January 26th…“DID YOU EVER SEE A PRESIDENT OR A VICE PRESIDENT IN PERSON?”
As a happy little farm boy, I seldom ventured more than a mile or so from the lush acreage of our farm and its quaint home. Ventured, that is, without Dad or Mom driving our 1956 Chevy. Besides, as a child, I was blissfully ignorant of world news and who was famous, or who was not. As long as I had my toy trucks n tractors and afternoon cartoons; who needed anything more, right?
My big brother, Lowell, on the other hand, not only SAW the Vice President of our United States, Lowell even cleaned and serviced the VP’s chartered DC-3 airliner. You see, my brother, at that time, worked for a small airport in Mankato, Minnesota. The airport was so small, that Lowell and his partner did pretty much everything needed. Baggage check, weather reports, ticket takers, load the plane, clean the plane……..they did it all. On more than one occasion, a handsome “North Central Airlines” DC-3 airliner would bank down out of that Midwest sky and touch her wheels down on the tarmac of that itty bitty airport runway. Once the propellers rotated to a stop, the side door of the aircraft was opened by a stewardess and she would let the door vertically hinge open to the ground revealing stairs built into the door itself. Within a few minutes, sure enough, out of that aircraft came Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey and his wife. Turns out their son lived there in Mankato and they came, as often as the rigors of his office would let him, to enjoy a visit with family.
Once the Humphreys had left the airport, it was now time for big brother Lowell and his partner to begin cleaning and servicing the plane for the Vice President’s return trip to Washington, D.C.. It appeared that the party on that aircraft had begun long before the plane touched down in Mankato, cause there was all kinds of party “trappings” all over that airship. And, some of those “things” left on-board that stage coach of the skies can only be described with a blush and a wink, that is 😉
So said the big brother of this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.
