Former Girlfriends

            Sorry to all of you who were hoping to find a juicy gossip column.  In this respect I am certainly no Bill Clinton, but here are all the other women in my life:

This is Lillian.  She was born in 1963 and is powered by a 145 horsepower engine.  She is a Cessna Skyhawk, and could seat four, but two of the seats best be fairly small, or Lillian couldn’t get off the ground.  I bought her from my stock broker in Billings, sold her to a couple fellows in Havre, and she now lives in Idaho.

This is Vivian.  

At this time I was looking for an older woman, and Vivian was born in 1947.  She is a Stinson 108-1, which is a tube and fabric 150 horsepower aircraft.  She also sat four, with the same disclaimer that two of the butts should be small.  Unlike Lillian, Vivian was a tail dragger. Note the location of the third wheel on the tail.  It takes special training to be certified to handle a girl like Vivian.  Vivian now lives in Miles City.

This is Daisy Mae.  She was born in 1955, had 225 horsepower, and was also known as a Cessna Skywagon.  She could honestly carry four big butts, and, like Vivian, was also a tail dragger.  It was with Daisy Mae that I experienced my first engine failure and had to “dead stick” a landing at the Laurel airport.  There is a saying in aviation that any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.  Any landing where you can use the plane again is a great landing.  My dead stick was a great landing.  Daisy Mae now lives in Texas.

This girl never had a name.  I guess I am getting trashy.  She is a 1953 Piper Super Cub and has a 150 horsepower engine.  She could only seat two but would lift anything you could stuff in the door or tie on the struts.  She also was a tube and fabric tail dragger.  She was a small and slow thing that preferred pilots who were around five foot six.  She was a tight squeeze for me.  She now lives in Bozeman.

This is my current girlfriend.  I haven’t named her either.  She is a 1961 Cessna Skywagon with a 260 horsepower engine.  She is a cousin of Daisy Mae, but with a few design changes, she is an enormous load lifter.  At 1500 pounds empty, she can easily lift another 1500 pounds and power along at 150m.p.h.  She has a big engine and an overly long prop.  This puts the prop tips speeding near the sound barrier, so, like a mother-in-law, she can be a little loud.  She lives at my house.