December 26, 2014 I was working at the Anoka antique mall (Antiques on Main), shooting the breeze with Dave, a new dealer there, and we were talking about the benefit of, as he put it, keeping your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut. I had heard that expression before and it didn’t take me long to bring the recollection to mind. Back in the old days, when I was the air traffic controller of the century, I worked at a place called Fort Worth Center. I worked the Oklahoma City Specialty and on OKC there was quite the collection of characters, including one young man named Tom Deppmeyer. Tom was a short, stout young man who looked like a small barrel. He had been a Marine air traffic controller and had transitioned to the FAA on his release from active duty. When he arrived in Fort Worth as a young neophyte controller trainee he still thought, walked and talked like a Marine. He was, in the early days of his career, very impressionable. To tell you a bit about Tom and his personality, he was at a stoplight one day when a guy in the pickup next to him threw a soda can out the window. Tom didn’t care for litter or people who littered so he rolled his window down and shouted for the errant nogoodnik to get out and pick up the can. The perpetrator responded by saying what Tom could do to himself, an admonition Tom didn’t take to, so he put his car in Park, got out and walked around to the nogoodnik’s window, picking up the can enroute and chucking it in the pickup’s bed. He then leaned toward the window, his left hand on the side mirror and his right hand on the door, and proceeded to counsel the loudmouth. In the middle of Tom’s counseling session the light turned green, much to the driver’s relief, and he shot off across the intersection, leaving Tom standing there, still holding the mirror which had come off in his hand. Tom, always the good guy and wanting to return the mirror to its rightful owner, threw it after the truck and, like any good wide receiver, the pickup’s bed made the perfect catch, truck and mirror reunited once again. As I mentioned above, Tom was, on his arrival at Fort Worth Center, an impressionable young man. He came to work one day to head out on his first familiarization ride, a fam trip. Fam trips were rides controllers took where you rode in the aircraft cockpit jumpseat, all the while visiting with the pilots and discussing items of mutual concern and interest. (It was a great program.) As Tom headed out the side door to get a ride over to DFW, his supervisor caught sight of him and brought him into the supe’s office where he gave Tom a lecture of which any USMC drill sergeant would have been proud. As he stood over Tom spewing command after command at him, among other things, he said, “Don’t do anything to embarrass the FAA and keep your eyes and ears open, and your mouth shut!” And with that he sent Tom on his way. Tom’s flight was on a DC-9, a pretty sharp airplane in its time but one that aged somewhat, and such was the type airplane in which Tom found himself. The DC-9 had a small jumpseat and Tom, being the stout barrel he was, pretty much filled it. The aircraft was at cruising altitude and still Tom, remembering the supe’s order of keeping his mouth shut, had hardly said a word. The pilots were otherwise occupied, one looking at charts and one reading a magazine, when Tom, looking around the cockpit, noticed smoke coming out of a vent at the ceiling, above his right shoulder. Smoke on an airplane is never good. It is generally a sign that something bad is about to happen, like a disaster. The old expression, Where there’s smoke there’s fire, certainly applies on an airplane and, of this, Tom was well aware. Yet the supe’s admonition kept ringing in his ears…keep your mouth shut! But surely these two highly paid professionals were on top of the situation? Surely they knew what was going on in their own airplane? Tom watched the smoke cloud grow in size along the ceiling until he could stand it no more, finally tapping the captain’s shoulder and asking, Pardon me but is that smoke supposed to be coming out of there? Tom said later that there was an explosion of activity and before he, Tom, knew what had happened, the captain was standing on his legs looking in the vent and then shouting at Tom to get up and out of the way so he could get into the cabin. Tom couldn’t move because the captain was on his lap. Finally the captain stepped back into his seat and Tom got into the cabin, followed by the captain who quickly found the problem and resolved it. The 1st class galley microwave had shorted out and was in the process of starting on fire. Tom’s questioning of the captain and the captain’s quick action had averted a major disaster. After that, Tom resolved to take the supe’s warnings with a grain of salt, and he would start that right after the bruises on his legs healed. G’nite. Mac
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 06:19:41 +0000