Ok so as we have been discussing the story about and since Air Boy Tibet's history
and some of the what should I call them? Adventures of Tinkerbell in keeping the faith of his giant spaceship design and the
Hexagon project as we have come to call it.
First I thought I'd talk a little about the space shuttle and as you know
it cost's a lot of money. And as you know Tinkerbells birthday is January 20th (inaguration day sometimes for the president
of the United States) and he was born in 1951 and was a Vietnam veteran who got an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army
for his service.Basic matter of fact information but if we could go over what adventures that happened just describing that
in the context of other Veitnam veterans and their experiances a Vietnam veteran may not be too surprised but some one who
was or is not aware it could at times be a real thriller even though most of my days were going to work as a helicopter mechanic
with my tool box and flying missions as a door gunner every once in a while were not seemingly too out of the ordinary.
There are several ways to tell a story and here I thought that I
would talk about Vietnam and the space shuttle and the knowlege of an asteroid heading to earth in the context of a Vietnam
Veteran that was married twice and has had issues from time to time on the domestic front of things and selected with the
information of a possible collision between earth and an asteroid and growing up in the 60's 70's and 80's and with
kind of a job to design a spaceship that can take care of the delima a sort of mission impossible mission!
First I thought I would go back to the 1950's and early 60's when with my parents
we would come as kids to Florida on vacation to see my mom's relatives who lived here and built houses in their own little
construction company.My mother was a war bride from England and before the depression her side of the family were in
the steel business. Here my dad would after we were back in Illinois in the winter time turned on the TV and they put pictures
over the television at 4:00 oclock in the morning of a spacship rocket called,"Ranger" that was launched from florida and
sent to the moon and then crashed into the moon with a camera in the nose sending back pictures brodcast over the TV. That
just about the first thing I remember about outerspace and Florida! In the 4th 5th and 6th and 7th grades I would go to the
library and read all the books on airplanes and aviation. This is a fact and I would draw airplanes on the kitchen table or
try to concept what a spaceship would be like. Before we knew very much about them I then started reading aviation magazines
periodicals they call them and we would keep our ears open to try and find out about aircraft like the X-15 rocket plane that
could fly at 4000 miles an hour!
Although this is before I found out about a book in the Wheaton
Library that had a picture of an Oberlutenant that I would find familar I had this uncurling interest in aircraft.
My first job was as a grocery bag boy and I took flying
lessons at the airport with the money I made. About this time I think although my father says that he can't remember it. That
he and I had a coversation and I thought that it had something to do with the war not Veitnam but WW2 and he told me "Kurt
these guy's are nuts! Go out and get a job any job and work!
True story! by the time I was a junior in high school I came home
school to find a lady waiting for me in the living room of our house she was from the Rotary club interveiwing high school
graduates I think and she was very nice she talked about what I was going to do and what I thought about what was happening
in the world with Vietnam. Later I think I put it together that this lady was Ann Bankroft from the movie 'The Graduate",
In 1968 president Nixion ordered a wing spaceship be built
and that could be an interesting twist if I'm right and it was Ann Backroft from Hollywood.
Ok so I didn't have the money to go to college and I wanted to
fly and design a spaceship what I ended up doing was joining the U.S. Army to be trained and work on helicopters on a section
of your army records there is what they call the dream sheet in which they asked you what you would like to do in the Army,(remember
this is when the army wasn't a voluntary or professional as they call it today It was known as the draft army). Tinkerbell
wrote on his dream sheet that he'd like to be in military Intelegence and go to Sweden where in his mind he would be close
to Germany and could be trained and work on his spaceship but with the powerful Kennedy's exercising their power Tinker thinks
they thought him a smart ass and sent him to Veitnam straight away. True Story!
Thats a fact and when I arrived at Cam Ron Bay after my
leave from helicopter school I was greeted with rockets from the enemy,who tinkerbell hadn't even met yet!
When I got to Cu Chi Vietnam all though we didn't know
it at the time Home of the 25th Infantry Divison in Vietnam the enemy had dug tunnels all around and under the base camp.
After getting use to my surroundings I like all pretty much enlisted personnel had guard duty and my first guard duty was
tower guard during the day.My duty started Monday morning but the Friday before I was to maned my post the guy who had the
duty just before me from California was shot through the head by a sniper and the insides of his head spattered on the tower
floor and wall later they found a 9 milimeter Mouser rifle with a teliescopic sight just beyond the perimeter. True Story!
And this was when I had just got there!
So that was not the only exciting time on guard duty one time at night
towards the end of my first tour in Veitnam I had flght line guard duty and it started raining so I crawled inside of an Hughes
Oberservation helicopter sittting on the flight line and turned the inverters on to listen to the radio station in Siagon
with the headphones on and stay drying dry in the rain and watch the flightline from my vantage point looking out the
window in the nose of the machine. Tinkerbell remembers it was just before dawn and I got off shift pretty soon and the music
that was playing on the radio was "Green eyed lady lucky lady" By sugarloaf I think.Any way in between the rain drops
on the windshield I saw a blury movement under another helicopter not far away and instanly I froze in panic. The inverters
on the helicopter with the radio on made kind of a whiring sound and I thought for an instant and knew that the noise was
giving up my position I had my helmet off and my M-16 was in the seat next to me I was so close I was afraid to lock and load
a round into the chamber for I had instant visions of a firefight braking out with these million dollar helicopters all around
me and me with kissing my almost a sargents pay with a big bill good bye. My heart was racing by this time and I decided to
move back to the hanger area where I could put a round in the chamber at least before I got killed was all I could think about.I
slowly opened the door and shut off the inverters and eased my body out of the helicopter and reached over the seat and got
my rifle then and sliped away behind the tail of the helicopter to the dark hanger where I kneeled on the floor and with my
heart pumping and locked and loaded.
I just knew I was dead I just knew it you just can't believe how terrifying this was after locking and loading
my weapon I thought to myself"Now what exactly did I see?" I couldn't focus the visual I was so shaken and I decide to go
get a cup of coffee at the orderly room just a little ways away across the formation area next to the hanger when I got to
the orderly room the CQ (charge of quarters) asked," whats up Johnson" with out thinking I blurted out that," I just came
for a cup of coffee", and I think there was still a round in the chamber I sipped the coffee and walked slowiy back to the
hanger just as the sky started to show light in the east! True story! You had to do your guard duty if you were an enlisted
man that was a requirement in this place in a combat zone later when I talked about it we were told that the whole base
was laced with tunnels! True Story Cu Chi. Vietnam 1970-71
There were other adventures Tinkerbell's wrote about them The first time I
went flying as a stand in door gunner near the famious black virgin mountain he was in a command and control ship a ship(huey
that had extra radios on board) flying at a hover just below the trees tops hopping from one bomb crater to another
in the still smoking jungle a day after a B-52 strike on a bunker complex looking for foot tracks. Tinkerbell holding the
trigger and handle of his machine gun so tight his knukles turned white and his hands got cramps. These things are telling
imagages etched in Tinks little memory a long time ago but yet when it comes to military stuff I'm not any less patriotic
but I have an uneasy feeling that war is not the answer and it can color your image of stuff.
So when Tinkerbell got home from the army and he met his wife who was going to teachers
collage in Illinois and she was dressed up like "Pippie long stocking", and known to of smoked a dubbie once in a while and
was rich operating not like Tinkerbell who worked in a steel factory and owned a used airplane but lived at home in his room
with his mom and dad He kinda was fanthoming alot of stuff. And when she played a record for me by Jefferson Starship that
was called "Where going to hyjack a starship". Tinkerbell mite of kind of wrinkled his nose! And think to himself "Boy you
don't even know!
Ok so today is the 15th 0f Dec and Tinkerbell is just found out that they
hit the prime minister of Italy with a statue at a rally and there is alot of stuff going on and we are kind of thinking about
a guy that wheres a Klingon uniform and drives a vw convertable that we know, Arthur and I, Tinkerbell!
Well so I thought to tell you some of this stuff that has happened to Tinkerbell
and maybe you can relate to it. It was about 1992 93 that I found a book in the Wheaton Illinois library but written in English
about the Luftwaffe in WW2 with a picture of Oberlutenant Helmut Lent in the back of the book with a nights cross and Tinkerbell
in his preveiw of regonition knew the picture was of him and he remembered when they took the picture this happened before
Tinkerbell got social security disability and was on his way home to Moline from Florida with the hope of seeing Debbie his
girlfriend short time wife from Spartan school of aeronautics in Tulsa, but he didn't get there it was at this time that the
50 year Secracy Act of WW2, 1945, was comming to an end and there were all sorts of shows on the history channel about WW2.