Chapter XIII

Sunday found me out at Sea-Tac doing the hurry-up-and-wait routine. There were four of us on the survey crew, the Senior Lead, an Engineer, a Manufacturing Engineer, and me, the Mechanic.

I figure that sitting right there in the lobby of the Airport was more experience at building and repairing Aircraft than anywhere else in the world. Our Senior Lead, Ernie was amazing. Here was a guy that had done it all, been everywhere. If in real life you wanted to do a "Flight of the Phoenix", Ernie was the guy you would want in charge.

He could figure out a way to do just about anything with a basic set of tools. If you couldn’t get something you needed, chances were that he could MAKE one out of sheet metal using nothing more than a torch and a ball peen hammer.

In between making phone calls to Star’s mom’s answering machine, I asked what was going on.

"Took one out body surfing" said Ernie. "They landed it in a thunderstorm, and didn’t bother to stop at the end of the runway, so it’s out there in the water. Took the front landing gear off, but the mains are supposed to be OK. It’s a fairly recent 757, so parts shouldn’t be a problem. The good news is that the gear didn’t wipe out the e/e bay. The bad news is it’s under water."

Most everyone knows that electronics and salt water don’t get along very well. The black boxes down there are not cheap, running from $25,000.00 on up. Everything down there shorted out, so the repair was going to be a couple of million dollars, double that if the engines were wasted, which was probable.

I called for Star again, and got her mom.

I have never gotten along with her mom. Delia figured Star could do better than a glorified knuckle dragging jet jockey.

She reluctantly turned the Phone over to Star.

"How you hanging in there, Star? How’s your dad?"

"Not so good Pat. They still have him in Intensive care. He is getting a little better, but not as fast as they would like. It is still touch and go, but the odds makers think he will make it. The prognosis is a long recovery, and he may not ever come back all the way".

"I’ll pretty much be out of touch for a couple of days. I’m at the Airport on my way to Grand Cayman to check out a bird out in the water. I’ll try to get through to you whenever I can, but I can’t promise much. We pretty much work 12 hours a day seven days a week when we have a repair going on. It’ll take a couple of days for us to do the damage survey, and then we’ll be back here to put together the repair kits, then back on the road as soon as we get the OK from the Insurance Carrier to proceed with repairs. Then it will be back to Cayman and probably a month or so on site to do the repairs. I’ll be in touch."

No lovey-dovey stuff. There was more in that conversation that was there and went unsaid than was spoken right out loud. It left so many questions unanswered and unasked. I figured that time would bring up anything that needed to be dealt with.

It has always been my way to work around the edges of things rather than hit them head on. Saves a lot of bruises on the head.

So off I went to Grand Cayman. Not a lot to talk about there. We did our repair estimate. I got into a big argument with the lead engineer. I thought that the structural stuff in the e/e bay should be replaced. He said that since it hadn’t suffered any structural damage it would be OK. I thought to myself "Salt water, aluminum and electricity. Doesn’t sound like a good combination to me. Once you set up electrolysis in aluminum, there’s no stopping it.

When we were on site, the Engineer told us to wipe down the shelves and racks with denatured alcohol to remove the salt. But like I figured, when we came in the next day, everything was covered with a gray fuzz.

Repeated cleanings did no good, and eventually we had to replace the structural stuff. I felt vindicated, but I also resisted the impulse to rub his nose in it.

I managed to call Star a couple of times. It was difficult getting through. If her mom answered the phone, she was never there, and she didn’t know when she would be back.

A couple of times Star answered herself. Her dad was going to live, but probably wouldn’t be able to work for a long time, if ever. I felt sorry for the guy. He lived for his business, and it was about the only thing he had to keep him going. If he couldn’t go to work it could literally kill him.

By the time I got back, Star had quit her job and moved back home to help take care of her dad. I called her now and then, but it was a busy time for me. There seemed to be a series of accidents one after the other for about six months. By the time the spate of accidents was over, I had pretty much lost contact with Star. She was still in La Grange living with her mom and dad, taking care of her dad, who had never really recovered from his heart attack.

Star was a pretty effective business manager, so the Pharmacy has been turned over to her. She hired a new Pharmacist to replace her dad, and kept the books with a little assistance from a part-time book keeper. The business could almost run on automatic pilot, because there was no competition, and the demographics of the area would support one Pharmacy very nicely.

I missed Star, but our relationship had not really gone anywhere. It was right there hanging on the edge of something, but we let it pull back because of the circumstances.

Sometimes I lay awake at night and wondered what might have been if her old man hadn’t had a heart attack at exactly the time he did.

So I slipped back into my regular life. I was going to say normal, but normal isn’t really a word that applies to the way I live. Long hours of hard work under brutal conditions. Typically 72 hour weeks, with maybe a couple of months without a day off. Usually around 1,000 hours of overtime a year.

It lets me play as hard as I work, and I don’t hurt for the comforts or playtoys.

Yeah, the rent on my flat is probably more than your house payment, but I have a couple of playtoys stashed away in a garage downtown that would bring tears to the eyes of a motorhead.

And when I take the Jag out on a fine fall morning on the back roads, things will be temporarily as good as it gets, if I only had someone to share it with.