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The barbed wire cut into his thighs so from time to time he shifted his position on the fence. Finally he remembered the newspaper in the airplane so he slogged back through the field to the mud-bound Cessna 150 and retrieved the paper. Rolling it into a tube around the top wire of the four-wire fence made the long wait more comfortable.
"Where IS this guy?" Ricky asked himself. "Those boys better not have lied to me." he thought. It had been the last day of his week-long trip that started on the Cap-Line, a long pipeline patrol from Norco, near New Orleans to Chicago, then returning via a petroleum-products line from the south shore of Lake Michigan to St. Louis to Dallas-Fort Worth's new airport. The line ended at the fuel tank farm on the airports' northwest corner after following the railroad from near Greenville across Dallas-Addison's south boundary and on to DFW. After a night visiting with my wife and I in Fort Worth, he made a deadhead flight to the pipeline-patrol company home field at League City, TX. Then after an overnight spent on the sofa in the boss's living-room, Ricky had arisen early in order to takeoff at daylight on the last leg of his week-long trip, a three-hour flight inspecting a Mobil pipeline which traveled easterly from near Orange, TX to Lake Charles, LA, then through the Atchafalaya swamp back to his home-town, Gonzalez, LA.
The line had suffered from low visibility in the morning fog, but that was nothing new to Ricky who had flown pipeline patrol for nearly three years now. He was intimately familiar with each of his pipeline routes, ...as familiar with each route as a person might be with their own house. Like most patrol pilots, Ricky could follow a line in low ceilings and visibilities as well as he could walk at night from his bedroom to the bath in his darkened home. Each turn, each road, each stream and radio tower, each and every power line, be it a 25 foot service line to a rural homestead or 250 foot high-tension line stretched across the Sabine river was as imprinted into his mind's eye and no more of an obstacle than his sofa might be on a pre-dawn shuffle through his living room to the coffee pot.
Like most patrol pilots, Ricky could fly his lines in ceilings and visibilities that would ground any airliner and virtually all private flights from any takeoff or landing attempts. Flying along at 85 knots only 75 feet above the terrain frequently placed him below the treetops through which the pipeline right-of-way (ROW) would be cut in forested areas. Many times, pressed by a tight schedule mandated by the pipeline operators attempting to meet their ICC deadlines for filing reports, patrol pilots familiar with their routes would press on in fog, ceilings, and visibilities that would slow traffic on the Interstate. Crossing Oyster Creek, turn right 45-degrees for 50 yards and the ROW re-appeared on the far embankment. Turn left 45-degrees and fly easterly again until crossing the shell-covered road, climb into the haze 50 feet to clear the rural electric company's power-line, then drop back down and turn north along the west side of the railroad tracks until the oil-company's condensation tanks appear on the ROW. Hard right, and it's on into the fog for the next 50 miles to the refinery feeding the line with product. It's a typical scenario to a patrol pilot.
FAA regulations regarding height above the ground and distance from objects fall before the onslaught of a patrol plane's schedule performing vital and necessary work along the pipeline. Only rarely are complaints received by the company...the large block lettering, "PATROL", beneath each wing lends legitimacy to the airplane's antics in the eyes of a curious public, even in urban areas. In the days before 9-11, rural folk usually looked up and waved enthusiastically at a sight familiar to them on a weekly or monthly basis. The patrol pilot rocked his wings in response and droned on, disappearing from view in only a minute, off to some destination unknown to the curious small boy left day-dreaming about airplane flying or some working farmer too concerned with more immediate matters.
Such was Ricky's daily life. He'd always wanted to fly airplanes. His dream was fulfilled when he got this job, flying largely unsupervised and without being hemmed in by office windows or supervisors looking over his shoulder. It was a great (albeit under-funded) vocation for a single guy unshackled by family or financial obligations, flying along each day in an airplane totally under his personal control, earning five-dollars an hour requiring only that he submit a simple report, filling in the blanks on the once-weekly company forms.
"Dang!" he thought. The fog was beginning to lift! Soon the stuck Cessna would be visible to any passers-by from the shell-covered road before him, and soon thereafter it would be visible to the controllers in the airport tower. "Where IS that guy?"
This particular line departed the Orange, TX area and proceeded directly to the Lake Charles, LA airport where it passed alongside the north airport boundary. It actually passed BETWEEN the approach light sequence flashers, which lead an airplane arriving on the ILS to the runway threshold. Ordinarily Ricky, approaching the Lake Charles airport from the west, would tune in the ATIS about 10 miles out, and then he would contact Lake Charles tower with a request. "Lake Charles tower, Patrol 43 Juliet, 7-miles west at 300 AGL (usually a lie) requesting permission to pass the north boundary."
Traffic permitting, the tower would customarily give approval immediately, and when Ricky passed the north boundary the tower would sometimes "shoot" him with their traffic-control light-gun, giving him a flashing-green "Hello". Ricky would say, "Adios ‘til next week!" and the tower personnel would broadcast in their Cajun drawl, "'Til next week, yew're cleared to be!"
But this morning, nearly at the end of his weeklong journey and anxious to be home for the weekend, Ricky had arrived at his check-in point and listened to the Lake Charles ATIS. "Lac Charls Ayeetis Infomashun Romaayo,...Indefinite Ceiling ZERO. Visibility ZERO. Wind CALM. Tempuratur 63 Dupont 63 Aalteemeter 2999 REEmaark: Aeroport CLOSED." "DANG!" Ricky thought. Almost home and doin' fine and now THIS! Hmmmnn.
"If it's REALLY as poor visibility as they say, how will they know I'm out here?" he reasoned. There wouldn't be any airliners shooting an approach. Their regulations would prohibit their even making such an attempt. "And with the airport closed, there'd be no private aircraft out here with me either!"
The control tower at LCH was on the east side of the Runway 15/33 at the mid-point of the field. The approach light sequence flashers are a full half-mile from the tower, and the tower cab is 150 feet up into the clouds. "How would they ever know unless I told ‘em??!!" he thought. Continuing along the ROW was no problem, because Ricky knew EXACTLY where he was along a KNOWN route, and since he could still see 100 feet in front of the aircraft, he would be operating almost as normal as any other day he flew this route. The only thing wrong with it, he reasoned, was the technical violation of operating in a control zone (now called Class D airspace) without a clearance from the tower. And yet, with the current broadcast weather at the field, there'd be no safety hazard to other aircraft, and the tower....THEY'd NEVER KNOW! He would only be prevented from being in his own home in a few hours if he radioed them and told them he was out here actually flying in this stuff! And in their requirement to comply with the regulations, of course, they'd have to deny him a clearance.
His thoughts flashed back to last month's episodic skirmish with the FAA over his crash-landing in the swamp. The feds never really believed his story about the engine quitting in the rain just because he had applied carburetor heat. They were unimpressed with his explanation of the subtle differences between "flocked" and corrugated paper air filters, and the way they absorb rainwater. They had begun a long series of harassing questionnaires and phone calls and required meetings in their quest to prove somehow that Ricky had actually run out of gas or something equally improper. It had developed into a small nightmare for him, and he had no desire to give them still more ammunition to fire at him such as having to explain why he was flying a pipeline patrol in less than the very basic VFR. Even though a clearance wasn't required to operate such a flight in uncontrolled airspace, the presence of the LCH control-zone along his path definitely presented a problem. "Do I tell them I'm out here in a tape-recorded radio broadcast? Or do I keep my mouth shut, fly on past them without any possibility of their ever knowing, completely without any danger to other aircraft or myself, and be home soon?"
Nope, he thought. LCH doesn't even have radar. I think I'll just keep this to myself. Down now to about 25 feet above the ground, flying along about 80 knots above a freshly-plowed, black-land field, the pipeline came to the familiar irrigation ditch lined with weeds, then made an S-turn across the water-logged ditch and continued to the east. He remembered the time he came upon a crop duster spraying seed in this very field. The duster pilot, unseen by Ricky due to the duster coming up from behind, was actually spraying at a higher altitude and passed over Ricky's patrol plane. The sudden rat-a-tatta sound of the rice-seeds hitting Ricky's windshield so startled him that he jerked the little Cessna into an evasive turn. Ricky looked up and caught the duster pilot's face grinning in hard laughter.
Now here comes the power-line.... pull up into the fog.... count to three...drop back down...there's the ROW again...and on to the airport's northwest perimeter. Yep, there are the flashers racing from upper-left to lower right. Actually passing BETWEEN the stanchions, Ricky couldn't even see the runway threshold only 100 feet to his right. Not even the runway end-identifier strobes were visible, thereby lending further comfort to him, now he was positive the tower would never know of his passing through their airspace. "Ha! Made it!", he said to himself, feeling relief in the knowledge he'd be home in just a few miles.
Quickly passing through the lights, the pipeline made a 20-degree left turn into a widely cut ROW through some trees and then Ricky exited the sharply defined ROW. Now his wheels were only 10 feet above freshly plowed black-land "gumbo" soil, and he was headed into what he knew was a pretty clear route the rest of the way home through the tree-lined ROW of the swamp. The end of the line would be at the storage tanks near his home field and grass runway, and he smiled because he knew as he flew further east and farther away from the coastal bays and inlets, the fog would soon dissipate, especially as the morning sun heated the air and burned the fog off. He'd be home in only minutes now.
"WHOA!" "What's THIS?" Suddenly the fog bank no longer presented him with sufficient visibility to continue. It suddenly and completely descended directly into the plowed field! With insufficient visibility to see the upcoming high-tension line he would have to do a one-eighty and abandon his route! But now there is another problem!
Despite his intimate knowledge of his pipeline, a patrol pilot MUST have at least SOME visibility. Ricky was suddenly faced with fog thicker than he'd ever witnessed, and it descended so completely to the ground without warning when he'd exited the cut-tree ROW and entered the plowed field that he would be unable to see even his wingtips! Worse...he was so low he couldn't even turn-around without striking a wing tip to the freshly plowed furrows! If he pulled up sufficiently to make a turn, he'd lose contact with the terrain, and he'd be unable to re-establish his exact position with regard to the ROW in such poor visibility. Now it was too late. He collided with the fog bank only five-feet above the wet soil. Ricky did the only thing he could to save himself.... He pulled the throttle off and landed in the plowed field.
The touchdown was surprisingly soft. Too soft, in fact. The wheels quit rolling as "gumbo" mud packed up into the wheel pants. The tires simply skidded along, locked up in mud. The forward motion stopped in only a few yards. The nose-wheel sank up to the scissors in black-land mud. The propeller tips began flinging small drops of mud up into the air and back onto the windshield. With a sudden sickness in his lower stomach, Ricky disgustingly pulled the mixture. He hit the Master switch to the OFF position. The needle/ball whined down like a disappointed child. Then,.... Silence.
He looked around in the fog. The wingtips were barely visible. The windshield slowly lost its transparency as the misty droplets began first to build, then to dribble downward in long tears. Ricky opened his window and peered down at the main wheels. They were half-buried in the mud. The ten-inch deep tracks they'd left across the furrows were already filled with muddy water. He felt lucky and unlucky in the same emotional flash. He'd not wrecked the company's airplane, but his immediate future looked about as clear as the weather.
He glanced back through the "omni-vision" rear window and was relieved to see, ...or rather NOT to see the airport control tower only a few hundred yards behind him. If he couldn't see them,...he thought, at least they couldn't see HIM either! He slipped out of his shoes, removed his socks, grabbed a red shop-rag from behind the seat, and opening the door, stepped out into the mud. It felt sickening as it squeezed up between his toes.
It was more difficult than he'd imagined it would be to slog through the mud toward the oyster-shell-covered road he remembered existed just 100 yards in front of the airplane. When he reached the east end of the field he noticed a doublewide farm gate in the barbed-wire fence-line. Hmmmmn. Just enough room it seemed. If I could only get the airplane out of the field, through this gate, and onto this wide shell-covered road, ...
He used the rag to remove most of the mud from his feet and slipped into his socks and shoes. Walking the road both north and south for several hundred yards revealed to him that there were neither obstacles nor anything else that might prevent a takeoff for a Cessna 150,....providing of course that the airplane could be gotten onto the road. But how?
And when? In only an hour or so the morning fog would burn off, and the Lake Charles control tower would be filled with curious controllers armed with binoculars very much interested in a Cessna 150 sitting in the mud only a few hundred yards from the tower base and almost within the airport boundary. Ricky began to realize his options were about exhausted.
It was then that two young boys came walking barefoot along the shell road. They had in their possession two cane fishing poles and a can of worms. They were very surprised to see Ricky standing in the road. They both showed considerable curiosity about the Cessna only barely visible in the field.
"Hi, boys!" Ricky said.
"Uh, hi." they responded, wide eyes looking first at each other, then the airplane, then each other.
"Looks like you boys are goin' fishin'!" Ricky said in an effort to strike up a friendly relationship with them."
"Nawsuh!" the boys responded. "We already been!" "Well, where's your fish? No luck?" asked Ricky, glancing at their empty stringer.
"Waal suh", they said, "we could see them fish in the creek, and they could see our worm,...but they jes' sat there and never opined up their mouf's. So after a while, we decided thet if they don't open up their mouf's,...then we ain't gonna ketch no fish! So we's headed home!"
With the formalities over, Ricky got to the point.
"Say, boys", Ricky began,..."Do you know who owns this field?"
"Yassuh!" they responded. "Mr. Bouchard* own THAT field." (*author's note: name changed for anonymity)
"Well", said Ricky,..."Does Mr. Bouchard own a tractor?"
"Well SURE Mr. Bouchard owns a tractor! Tha's how he plows his field!" they said.
"Well, boys", Ricky said,...."Do you know where Mr. Bouchard lives?"
"SURE we knows where Mr. Bouchard lives. He lives down this road!"
"Well, boys", continued Ricky, ......"How would you boys like to earn two bits apiece? I'll give each of you a quarter, if you'll go fetch Mr. Bouchard and his tractor, and tell him I'll pay him very well to pull my airplane out of his field and up onto this road. What do you say about that?"
"Yassir!! We'll do that."
Ricky was so pleased with his quickly developed plan of escape from his predicament that he paid the boys up front, a quarter a piece, and then he perched himself onto the fence while he watched them disappear into the fog to get Mr. Bouchard. Yep. This might just work. Get the airplane pulled out of the mud and up onto the road, and when this fog lifts a bit, he might yet takeoff before the fog lifts sufficiently to expose him to the control tower.
He returned to the airplane and took out the toolbox he kept in the baggage compartment, and removed the wheel pants, tossing them into the baggage area. The nose wheel fairing had been removed long ago when it developed too many cracks to repair from operating on rough grass runways, so that was not a problem. Now he sat on the fence awaiting the arrival of Mr. Bouchard and his tractor.
The boys had been gone now for almost an hour, and Ricky began to worry as the fog clearly showed signs of breaking up. If he looked back to the west, Ricky could begin to make out the airport perimeter fence, and occasional glimpses of hangars came into view and then disappeared again. His butt began to hurt again even through the newspaper he'd placed on the barbed wire. He thought about what Mr. Bouchard might be like, and contemplated whether he might be angry about the damage the airplane had done to his freshly plowed furrows.
"Where IS this guy?" he thought. "This is a workable plan to get out of here, if he'll just get here and quit fooling around!" Oh,....what poor Ricky didn't know.
When the boys left Ricky they promptly, and true to their word ran straight to Mr. Bouchard's farmhouse. They pounded on the door with their fists.
"MIZ BOUCHARD! MIZ BOUCHARD!" they yelled and pounded. Mrs. Bouchard came to the door in her apron, wiping her hands with a towel. "Yes", she said. "What do you boys want?"
"Miz Bouchard! Theys a arrplane crashed in yore FIELD!" they shouted.
Mrs. Bouchard, knowing that the family farm was adjacent to the airport where Texas International Airlines operated DC-9's on scheduled passenger flights asked, "An airplane? A big airplane?"
"YES MA"AM! A GREAT BIG ARRPLANE!", the boys replied about the little Cessna. They didn't bother to accurately describe the little plane or even mention Ricky's mission for them. Mrs. Bouchard doubtless had visions of scores of people scattered all over the ground in a crashed airliner.
The boys also had failed to mention a small detail to Ricky as well. They hadn't mentioned that Mr. Bouchard was only a farmer part-time. Or that his full-time job had him performing his usual habit which included spending the foggy morning down at Scotty's doughnut shop, listening to the agriculture report and local gossip with his fellow farmer parishioners. When Scotty answered his doughnut-shop's telephone, he was heard to exclaim, "Whaa---aat!??" Then he handed the phone to Sheriff Bouchard.
So, there he was, sitting there on the fence in the fog, trying to keep this thing rather quiet, waiting for a farmer and his tractor when to his ultimate horror and shock he observed an ENTIRE PARADE of emergency vehicles complete with wailing sirens and flashing lights racing up the oyster-shell road towards his very position! Fire trucks, ambulances, sheriffs vehicles, and every conceivable emergency vehicle in the parish came roaring out of the fog, grinding and sliding to a stop, right in FRONT of him!
Now, ... there may be some pilots out there reading this who harbor aspirations of flying professionally, or maybe already earn an income from a flying-related vocation. And if there are, perhaps they might be thinking right about now, how they might respond to a law enforcement officer's questions regarding the predicament in which our friend Ricky found himself. Perhaps some might be especially adept at extemporaneously explaining circumstances in which one might unexpectedly have found oneself, and maybe some have even experienced some measure of success in extracting themselves in such circumstances. I don't know how I would have handled the situation had it been myself instead of our friend Ricky. But I do know this. There sometimes comes a moment in a person's life that a situation might present itself not as a burden, but as an opportunity. Most opportunities are not always recognized as such, at first glance. But some people are especially adept at making lemonade out of lemons.
Ricky was just such a person. I'm not sure exactly how he extracted himself from this mess. It's been over 3 decades since it occurred. Not long afterward, he quit flying pipelines and moved east. Last I heard, Ricky was doing just fine on the east coast, part-owner of a profitable heavy equipment operation, probably doing his aviatin' in the rear of the company plane. I still remember him with fondness and often remember his good-humor.
As for his extracting himself from his troubles with the feds, all I know is that somehow the authorities had a difficult time putting a case together. No one had actually SEEN Ricky land that airplane in that field. All they'd seen was Ricky sittin' on a fence. In describing his story to me, Ricky said something to me about it like, "You know George, after I told the feds what happened in the swamp with that carb-heat thing, I began to realize that most of the trouble they gave me over it resulted from the fact I'd given them far too much information with which to work. I've not forgotten that. When they started in to asking me all about the muddy field, all I could think about was those little boys and their empty stringer. I suddenly came to the decision that... A fish would never get caught if he'd just keep his mouth shut!"
