Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2018-45

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Jean Ang writes in Heroic Stories about a pilot´s kindness
• Jean Sterling is moving to an assisted living place
• Catherine Nesbitt forwards a letter to the editor
• Brigitte Patheiger tells an Irish ghost story
• Irene Harvalias remembers common things from long ago
• Sites are suggested by Barbara Wear

Jean Ang of California writes about

CHRIS´S WINGS

In December, 2001, my husband and I took our son Christopher on a flight from Seattle to Los Angeles. Chris had Duchene´s Muscular Dystrophy. When we boarded in Seattle, the pilot, Gary, asked if we wanted to show Chris, 15, the cockpit. My husband carried him in for a look. Chris´ face lit up as he told us when he became well he wanted to be a pilot. It made me cry.

During our flight the entire crew was great to Chris. When we landed, Gary asked for our address to send Chris a card. Chris was so excited Gary wanted to write to him.

Several weeks later Chris received a beautiful card. Pinned to it was a pair of wings. Gary wrote that he´d earned them while in the service and wanted Chris to have them. We put the wings on Chris and he didn´t want to take them off. All he did was talk about the pilot that sent them. He even took them to school to show his friends.

Three months later Chris had his 16th birthday. That Saturday there was a knock on the door. It was Gary, who said he was on the way to LA for a flight. He wanted to see how Chris was doing and had a surprise - he´d brought Chris one of his old pilot jackets.

Chris was just beside himself. We immediately put the wings on the jacket and took pictures of Chris wearing it. I´d never seen him so excited. The jacket was his most prized possession.

Six months later, on August 10, 2002, Chris passed away. We sent Gary an e-mail about Chris´s death, but sadly, it was returned.

Four years later I found a web page looking for stories about wonderful customer service experiences while traveling on Alaska Airlines. Now was my chance to let the airline know about Gary and what he´d done for Chris. My letter was published on the website.

The next week, I received an e-mail from the airline asking my permission to publish my letter in their upcoming In-Flight magazine. I was honored and thankful that Gary would be recognized for what he´d done.

I received a call from Gary two months later asking if he could come over as he had something for me. When he arrived, he opened a box containing a model of a 737 Alaska Airline airplane. There was also a note from Alaska´s CEO thanking me for writing the letter. Gary has since been promoted to captain.

This experience taught me the importance of being kind to one another. My older son became a pilot and teaches flying lessons. He is living Chris´s dream - because of the incredible kindness of one person. I will never forget how Gary made one special boy very proud, and how he made such an impact on our whole family.

E-mail subscriptions to HeroicStories are FREE. Sign up here: HeroicStories.org.

CORRESPONDENCE

Jean Sterling, prompted by the Heroic Story in last week´s Spinner about sisters finding a care home for their mother, writes: We are moving in a couple of weeks. (Isn´t it great that you don´t have to change my e-mail address?) We are moving to an assisted living place (Bishop´s Glen) that looks real nice and gets great reviews. I won´t have to cook dinner any more! And I won´t have to do a lot of cleaning as there is help with that once a week.

They even have a pool, but I will continue to go to the Y as the pool at Bishop´s Glen is miniscule. Bishop´s Glen is built where a fellow named Bishop used to graze his cows.

Of course here in Central Florida we don´t have to shovel snow.

I remember my youngest went to Georgia Tech, which is located in Atlanta. The first year he was there it snowed. He had only seen snow once before (it snowed here for about five minutes in 1977, and it didn´t stick.) This snow did stick, and the school shut down for the day as transportation was snarled. (Atlanta doesn´t handle snow well). He thought it was great and went out to play in it. Kids in the dorm from places like Connecticut thought he was crazy! Now he lives in Virginia and gets to experience shovelling!

Catherine Nesbitt forwards this

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

A White House senior aide has disclosed that the sheer number of retired Canadians amassing along the northern border is creating consternation among top State Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Experts anticipate that half a million of these snowbirds will migrate to the U.S. over the next month, dwarfing the immigrant caravan crossing Mexico, and placing undue stress on the quality of life for many Americans, while posing a growing security threat.

"It´s too much," lamented the anonymous aide. "It´s a struggle for citizens in Florida, Arizona, and California to find a tee time; the pickleball courts are full, and God help you if you want to find a parking spot at an outlet shopping mall. My parents tried to register for a ukulele festival in Sedona and couldn´t get in because of all the Canadians."

Evidence collected last winter raised concerns that the normally reserved Canadians are exhibiting more uncivilized behaviour these days.

"We have reports that Canadians were telling jokes about our president. And across the southern US, pot-bellied over-the-hill Canadians in pastel golf shirts would walk into bars in the late afternoon, demanding $2.50 for highballs and a buck and a half for a beer, proclaiming that happy hour, happy hour was here. Like they were tragically hip or something."

The aide was asked if anxiety surrounding the Canadian caravan permeated the White House.

"Look, I can´t speak for everyone here, but we love Canadians - Conrad Black, the Reichmann family, Pamela Anderson. We love poutine. We are generous patrons of Canadian culture, especially the Montreal cabaret scene. But we cannot ignore the burden this influx of Canadians places on us."

The security concerns are heightened by Canada´s recent decision to legalize recreational marijuana. U.S. officials are wary of baby boomer potheads bringing their debauched drug habits over the border.

"It seems they´ve all been told to say the same thing to our immigration officers," said the aide. "When they ask Canadians if they have ever consumed marijuana, they get this apathetic stare and the standard response, ´Who me? Uh, no officer. It´s a travesty, this legalization thing.´

"We´ve searched luggage and repeatedly found boxes of instant brownie mix hidden under lumberjack coats, but there´s nothing we can do."

The Canadian snowbirds want to ensure that empathetic Americans understand their plight. One traveller going through US immigration at the Calgary airport with a detection dog sniffing at his privates put it this way: "We sacrifice a lot leaving our homeland each winter - Caesars, people saying ´you´re welcome´ instead of ´uh-huh,´ 24/7 coverage of the Leafs on CBC. But you must realize that we suffer from a brutally oppressive environmental regime. We have to seek seasonal asylum in your country."

This is expected to become a pivotal issue in the run-up to the U.S. mid-term elections. Canadians are advised to slip over the border while they still can.

Tim Simard, West Kelowna

Brigitte Patheiger shares this

IRISH GHOST STORY

This story happened a while ago in Dublin, and even though it sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock tale, it´s true.

John Bradford, a Dublin University student, was on the side of the road hitch-hiking on a very dark night in the midst of a big storm. The night was rolling on and no car went by. The storm was so strong he could hardly see a few feet ahead of him.

Suddenly, he saw a car slowly coming towards him and stopped. John, desperate for shelter and without thinking about it, got into the car and closed the door - only to realize there was nobody behind the wheel and the engine wasn´t running.

The car started moving slowly. John looked at the road ahead and saw a curve approaching. Scared, he started to pray, begging for his life. Then, just before the car hit the curve, a hand appeared out of nowhere through the window, and turned the wheel. John, paralysed with terror, watched as the hand came through the window, but never touched or harmed him.

Shortly thereafter, John saw the lights of a pub appear down the road, so gathering strength, he jumped out of the car and ran to it. Wet and out of breath, he rushed inside and started telling everybody about the horrible experience he had just had.

A silence enveloped the pub when everybody realized he was crying, and wasn´t drunk.

Suddenly, the door opened, and two other people walked in from the dark and stormy night. They, like John, were also soaked and out of breath. Looking around, and seeing John Bradford sobbing at the bar, one said to the other...

"Look, Paddy! There´s that fooking idiot that got in the car while we were pushing it!"

Irene Harvalias sends this article:

OLDER THAN DIRT

Someone asked me the other day, "What was your favourite fast food when you were growing up?"

"We didn´t have fast food when I was growing up," I informed him. "All the food was slow."

"C´mon, seriously. Where did you eat?"

"It was a place called ´at home,´" I explained. "Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn´t like what she put on my plate, I was allowed to sit there until I did like it."

By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn´t tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.

Here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood, if I figured his system could have handled it:

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore Levis, set foot on a golf course, travelled out of the country, or had a credit card.

My parents never drove me to school. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and had only one speed, slow. It was a Columbia-in 1943.

We didn´t have a television in our house until I was 22. It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at 11, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God. It came back on the air at about 6 a.m. And there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people.

I never had a telephone in my room. Our only phone was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen to make sure some people you didn´t know weren´t already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home... But milk was, and so was bread.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers. My brother delivered a newspaper six days a week. He had to get up at 5:00 every morning

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies! There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren. Don´t blame me if they bust their gut laughing.

SUGGESTED SITES

Barbara Wear forwards this link to a compilation of elevator gags for laughs:

Barbara also sends the URL for a video of the world record for most UAVs airborne simultaneously, accompanying an orchestra playing Beethoven´s Fifth Symphony:

On November 11, 1999, Terry Kelly was in a drug store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, at 11 a.m.:

In this Tyee interview, Jane Goodall isn´t giving up, in spite of species die-offs and political horrors:

In this video, Dr. Eric Berg maintains that drinking eight glasses of water per day is "a big fat lie:"

Graham Allison thinks the US and China may be headed toward a violent collision that no one wants, and suggests how we can summon the common sense and courage to avoid it:

In this TED talk, Mark Bittman talks about what is wrong with the way we eat, and why it´s putting the entire planet at risk: