My Helms Bakery truck , AKA,My Hippy Van

My Doberman Buddy, is probably wondering what the heck is that thing?

I fell in love with the Helms bread truck when a gyro pilot friend showed me a picture of it many years ago. "How much will you take for it ?" , I asked. We came to an agreement and the bread truck was mine. I call it my Hippy Van because it is about the size and shape of a Volkswagen bus which was popular with the hippies in the 60's .

I rationalized needing it because we could use it when we traveled to fly-ins and air shows. It was an attention getter and it had room inside to carry all the items we took to display and it could also tow a gyro. Really, I just wanted the vehicle , plain and simple. My rationalizing didn't fool Docko...he knew I wanted the odd looking vehicle .

I intended to clean it up, paint it , etc. As happens sometimes, life got in the way and my hippy van ended up being stored outside for years in Northern California where it seems to rain all the time.

Finally it is home with me here in the desert . To say it looks sad is an understatement but I am up to the challenge of making it all pretty again. I don't plan to make it roadworthy because it's job from here on is to be a fancy gazebo sitting in the loop of our driveway. It's days on the road are done.

It is pretty rusty and some places the rust has eaten through the metal . I think with some rust inhibitor, bondo, or fierglass mat ( the mat chopped into fibers and mixed with resin to make a paste ) and a little paint I can get it looking OK again. I don't plan to replace any rusted out metal but fiberglass ,bondo and paint, I can handle.

It has a bellows for a horn...the horn is not working now but maybe eventually it will be. The engine instruments are very few. The ignition key is a toggle switch. It has a gas pedal, and a clutch/brake pedal. Push on the clutch/brake pedal a little and it acts as a clutch. Push a little more and it becomes a brake. The seat is shaped like an old fashioned bicycle seat and is mounted on a pedestal type arrangement. The seat can be pushed forward getting it out of the way allowing the driver to stand and drive.

It's roomy inside . Plenty of space to make a nice seating area and lots of big windows to view the scenery through. I think it will make a good get-a-way place to get away from cats, dogs, and birds for a little time out to myself when needed.

Till next time.

Marion Springer

My broken toe

It was just a couple of days before the gyro fly-in, and I was looking forward to flying with other gyro pilots during the annual event . I was out with my two Dobermans and they were running about like the young dogs they are. I, of course was wearing what I call my desert sandals, also known as very worn out tennis shoes which are so comfortable . Comfortable they may be with holes all over them but they are absolutely no protection at all for little toes, as I learned the hard way. My Dobbie, Connie ,ran past me in an all out run and she clipped the little toe on my right foot as she sailed past me.

Oh, the pain, the pain ! I looked down and four of the toes on my right foot were still pointed in the right direction but the little toe was pointed 90 degrees to the other four. What a strange sight ! My first thought was, " OH NO! I won't be able to fly". I suspected the toe was broken and thought that the doctor would put a cast on my foot or at least put a splint on the damaged toe thereby making it impossible for me to operate the rudder pedals on the gyro. Linda said, " I will take you to the doctor", but visions of a cast on the foot was going through my mind so I refused to go see the doc.

I pulled the little toe back into place and used tape to hold it in place against my foot . Thus bandaged, I attended the fly-in limping badly but getting about and I did fly.

So, Monday after the fly-in we decided that it was time to see the doctor about the little toe. Yes, he said , X-Rays show it is broken. He didn't put a cast or even a splint on it. The toe is taped to it's neighbor and I'm wearing a shoe for broken toes.

When Linda was giving me the old , 'you need to see the doctor routine ', like I do to her at times when she has a hurt I reminded her that Chuck Yeager was flying with broken ribs when he broke the sound barrier. He hid the fact that his ribs were broken lest he be grounded. I felt like I was in good company when I flew with the little toe broken.

Till next time.
Marion Springer

Ed Nielesky, a gyro pioneer

We had a gyro fly-in last weekend on the El Mirage dry lake bed. It's an annual affair and is always on the last weekend of September . Gyro pilots and enthusiasts come from near and far to fly, do a little hangar flying ( that means talking about flying ) and to visit with friends old and new.

One of my old friends, Ed Nielesky, in the photo above ,was there. Ed isn't flying anymore but over the years he has done his share of flying . His son Joe, says of his dad that when Joe was a kid one morning he and his dad left the airport before daylight in an airplane and flew all day. They arrived back at the home field after dark and Joe said his dad said," lets fly some more ". That sounds like Ed all right.

Ed started flying gyrocopters in the early days of the Bensen gyro, back when we had to teach ourselves to fly because there were no two place powered gyro trainers or flight instructors. Ed flew a Bensen gyrocopter with a McCulloch engine for many years.

Th Tee-shirt in the photo has a picture of two gyros flying. The pilot of the gyro in the foreground is Ed back when he was young. The gyro in the background is flown by the late Ken Brock , another gyro pioneer, . The photo was taken by Dr. Igor Bensen, designer of the Bensen Gyrocopter . The Tee-shirts were sold in department stores in the late sixties and early seventies.

The shirt shown here is one of mine that I wore when I was young and slender back in the early 70's. I displayed it at the fly-in as a tribute to my old gyro friend , Ed Nielesky.

I thought you might like to see a bit of history in the gyro world.

Till next time.

Marion Springer

Hong, a most unusual person

Hong is Vietnamese. When I met him a few years back , he introduced himself to me then he said, " I am the enemy". The last sentence refered to his nationality. " You are not my enemy", I told him. "You haven't done anything to me and you are not my enemy ".

Hong has a helicopter that he is adapting to be flown by hand controls because he has no legs . Helicopters have rudder pedals which are operated by the pilots feet, but in Hongs case he is making the rudders controlable by hand. He is doing the work on the helicopter by himself which is just amazing considering that he is wheelchair bound.
The helicopter stands fairly tall. I saw some screws in a cowling up high on the side of the helicopter that were only half way in and waiting to be secured . "How in the world will you reach those screws ?", I asked him. He pointed to the sturdy table alongside the helicopter and said that he would get up on the table so he could reach the screws.

I understand that a person who requires hand controls to fly a helicopter not only has to modify the machine but he has to teach himself to fly it.
I had stopped by to visit with him and to ask him how the work was progressing and he said the progress was good for he had lifted the helicopter off the ground several times the previous morning.
Hong has taken on a tremendous job and is succeeding very well with his project. My hat is off to him .

Till next time.
Marion Springer

Another old friend heard from

Recently I wrote about old friends with whom you have lost touch coming back into your life and how special it is...well, it happened again a few days ago. His name is Hill , first name, that is.
Hill and I did a lot of gyro flying together in the good old days. He was already flying gyros when I was just learning to fly them so he was considered the gyro guru in our group of early gyro pilots.
Somewhere I have a picture of him and my daughter Linda, playing their guitars together. When I locate that picture I will post it and write about the gyro adventures Hill and I and a bunch of other like minded people had back in the 60's and 70's.
I must have put that photo in a really good safe place for I haven't found it yet, but I will, so don't go far away.

Till I find the picture.
Marion

What a Gal !

I read a lot, mostly court room dramas, who dunnits, etc. but other day I bought a book that was truly hard to put down once I started reading it. It was about a woman by the name of Stella Walthall Patterson who, at 80 years of age decided to get away from it all and go live in her primitive cabin on her gold mining claim in the Siskiyou mountians of Northern California.
She wanted to see if she could stick it out for one year. Her cabin was bare bones, set on the side of a mountain above the Kalamath river. She cooked on a wood burning stove like my grandmother did. Her water supply was the water running from a creek and funneled into a pipe that ended close to her cabin. Her bathroom was outback. She made kitchen curtains from flour sacks and dyed them with boiled onion skins which gave them a pale gold color. With no electricty, there was no refrigerator so meat was cooked immediately lest it spoil. Every meal was made from scratch, as there were no restaurants within miles of her cabin. This may sound like a hardship to many people but the eighty year old lady loved every minute of it.
She was called Dear Mad'm by the local people that she got to know. Her unusual name came about because she couldn't remember the name of a man she had hired to work her claim so when she spoke to him she called him, DearSir. He laughed, and responded by calling her DearMad'm. The names stuck and so to everyone she was , " DearMad'm and the man was "DearSir".
The one and only time she fired a rifle, a 30.ought 6, for goodness sake, which she could barely lift, she killed a cougar with one shot. It was a head shot, no less. When DearSir and UpandUp, a name she gave to a tall fellow, came to check on her she told them she had killed a cougar. They laughed. DearSir said something to the effect that her little pea shooter, a small Iver Johnson hand gun couldn't kill a cougar. She lost patience and told them to go find the dead cougar...they left and were back in less than 10 minutes dragging the carcass of the cougar between them.
She enjoyed her life in the midst of nature and when one year was up she decided to remain in her rustic cabin instead of returning to her comfortable home in San Francisco.
While living in the wilds, she wrote a book about her life in the rustic cabin and the people she met in the area. The manuscript was picked up by a publisher and it was eventually published under the title of , Dear Mad'm". The sad thing to me is, she passed away before the book hit the stands and so she never got to read it. She was one spunky lady.

Till next time.
Marion Springer

There's a snake in the house!

The two Dobermans were excited and looking at the base of the display case in the living room. The case stands about 8 inches from the wall so I thought one of the cats was back there teasing the dogs as they sometimes do. But no, the dogs acted more serious than they do when they are playing with the cats, in fact, they were scared. They would approach the display case then jump back.

I keep a card table tucked out of sight behind the case so we took the table out of the space so we could get a good look at what was upsetting my two big brave puppies. Would you believe it was a snake ? First thought, Mojave Green rattler ? Please don't let it be a rattlesnake in the house. Please, Please.

Looking closer I could see it was not a dreaded rattle snake. A rattler has a head shaped like an arrowhead. The head tapers in at the neck whereas other kinds of snakes have a narrow head that just tapers on back without the indentation that gives the head the shape of an arrowhead.

And of course the rattle snake has rattles on the tail although if it is a baby snake it may not have had time to grow rattles so then you must depend on the head shape and the coloring to know if it is dangerous or not. Thankfully the snake behind the display case was a harmless garter snake and we see them frequently in the yard...this was a first , finding one in the house. Not a happy first, I must say!

So, now the big question is, how do we get him out of the house? I am not brave or foolish enough to pick one of those critters up. Our solution was to make the dogs stay out of the way and then Linda opened the screen door and the front door. Meanwhile I had a long probe that I used to bang around on the wall behind the case and that moved the snake toward the door. The snake saw the open door and freedom out he went, probably relieved to get away from two gals and two excited dogs. He exited onto the front porch and with us behind him urging him onward, he went off the edge of the porch and probably on to his hole-in-the ground home and probably as happy to be there as we were to have him gone.

This is desert, home of snakes, a wide variety of birds and coyotes , a few red foxes , desert turtles and who knows what else. We live and let live unless of course, it is a dangerous snake in close quarters and is a threat to one of us then we do what is necessary to be safe. But that said, it is a little disconcerting to find even a harmless snake in the house. How did he get in??? I wish I knew!

Till next time.
Marion Springer