by T I WADE
***
Carlos was offered several jobs in the months after his graduation. He understood his father’s idea about working for a while before going back to school and accepted a position with the Air Force as a civilian-paid employee at Andrews Air Force Base. The job offer was in research in a small and secret building on the base, but gave him unlimited flying opportunities in new and interesting aircraft, and somewhere where he could base and fly his new toy with ease.
He stayed at Andrews for three years before he started back at MIT on his new degree, paid for by the Air Force. That was also the same year that he asked his father’s permission to trade-in the graduation gift for something more exciting. There was a beautiful P-51 Mustang that a friend of his, Preston Strong, had found when looking around Reno, Nevada for parts for his own P-51. Carlos had flown Preston’s Mustang once or twice, and wanted the chance to exchange for one of his own. Manuel told him that it was his aircraft and that he could do what he wanted with it. The King Air, now with 300 hundreds hours total time on her dials, went for a $100,000 more than its purchase price, and since the Mustang was only a quarter of that, Carlos had a lot of money to put into the bank. With his friend’s suggestions, he invested wisely into tech stocks and quickly tripled his money with Qualcomm in 2006, doubled it again with Microsoft in 2008, and then tripled that investment with Google stock by the end of 2009.
Chapter 9
Preparations for the New Year’s Eve Fly-in
By the 2nd of December, Preston and Martie were ready for the annual fly-in. The first guests were not expected before the 24th and they had a lot of time to check to see if they had everything they needed.
With the forklift, Preston set up one of the large Man diesels on a secure wooden platform, screwed it down with large screws and bolts, and connected its wiring into both the hangar and the house systems. It took a couple of starts with the original key and a new starter motor, but on the fifth try, the old diesel engine started, coughed out a lot of dark smoke from the exhaust, pointing skywards and reasonably quiet through the new truck exhaust silencer. Slowly, Preston increased the rebuilt and modernized throttle, an old water-value wheel, and opened it slowly by screwing the wheel to the right, stopping at 1,000 rpm. He then pushed a switch to ”On” to allow the generating power to feed through to his two large sets of deep-cycle marine storage batteries. He signaled across to a waiting Martie, and she ran around like crazy turning on the lights in both buildings, as well as all the new ones, and then pumped the new sound system to an ear-piercing blast. Preston listened to the noise of the diesel engine as she did this. It didn’t even show any strain from beginning to end. Martie came panting over the runway to the rear of the old barn where the diesel was now warm and happily grumbling away, and Preston screwed the large screw back to 750 revs—its usual idle speed.
“Didn’t even feel anything,” Preston shouted to the still panting Martie. “I reckon about a gallon or so an hour and she could light up three or four times as much on idle. At her limit of 2,500 revs, she could light up the UNC campus in Chapel Hill, or at least most of it,” he smiled.
They then went about checking the well where the farm got its water, cleaned the filters, and made sure everything was in good order. They then checked both the house septic tank and the second one behind the hangar, ordered a “honey” truck to come out and empty them, and then put some Redex into the systems to make them ready for the extra work they would be doing over the festive season.
Joe brought the meat over a few days later and set up the freezer trailer to run, which prompted Preston to fill up all the underground gas tanks, just in case.
“What the heck,” he told Martie over steak and red wine that night, with the faithful Oliver waiting for bones or other tidbits to come his way. “Gas prices will be on the rise closer to Christmas, and word is that prices are going to soar next year, so I might as well fill everything up we have.”
“At $4 a gallon, what do we have now and what do we need to fill them all up?” asked Martie.
“I need a full 5,000 gallons of diesel or close to it, since there are only a hundred gallons or so in that tank. I might as well fill up the 5,000 gallon jet-fuel tank as well, and I’ve never done that before. This year we have a few turbo-props coming in with the 5,000 gallon jet-fuel tank—Lady Dandy and Sally’s Pilatus—so if prices are going up, I can always put in some fuel preservatives and keep it as an investment. To have everything filled to the brim, I reckon we need around 20,000 gallons. That will be nearly $90,000, including the jet fuel, plus Joe will want his tanks filled up—he has four smaller 200-gallon above-ground tanks, and it would save him a delivery fee.”
A couple of days later, the last tanker from RDU airport arrived and pumped in the necessary jet fuel. Jet fuel was not freely available at the average gas station. Preston paid for everything and Joe came over to ask him what he owed. They discussed the matter over a beer, sitting on the semi-warm porch with a heater blowing warm air over them.
“Your share, Joe, for 720 gallons of regular at $4.05 cents wholesale a gallon Is…”
“$2,916.00,” interjected Martie, walking up and working on her iPhone. She had three fresh beers under one arm and handed them out.
“Thank you, Martie,” smiled Preston. “I was working it out in my head.”
“That was what was worrying me, Preston,” laughed Joe, winking at Martie. “By the way, do you remember the only gas station on the 751? The one with the big blue sign? A lot of work trucks used to stop there at daybreak.”
“I go past that way most days into Chapel Hill,” replied Martie. “I know the one you mean.”
“I think so,” added Preston. “Does it have a road junction from the right as you’re driving north?”
“Yes, that’s the one,” answered Joe. “The owner, Pete Wilson, is a friend of mine and he is retiring at the end of the year. He closed it down last Friday for good and asked me if I wanted some beer for Christmas. He has a lot of stock and owns all the stock himself. I’d say he got a couple hundred or more cases of beer and he did have some nice beers, like Bud and these Yuenglings you like,” Joe showed them the bottle he was drinking from. “You know I’m a Busch Light guy myself, and as long as it’s wet and got color I‘ll drink it. So, my idea is that I buy the whole lot, and since old Pete wants to turn everything into money, he will give me a little discount. I could keep the “crappy” beer, as you call it, and you could get the fancy stuff for your fly-in. What do you think?”
“As long as you don’t take the bad stuff home and then come over and drain all our good stuff over the festive season,” laughed Preston. “I’ve seen how you guys put them away.”
Joe and Martie laughed at Preston. He was only pulling Joe’s leg and it was always a bit of competition between these two neighbors, but they wouldn’t survive very long without each other. Preston agreed with the idea and told him to buy whatever Pete was selling, including snacks and candy. If it wasn’t used at the party, they could all eat it for the next decade.
Preston was in for a shock at what Joe returned with the next afternoon. He took off his cap and scratched his head as one of Joe’s sixteen-wheel tractor trailers entered the driveway and it looked pretty heavy.
“Sorry, Preston,” mumbled Joe, looking sheepish. “I offered him a lump sum and he told me to take everything.”
“How much did you offer him?” Preston asked.
“Well I looked over what he had in the store, and in the back. It looked like about a hundred cases of beer and a ton of boxes of all different things. I thought $10,000 was about the right amount. He looked back at me as if I were stupid and said he wanted at least $20,000 for everything. I couldn’t say no, Preston, he’s a darn good friend. It didn’t look like what I saw was worth what he wanted, but I said ‘alright.’ Then he drags me over to his old tractor trailer in the back of his house next door, and the thing was full of even more stuff—double what I had seen in the store! I think
my mouth must have dropped open, ‘cause he laughed at me and told me that I might as well get everything at one time and that I was getting a pretty good deal for the money.”
“$20,000!” Preston stared at Joe, misbelieving a number of that magnitude.
“Yep!” replied Joe. “And this is your half.” He pulled out a list and read it to Preston.
“Did I hear right… 840 cases of beer?” stated Preston. “It’ll take us years to drink all that!”
“You think YOU have a problem,” laughed Joe. “I have twelve hundred cases to drink. At around $10.00 a case, we paid about 50% of the wholesale price. Some of the cases are only a few months old,” added Joe carefully. “Don’t look too hard at the merchandise—these cans might not have a ‘use-by’ date on them!”
“They could be years old already?” cautioned Preston.
“As long as they are wet and the right shade of brown, who cares?” smirked Joe.
“Then you have peanuts, peanuts, and more peanuts, potato chips, potato chips, and more potato chips. Actually, you have 20 large cases of each, 100 boxes of chocolate bars, another 100 boxes of other types of candy, and then cases and cases of assorted food stuffs. I reckon we got about $40,000 to $50,000 worth of merchandise at less than half price.” Joe slowly folded up the paper, put it into the top of his farmer’s overalls he always wore, smiled at Preston and waited for the shock to wear off.
“Sometimes, Joe, I want to move and go somewhere where people are normal,” stated Preston, still staring inside the truck.
“Mars, or Alabama would be a good place to start,” joked Joe. “My boys want to get the stuff off-loaded. It’s going to be beer time by the time we finished and we have already emptied one truck at my house today.”
One of Joe’s sons drove around the truck to the hangar door, carefully backed-up into the area where Preston guided him, and started the off-loading.
It took an hour for all seven guys to off-load just the beer. Joe had forgotten that Preston had the use of a fork lift and had not loaded the stuff onto pallets, but he had some in the truck and they moved the fork lift up to the old truck interior and loaded the beers onto eight pallets, one case at a time. Then came the cases of soda Joe hadn’t told Preston about, and then the hundreds of boxes and cases of so many different varieties of peanuts, chips, and candy. Preston had never seen so much in his whole life.
“Are you sure this is everything?” checked Preston sarcastically as he opened the new refrigerator in the hangar downstairs area and took out seven cold beers. “Only one more round after these!” Preston called out to the men around him.
“No problem, Buddy,” stated Joe’s eldest son. “We are nearly halfway and I think we have enough beer here if you run out. They were pretty cold when we picked them up.”
By the time they were finished, the refrigerator was empty, as was one of the cases of beer an hour later. Preston couldn’t believe what he had gotten himself into, nor did Martie when she arrived to see a rather drunk Preston sitting in the hangar staring at a mountain of food stuff that hadn’t been there the day before.
“Preston Strong!” stated Martie looking at his sweaty, drunk appearance and the new mountain of food that now took the place of a future aircraft that might want this section of hangar.
“What the hell have you been buying? We have maybe ten visitors over Christmas and New Years and you have purchased enough for the U.S. Army in a dozen states. Are you intending to feed Fort Bragg or something?” Preston looked back at her, smiled sheepishly and hiccupped.
“Hi, Martie, grab a beer,” he suggested, slurring slightly with his face slowing the signs of blushing. “We have a few left.”
“A few! A FEW!” She looked in wonder at the eight packed pallets of beer, and shook her head slowly. “I bet Joe gave you everything from that gas station. I bet he could not pay you for the gas and gave us beer and peanuts instead!”
“No, Martie,” Joe responded looking at the food mountain and still trying to fathom what he was going to do with all the stuff. “He paid me for the fuel and I paid him for this stuff.”
“And I think I know who paid more,” she replied sarcastically, going up to the nearest pallet and pulling out a six-pack of Yuengling bottles from a case. She walked over next to Preston, who was sitting on several brown cartons of corned beef.
“Preston, you don’t even LIKE corned beef and you said I would be fired if I ever bought some. Now you’re sitting on what looks like 72 cans of the stuff! Move over and let me see if there is something exciting about sitting on corned beef while you tell me what happened.” She opened two bottles, took her position next to Preston and stared at the mountain of food while she waited for this sure-to be interesting saga on the Strong Farm. It took an hour and three beers before she understood the whole story. “What we don’t need during our fly-in, we can give to a food bank or something next year,” she suggested to a very drunk Preston as she helped him into the house. She put him on the couch and he was asleep before she started dinner. Martie went back to the hangar, picked up a case of 12 small cans of corned beef and took it back into the house. She loved corned beef.
An hour later, she sat down in the chair next to Preston and turned on the television, looking forward to the smelly corned beef and sauerkraut dinner she had made for herself. Preston did not like either, but since he was in the dog box, so to speak, she didn’t really care, and Oliver was certainly paying her more attention than usual. “That beef sure smells good,” was written all over his face.
The news was on and she decided to watch it. The country’s problems had really escalated in recent months and with the riots in Washington and elsewhere, the American people were unhappy. Even the media had a hard time hiding the growing tension.
“The stock market hit the 10,000 mark today, for the third time this year,” said the pretty, local newscaster smiling out at the world she was facing. “The market is finally rebounding and is looking promising for a renewed start next year, the President stated, giving a speech at the University of Kansas today. He will meet with State officials there about revamping Fort Riley as an army base. He was interviewed earlier after talking to the 1st Infantry Division about bringing back all American troops by December of next year. The President spoke to about 200 reserve troops who intently listened to what he had to say. The President stated that his most important task now was to keep his word and bring home the promised first 200,000 men and women by January 31st. He got a loud ovation from the crowd. In other world news, the Chinese Premier broke a bottle of champagne today on the commissioning of their first aircraft carrier. Her name is Shi Lang and she is currently moored in Dalian Harbor in northwestern China. Many might remember the oil spill from a gasoline explosion that closed down the port for four days in 2010. Much controversy has swirled around this ship since a Chinese conglomerate won this partially-built carrier from the Ukraine for $20 million in an auction a decade ago. The original plan was to turn her into a casino in Macau harbor, near Hong Kong. That never happened, and the last film footage showed her in October with a large 83 military ship-designation freshly painted on her bow. An ongoing report from Jane’s Fighting Ships on the ‘Varyag,’ as she was called before her purchase, states that over the last several years she has undergone a massive refit in dry dock to complete her military makeover and now she is ready for sea trials. The report also states that the group of companies that originally purchased the carrier still has shares in the vessel.”
“There was another nuclear power station malfunction today, this time in Nevada. Again, the malfunction was a cooling issue and the reactor was put into emergency shutdown mode in case the problem became serious. Eleven thousand houses in northern Nevada and Idaho were without power for several hours. The problem was quickly located and an electrical system within the cooling system was replaced. A spokesman for the plant stated that nobody was in any danger at any time, and there were three new backup systems for this type of problem
. He stated that renewed tests on the cooling system would be completed by Christmas and they were implementing what the world had learned from the Japanese disaster a couple of years ago—new fail-safe backup generator machinery.”
Martie stretched and scratched Oliver’s head as she took a break from her corned beef.
“North Korea is reported to have bombarded Seoul for the seventh day in a row. Five artillery shots were fired into the Samsung area of Seoul and at least 55 civilians are reported dead and hundreds more wounded. South Korea retaliated with over a hundred projectiles fired into several known North Korean military bases. A recent satellite image shows vast areas of North Korea blackened, or still on fire, with far more destruction than that on the South Korean side. A U.S. missile carrier in South Korean waters shot down five aircraft a couple of hours later. They were approaching from North Korean airspace and flew inside its 50-mile fly-zone. The United States has repeatedly told North Korea that action will be taken if unidentified aircraft enter any American warship’s 50-mile no-fly zones in the area.”
“New attacks hit American Forces today in Iraq and Syria. The Pentagon reports that a troop-carrying helicopter was shot down, and a second attack this week on the same road hit a fuel convoy heading to the Iranian border to resupply forward troops in the area. Over 50 trucks were destroyed, as well as a number of escort vehicles. This is the seventh attack this month on fuel convoys, and reporters are saying that a lack of fuel is starting to hit the entire Iraq-Iran border area. Over 150,000 American troops are reported to be in the area.”
“In Syria, a fuel convoy was also hit heading to the southern area where most of the fighting is taking place with the rebels in hard combat with pro-government forces. Again, reports in from the BBC reporters who are covering the area is that there are three large new American military bases in the intermediate area, one large, recently built airfield and approximately 100,000 American and 12,000 NATO troops.”