kerewin's whine cellar

A Story From When I Was Eight

With very little on my mind to write about, Nefariously Evil Darryl (N.E.D.) suggested I write something about when I was eight. The Summer I was eight the Goodyear Blimp came to Spokane. They were camped out near the airport and were in town for a couple of weeks. I am not really certain WHY they were in town, maybe they just travel all around the country when not doing sporting events.

Anyway, my Father was fascinated. At the time he was working as a salesperson for a company that sold popcorn machines, candy cotton machines, candy bar machines, basically all the sorts of things that kids loved. So we would go out to see the crew each evening and watch the blimp take off with people from Spokane that had a lot more money and influence than we would ever have. We ended up forming friendships with all the crew and just hanging out with them. They were superb, really, really nice poeple. When we went my dad would bring along those HUGE bags of popcorn that you see minimum wage high schoolers dump into the heaters at movie theaters. Some we ate, but mostly we left for the Blimp Crew.

It was a very exciting Summer for a girl between 2nd and 3rd grade. There was one crew member, Steve, who was....ah, he was a lot like the blond guy in Dukes of Hazzard. I had SUCH a crush. On one of the last nights we went out to see the blimp crew they had a huge surprise for us. They gave us each pieces of blimp, signed, a statue, and a picture signed by the entire crew and........................A RIDE ON THE BLIMP FOR THE ENTIRE FAMILY!

So the next day, in our best clothes we troop out there for the last time. It was a gorgeous, sunny day. We all got on with our favorite pilot, Corky (years later, my Father would be very careful to listen to the crew flying the blimp for major sports events and CHEER if Corky's name was called). I don't remember much, it was VERY loud on takeoff and then rather floaty. It seemed very small and very high up, as you can imagine it was rather amazing. Then the unimaginable happened, Corky got up and had my DAD fly the blimp! We even flew over our house and looked down upon it. Truly amazing.

In Third grade when we all got up to tell what we did that Summer, I sure had an amazing story to tell. I even had all my blimp props to prove it. Oh the power of popcorn.

Speaking of N.E.D. I was trying to figure out which Duke brother was blond and NED sent me this link. Jesus, that sausage is, um, fake? I never remember seeing that at the tender age of eight.

UPDATE: here's N.E.D.'s reponse: A Story From When I Was Eight

Posted by kerewin at July 4, 2005 09:17 PM