As I mentioned last week, I was in Phoenix, Arizona for the week with Adele. She was there on a business trip and I was there to have fun. On Thursday went to the Pima Air Museum in Tucson. It’s about a two hour drive from Phoenix so right after breakfast I packed a lunch (a six pack of Pepsi, a bag of BBQ Fritos, a bag of Jolly Rancher jelly beans and a box of Banana Twinkies), put on my hat and sunglasses and headed out. The drive wasn’t too bad and by the time I arrived my blood glucose levels were rocketing. This was going to be a great day.
If you are interested in aircraft, the Pima air museum is one of the best places to go because they have so many great, historical aircraft that you can go right up to. They have several aircraft that I had read about and seen pictures of and now could actually see! They has a B17 Flying Fortress, a B18 Bolo, a B23 Dragon, a B24 Liberator, a B25 Mitchel, a B26 Invader and a B26 Marauder, two B29s Superfortresses, a B36 Peacemaker, a B50 Superfortress, two B57 Canberras, a B58 Hustler, and four - count ‘em - four B52 Stratofortresses! In all, I counted 278 aircraft at this one museum!
Of all those B aircraft listed above (B stands for “Bomber”) my father flew all from the B17 to the B29 with the exception of the B23 and B24. This was when he was a navigator in the US Army Air Force during the WWII. The reason that he flew on so many of the aircraft was that he was a really good navigator. These were the days before GPS and most electronic navigation so it was all maps and calculations with a pencil and slide rule (how many know what THAT is?). He even had to use a sextant in for sun and star shots. He was so good at it that not only did the Army send him up in all these different aircraft, but they made him an instructor to teach others how it was done. The only problem for my dad was that he got chronically air sick. He was so bad that he would loose his last meal just taxiing the aircraft on the ground before it ever took off. Add to that the fact that he had to sit at a table reading charts and maps while bouncing all over the sky… well, you can imagine what it was like.
My dad didn’t like to complain much so he just went along with it. Fortunately for him there were two things that helped: 1) he usually kept a bucket somewhere nearby, and 2) you could open the windows on the aircraft in those days. Never mind that the wind was blowing at 150mph and it was -30 degrees F… It really only became a problem when the guys at the waist gun positions behind him had their windows open too. And actually he really didn’t feel that bad as long as the plane was above 10,000 feet and everyone was on bottled oxygen. Unfortunately, the Army, in it’s infinite wisdom, assigned him to submarine patrols over the Caribbean flying at between one and two thousand feet.
I’m writing about these things now but I never actually found out about them until many years after the war. Like so many others of his generation, he never talked much about his experiences in the war. It was partly because the memory of showing up in an ice cold bucket under a desk in a moving compartment smaller than a coat closet was anything he really wanted to recall. But it was also partly because what he was doing didn’t seem like anything special. He was serving like almost everyone else he knew.
I started writing this to try to come up with something on the theme of humility. But it’s hard to be humble when you’ve had a dad like mine. Because he actually was very humble and did so many things for others without complaint and without even mentioning it. I could give you a long list of those things because, while he was humble, I am not.
James 4:10 says “Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will lift you up.” and Romans 12: 4 says :"For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think. Instead, think sensibly, as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one.” That’s how my dad was. I should try to be more like him.
I’ve gone on way too long but there is another interesting article on the subject of humility at http://healingprojects.org/
So, other business:
There is New Light this Friday night.
Sunday is Jr. High Sunday School
In two weeks, on March 18th we’ll have another movie night.
Cheers,
Duane
When:
7:15pm on Friday, March 4
Where:
Grace Community Covenant Church
Foothill Covenant Church
1555 Oak Avenue
Los Altos, CA 94024
