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Recallin
Part one of an Avalon
Air Transport worker's
adventure in 1962
BY RICHARD VON KLEINSMID
FOR THE ISLANDER
Editor's Note: Richard yon
Kleinsmid worked for Avalon Air
Transport in the late 1950s. Below
is part one of his story of a day in
1962 when he had to play flight
attendant (in those days they were
called stewardesses) aboard DC-3
trying to hurry a couple of dozen
people to the Island while it was
still too foggy for the Gooses toffy.
One morning in what I guess
was 1962, there was not just a typi-
cal "marine layer" of"June gloom"
besetting southern California, but
a particularly thick fog that got
stuck in place, did not "burn off,"
and caused a gathering mob of pas-
sengers at the Long Beach Airport
to become impatient.
Our principal mission at Avalon
Air Transport was, indeed, to
transport people out of humdrum
Long Beach through the air to
the relative paradise of smog-free
Catalina Island, the only real town
on which was Avalon, using a
fleet of sturdy little amphibian
airplanes.
Unfortunately, a Grumman
Goose could not legally take off
in fog.
Sometimes a day's first flight,
usually scheduled for 7 a.m
would, because of "gloom," find
itself leaving a lit.tle late. But on
this day hours rolled by with no
improvement in visibility, and the
terminal building gradually filled
to overflowing with stalled cus-
tomers beginning to notice that the
time remaining for their planned
vacations was eroding before their
eyes.
In high season, each hourly
"flight" might have more than one
Goose-load of passengers-by the
ten o'clock flight, maybe three or
even four-and an excitable person
could begin to wonder, as every
hour more passengers accumulat-
ed, if on this unhappy day there
was even some danger of a riot.
At around 10:30, after a few
passengers had canceled their
reservations and demanded their
money back, my father, who ran
the place, decided to offer al! cus-
tomers the chance to fly immedi-
ately to Catalina's inland airport
on one of the company's DC-3s.
Because the DC-3s had better
navigation equipment and required
a real co-pilot, they were allowed to
take off in fog; because they were
big enough to carry 27 passengers
at a time, they could deal with
three Goose-loads of passengers
at once; and because Catalina's
airport was well above sea level,
they could expect to arrive under a
bright sunny sky.
The airport was so high
because, a little before the war,
engineers trying to find enough
level land for an airport on rugged
Catalina Island decided to shear
off the twin peaks of one of its
tallest mountains, to fill in the
space between them with the earth
they had sheared, and to pave the
resulting horizontal surface into
a runway.
To do all that they first had to
build a road to connect that place
to Avalon.
The result was out of the ordi-
nary in two ways.
The runway was unusually
short, beginning and ending with
impressively abrupt drop-offs,
and to get up there from Avalon
required something like a 45-min-
ute drive and a willingness to
brave numerous blind hair-pin
turns on a two-way, one-and-a-
half-lane, cliff's-edge road.
Fortunately, there was never a
whole lot of traffic.
Employment
O " "t"
ppo um
CODE ENFORCE NT OFFICER- FL L
BE FITED POSITION- FLSA Non-Exempt
Range 36 6.490 Hourb"
Must be available- to work weekends, holidays and some evenin
Applications may be obtained at the Front Counter - Lobby Area of CiW Hall
410 Avalon Canyon Road, Avalon, CA 90704
Deadline: Friday, October 6, 2017 by 4pm
More Information:- www.Cib/ofAvalon.com
The California DMV will conduct business in the City of Avalon
October 9-11, 2017
Appointments are available and may be scheduled atCity Hall.
California driver license and identification card applications will be processed.
All original driver license and identification card applications will require two (2)
acceptable California residency documents.
Non-commercial drive tests will be conducted and basic vehicle registration
renewals/applications will also be processed.
DMV hours of operation will be:
Monday
1:00pm - 5:00pm
Tuesday 8:00am - 5:00pm
Wednesday 8:00am - 11:30am
Acceptable methods of payment will be: cash, checks, and money orders.
(Checks are preferred)
Commercial drive tests will no longer be administered in the City of Avalon.
The inconvenience of that air-
port was central to Avalon Air
Transport's decade and a half of
success. For $6.60 in those days,
you could avoid that airport and
in 17 minutes have the fun of
flying directly into Avalon Bay
on a Goose and landing with an
unforgettable, vigorously, climac-
tic splash that culminated with
you and your airplane powerfully
engulfed in the embrace of an
ultimately gentle sea, a far more
thrilling ride than any offered
at a theme park. I find myself
wondering how much they charge
these days at dear old Disneyland
for a [2-minute?] ride down the
Matterhorn. It was in some ways a
golden age.
Almost instantly, Pop got his 27
eager volunteers. The only glitch
was that DC-3s required a steward-
ess, and on this morning all three
of Avalon Air Transport's DC-3
stewardesses had the day off. And
so, time being of the essence, it
was blithely decided that, once we
had loaded all the passengers and
their baggage onto the plane, I, as
gate manager, would close up the
DC-3, this time, with me inside,
and thereupon miraculously trans-
mogrify myself into the manifest's
alleged "Miss Johnson." It seemed
to me sort of a hoot, actually. I had
long smiled at harmless fraud, and
I had long heard about, but never
been to, Catalina's storied airport.
It was mainly the trip back,
though, that I was looking for-
ward to. Pilots had often told me
that, taking off, you couldn't really
count on achieving "air speed"
before getting to the end of that
little runway, but that, ho ho, up
'there it didn't really matter: you
could count on being air-worthy
well before you hurtled all the way
down into the sea, Whee. I was 19
years old and fearless as any other
self-evidently immortal teenager.
I dimly recall having a little
trouble culling from the, by now,
mountainous pile of baggage those
bits of it that interested the volun-
teers, but otherwise the adventure
started out quite smoothly, buoyed
by a general sense that fate, or
anyway the weather, was being
thwarted by this little band's inge-
nuity and pluck.
It was fun to drag the plane's
big old aluminum door up by its
cables, somehow or other to lock
it shut, and then to hike up the
cabin's inclined aisle checking seat
belts left and right, enjoying the
camaraderie. And, too, I was about
to get to go for a ride in a genuine
DC-3.
Soon I had strapped myself into
the little fold-down jump seat for
stewardesses at the back next to
an urn of stale water, this airline's
closest approximation to coffee,
tea, or milk, and we all roared
off up into and then through the
blanket of clouds to the gloriously
bright blue sky. Out the right win-
dow I could then see peeking up
through the clouds, the tops of
the long row of mountains that
define the LA basin, and, still
more delightful, out the left, beck-
oning us, all by its lonely self,
Catalina's ever so aptly named
Airport in the Sky.
When I spotted it I think I
maybe even laughed, once any-
how, out loud. Then we banked
and turned left in its direction, and
there was nothing much to look
at for ten or fifteen minutes from
the cabin but the clouds stretching
maybe all the way to Mexico and
the infinite sky. A dullish trip, I
suppose, but I was glad I had not
been expected to serve drinks and
peanuts or even a little meal.
Soon the fog thinned enough to
reveal a filtered glimpse of the sea,
and then suddenly, straight below
us, here came the island's rocky
shore swiftly sweeping up to an
altitude little below us, and then a
flat stretch of gravel and, whoosh,
the near end of the runway. A little
bounce and squeak, another, and
then a gently bumpy roll on terra
firma as the tail thought about
lowering itself to the ground, then
did so with a surprising little jerk
as on we rolled [hmm] past the
other end the runway and on to
another bed-of gravel, whereupon
the engines roared and shuddered
at cross purposes right and left, I
could feel the rudder flop hard to
the right, and my little rearmost
chair and I, along, of course, with
the whole tail end of the plane,
swung around in a vigorous clock-
wise 180 as the engines roared
anew--and with a couple of back-
ward hops we clattered to a halt,
paused a second, and then tax-
ied serenely over to the airport's
way-cute terminal buitding. Well,
thought I, a little breathlessly, just
like stopping your bicycle with a
"brodie."
Now all I had to do--alas,
entirely by myself--wa's welcome
everyone to Catalina.
To be continued.
9/29 Crossworll Solution
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14 1 Friday, Sept. 29, 2017 THE CATALINA ISLANDER