An airport bum

As promised today I have a very short piece that my father wrote. I found this in a drawer among a bunch of other papers. It was typed on the back of an old letter that he received from his insurance company. This is exactly as he typed it minus his typos.

An Airport Bum

by Michael Surovick

They say that I'm an airport bum. Well maybe really I am but one thing for certain, I never go out there on a  Sunday morning. I would never dream of missing church on a Sunday and perhaps that's because I've had the hell scared out of me more than once thy those airplanes, and the Tri-Pacer is no exception.

There was a loud explosion and I was hurled from contentment to terror. Instinctively I reached for the transponder to switch to the hijack code, 7500, but at the same moment I caught my passengers eyes and they were also filled with horror. Realizing my stupid assumption I surveyed the rest of the cabin and low and behold, the little left side window blew open. I vowed to stop watching hijack stories and latch the window properly.

Shortly after purchasing the Tri Pacer I went out to practice landings and takeoffs. I was just about ready to give the Tri Pacer and A+ rating and then all of a sudden as the airplane accelerated on takeoff I was hurled to the back. For a few minutes I was a passenger with hair standing on edge. Luckily I had the trim set for climb and there wasn't any cross wind. In that moment of anxiety, luckily the previous owner wasn't around or I might have clobbered him.

 This is one of my favorite pictures of my dad. He was a cadet in the United States Army Air Corp.
I found it really amusing that my dad wrote "I've had the hell scared out of me" since he would never dream of using the word hell out loud unless of course he was referring to the undesirable final destination. You know, the more I think about it, I'm sure that if my dad was still alive, he would probably be a blogger.