The Nest West

We had a bunkhouse in a hangar at the New River Valley Airport in Dublin, Va. We called it the "Pro's Nest" But we already had a bunkhouse in Cumberland, Md. at the other end of the Airmail route, the original "Pro's Nest". So we called New River "The Pro's Nest West", or "Nest West". One Saturday we were just sitting around the "Nest West". My friend Mark was waiting for his girlfriend to come from Blacksburg, Va. Mark had arranged for Leo Daley, who was an instructor there at Blacksburg to fly his girlfriend over to New River to meet him using the school's Cherokee. After a while Daley came staggering in looking white and stunned, and kind of brush torn. Mark took one look and said "Daley you crashed"! Daley just nodded his head over and over in agreement. My other buddy and I started laughing and apologizing for laughing at the same time. We had been abusing alcohol and perhaps other substances. Mark said, "Is Robin alright"? Leo started nodding his head up and down again in the affirmative. We now howled even louder and apologized more. We all followed Daley out on foot to where the airplane was in a sorghum field a half mile short of New River's 6000 ft. runway. Mark's girlfriend was waiting a safe distance from the airplane. It was a cloudy day and no skydivers were out, and not much going on so we decided to rescue the airplane right away and perhaps keep Daley out of trouble. We had no Jeep and this was before every middle class American had four-wheel-drive. We wound up using a small tractor which the FBO used for a tug. It was slow, but that was good. We knocked down and cut down a path through the sorghum and inched our way through, then dismantled a fence, then managed to cross a ditch by pushing and pulling and towing, and we were up on the taxiway. We hosed the mud and grass and sorghum stubble off and assessed the damage. It was minimal. We fueled the aircraft up, because it was completely out of fuel. We polished out some scrapes in the paint. We moved a bunch of planes out of the hangar and stuck the little 140 in a back corner and moved the planes back. The airport was open for fuel on Saturdays, but only until noon or 1PM, then by request. These guys had been flying around locally and in the pattern in this 182. They came in and got gas. The refueler "Doug" was the Airmail pilot's buddy forever as we would take him on the mail with us sometimes. "Hey what's the story on that plane that was down off the airport? " What plane"? "A plane down in that cornfield right over there"! "Where?" "Just east of the runway"! "If it wasn't on the airport property we have no control over it. You sure it was a plane"? "The guy must have taken back off". "Yea". The next day a phone call came in asking about a plane crash and it got the same stone wall. After hiding out a day and a half Leo Daley was leaving, but his shirt was a mess. I dug in my Airmail duffle bag which I lived out of. My Avant garde girlfriend back in D.C. had made fun of my brand new shirt with it's longhorn logo. She was too proletarian for capitalistic symbols. (Don't you love the Seventies?. I ditched the girl). I got out the shirt and gave it to Daley. For keeps. It fit him like a glove. G.A. Informal