Like a Good Penny
It’s curious how people come and go in our lives, and perhaps stranger still how some people stay on your stage, wandering in and out of the scene. Sometimes they arrive for an intense few weeks or months, like a professional gig or an amoral relationship in the seventies. But there are others who show up, and you think they’re done, but they show up again. If only to keep me on my toes — to be alert for more surprises — there are folks who with a phone call or now an email will insert themselves into my consciousness, and derail whatever is my then train of thought.
One such person is Rogers McKinnon. He was one of the partners of Ascot Aviation, where I first dipped my foot — and then my soul — into aviation. An engineer who built dozens of bridges here in The Golden State, Rog was retired when he invested his home and two small planes and several hundred thousand dollars into Ascot. He was not, however, a businessman, and he subsequently got squeezed so badly that he lost everything. Through a curious — there’s that word again — chain of circumstances, he managed to get his house back, though the planes and the money are gone and not coming back.
It was in one of Rog’s planes that I learned to fly, at the hands of the other partner, Robert Scott. Four-three-echo, as she was referred to by the back half of her call sign, is a 20-year old Cessna Skyhawk. (There are photos at my "From the Ground Up" web site, http://www.radio-pilot.com.) I don’t want to sound mawkish, but there truly is something special about the plane in which one learns to fly. More of a life-’n-death kinda thing than a car; depending on how you drive.
When Rog and Robert got caught in a manipulator’s funding game, their personal relationship was ruptured. At Robert’s behest, I had given Rog some information he didn’t want to hear about the guy who was causing their problem. Though the information was significant and accurate, I had a sense that like the messenger of ill tidings in ancient Greece, I was going to be killed. So to speak. It felt like a loss.
Then last year, fate and the court system threw us together again. Rog was still titularly in charge of Ascot, which had been kept breathing by the predator because some important leases were in the company’s name, and I was in small claims court to collect several thousand dollars that was owed to me by Ascot. My action was focused on the man who had taken over, the company, keeping the assets and refusing to pay the creditors.
When the case was finally heard, the man I was suing failed to show up in court. But Rog was there, and while waiting for the proceedings to proceed, we chatted about where we’d been and where we are. ‘Cause the guy missed our boat, the judge stopped me three-quarters of the way through my sordid tale — he’d heard enough — and he asked Rog if he disagreed with my description. Not a word, Rog said. So the judge found for me, and before he signed his decision, I asked him to make the judgement against the miscreant alone, and to leave Rogers out of it. The judge did so.
Rog called the other afternoon. He gets SetonnoteS, and didn’t understand one of the words. I make some of them up, I admitted, but thinking that they are obvious enough to figure out. He said that he had worn out his dictionary working my vocabulary. Hey, where do you think new words come from? We talked a for a while, about flying, and life and stuff. And promised to get together for a toast to his finishing the paperwork to get back his house.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.
UPDATE: Rog not only got back his house, but N9943E as well..