airplane needed to be test flown to make minor adjustments to the engine controls and such. I had a neighbor who had wanted to ride in the DC-3 for quite some time and I invited him to come along on the test flight. My copilot was the mechanic that had changed out the engines. A thorough ground check showed all to be normal and we took off from Houston International intending to fly for about an hour over Galveston Bay and if everything remained normal, return and make whatever adjustments were necessary. As we were climbing through about fifteen hundred feet altitude, the tower

advised me that a Cessna had reported to them that my right engine was on fire. My copilot opened his cockpit window and looked back at the engine to confirm that it was on fire just as my neighbor ran to the front of the cabin and informed me that flame was coming from the cowling. I pulled the fuel shut off, closed the throttle, and feathered the engine as I pulled the fire extinguisher release. The resulting puff of carbon dioxide made it appear that the engine had blown up and scared my copilot and passenger half to death. The fire was out, but we were flying on one engine. I looked ahead and saw that we were approaching the La Porte Airport and told my copilot to call them on Unicom and tell them we were going to land there with one engine out.

As we approached the airport I instructed my copilot as to what I wanted done. First I would want him to lower the gear on my command and then the flaps. We would leave the gear up until we were sure we could reach the airport safely because we would not be able to maintain altitude with the gear down and fly on one engine. When I saw that we had the runway made, I asked for gear down and reduced power on the good engine. The engine quit. The next few minutes seemed to be an eternity; I tried everything in the book to get the engine going again but it would not respond. Luckily we reached the end of the runway to make a safe landing. We had lost both engines in one flight.

A thorough examination revealed that the propeller governor oil return line had been left loose on the right engine which and allowed oil to spray on the exhaust and catch fire. The right engine had quit because of a badly ruptured diaphragm in the carburetor. We were lucky all this happened on a test flight while we were lightly loaded. I thought of Joe Lacy's definition of flying experience, which he said was hours and hours of pure monotony sparked with a few moments of stark terror.

Bob Karnan turned out to be an alcoholic. Nick fired me for being late getting to his house one night when he called me to pick up a bottle of whiskey at the airport and bring it to him. We had an early flight the next morning; he never showed up for the flight and then blamed me because I did not call him and wake him up. I did not have his unlisted phone number.

It seems that things always happen for the best, because as a result of being fired by Nick Morrow, Bill Newton hired me to fly his De Havilland Dove in Conroe. In Bill's words, "You could not have had a better recommendation than being fired by Nick Morrow." The salary was much better and so were the working conditions.