Hey! God, Was That You?: Coincidences from over Five Thousand Flight Hours and Forty-Four Years

Copyright © 2014, 2016 Ron Gluck.

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-1867-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-1869-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-1868-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013922122

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/11/2016

Contents

Introduction

1 Lord, I Didn’t Come Here To Fly Dead Pigs!

2 Different From Yesterday

3 Stay Away—It’s Raining Cats And Dogs Here!

4 The Propeller Wind-Milled

5 Pointers! What Are They Doing?

6 What’s Bitchumen?

7 Pigs And Kids—Different Values

8 Strength Of Steel

9 I Couldn’t Believe It!

10 Surasil And Sign Language

11 You Missed The Sheet!

12 Kassam Pass Out

13 Red Dirt!

14 So Finely Tuned

15 No One Should Have To Eat Worms

16 You Were Scared, Weren’t Ya?

17 Sorcery, Or Turn Your Back On God?

18 Dunas And The Dow Jones Industrials

19 But Only Half The Airstrip Available?

20 The In-Flight Repair

21 A Lighted Match Dropped Into Avgas

22 Jim, I’m All Right Now

23 Ewapa—My Gadsup Friend

24 Rabaul Control, Contact Sil!

25 Swimming The Straits

26 Levity, By The Book

27 Pet Possum Comforts Passengers

28 Peace Laughing

29 Two Chiefs

30 A Wonderful Confirmation In Two Bags

31 God, Wasn’t That You—Again?

32 Arrival In Yaoundé, But Where To Go?

33 Ron Thwing Understood

34 Engine Failure, Passport, And Turnaround

35 Flying A Tribal Chief

36 Where Are Your People?

37 Where’s Your Husband?

38 Letter: It Takes A Team

39 Strawberry Jam

40 Another Power: Mokolo—Cameroon

41 Cameroon Tribune Newspaper Article

42 I’m So Happy. Tikar Is My Language!

43 Lightning Seemed Everywhere

44 A Dark Stripe—Or Toilet Paper Filters

45 Sil Office In Washington, Dc

46 Bribery Or Friendship?

47 You’ve Never Even Met Your Own President?!

48 Leopard Skin And Comeuppance

49 A New African Diplomat As Ally In Dc

50 Capitol Hill Bible Translation Day Celebration

51 A New Friend And Advocate

52 Bawling Like A Baby When He Said Amen

53 Your Institute Has Not Been Without Controversy!

54 Yes, Let’s Do It

55 Wise Counsel

56 The Best Advice In A Long Time

57 Parting Statements

58 Here’s Our Number At Home

59 We Laughed

60 We Want To Reciprocate

61 You Need Help!

62 But These Languages Are Spoken Next Door!

63 Hey, Gluck, It’s Me!

64 This Is Sedfrey

65 Today, I Am Removing My Mask

66 You’re Not Here About Our Defense Posture?

67 Why Do You Keep No Other Women?

68 Of Course. That’s Why We Marry Them!

69 But You Have Electricity!

70 Can You Help Us Dispose Of These Migs?

71 You Mean An Ils—An Instrument Landing System?

72 Moi, Je Préfère La Tête!

73 Passing The Buck

74 Language Dispute Settled

75 President Helped Distribute Mark

76 We Want To Come Home!

77 Your Leaders Pray

78 Sil Is Always Welcome At My Door

79 Your Prayer Is The Benediction To Your Visit

80 People Studying Our Languages Back Home!

81 Colley

82 Mbaka Pygmy Chief: We’ve Been Waiting A Long Time!

83 Oh, Great Chief Of Heaven—A Salt-Yui Prayer

84 Marching White Lights

85 Is Prayer Practical?

86 Reading Nso

87 Where Did I Just See This?

88 Why Must You Know…?

89 A Son Brings Salvation

90 You Speak Our Language Like A Chicken Pecks

91 Roof Stomping

92 A Dream Solution

93 A Helpful Prefect

94 Hey! Aren’t You Going To Stop?

95 Level Or Uneven?

96 About 1935…

97 Faith And Heartburn: A Clash Of Values

98 Friday Night Prayer Breakfasts

99 I’ll See You In Heaven

100 Agaruna Of Peru

101 Tzeltal Of Mexico

102 Golin Of Png

103 Sheep Are Unknown; Pigs Are Popular

104 Jesus Lost His Name For Us

105 Upstairs?

106 A Really Good Friend

107 A Guatemalan’s Life Perspective

108 Glancing Backward

109 Retirement Provoked A Transition

110 Bottom Line: Hey! Be Thankful

Technical Stuff

Acknowledgments

About The Author

SIL International (formerly the Summer Institute of Linguistics), JAARS, and Wycliffe Bible Translators are partner nonprofit agencies. See Technical Stuff for websites.

This book is dedicated to all those engaged in or supporting the unraveling of languages, reassembling them into written form, and assuring the translation of the Word of God so that people worldwide can have Scriptures in the language they think in—their mother tongue—and to Arthur and Hulda, Ruth, Cheryl, Trent and Kelly, Sharon, Charles and Jennifer, and Owen and John.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

—Will Rogers

Map of the Trust Territory of Papua and New Guinea

March 1965—November 1969 based on UN Map 4104

INTRODUCTION

In 1959, I was aligned for takeoff shortly before noon at the Greater Pittsburgh Airport in a Pennsylvania Air National Guard F86L all-weather fighter interceptor jet. The air was warm, the wind was calm, and the sky was clear with high overcast—excellent for flying. In my helmet headphones, I heard Pit Tower clear a TWA Connie (Constellation) passenger plane onto runway ten and to hold position. The Connie taxied into position on the opposite end of runway twenty-eight, my runway. With brakes locked, I advanced the throttle. While awaiting the engine spool-up to maximum revs, I lowered the flaps to takeoff position and checked the circuit breakers and flight controls before going up on a routine training flight. There was no way of knowing that what would happen in the next twelve to eighteen seconds would foreshadow coincidences in future years.

The engine was howling at max revs, eight thousand revolutions per minute. All instruments were in the green, so I radioed, Pit Tower, Barney fifty-eight ready, and was cleared for takeoff. I advanced the throttle to the far forward détente, and the afterburner kicked in, adding maximum thrust. The tailpipe temp gauge stayed in the green, so I released the brakes. The eighty-six began rolling, slowly at first with full fuel tanks and then accelerating more quickly down the 7,500-foot runway.

Approaching the five-thousand-foot mark, the plane became airborne and climbed ten to twenty feet with indicated airspeed passing through 125 knots (nautical miles per hour). I was about to reach forward to retract the wheels and flaps when engine noise and forward thrust stopped abruptly! The plane bounced hard back onto the runway and along with ten tons of metal and fuel, I hurtled down runway twenty-eight straight toward the four spinning propellers of the TWA Connie. That pilot screamed into the radio asking if I had him in sight. I was a little busy yanking the throttle back, deploying the drag chute, and trying to control the eighty-six, but blurted out, Got ya eye-balled.

The drag chute slowed the plane rapidly, and as engine rpms spooled down, the hydraulic pressure also dropped, eliminating nose wheel steering. Trying to avoid the Connie, I stomped hard on the right pedal, hoping for sufficient rudder-air effect to steer off of the runway and into the grass. The eighty-six rolled slower and slower, finally onto the grass, my left wingtip passing just feet under the TWA left wingtip, and slowly onto a concrete taxiway, where I braked to a stop. Securing the cockpit, I opened the canopy and turned off the master power switch. At some point I had shouted into the radio for a crash crew. They promptly pulled up in emergency vehicles and helped me exit the plane.

Back at the Guard flight operations, I was asked why takeoff was aborted. My explanation was that the engine flamed out.

The squadron commander then assigned me to fly a different eighty-six. In trying to get up into the cockpit of the second plane, my legs wouldn’t work. That is, I could not get myself up the ladder and into the cockpit. The squadron commander was watching, saw that I was in distress, and ordered me to go home and fly another day.

The events of that day over fifty years ago still come to mind.

In retrospect, how grateful I am to the Pennsylvania Air National Guard 147th fighter interceptor squadron for the hours of mandatory training in the flight simulator—an exact replica of that model eighty-six cockpit. Many sessions were practice for just such emergencies. At a critical instant, when seconds literally counted, there was no hesitation pulling out that lever to deploy the drag chute. It was an automatic reaction.

But consider a few what-if questions.

1. If the eighty-six engine had flamed out just one second later, I would have been higher, touched down several hundred feet closer to or right on top of the Connie, and…?

2. That eighty-six was later towed to the Guard cabbage patch test area. The engine was started, the afterburner kicked in, and the engine flamed out again, but the throttle was left untouched. Suddenly the engine exploded. Thankfully, no one was hurt. But why didn’t it explode during my aborted takeoff?

3. Was our Maker involved in protecting those aboard the TWA plane—and me—that day?

1

LORD, I DIDN’T COME HERE TO FLY DEAD PIGS!

One morning in 1967, the other SIL pilots and I were at the hangar refueling and pre-flighting (inspecting) our planes for the day’s flying. The daily radio check-in was occurring with SIL language teams requesting flights as John Sahlin, the new flight coordinator and voice of Uniform Whiskey* gave the day’s flight schedule. In the background of all the radio chatter, I was hearing a distinct, intermittent clicking sound. Could it be someone trying to transmit but unable to? I asked John to listen for it. He heard it too and asked everyone else on the net to be quiet and just listen. Sure enough, there was that clicking sound.

John radioed, This is Uniform Whiskey. If anyone is having problems transmitting, click the mic button twice.

We heard two clicks of a mic button. Then John called the village teams he had not yet spoken with, soon determining that Dottie and Edie, the West sisters, had the radio problem.

John next instructed them, Use one click for no and two clicks for yes to answer my questions.

Is your radio okay?

Two clicks.

Is the radio battery low?

Two clicks.

Can you hear okay?

Two clicks.

Okay, we’ll change the flight schedule and get a charged battery out to you this morning.

I took the flight—eleven minute trip direct to their airstrip, Imani, about twenty miles southeast of Ukarumpa, our SIL center. The flight would take me over the steep-sided Imani Valley, whose eponymous landing strip was one-way and sloped, maybe 3,400 feet above sea level. One could only land uphill, into the closed canyon. Once committed on final approach, there was no second chance. I began a circling descent, lined up for final approach into the narrow valley, and landed. As I got out of the plane, it was hot, and as usual there were plenty of flies. People gathered around as I unloaded the charged twelve-volt car battery for the two-way radio and other cargo to resupply the village store. Those batteries weighed nearly forty pounds.

Dottie and Edie were grateful and glad to see me. By the way, they told me, there are five men here who would like to be flown to Leron Plains. They can pay. Can you take them?

Sure. Have them stand alone with their baggage.

Since landing, I had detected a strong, pungent, putrid odor, but couldn’t discern its source. The five village men I was to fly stood together with their personal effects in expandable woven bark bags slung over their shoulders. From under the pilot seat, I removed a small bathroom scale, put it on the ground, and weighed each of them on it. I scaled their bags separately and loaded the bags into the belly cargo pod