When Art Work Rescued Me
Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. This story (a true one) will be in my book, “Scatterbrains and Scattered Showers” if I ever get around to writing it. Looking more and more like I will be as old as Noah in the Bible when he built the ark.
It was in the early 1960s (I think) I was on day-shift duty at the U.S. Weather Bureau at Birmingham Airport. My duties were hourly weather observations, answering endless telephone calls, sending up a weather balloon and briefing all pilots whether by phone or in person. (In later years, pilot-briefing duties were turned over to the FAA)
About 10 am, too pilots (in uniform) walked in. They were from Argentina but they could not speak any English. I finally understood enough that they were headed for Washington (they pointed to a map)and wanted a weather briefing. I did everything I knew to brief them. Fortunately, they knew how to read coded hourly weather and terminal forecasts.
Unfortunately, they were going to encounter a powerful line of thunderstorms before they got to Virginia, some with tops to 60,000 feet. They did not understand a word I said. I was very worried. I finally took them over to our pilot briefing counter covered with Plexiglass with maps underneath. I took a grease pencil and drew a line of big “thunderheads” (that is what we called them in Havana Junction) across Virginia on the map. I showed that to them and said in a loud voice, “boom, boom, boom, boom!
They immediately understood, began patting me on the shoulder and shaking my hand. At that time the USWB was on the top floor of the terminal building and the control tower on top. We had a continuous open line to the tower and I immediately warned them about the situation.
They said, “don’t worry, they have a navigator on board and he speaks perfect English. We have been speaking to him by radio.”
A big sigh of relief from me and I probably sat down and ate a banana moonpie!
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