1 day Ago
Here is another tale that involves a stamp. I’ve written before about the power of a simple postage stamp and the Postal Service. My favorite story about stamps is Willie Lee Buffington taking a dime and mailing five letters asking for books.
A dime and some stamps allowed him to create a rural library. That’s quite an accomplishment. My story starts in about 1970.
I’m interested in flying. Reading flying magazines is important to me. One day I see a picture of a neat looking airplane called the North American OV-10 Bronco.
They are using this airplane in Vietnam. I think it is the coolest looking airplane that I had ever seen. There are pictures of the airplane being used as a Forward Air Controller.
This plane can shoot marking rockets and stay over the target to direct ground troops or bombers. It can drop parachutists and to me it is the coolest looking airplane I have ever seen. I haven’t taken a flying lesson and I really don’t know much about flying or anything else.
Back then; there was no fast way to get information on this new aircraft that was just being used by the military. The only thing to do was to write to North American Aviation and ask for information. I don’t know what I paid for the stamp, but I wrote a letter to North American and within two weeks I had a brochure and a newsletter about the OV-10 and its specifications.
That summer I learned to fly. This neat looking airplane was used by the military and the only way I would get to fly one was to be in the Marine Corps or the Air Force. I still had the brochure.
That brochure stayed with magazines and airplane pictures for nearly 30 years. Somehow during clean up or moving things around the brochure was lost. By then the OV-10 had been retired from military service.
The California Department of Forestry had the surplus OV-10s to use as forestry spotter planes. Those planes still looked great but getting to fly one was still certainly out of reach. By the early 2000s there were a few privately owned OV-10s that were owned by museums.
I wrote a few letters but got no reply. Some times the universe shows up in unexpected ways. A guy that I flew airshows with in the 1980s had a job flying a mosquito spraying OV-10.
We met at a mosquito-spraying clinic and talked about the old days of flying in airshows and some of our other adventures. I told him about my obsession with the airplane and how I had wanted to fly one from many years ago. My obsession began with just a letter all those years ago.
If I could ever get a chance to ride in the OV-10 it would be a dream come true. Well, almost five years passed and the airplane was going to be on display for an airport open house. Well, here was the one surprise chance.
We met at the airport and after a quick briefing we were buckled in and engines were started. We taxied out and here I was flying an airplane that I had spent a stamp on and gotten 54 years of thinking and obsessing about. The flight was a short but everything I thought the airplane was true and maybe more.
I can’t say that flying this plane was really a bucket list item. Usually, I work on something and made it become a reality. Wishing for something doesn’t work like continuing effort.
I had thought that this was just something that would never come to pass. There is a little bit of sadness to this story. That flight could really be the final thing on my aviation quests.
Now the hard becomes figuring out something else to replace that kind of quest. Special thanks to my friend Russ for making a dream come true. Also it was good luck for me to write a letter and learn about something that would be such a big thing even though it took 54 years to get around to.
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