Better to remain silents and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Light and love, while you still have the chance
It’s only 1/8000000000th about you.
Stop thinking you have all the answers. That’s a conceit. Instead, justice, mercy, humility
Dream and hope, then make them come true.
Give up on the past. If you could turn back time, you’d probably screw it up worse than you did the first time. And tomorrow is coming.
Smile. Make eye contact. Hold the door. Say thank you. Be a person.
Welcome the quiet, the sunshine, the day, the night.
Be here now.
I Was Ugly by Richard R. Barron
It’s true. I was ugly.
My sister and I share and firmly believe the narrative that we were both really cute kids, turned into monstrously ugly teenagers, then became reasonably attractive adults.
Sure, we all think we’re ugly at times. We all look at those pictures: the zits, the garish clothes, the awkward eye contact, the crooked posture, the underdeveloped style, the poison of the decade of Nylon or taffeta or parachute pants or Uggs.
But I have real, actual evidence that I was ugly.
One day I was riding the sixth-hour bus home because I stayed late to help a teacher move some chairs. There were only a few of us on the bus. Two rows behind me were two girls my age, about 12 or 13. I could hear them talk, and I heard one of them say, “Look at that guy’s hair. It’s so pretty!”
This got my attention, since they were undoubtedly talking about my hair, so I turned my head slightly so I could hear a little better. She obviously got a glimpse of my face at that point, because she immediately added, “Oh, but he’s ugly.”
So, a jury of my peers, with no prejudice , had convicted me. I was ugly.
Richard Like Hands by Richard R. Barron
“Richard likes hands,” Mackenzee said after I photographed her hands wrapped around a coffee mug.
I tried not to blush or even react, because my love of women’s hands is the worst-kept secret of my life.
At one time, Mackenzee photographed my hands and my wife’s hands together, Abby’s soft grey sweater around her slender wrist, my freckled fingers touching her palm.
The hollow of her hand was one of my favorite places on earth. Her fingertips in my hair was the most intoxicating thing I have ever experienced.
In our sleep, our hands together
One the road, our hands together
In a café, our hands together
At the end, our hands together
My readers know me well enough to know that I am a very well-organized person, particularly when it comes to photography. Part of that is my devotion to keeping things neat (not, as some charmingly unwelcome critics have suggested, “OCD”), and part of it is my fairly sharp memory.
I thought of this as I was scanning some film recently, some of it from as far back as college in the early 1980s. This is the frame of the hour, a self-portrait (not a “selfie” since they weren’t a thing for another 20 years or so) made in my room in a rooming house in Norman, Oklahoma…
At this point in my life, I was living small and cheap, but there is still a lot to unpack in this photo. Keep reading.
I rented the house with five other college-age students, and a man who wore a lot of camo and had us convinced he was a CIA operative. We each had a room, and shared a living room, kitchen, two bathrooms, and a weirdly partially-finished indoor-outdoor courtyard.
I could walk to class and/or the journalism school in about 20 minutes, and did so all the time, since I was often “broke as a joke” (a term I only just heard yesterday from my friend Robert) and didn’t want to scrounge for gasoline money.
I have other images from this era, of course, since I was trying to become a photojournalist, but this one probably has the best story to tell about who I was then.
I lived in this room for two years, December 1983 to November 1985, but to narrow the time a bit, I stopped shaving July 5, 1985 and have been bearded ever since, so it had to be before that.
So what do we see in this masterpiece on Plus-X Pan Film?
At the very top left, the box with the brass hinges is a folding chess set. I was my high school’s Chess Club President and 10th grade chess champion.
On the shelf below that is a jug with a black roll of film sitting in front of it. The black film is probably Kodak Technical Pan Film, and the jug is probably with it because it contains Technidol, the developer specifically for that film. Also on that shelf are books such as Richard Bach’s Illusions, Joesph Heller’s Catch-22, a Bible, and Windmills 1982, the OU English Department’s literary magazine. I also know that Second Skin by John Hawkes is on that shelf too because you can hear my friend Scott mention it on an audio tape one night.
Three shelves down, you can see a grey camera bag with black webbing. I used that bag when I walked to class and only wanted to carry one film camera and a couple of lenses. I later took it to New York City in March 1985. My bigger blue LowePro bag is out of sight below and to the left of it.
Barely visible at the bottom left of this image is my Sony Walkman Cassette player.
Back to the very top of the image, on the middle shelf, that curved thing is an incense holder.
On the shelf below that are some full journal notebooks in various order. I believe the one I am writing in is from 1984. In this image, I am writing with that Paper Mate pen, “The Pen” (link if you didn’t get a chance to read it.)
The next shelf full of record albums will probably evoke a lot of interest in the post-Napster milieu, though at the time, it was just my music collection.
My stereo is next, and among the most interesting items in this image for me, simply because it was probably the best hi-fi I ever owned, but one that I later sold to “upgrade” to stuff that should have been better but wasn’t. It included a small MXR 10-band graphic equalizer. If you took the end caps off it, it was the perfect size for hiding a bag of weed. The Technics receiver next to it sounded great, but suffered from the 1980s linear aesthetic, and I didn’t love sliding that stupid volume control up and down. Note that it is tuned to 100.5 MHz “The Katt,” a radio station I pretended to like because of peer pressure. The tape deck below it was the best I ever owned. It has a 90-minute Maxell “Metaxial” tape in it.
My turntable is hiding behind me.
On my desk is the world’s largest dictionary, placed pretentiously to imply that as a writer, I would need it. Pencil holder, desk lamp, alarm clock, telephone.
At the very top right you can see part of one of the three-way Marantz speakers my parents gave me as a graduation gift.
Below that it the requisite Pink Floyd’s The Wall poster, which came with the album.
The girl in the picture on the wall behind me is Melissa, playing the piano for me at her sorority house in Stillwater in 1984, which supports the timeline of this photo well.
I have often said and written that putting pen to paper is one of the best ways to learn, one of the best ways to express yourself, and one of the best ways to keep track of our very complicated lives. You can see some clinical analysis at Psychiatrist.com. and Pens.com.
Paper Mate, you had me at two hearts.
I’ve been writing in longhand my whole life, and don’t expect to stop. Not only does it seem to liberate my creativity, it is also fun, and has a lasting effect that is even more potent than printing out a typewritten page.
In high school, I carried several pens for class, either the clear Bic with the black caps, or the white “Bic Stic.” I wrote in my journal all day with those, as well as doing my school work with them, but when I got home, I always wrote with my Paper Mate “Double Heart” pen. I didn’t bring it with me to school since I would have lost it; I lost those Bics all the time.
As I wrote with it, the black inlay in and around the hearts wore off. The gold finish paled. The black section of the barrel got scratched and smoothed by my hand. When it ran out of ink, I put in a refill, and I considered running a refill dry an accomplishment, a milestone. A typical regular refill would write for about half of a Mead 120-page college-rules spiral notebook. I don’t know exactly what that word count might be, but my cursory count is about nine words per line, about 30 lines per page. 60 pages of writing might be around 16,000 words?
Can you picture young Richard (mostly without the beard), laboring tenderly to scratch out 16,000 words with this pen?
I bought my last refill for that pen in about 1985. Friends and relatives have me Cross brand pens a few times, but writers know that Cross pens of the era were slick and thin. They were thoughtful gifts, but not great for a lot of longhand.
My mom used mechanical pencils for her crosswords, and when she died, my wife Abby inherited them and used them for crosswords and Sudoku until she died.
Abby also needed green pens for her office (and didn’t like the ones they provided), so she bought a few boxes of green-ink Pentel EnerGel pens.
Abby’s green pens worked fine for her work situation, but I seldom reach for them myself.
At one point years ago at my office, they told us to go to the bank and get some of their free pens, which wrote okay, but felt cheap in the hand. Years later, an editor who was very into fine stuff (fine whiskey, fine wine, fine cigars, and fine writing instruments) bought us a bunch of Pilot G2 pens, and some black-ink Pentel EnerGel pens, which have become my de facto writing instruments.
I like the EnerGel pens with the caps because they seem to have the boldest line stroke, for times when I am writing in notebooks with rough or extra-thick paper.
I bought a dozen Pilot pens and gave them to my fellow Open Mic writers, along with some quarto notebooks.
All this is making me wonder how much ink I have actually spread onto the page in my decades of words. How many miles of lines in my hand? How many pounds heavier were my notebooks after I finished writing in them?
And of course, the final and more interesting question is: how long will those words last? We all seem to understand that the Internet and social media are pretty much gone the second we scroll past them, but what about my ink?
I am loving the newest batch of Pilot G2 pens I bought, which included switching from 0.7mm to 1mm tips, giving me a smoother, more readable stroke.
We’ve all been watching the Internet in the last few years. The disappointing trend has been accelerating away from the fun, promising Internet of the late 1990s and early 2000s, toward an almost Vaudevillian collection of ads, misleading and untrue facts and ideas, and grotesque incivility.
If you really miss Vines, here you go.
For a little while after Twitter became X, I toyed with the idea of using Threads, an app/site literally aimed at replacing Twitter, which I never liked, so I lost interest.
At one point I kind of liked Facebook, and I still enjoy some aspects of it, but in just the past few months, Facebook has gotten burdened with more and more “Sponsored” content, which Facebook has been deliberately making less obvious, mostly by making the word “Sponsored” smaller, or placing Facebook accounts that are actually ads in our feeds, asking us to follow that page.
Meanwhile, I am just about done with YouTube, due to both the longer and longer pre-roll video ads that are never of any interest to me, combined with in-video ads read by the content creator him/herself, also never of any interest to me.
Is this MyTube?
Many of us have been using Facebook for 10 or 15 years, and it has grown to feel comfortable to most of us. We understand how to add friends, find events, post fun stuff, post news, and on and on, so it might be a hard choice to move away from the familiar.
I also made several attempts to get into Instagram, which has devolved into the home for obnoxious know-it-alls under the umbrella term “influencers,” mostly photographers and videographers who wanted to tell us who we should be, whether we should be that or not.
It’s all very frustrating and disingenuous.
Along comes BlueSky, “a microblogging social networking service modeled after Twitter (now X). Users can share text messages, images, and videos in short posts. The service is primarily operated by Bluesky Social, an American benefit corporation.”
The one thing that BlueSky does better than Instagram is that you can post from your web browser.
It is very difficult to predict what’s going to be popular and successful. Look at Tumblr, Friendster, Vine, MySpace, Google+, Xanga, and more.
And, of course, I have said many times, the ultimate log, blog, or journal is the simplest: pen to paper.
Sure, you could find me on BlueSky, or maybe you could show up in real life and buy me a coffee.
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” ~Maya Angelou
My wise 10th grade English teacher, Gil Hernandez, wrote this note in my journal, which he read and graded every nine weeks. The message, “Reach out to those who accept and not those slap your hand,” is obvious to me now, but one that took me years and years to learn and relearn.
An important truth I have grudgingly learned over the years: most people are very happy to be very unhappy.
I thought about this for a long time after someone I once liked decided to set me straight about what a terrible person I am. It was sudden, unexpected, and intentionally cruel. It was abuse.
My first clue was when I wished her a happy birthday in a text message, and she replied, “I don’t feel very happy.” My second clue was when I saw her and told her she looked good, she declined the compliment.
Of course, there was a long history of clues about her, from the fact that all my friends, and even some of her friends, told me she wouldn’t be good for me (or anyone), to the fact that when she divorced and I asked her out years ago, she told me she “didn’t think she deserved” my affections “after what’s happened.”
Back to last month: It seemed like we were having a nice lunch, then she just suddenly laid into me, in the form of a 90-second rundown of what she hated about me, that was loud enough for other patrons in the restaurant to hear. As she berated me, I watched her open her purse and pull out a $20, which she threw onto the table to pay for her lunch, then said, “Don’t follow me out!”
It was surreal.
As I turned this all around in my head, I kept thinking about her actions, and the ways that we define sociopaths, and it really started to fit. Sociopaths lack empathy, don’t feel guilty about hurting others, are often impulsive and prone to fits of rage, and are often openly hostile in inappropriate situations.
And part of me wants to know why it would even be of interest to say these things. Why did she ever answer the phone? Why did she call me back? Why did she agree to see me? Why? If she really hated me all that much, why did she ever have anything to do with me?
Mission accomplished, though, right? One fewer person who thinks highly of her, one more excuse for hating herself, one more reason to be angry at the world.
Without question, her goal couldn’t have been to change anything for the better.
And, although it definitely isn’t my problem, she is one of the least happy people I have ever known.
It was interesting to see several people offer up explanations for her behavior, such as the death of a loved one or health problems, but those are excuses, not reasons, and that is one of the ways sociopaths continue to manipulate things, by getting adherents to believe their excuses.
I am also cognizant of the fact that part of why I was willing to put up with her was that she was cute. I know that makes me sound shallow, but at least I am admitting it.
The bottom line, then, is for me to remain vigilant about abusers, gaslighters, and sociopaths, recognize ways to disarm them and keep them out of my life, all while still remaining open to, and able to recognize, real human interactions and intimacy.
An old saying says, “Trust in Allah, but tie your camel.”
Two of my long-time photographer friends and fellow Alan Parsons Project fans attended an AP² concert recently, so it got me thinking about what songs I loved and hated from this long-lived band.
One of my friends made some video of the Alan Parsons Project concert he attended. This is a screen shot from that night.
Most of the instrumentals are robotic and pointless: Hawkeye, Cloudbreak, Breakaway, Urbania, Pipeline, Nucleus, etc.
On the other hand, instrumentals like Voyager and I Robot are pretty dope.
As a whole album, Tales of Mystery and the Imagination rivals some of the greatest albums ever created.
A lot of their songs are locked into my college years by association, and a couple of albums are directly connected to the beginning of the CD revolution, in the mid-1980s. Some of my first CDs to replace vinyl albums were Alan Parsons Project, though my very first CD was Peter Gabriel’s So.
Here is a list of what might be my favorites, but I could add to it if I shuffle past something I left out.
Standing on Higher Ground (from Gaudi)
The Same Old Sun (from Vulture Culture)
Somebody Out There (from I Robot)
Damned if I Do (from Eve)
Time (from Turn of a Friendly Card), though this song is cemented to an event in my life in 1981.
The Eagle Will Rise Again (from Pyramid)
Silence and I (from Eye in the Sky)
If I Could Change Your Mind (from Eve)
Oh Life (There Must Be More) (from Try Anything Once)
To One in Paradise (from Tales of Mystery and the Imagination)
Turn It Up (from Try Anything Once)
I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You (from I Robot)
This last one is connected to a story about human ugliness and pettiness. In about 1986, I was visiting a friend in Norman, Oklahoma. Among the other guests were a shallow, great-looking college girl, and a chubby supernurd who, like a lot of supernurds, hated good-looking, successful, popular people. He found I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You in the host’s record collection, turned it up, and glared at her through the whole song. She didn’t even notice.
So, what are my conclusions about the Alan Parsons Project? It was one of the important influences on 70s and 80s pop sounds. Some of it is lifelessly technical, but other songs in their catalog are very moving. And like a lot of bands, their early stuff is mostly their better stuff, because of a feedback loop: they are more popular, so they make better records, then they are less popular so they make worse records. But which came first, the bad music, or the absent fans?
Here are some of my Alan Parsons Project CDs, stacked in a way that reminds me of the band’s technical perfection.
A couple of searches and shared memories resulted in finding these old photos of my late wife Abby.
Abby and I smile for a snapshot at a courtyard café on the east coast of Florida in the Summer of 2007. She looks so amazing in this image.
It started when my sister asked how her husband could take better pictures of her, and I reminded her of a time in 2007 when I posed, lit, and directed Abby for a portrait in my mom’s house in Florida.
I made this image of Abby in my mom’s living room in Palm Coast Florida. My sister noted how well Abby posed and how natural she was in front of the camera.
We all had point-and-shoot cameras of the era when traveling, since cameras on our cell phones then were marginal at best.
My sister and I had identical Canon Powershot A560s, while Abby used an Olympus Stylus 7030a.I don’t know who suggested it, but this picture of my wife, my sister and me, made in the full-length sliding hall closet door in Mom’s house in Florida, still makes me smile to this day.Abby was always great in front of the camera.
“Richard, stop being infatuated with me!” ~Pam, October 1990
Toward the end of her life, Pam lived almost exclusively in bed, often unable to sleep.
Today is the first anniversary of the death of Pam Hudspeth, a long-time friend, one-time girlfriend, and fellow journalist. She was just 58 when she died.
A couple of nights ago, I had vivid dreams about her all night. Lucid dreamers know how much that can color your thoughts, so for the past few days, she has been right here with me.
Journal, April 17, 1992: “Pam made a face when I told her I’d like to read her writing. Her whole life has unprepared her for the kind of openness I offer.”
Journal, Friday, May 1, 1992: “My hands smell like Pam’s perfume. And her soft voice touches me with illusion.”
That was just as the Dread Poets Society was coming together. It would be another month of writing and meeting to critique our writing that Pam and I would … hmm.
Pam wrote a lot. To put that in sharper perspective, Pam probably wrote more in a day that I do in a year, and that’s a lot, but Pam wrote in rants, like wild rainstorms of emotion, most of it anger.
These are some of Pam’s journals, though some are missing, and, knowing her, there are more that were hidden, relocated, or destroyed.
Journal, May 13, 1992: “I think Pam enjoys loneliness,” Frank told me.
Journal, Friday, May 15, 1992: “Pam looked so beautiful to me.”
I made a note in the margin that night that said, “Pam apologized to Melissa, Craig and Frank for being what she phrased as, ‘a judgmental bitch.'”
Pam, I added in that entry, “is a puzzle, wrapped around a mystery, surrounded by an enigma.”
Later in the evening, Pam confided in me that, “I don’t know if I can ever be with anyone again. I guess that’s what’s bothering me.”
If I could have, I would have wrapped my arms around her and taken away all of her fear and pain and heartache and insecurity.
Journal, May 23, 1992: “I thought about Pam a lot today. If she were here, I would smile at her.”
By June, we were something of an item, but she struggled with it. At a Chautauqua event, for example, she wouldn’t sit with me, and wouldn’t say why. Trying to love her was always like that; she would only let me get close to her in fits and starts. As spring 1992 turned to summer, she tried to let me in more, and even shared with me a story about her life she had mostly kept secret. Afterwards, she said, “I never told that to a man.”
Then she would emotionally retreat, and getting back to her meant navigating barbed wire, then walking on eggs.
Journal, June 8, 1992: “Now, with the sweet smell of her perfume lingering on me from holding her for a long, long time, and the even sweeter memory of her face under the streetlight as I held her hands, I feel like our time together was too short.”
Journal, July 14, 1992: “Pam was so glad to see me. She smiled and held my hand… she had just come from her counselor, who had told her she and I have a ‘healthy’ relationship. She told me I open up a sensual aspect of her she’d never really known before. ‘I’m trying to think of anyone I’ve ever met like you,’ she told me. ‘But of course, there’s no one.'”
Journal, July 26, 1992: “She tells me that she’s not as excited about seeing me as I am about seeing her – ‘I look forward to it, but I don’t do cartwheels.’ Then she turns around and tells me our relationship is ‘very wonderful,’ and that she has pre-visualized our wedding.”
She seemed annoyed by my vegetarianism. At some point that summer, she left a message on my answering machine that I wrote down verbatim: “Meat loaf. Pot roast. Yankee pot roast. English pot roast. Cheeseburger. T-bone steak cut from the side of a cow. Round steak. Rib eye. Fillet mignon. Fried crab. Oysters on the half shell. Pork ribs. Barbecued beef ribs, dripping, glistening with barbecue sauce. McD’s Big Macs. Oooo, I have a deep voice! Hamburger meat, nice and lean and frying in a pan forever and ever. Pork chops. Chicken, broiled, baked, fried. Chicken noodle soup. Beefy vegetable soup…uh… (beep.)”
*************
A couple of months ago, I was flipping through old journal pages, looking for writing ideas for Open Mic Night, which I think of as “journal mining.” I found the entry in which I noted that Pam had gotten married again, just 20 months after she and I parted company. I got pretty mad when I did that little piece of arithmetic, since at the time of our breakup, she made all kinds of noise about not being able to be there for me, can’t be a in relationship, having a lot of work to do on herself, blah blah. Married 20 months later made that all sound like the usual breakup lies.
This is Pam in around 1999 or so, based on her shirt and her name tag from a church “encounter” she and her then-husband attended.
In an email on August 1, 2022, Pam wrote, “Richard. You are the ONLY man – I could feel like our ENERGY … when we got to hug each other after nearly 25 years … I’ve never EVER in my life felt safer with a man – and that man is YOU. MY WHOLE LIFE – YOU have been the SAFEST, uncurl, loving, lovely, allowing my stupidity, being there no matter what .. ..I just had to tell you that because I’m not sure I ever did.”
Her friends and I know that the best song to go with her life and death was The Girl with the Weight of the World in Her Hands by The Indigo Girls…
“With the half logic language of the sermon she delivers And the way she smiles so knowingly at me gives me the shivers…”
Yes, the way she smiled at me; that lyric is exactly right. Pam knew it too. She just didn’t know how to put down the weight, and stop being the girl with the weight of the world in her hands.
Pam had a look and a way about her that was very attractive to me.
Journal, April 1, 1994: I got checked out on the Piper PA28 Cherokee 160 this afternoon. I flew it just great, start to finish. The instructor said he “really enjoyed” flying with me. It wasn’t a perfect day. The wind was at 220 at 20, and it was quite squirrelly on final, all cross-controlled.
It weights about the same as the Cessna 172, but the wing (the infamous Hersey-bar wing) is very different, so when you pull the throttle to idle, it comes down!
On the other hand, it was docile in the stall in all configurations, showing no inclination to drop a wing. In slow fight, we were surprised that it required full “up” trim. It only buffeted mildly in the stall, and only with full flaps.
I was very happy to be in the air again.
Journal, April 2, 1994: The Cessna 152 I rent in Shawnee made a forced landing in nearby Tecumseh after the pilot ran it out of fuel. The pilot told the newspaper the right tank’s gauge read half-full. What a moron.
Journal, April 6, 1994: I made a great flight to Holdenville and back this evening. It was rough at all altitudes, but I made a smooth approach and landing.
Journal, April 16, 1994: I started with four landings: short, soft, no-flap, forward slip. I’m still sharp.
It was an absolutely perfect night for flight. After flying northwest for a bit to check out a grass fire, I headed into the setting sun. I called OKC approach. The controller was confused – she gave me three different squawk codes. But we worked it out. I made a touch-and-go at Wiley Post, then got vectored downtown, then to Norman, where I did another touch-and-go, then headed home.
Journal, April 23, 1994: Flew today. Visibility in haze was no better than about six miles, but it was enough. I got N172FJ at Shawnee and flew it over to Seminole at 6500 feet. I had a great time, but my landings in the Skyhawk need work.
Journal, August 11, 1994: I shot seven of the best landings of my life this evening on runway 12. The wind was right out of 120. Normal, short field, soft field, no flap, forward slip, everything.
The radio is playing chants. I curl beneath my electric blanket on the floor and listen, thinking about the day, my friends, my body and soul, my past and future, illusions and reality, and this very perfect moment.
“He who yields to fear or pain or anger is a fugitive slave.” ~Marcus Aurelius
“I really enjoy your writing,” the Ultimate Waif told me. Later, for some reason, she ghosted me.
MAP told me that I can turn a phrase as well as anyone she’s ever read, but that I lack a “sellable” cohesive structure. She says I don’t take the reader into account.
I’m thinking about you, all the moments we shared and who we are to each other now. I’m thinking about what it would be like if you walked though my front door right now.
I remember she wanted to go to church with me, but when it came time for Communion, she shrank away and said, “I’m not a member here.”
“It’s okay,” I told her. “All Baptized Christian are welcome to receive the Sacraments.” It was the last time I took Communion.
… if the right thing is revealed…
Quote I read somewhere today: “Sour sixteen, when I was cooler than God.”
Later: I wasn’t ready to stop punishing myself for the cruelty of others.
All humans have weakness, but we don’t have to be weakness.
Brocimole. Don Spankenburger. Cowpotamus. Chili with Irish potatoes: chili con Blarney!
Please note: this entry contains descriptions of violence and death that some readers might find upsetting.
I read this at Open Mic Night Monday, October 7, 2024…
There’s something about seeing freshly-dead, burned-up bodies that puts an air of frivolity around the day’s business.
The lives of four people, on a business trip, were rather suddenly and terrifyingly turned to charcoal.
Yes, there’s something about it. There’s something about being rendered unrecognizable by fire.
There’s something about being stiff and frozen in the position in which you must have had your last thoughts.
There’s something about being hauled into a crash bag and tossed into the back of an ambulance.
I know it happens every day, all over the world, but when it happens just north of Sandy Creek, it somehow means more to me.
It reminds me that I am in that plane or that car or that building every day, and there, but for the grace of blind luck, go I.
I wonder now if they had their affairs in order. I wonder whose heart was broken this afternoon as I watched, from outside my newspaper, the first plumes of smoke rise from the ground north of town.
Do I have my affairs in order? Am I ready to leave my body behind, heavy and stiff and helpless?
And is that what life is about? Do some business, get a bite to eat, go down in flames?
Is this another one of those “make every moment count” speeches? Sure, I guess. The four people in that plane today might have been saints or satans, but now they are simply dead.
Richard R. Barron | The Ada News (FILE) — Byng’s Dan Randolph, Dee Harrison and Joe Daniels were the first firemen at the scene of an airplane crash near Byng Tuesday afternoon. The fiery crash, which killed four persons, occurred just minutes after the plane took off from Ada Municipal Airport.
Last year I mused about my second year of grieving the death of my wife Abby. I noted that it seemed harder, somehow, than that first year. You can read that entry here (link).
Now, in the third year of grieving, it seems even harder.
Abby’s beautiful smile, willowy hands, and golden hair shine in the golden Colorado sun as she and I make our way from one point to the next on one of those perfect days together.
One of the cruelties of memory, at least in my case, is that I am playing back so many bad memories right now. Three years ago, Abby’s health was failing, and although I tried to take care of her, I didn’t always succeed.
Marry that to the even crueler idea that she and her health also failed me… it’s hard to admit that, because it makes me seem selfish, even to myself.
Odder still, the weather in my part of Oklahoma has been very beautiful the last few days, and while you would think it would cheer me up, it has the opposite effect of acutely, stingingly reminding me of all those gorgeous, sunny fall days Abby and I would load up the truck and head west for our annual anniversary vacation.
Abby holds our Chihuahua Summer in her lap at The Hollar in Madrid, New Mexico, in the fall of 2019. It hardly seems like five years ago, but it also seems like forever ago.
One thing I found out recently is that our favorite restaurant in the world, a place called The Hollar in Madrid, New Mexico, went out of business in December 2023. We both loved it there, and having lunch at The Hollar became one of our regular destinations when we travelled out west.
“I could live here,” Abby told me more than once in Madrid.
I know I’ll be okay, but these thoughts and feelings are on my mind right now.
I was saddened to learn that The Hollar in Madrid, New Mexico had closed, and I know Abby would have been even sadder.
This fall has been cool and dry, so I’ve been taking every opportunity to work outside.
One of my oddest chores has been efforts to remove chicken wire from the back yard fence. Abby had originally installed it to keep in her Chihuahua Gabby, but we reinforced it when we had goats. The problem with chicken wire is that you can’t run a string trimmer on the grass at the fence, since it will shred the string.
As time passed, grass and vines grew between the fence and the chicken wire, and since I don’t have goats or small dogs in the back yard, I decided to rip out the chicken wire and pull up the vines and grass.
It’s been a lot of work, and that equals a lot of movement, a lot of fresh air, and a lot of steps.
It is a task, and it has purpose.
Tonight I felt bad for people who run on treadmills while lawn care companies cut their grass. I felt bad for the wealthy, who drive giant SUVs to the gym while housekeepers clean their homes.
I know those are all choices, and I also know some of those choices are made for us. Tonight, though, and many nights, I work hard, and thrive on task and purpose.
A pair of my work gloves sits on a pile of grass and vines I raked up after pulling them out of the fence in the back yard.
Radio communications listening is a fun and interesting hobby.
Here is an overview of scanner frequencies in and around Ada, Oklahoma, which is in Pontotoc County. Some agencies use OKWIN, a growing Project 25 Phase 1 system, in some parts of Oklahoma, which can be monitored with a digital-capable scanner.
Many other radio systems still use conventional, non-digital signals that can be monitored with most programmable scanning radios sold today, or in the past 30 or so years. Some very old scanner radios use crystals to define the frequencies they monitor, and conventional two-way systems can be monitored with the correct crystals.
Most systems use repeaters, duplex radios with antennas located on hills or towers, which listen for mobile radios on an input frequency, and retransmit those signals at a higher power level on an output frequencies. Modulation is frequency modulation (FM), and frequencies in this list are in megahertz (Mhz).
Sidebar note: one misapprehension about repeaters is that if you transmit more power into them, they radiate more power. Repeater output power is always the same (usually 25 watts) whether you are transmitted to them with a 1-watt handheld or 100-watt mobile radio mounted in the truck of your car.)
These systems are listed with their code squelch tone or number in parenthesis.
Pontotoc County Sheriff’s Office analog dispatch:
154.65 (151.4), 156.15 input, used for Allen Police dispatch (which is out of range of OKWIN), multi-agency storm spotting, and occasional special operations.
Pontotoc County Firefighters Association, paging and dispatch:
155.325 (151.4), 153.77 input. East fireground: 154.965. West fireground: 154.355. Country firefighters also use any of the nationwide VTAC frequencies, which Emergency Management can designate on the scene; used often when multiple counties are involved.
Ada Fire Department, paging and dispatch:
154.175 (162.2), 155.295 input. They supposedly use a discrete fireground frequency, listed as 154.01, but I seldom hear anything there (even when I am on a scene), and often hear fireground communications on dispatch.
Byng Fire Department:
154.25 and 151.1525. Byng is paged out on Pontotoc County dispatch, but uses 154.25 for fireground, talk-around, and tornado siren activation. I don’t hear anything on 151.1525.
State fire:
154.13. I often hear AirEvac Life Team helicopters on this frequencies as they approach crash and fire scenes, but they often do not get a response.
Ada Police:
158.775 (114DPL), 153.875 input. Ada PD tried to go digital in 2011, and again in 2018, but remain analog as of late 2024. At one time, they used 158.73 as their talk-around frequency, referred to as “Channel 3.”
Ada Emergency Management:
151.73, 159.81 input, but they only routinely use it as a back up for Ada PD. EM also lists 155.9325 as their digital option, but I don’t know if they use it. There are statewide repeaters on 155.235, including in Ada, but all I hear on it is the weekly check-in.
Mercy Hospital Ada EMS:
155.385 (151.4), 153.77 input. Ambulances call the emergency room on 155.34 to give patient reports. Mercy Hospital security is on 154.505, and housekeeping is on 153.3875.
AirEvac Lifeteam Ada, Okla., dispatch:
158.4. This frequency isn’t listed locally, but AirEvac is loud and clear across Pontotoc County on this frequency. AirEvac can be heard on 160.155 in Garvin County.
Other services I hear all the time on analog FM are…
Call-a-Ride, 151.0025 (223DPL). Holcim Cement, 462.2, 467.2 input. Maybe City of Ada: 155.49, DTMF tones only. The City of Ada lists 158.3 as their street maintenance frequency, but they mostly use cell phones and text messages instead.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol:
They mostly use OKWIN, but they operate car-to-car on 855.9875 analog, and in rural areas I still occasionally here them using the old VHF-low channels 44.7 and 45.22 for car-to-car, but my guess is that they are no longer installing low-band radios, so when the existing ones die, that will be the end of low band. At one time, area police could call other agencies on 155.67 “state net,” but that frequency has been mostly silent in recent years.
Surrounding counties:
Hughes County Sheriff and EMS, 151.0775. Coal County Sheriff and Fire, 154.04 and 154.415. Murray County EMS, 155.205. Garvin County Sheriff 151.085, Stratford Fire and Police, 153.935.
Other areas to monitor are aviation, 108-136Mhz.
Amateur radio spans the entire radio spectrum. A good place to start listening to amateur radio might be 146.52, which is the nationwide simplex calling frequency.
Radio scanners range in age, price and capability, everything from a $15 16-channel garage sale scanner to a $1000 9000-channel fully-featured rig.
There is a clever saying that goes, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today.”
That’s how I feel and act all the time. When I bought new tires for my Nissan Juke this week, it inspired me to hand-wash the car, which I finished around dark, but I decided that I wanted to do more, so the next morning, I took advantage of the morning cool and vacuumed, Armor-alled, Leather-alled, and Rain-Xed both the Juke and my Nissan Frontier.
I bought this car 11 years ago, and it still looks, and drives, like a champ.
It certainly wasn’t going to happen by itself, and since I am always happy with my vehicles when they are clean, it seemed pretty straightforward: get to it, and get it done.
Another thing on my mind this week has been my weight. Anyone who saw me this week would argue that I was off-base, and my weight was fine. But when it the best time to watch your weight? Before you get heavy.
I photographed this half-glass or orange juice because I liked the light on it, but it reminded me that fruit juices are better is all respects than drinks with processed sugar.
Managing my weight is unfairly easy, since I tend to have a taste for foods that are inherently good for me, like fruits and vegetables. I actively dislike processed sugars like those found in cake, candy, and doughnuts, and I ever prefer – yes, actually prefer – to snack on fruit. I haven’t had a soft drink of any kind since, hmm… I guess I drank a coffee-flavored Coke left behind after Abby died, since the alternative was throwing it away.
So there really isn’t a better time than right now to do something, get something done, help someone, eat more nutritious foods, let someone know you are glad they are there, even something as simple as holding a door open for someone with a smile.
Today is the day.
I found veggie “skallops” on Amazon. They make a nice addition to my veggie stir fry.
As some of you might know, I am a licensed amateur radio operator. My FCC-assigned call sign is kc5tfz, which is also the custom license tag on my Nissan Juke. I have several friends who are licensed “ham” radio operators. Almost universally, we use our amateur radio privileges less and less. I got my license originally to aid in storm spotting, but like most communications in the 21st century, amateur radio has been, or is in the process of being, replaced by the Internet, or more fundamentally by the “datastream.” Even our personal two-way radio needs are better met by Family Radio Service handheld radios available everywhere. Abby and I each carried one when we hiked.
Uniden, Radio Shack, Kenwood, Icom and more; I don’t have a favorite brand, but certain radios have stood out as the best over the years.
I have made a few antennas in my day, like the occasional j-pole or quarter wave, but I was never all that into it. I am actually pretty good at identifying antennas on towers and vehicles.
As I was driving to Utah a few years ago, I had lots of time on my hands, so I decided to make a list of all the police scanners I have owned. It was no small number, due in some part to improvements in technology and changes in the scanning environment, but also due to scanners wearing out and dying. Sometimes even boredom takes a role, and I’ll pick up a scanner as a bargain from a pawn shop or a garage sale just to play with it.
I have a vague recollection of picking up some scanner traffic on an analog multi-band radio I got as a birthday gift when I was a young teenager. I was 15, because I noted it in my journal. “Does this subject want to breath or bleed?” I quoted in my writings. The question was asked to determine if a DUI suspect wanted to take a breathalyzer test or a blood test. I suspect this was on an unpublished frequency, since my radio didn’t pick up the UHF band used at the time by Lawton police. That was my first experience with listening to public safety communications.
This was my communications stack in the mid 1990s.
In 1982, I got an internship in a newspaper in Lawton, and there was a scanner in the newsroom, and one in each of the cars the paper owned that we photographers used. I recall that one of the scanners was the venerable Bearcat III 8-channel crystal-controlled units, and the other a 16-channel programmable. They were getting long in the tooth even then, with the emergence of better microprocessor-controlled scanners, but they got the job done, since Lawton only used about four frequencies on a regular basis.
The Bearcat BC-100 was among the first programmable scanners. Although it wasn’t a great radio, it worked, and I used it for a few years in the 1980s.
I was so enamored of the notion of “spying” on the police and fire departments (which prior to that I thought was illegal) that for my July birthday I asked for a scanner, and my parents obliged. Thus began a hobby that has lasted to this day. The list of scanners I owned throughout the years goes something like this (red ones are dead):
Bearcat BC-150, 10 channel (birthday gift 1982.)
Realistic Pro-21 4 channel crystal scanner (scanned VHF great, but very poor for UHF, which it was supposed to do. I had the front end readjusted a couple of times, which didn’t really help.)
Bearcat III, 8 channel crystal (garage sale, installed in my first car, a 1973 VW.)
Bearcat BC-100, 16 channel, the first ever programmable handheld scanner (bad battery setup, bad antenna design. I later got one from Ebay just for kicks.)
Fox BMP 10/60 10 channel, died decades ago, replaced with a half-working copy from Ebay for$20 in 2023; red LED display plus red LEDs for each channel, with Service Search (installed in VW and later Renault Alliance.)
Radio Shack Realistic Pro-2001, 16-channel, acquired in 2023 for $30 from a guy who called it “untested,” but it works fine. Interesting hybrid of crystal-controlled-style LEDs for each channel plus red LED display on the face.
The Fox BMP 10/60 sits atop the Realistic Pro-2001.
Radio Shack Realistic Pro-31, 10 channel handheld (big radio that uses six AA batteries, hard to carry, but nice and loud.)
Realistic Pro-37, 200-channel handheld. Regarded as one of the best handheld scanners in 1987, I got one from Ebay in 2022. Uses six AA batteries.
Realistic Pro-2006, 400 channel base station. Regarded as one of the best base station scanners in late 1980s, I got one from Ebay in 2022. Sticky keys meant I had to open it up several times to spray with tuner cleaner, but it mostly works. Electroluminescent display is sketchy.
Realistic Pro-2004, 300 channel base station. This was regarded as the base station scanner to own in 1986, so I got one from Ebay in 2022. It turned out that bad soldering during production meant none of these work any more. It looks good in my stack, however.
Radio Shack Pro-2021 200 channel. I bough this radio new in 1986 when it got marked down and discontinued, but despite the fact that it scans too slowly, it receives well and is loud and clear. I had it my car for a short time in the early 1990s, and it currently resides in the garage. In early 2024, I saw one in mint condition on Ebay for $25 and bought it, so I have two of these.
Cobra SR-15 100 channel handheld (with leather case, one of the best handhelds I ever owned.) Update: in 2020, I found one of these for $10 on eBay and bought it for its nostalgia value. It looks great but doesn’t run well.
Regency MX-3000 80 channel (slanted front, blue display, worst receiver circuit of any I owned.)
Uniden BC760XLT 100 channel mobile. Good audio, good form for car mounting. But mine forgets all it’s frequencies when power is interrupted, so I have relegated it to single-channel listening and band searches.
Uniden Bearcat BC560XLT 16-channel with 2-digit display x2 (very cheap, good speaker – one was destroyed in a crash in 1990.)
Sporty’s Pilot Shop A300 aviation band transceiver.
Icom IC-A3 aviation band transceiver given to me by a ham radio buddy.
Uniden 500 UBC9000XLT 500-channel (most expensive scanner I even bought, died within three years.)
Radio Shack Pro-2026 200 channel
Bearcat BD144XL 16 channel (pawn shop, gave to a friend.)
Radio Shack Pro-23 50 channel handheld (bought for next to nothing from a coworker.)
One way to make mobile antennas work in more than one band is to include traps, coils, or, in the case of the Diamond NR790A, a combination of the two. The NR790A is a 5/8λ over 5/8λ over 1/2λ collinear antenna. Totaling almost five feet in length, this is a very capable antenna.
Radio Shack Pro-94 1000 channel handheld (confusing “trunk” radio programming, terrible battery performance, tinny audio), in 2024 I gave it to Jamie and Ian.
Radio Shack Pro-2035 1000 channel
Radio Shack Pro-2039 200 channel
Alinco DR M06TH 6-meter amateur (not really a scanner, but will scan 30-50 Mhz in addition to 6m; at home, fed by Cushcraft AR-6)
Cherokee AH-50 6-meter amateur handheld (not really a scanner; 6m; not in use.)
Radio Shack HTX-202 and HTX-404 handheld 2m and 70cm transceivers (not scanners)
Icom IC-2820H, great, very capable dual band amateur radio with full scanning ability, including tone squelch; my primary news-gathering radio in my Nissan Juke
Icom IC-2350H amateur dual-band + public safety, installed as a second radio in the Nissan Juke
Icom IC-207H amateur dual-band + public safety, currently in my stack in the house
Icom IC-V8000, a high-wattage 2-meter radio mounted in the Nissan Frontier
Kenwood TH-79A amateur handheld + public safety
Kenwood TH-22A amateur handheld + public safety
Uniden BD175XL 16 channel (given to me by Abby’s late father)
Radio Shack Pro-2030 80 channel (died, fall 2024)
Radio Shack Pro-2028 50 channel
Uniden BC72XLT “Nascar” handheld 100 channel (one of the best handheld scanners I own because of its small size and good audio.)
Uniden BCT75XLT 300-channel handheld scanner, given to me by Robert Stinson, who bought it and two others at a thrift store, giving one to Scott and one for himself as well.
The Radio Shack Pro-2052 is typical of the scanners from the 1990s, with 1000-channels and analog-only 800mhz trunking. As of September 2024, I haven’t exactly decided how I want to deploy it.
Radio Shack Pro-2055. After installing an additional quarter-wave on the roof, I poked around a couple of pawn shops and found this radio for next to nothing.
Radio Shack Pro-163. This radio is very similar to the Pro-2055.
Radio Shack Pro-2020 20-channel scanner of 1978 vintage, bought from Ebay for its nostalgia. I took it apart and cleaned it out with contact cleaner, which was a chore, but which worked. I paid about $10 for it. It is the heaviest and largest scanner I own, maybe 10 pounds and the size of a cassette deck.
Radio Shack Pro-2002, a 50-channel radio, also as a bargain from Ebay.
Icom IC-2200H. I got this from a pawn shop for $80.
Baofeng UV-5R multi-role transceiver. This tiny radio is all the rage, so I bought one in June 2019 for next to nothing to see what the fuss was all about. Read it’s review here (link). I had three of them, but the red one seems to have disappeared.
Uniden Pro501HH Citizens Band radio. I got this recently after patiently scouring garage sales, estate sales, and used equipment websites like Ebay, with no luck at all finding anything CB at all. I don’t expect to use it a lot, but the tipping point for me was learning that Jeep events still use Citizen’s Band.
Radio Shack DX-394 all-mode communications receiver, bought on eBay in 2023 as a replacement for my long-dead DX-400, which got done-in by corroded batteries.
Radio Shack HTX-212, 2-meter mobile, bought from “silent key” auction from the Pontotoc County Amateur Radio Association.
The Radio Shack HTX-212 2-meter mobile radio looks good in my stack with it’s green display.
Radio Shack Pro-2052, 1000-channel scanner, bought from “silent key” auction from the Pontotoc County Amateur Radio Association.
Radio Shack Pro-91, 150-channel handheld scanner, Pontotoc County Amateur Radio Association, won’t power up.
Tram 1400, 5/8λ over 5/8λ UHF collinear, silent key auction; put it up outside.
Diamond NR790A, three-section dual band (2-meter and 70-cm) collinear; put up outside.
Radio Shack DX-394
I had a few Citizen’s Band (CB) radios over the years, and found them to be just as useless as most of the internet is today, littered with vulgar, ignorant, undisciplined chatter.
The Radio Shack Pro-2055 was added to my home stack July 2012. Although it is not able to be rebanded, its low pawn shop price makes it a good choice for local listening in my area.
My wife was annoyed by the daily chatter of the scanner, but I am able to filter it very effectively, and my ears perk up every time I heard a code that corresponds to something that might be newsworthy, like an injury accident, house fire, missing person, high-speed chase, severe weather, and more. The best example of my brain filtering scanner traffic was one night in March 2000. I kept the scanner on at a very low volume level, so that I could barely hear the routine comms, but sirens or urgent voices would wake me, as did, that night, the very urgent words, “The roof of the Ada Evening News is on fire!” After hearing that, I was downtown covering one of Ada’s biggest fires, of the Evergreen Feed Mill, in about three minutes.
To celebrate, I flew, of course. First, I flew the 150 alone to the practice area and did some spins. It had been a while, and guess what? Spins are still a huge rush.
At 9 p.m., I flew two short field landings on runway 12, the second one short enough that I got the airplane stopped before the intersection with runway 17.
I had asked my young friend Amber if she wanted to fly with me. I picked her up at the terminal, and we flew to Seminole and back, about 30 miles, in the gathering darkness. It was an absolutely beautiful flight.
Almost back to Ada, we followed Dr. Chad in N5434E on five mile final. The approach was so beautiful that I didn’t want it to end, so I flew the missed approach. Both times I flew the VASI all the way to the numbers perfectly.
That birthday with my shy friend Amber in the right seat was perfect.
Right after I got my pilot certificate in May 1993, I got checked out to rent airplanes at airports in my area.
Two Ada High School students tagged along with me for a story on the Cougar News Network, including this young lady in the back seat. The aircraft, a Cessna 172, belonged to Gary Rhynes, who rented it to me very regularly. I still have the video they made that day.
N2870Q, a Cessna 172, belonged to Dub. Dub and I were the first students to graduate from Phil’s class at the Ada airport. That was Saturday morning, May 1, 1993. Dub took his check ride in his airplane, and I took mine in the rental, N6059G, a really nice Cessna 150.
That 150, named Old Gomer, was apparently involved in a September 2023 crash in Huntsville, Texas that killed both occupants.
In April 1997, I ferried Dub’s Cessna to Tulsa, where he was having work done on a Piper twin he had recently bought. It flew like every other Cessna 172. I was surprised to learn that in November 2005, someone (I don’t think it was Dub) crashed this airplane after running it out of fuel in Rock Springs, Wyoming.
Abby and I pose with a Cessna 152, N6202M, in the spring of 2003.
Another Cessna 152 I rented pretty regularly, including to fly with Abby in the spring of 2003, N6202M, was demolished in a fuel-exhaustion crash in 2018 at Horseshoe Bay, Texas.
It hurts my bones to see a plane Abby and I had so much fun in get crunched like this.
For a while I was renting a Piper Cherokee 160, N5422W. It was easy to fly, but had a couple of oddities I didn’t like, such as the Johnson bar flaps, and the overhead crank for elevator trim.
I took it to Tulsa a couple of times. The most interesting Tulsa trip involved a stubborn thunderstorm directly over my destination, Tulsa International Airport, which happened to be close to where a friend lived at the time.
I dutifully listened to the ASOS, but instead of weather and NOTAMS, all I heard was, “developing situation; contact ATC.” Weird. On the other radio I heard an American Airlines flight asking to return to Oklahoma City. Weirder. I called ATC and they told me a thunderstorm was parked right over Tulsa International, and hadn’t moved in an hour. I told them I would land at Riverside, which was reporting VFR. The Riverside controller had me do a right downwind for 17, and said he would call my base turn. The thunderstorm was right in front of me. I slowed the airplane down and waited for what seemed like forever before he called my base. The landing was uneventful.
A few months later I called to rent that plane again, but no one seemed to know where it was. Word on the street was that someone had flown it to Mexico and left it there.
The airplane finally found it’s fate in August 2000 when the pilot reportedly “encountered a gust and lost directional control while attempting a go-around, resulting in an in-flight collision with trees and terrain.”
Possibly the weirdest fate of any airplane I flew regularly was a Cessna 172 with the tail number N172JF. An accident report from October 1998 states, “Witnesses observed the airplane roll into a steep bank and descend vertically into the ground… the accident site was located adjacent to a church where a friend of the pilot was attending services. The friend had reportedly declined a marriage proposal from the pilot the night before the accident. The medical examiner classified the pilot’s death as a suicide.”
Yesterday was “one of these days,” as in, “One of these days I’m going to get around to burning that brush pile.”
My north brush pile began 13 months ago when a severe thunderstorm tore down some large limbs in two of my maple trees and Abby’s 100+year-old walnut.
This is my north brush pile at the height of burning last night.
I had built this pile in the north pasture, quite far away from anything it might threaten, like houses, sheds, other trees, and so on, but I still wanted to burn it in a no-wind condition, and last night was perfect.
I had attempted to burn this mountain of everything from full-sized tree trunks to twigs and leaves, but found on two previous occasions that it was too wet.
Last night I tried to light a bundle of grass and hay kindling under it, but it wasn’t until I stuffed a couple of editions of The Ada News under it that I was able to get it going, after which there was no stopping it.
Now I need to vow that I will burn brush before it gets high and wide, maybe once a month.
I love the way a big fire looks and smells when it goes to coals, especially in the evening when the coals glow deep orange and the ashes catch the blue of the last light in the sky.
An American Airlines Boeing 777 arrives at DFW’s runway 18-right.
Ever since my late wife’s daughter Chele and her family moved to Anna, Texas, I’ve wanted to visit Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport’s Founder’s Plaza, which is about 45 minutes from Chele’s home.
When it comes to flying, I am a kid at heart. Here I am posing with bronze statues of kids “flying.” My shirt, a gift from my wife, says, “I’m a pilot; what’s your superpower?”Paul Thomas Reeves uses my 500mm to photograph the jets. Longtime Ada and Byng residents might be interested to know that Paul is Dorothy Milligan’s great-grandson.
My readers know that I have always been a big fan of aviation in all forms, and I became a pilot in 1993. I love air shows, military aviation, commercial aviation, anything.
I thought this overhead lamp was art unto itself, especially the wires on top, designed to keep birds from landing on it.
Built in 1995, Founders’ Plaza is an observation park dedicated to the founders of DFW Airport.
Founder’s Plaza flies the Dallas flag, the Texas flag, and the U.S. flag.
I was a little afraid I might bore Chele, her husband Tom, and their 13-year-old son Paul, but they ended up loving it too. We saw lots of jets, some arriving from or departing to locations across the globe. We had a great time, and vowed we would return, possibly at sunrise or sunset, maybe in the fall.
An Avianca Airbus A320 passes “over the fence, over the numbers.”
I recommend this attraction, which is free, for anyone who loves airplanes.
A Korean Air Boeing 787 Dreamliner starts it’s takeoff roll for it’s nearly 15-hour slight to Seoul, South Korea. It can be tempting to think of these very long flights as mundane, but I still look at it as something very amazing. For what it’s worth, I was back in Ada, had walked my dogs, had dinner, and gone to bed before this aircraft arrived at it’s destination.
I recently had the opportunity to fly in the camera plane to photograph a Douglas A-26 Invader, a fast medium bomber of late World War II. The aircraft was fueled with Ada-based General Aviation Modifications, Inc.’s new aviation gasoline, G100UL, the first-ever 100-octane unleaded aviation gasoline.
This is the team posing for a for a picture prior to our air-to-air photo session.This is my perch before takeoff.
I sat on the floor in the back of a Beech Bonanza A36, N59CT. I wore a harness, which I mention because people who saw pictures of me kept asking if I was “strapped in,” not, I guess, realizing the straps of the harness I am visibly wearing in the photos are holding me safety in the aircraft.
My view out the door on departure shows one of Ada’s most-recognized landmarks for both people on the ground and people in the air, the big red barn of the Pontotoc County Agri-Plex. On clear days, you can see this from 5000 feet 30 miles away.We flew down to Atoka Lake, about 45 miles southeast, where we formed up with the A-26.
The Commemorative Air Force owns and the A-26, and only flies it when they can afford it, and when they have a pilot with the type rating to fly it. I wrote the story for my newspaper when the aircraft moved to Ada in January 2022 after losing the lease for its hanger in Guthrie.
In this view, the A-26 pilot is banking slightly into us, holding some left aileron and right rudder so he holds his position relative to us, allowing me to photograph more of the aircraft than an edge-on view might provide.
At one point a four-foot piece of trim came un-velcroed from over my head. I didn’t want to lose it or pitch it overboard, so I pinned it to the floor with my right foot.
Since it was a bit gloomy, my images of the green aircraft against the duller-green of the lake weren’t ideal, but will work for client.
The flight was reasonably smooth, but we didn’t get sunshine, and the CAF has a 500-foot minimum air-to-air formation rule, so, though I shot with my 300mm f/2.8, a lot of my frames were trash, and overall they weren’t as beautiful as some of the commercial air-to-air work I’ve seen.
On descent back at Ada, I asked John to deploy the speed brakes, an aftermarket accessory for faster airplanes that help the airplane descent faster without risking an overspeed.I am all smiles in the back of the airplane and behind my 300mm. It was a warm day, but once we got the wind rushing in, I was very comfortable.
It was a lot of fun, and I hope GAMI and the CAF call on me again to do this kind of work for them.
Today Ada Sunrise Rotary presented the 2023-24 President appreciation plaque to me, which was an honor to receive. And while I did serve as Sunrise Rotary’s President for a year, it was fun and productive, and, for anyone familiar with civic clubs, another chapter of, as the Rotary International motto says, “Service Above Self.”
Ada Sunrise Rotary 2024-25 President Christen Puckett-Smith presents a plaque to me in recognition of my 2023-24 Presidency.
I feel that we accomplished many of the goals we set out to achieve, including this year’s better-than-ever Fireball Classic 10k/5k/Fun Run. I also feel that our new President, Christen Puckett-Smith, is poised to be a great leader in the coming year.
In the past year, the duties of running the meetings left little time for what had become one of my favorite reasons for joining Ada Sunrise instead of Ada Rotary (which meets at noon), breakfast at The Aldridge.
Anyone who knows our town knows that breakfast at The Aldridge at 12th and Broadway is more than just a meal, it is a meal full of tradition. If you want to taste Ada, get a bite at the Aldridge.
I know I’ve made this point before, but civic clubs in general are worth your time and support, and if you have ever considered doing something fun with a sense of purpose and belonging, Rotary, Kiwanis, or Lions might be right for you.
Breakfast at the Aldridge is great any time, but tastes even better on Friday mornings with my fellow Rotarians.
“Everybody experiments in college,” as the saying goes. I experimented with light.
I visited a friend on the local college campus recently. When we stepped out into the cool late-morning air, I was struck by the memories it summoned.
Many college memories center around the start of college, the start of semesters, the start of the school year. Those are often associated with the excitement of the potential ahead of us, wearing sweaters and walking to class among the falling leaves.
But that late morning moment this spring: the humid, hazy look in the sky, the green grass with fresh clippings lightly littering the sidewalk, that odd silence after classes were done for the year as students and teachers readied for exams, summer plans, graduation… where was I when all this was happening to me years ago?
It would be another summer of scraping by selling news photos to the Daily for $3.50 each, trying to make rent, trying to eat cheap, trying to imagine the future of my photography, a career.
It had the smell of loneliness, the smell of failure. When did I devolve from arrogant freshman to lonely senior? How did my bright future turn so dark and dusty?
I could blame guidance councilors and college advisors, but I won’t. I could blame the company I kept, but I won’t. I could blame high school and college curriculums, but I won’t. Parents, friends, enemies, society, academia, nutrition, the threat of nuclear war, television, sugar, fat, salt. None of those.
That pretty much leaves the mirror.
I failed myself. To posit otherwise would be to admit that we aren’t sentient, that we aren’t people.
A tenth grade English teacher once wrote to me, “You. You. You are the master of your fate and the captain of your soul.” At the time, I thought it sounded like nonsense. I was so busy acting like I understood everything, I missed out on actually understanding.
I see myself in that mirror in that ratty rooming house, looking at a dreamer. I dreamed about money, cameras, cars, airplanes. But I didn’t plan. I waited.
In my journal, it became The Summer of Private Drama. By July, I found myself wondering if I meant anything at all. The girl I adored with the Zeta Tau Alpha socks and the hazel eyes had told me off, again.
In my journal, I wrote, “Right now I’ve got fear, pain, and boredom. These are good ones, because they can get so real, so sharp, so clear. I have blurred visions. Blurred by what? The telephone line. Honesty. Your presence. The realness. History. Ghosts. The sky on fire. Silence.”
What was I writing? Why was I writing? I hadn’t been discovered as the next Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus?
Wasn’t that supposed to happen if I wrote in my journal?
Then I wrote, “If I kept a journal for other people… the concept sounds ridiculous. Every night, there is a blank page, just for me. Create an image with words instead of creating an image with suffering.”
That was my turning point. I realized the journal was for me.
In 2024, this looks like it was at least Photoshopped, and maybe even created by AI, but it wasn’t. It is a ten-second exposure during which I move my eyes, making them look this way. It seems like nothing today, but it was one way I experimented with imaging in college.
I just finished watching both parts of the newest motion picture iteration of Dune, and I had fun.
I got to thinking about the spice melange, what it was and how it worked.
Sidebar: if you read the Frank Herberts Dune books in high school, please go somewhere else. I’m not up for a “but in the book” debate.
In The Underestimated Importance Diagram, I wrote, “27th century dynamic Third Eye is saturated with a powerful psychotropic drug (PPD) that yields perfect perception.”
Wow. “Perfect perception.” Am I a genius?
Dune’s spice melange is a reddish, sparkling powder, but I had in mind that PPD would be clear, contain all flavors, all scents, and is so complex that it actually contains a couple of substances that only exist in the future, even it’s future. It is so transparent that you actually can’t see it, and that wouldn’t matter anyway, since you are looking into the future.
CBS turned this on his head in a show called Limitless, when a professional douchebag named Brian takes NZT-48, a miracle drug that gives him access to every neuron in his brain. The series wasn’t great, though Abby and I watched the whole thing and had a lot of fun. (Abby and I could watch grass grow and have fun if we did it together.)
NZT was dangerous and would eventually kill you, but PPD does not. Like the spice melange, it extends life and health, though unlike melange, it doesn’t make you trip, doesn’t color your eyes, and cleans up your terrible grammar.
The most beautiful thing about PPD is that it never wears off. This is because perfect perception is completely transcendent of time.
Here is a simulated sample of one millionth of a gram of PPD. I can’t show actual PPD because the tidal effects on the brain being exposed to perfect perception without actually experiencing perfect perfection quickly cause insanity. The sample is held in a special psychomagnetic field designed to enhance its quality and lustre.
There is a song by This Mortal Coil called A Single Wish. The lyrics to it are difficult to hear, and neither the liner notes nor the internet seem willing to define them. So I decided to write them down as I hear them.
I wonder, alone here
The sound
The living now
The longing’s end
It’ll end in tears
And now as follows
Let’s hide a single wish
The living love, forever
Oh, no, it’ll end in tears
It’ll end in tears
Are these lyrics incomplete, or are they intentional?
Sometimes flying on a Saturday is the most fun you can have, and sometimes factors as fickle as the wind and the weather bring that all to a halt.
Your host poses with the Douglas A-26 Invader this morning at Ada Regional Airport.
Today was one of those Saturdays.
I was invited by General Aviation Modifications Inc. President and fellow pilot Tim Roehl to be the photographer for a high-visibility demonstration of their newly-certified G100UL unleaded aviation gasoline.
The plan was to fuel up the Douglas A-26 Invader that lives on the field here at Ada Regional Airport, an aircraft I wrote a news story about in January 2022 (link), and fly it in formation with GAMI’s Beech Bonanza A36 with the right side door removed so I could photograph the Invader as it flew from Ada to Chickasha, Oklahoma for an air show.
Patchy dense fog rolled into the area just as we got the word that our pilot couldn’t make it.
Right around our planned departure time, Tim got a text from the A-26 pilot that he needed to go to Florida unexpectedly, and at that same time, dense fog rolled up all around us.
We finished the last of the prep work, including fitting the new safety harness on me and testing it, so we will all be ready – hopefully – when the pilot and the weather are good to go.
Your host poses in the doorway of our camera ship, a Beech Bonanza A36, with a brand new safety harness. Hopefully we will be able to put this mission together again soon.
In 1996, at a meeting of the local chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association, a fellow pilot, one of the guys I learned to fly with, told us he departed Guthrie, Oklahoma to fly to Ada under low ceilings and visibility, without any charts. He tried to “scud run” under the clouds until he passed under the top of a television broadcast tower. He urgently climbed into the clouds without a clearance, but couldn’t remember any of the Oklahoma City approach/departure frequencies (I know them by heart: 124.4, 120.45, 126.4). He called Fort Worth Center, who handed him off to Oklahoma City. When his transponder wouldn’t work, even on 7700, they gave him a vector based on primary (not transponder) radar contact.
In early 1993, when my pilot class and I were doing our flight work, a fellow student did his long cross-country flight to Stillwater, then Enid, then back to Ada. When he returned, one fuel tank was almost empty, and the other tank was completely full. Since the fuel selector in the Cessna 150 is either “off” or “both,” he must have simply forgotten to fill one of the tanks when he stopped.
The pilot of one of the airplanes I rent made a forced landing in it near Tecumseh, having run it out of fuel. He told authorities the right fuel gauge indicated he still had half a tank left.
The same week I got my pilot’s license, May 1993, a 30-year pilot made a forced landing about 10 miles north of the airport after his engine ran out of oil and failed. The pilot was notorious for getting in and flying his airplane with no preflight checks of any kind.
Readers probably know now that tornadoes struck across Oklahoma Saturday night into Sunday morning. I listened to non-stop amateur radio and public safety communications, and when tornado warnings were issued for my location, I brought Hawken, my Irish wolfhound, inside, and sheltered in the center of the house with him and my Chihuahua, Summer.
Those storms passed us without causing any damage, but nearby Sulphur, Oklahoma, wasn’t so lucky, and late Saturday my notes from the radio traffic say, “11:17 p.m., Murrah County is requesting help, houses leveled.”
Knowing I could do little until day break, I planned to go to Sulphur first thing Sunday morning.
The downtown portion of Sulphur was devastated by a tornado Saturday night. I made this image with the drone my newspaper bought for me. Mine was not the only drone in the air that morning.
At the time I left my house in Byng, the water and the electricity were both off. I got a text from the power company saying it was back on at 12:13 p.m., but got home an hour later to find that it was not, so I went to the office to work my photos, video, and the storm story.
Home around 5 p.m., the power was back on, but the water was a muddy trickle. My neighbors said their water was back on. I tried all the faucets inside, but it seemed the pressure was near zero. I decided I need to be able to flush, so I grabbed a bucket and started toward the pond, but quickly checked the outside faucet, which, much to my surprise, was flowing like a waterfall.
Hmm. No water inside, full pressure outside, all connected to the same pipes.
I summoned a buddy of mine, who looked around with me and was just as baffled. We found the tub ran full flow, but the sinks and toilets did not. He then got the idea to remove a screen from the bathroom faucet, where we discovered it was fully clogged with tiny, yellow plastic balls. It looked like resin from the water softener, which shouldn’t be able to make it into the flow.
We concluded that when the house was re-pressurized after the outage was repaired, the shock must have dislodged resin, which traveled to the screens, clogging them.
Neither of us had ever seen this before.
I thanked him, then set out to clean all the screens in the house, with an unexpected result of improving the flow from all the faucets, which is a sign that I should clean them out regularly.
This is the screen from the backroom faucet, completely clogged with resin from the water softener. It is shown with a quarter and a penny for scale.
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My Ten Commandments by Richard R. Barron
I Was Ugly by Richard R. Barron
Richard Like Hands by Richard R. Barron
