One of my biggest regrets in life is that
I never got my pilot’s license. I often wonder what kind of career I’d
have had if I took the money I spent on getting a college degree and
spent it instead on auction school and flying lessons.
I’ve
always been mesmerized by small aircraft and I come by it honestly. I
grew up in a small town two hours north of Hollywood and many of the
stars kept their planes at my hometown’s famous airport because it was
seldom fogged in. Steve McQueen had a couple large hangers filled with
fast cars and even faster airplanes.
I
got scared off flying a little because a couple of my idols had their
brilliant careers cut short when they crashed, including Will Rogers and
Jim Croce, a favorite singer of mine. Richie Valance also crashed in an
airplane called American Pie, which lent its name to a famous song by
Don McLean.
The
first time I ever flew in a small plane was when my wife and I were
going to school in Australia and a nice lady took us up in her Cessna
and showed us Australia’s Gold Coast from the air. I was immediately
smitten. After that I flew in small planes almost on a weekly basis
because many purebred auctioneers flew their own small planes to get
from one sale to the next and I often hitched a ride. I could either
spend eight or ten hours driving or two hours flying. It also often
meant I could be home with my wife every night instead of sleeping in
some lonely motel. I announced a video sale once a month for over 20
years and my friend John Rodgers hauled me to most of them all over the
west. We flew in the fog, in the snow and one time over Donner Pass in
smoke so thick we couldn’t see a thing. Johnny called the tower in Reno
and asked what we should do and the air traffic controller suggested
prayer and told us to try and avoid crashing on anything expensive or
inhabited.
I also flew with ranchers
like Jeff Lane of the Bell Ranch who later died in a crash. I flew with
auction market operators and with cattle buyers, including one who I
later found out didn’t even have a license and whose plane was really an
engine mounted on a coffin. The world was a safer place when his plane
got stolen on one of his trips to Mexico to buy cattle.
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