In last Saturday’s Palladium, there was a picture of a plane crash that happened on Friday on U.S. 131 north of Plainwell.
I told my wife we had seen take-offs and landings from this airport as we would be going or coming back on 131 on trips up north over the years.
Then on Sunday, on our way to Grand Rapids, we stopped at Kalamazoo to get a Sunday paper that had a picture of our son Terry and his shark painting that he entered in the Grand Rapids Art Prize contest.
We had to go there to register to be able to vote for his shark painting.
After we got home from seeing his painting in one of the many venues in Grand Rapids — and there are quite a few of these places — I noticed another article about the plane crash in going through the paper.
The plane crashed as it clipped a trailer of a Fed Ex truck as it came in for a landing.
If I remember, the planes used to be pretty low on landing as they flew over 131, the ones we saw on our trips up north.
In my further reading of the article, I spotted a familiar name, Bob Wagel, a Dowagiac resident who was and still is a restaurant regular at the small airport restaurant.
The article said he still goes there, but drives up as he sold his plane last year.
He goes for the companionship of being with other pilots.
In my old flying days, I never landed at this small field.
I found in one of the old newspapers given to me an International photo of eight jet aces.
One of them was our Capt. Iven C. Kincheloe.
They were all stationed at Nellis Air Force Base.
It told of each one’s record of kills in combat and the aircraft they damaged.
Kincheloe’s was six killed and seven damaged.
The total of these eight jet pilots was 47 kills and 18 damaged (quite a record, huh?).
The picture was the largest group of jet aces ever photographed together (I’m proud to say I was fortunate to say at one time I sat at the same table with Iven in our old DHS study hall years ago).
Recently, my child-bride wife, as she came into the living room where I was reading my morning paper, clutched a Kleenex with her nose running from her ragweed allergy.
She said to me, my nose is “running like a sieve.”
Gee, I hadn’t heard that expression in a long time. Peg is now praying for a frost.
1898: You could get the Dowagiac Daily News for only 10 cents a week.
1923: Workers will be back on the job Saturday to complete the Pioneer Log Cabin on the shore of Stone Lake.
1923: Headline, Cult bankruptcy effort fails today/judge hits plan to call colony broke.
It was about a suit from Bamford girls against King Benjamin Purnell of the House of David.

Emotional movie

It has been quite some time since Peg and I had gone to a movie, but last Thursday we made a trip to Niles — the closest theater around.
We are two old folks who really enjoy a good movie (hard to find these days, huh?).
This one was a true story of a dolphin called Winter, whose tail was damaged in a crab trap off Clearwater, Fla.
This movie had really believable actors — Harry Connick Jr., Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman, Nathan Gamble, Kris Kristofferson and Winter as herself.
We both said we could see this movie again.
If you go, take some Kleenex, as a few parts are emotional.