Monday Meanderings - 7.4.2016

Happy 4th of July. I hope your shade is refreshing, your beverages cold, your BBQ delicious and your fireworks spectacular.

It is hot in Central Texas and a great many folks are trying to cool off at the lake, so a number of people witnessed an incident involving a small biplane that took an unexpected dip into the water on Saturday. 

Fortunately there were no serious injuries, but a lot of photo opportunities. Like this one. It looks a little like the Loch Ness monster, but you can make out the tail section and the wings, just out of the water.

I am reminded of another 4th of July, long, long ago. This was in Abilene when I was working for a local radio and television station. It was a good-sized station and we actually had a news department; guys that stripped the teletype, wrote up stories of local interest, and hung it all appropriately on the news room wall. Those of us announcing simply picked up our material, rehearsed it (in theory), and read it at the proper time.

One weekend I had a local story about an air show, to be held on the 4th out at nearby Phantom Hill Lake. The story described the show in detail, how it was sponsored by the local Jaycees, admission was blah, blah, blah. And the conclusion of the story, and to the airshow, was a paragraph about how the stunt pilots were going to put a plane into a spiral, parachute out and let the plane crash into the lake!

The airshow was legitimate; the part about crashing a plane into the lake was pure fabrication, and on Monday I got a call to come in early because the station owner wanted to see me before I went on the air. IF I went on the air.

I'm not sure Mr. Ackers ever believed me when I vociferously protested that I had not made up the crash part and inserted it as a lark. The copy of the story that was retrieved from the "Read News" basket did not have the plane crash paragraph, and it was my word against the senior news guy's, but thankfully Mr. Ackers didn't fire me.

Larry Fitzgerald, the senior news guy (and the perpetrator of this gag - though he never admitted it), went on to have a notable career in broadcasting in Abilene. During my less-illustrious career, I made sure that I never promoted another airshow.