Happy Father’s Day – Here’s Mine

This is a picture of my dad from 1955. He was a Lieutenant in the Air Force and an aeronautical engineer in Pasadena, California in the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. He ended up working on missile or military aircraft projects for the rest of his adult life. Except for the time when he decided to move us to the family farm in Missouri. So we did that, and then he went back to his "city" job and did both jobs for a while.

One day while he was working in this office, an older gentleman called him and told my dad that he'd invented an "anti-gravity" machine. He wanted to know if the Air Force would like to pay him for the idea. So, my dad says, "Come on down and we'll talk about it." The old guy gets to the office and says, "How much will you pay me for the idea?" And my dad says, "Well, how about you show us your 'anti-gravity' machine." And the guy says, "Can't. It flew away."

Before that he was based in Albuquerque, New Mexico at Kirtland Air Force Base in the 4925th Test Group (Atomic). Google it - they did some "interesting" work.

Kirtland is about 200 miles northwest of Roswell, NM. And this was in 1951 - four years after "something" (supposedly) crashed near Roswell. I'm not saying he knew anything about "aliens", but..... (right now he's looking down on me and shaking his head, whispering words like "no evidence" and "science" and threatening to take away my car keys or something). Seriously, he just laughed when I asked him about that stuff.

Anyway, I miss the guy. He was the smartest guy I ever met. (East Lansing High School probably deserves some credit there) He was a great guy to have around if you needed to build a deck or replace an engine in your car, or had some physics homework. The deck he planned, and he and I built, will be the last thing standing in Pittsburgh after the Apocalypse. And, he taught me how to shoot a bow and a gun, got me interested in flying, and came to all my baseball games - even when he wasn't the assistant coach.

Wouldn't give up the location of those aliens, though.

Happy Father's Day.

Banana Don and Stephanie McCoy amuse and thrill you every weekday morning from 5:30 – 10AM on the radio at 100.7 WITL.

Banana Don can be reached via email at don.jefferson@townsquaremedia.com and on Twitter at @WITLBananaDon and @WITLFM. Also, Facebook friend Banana Don and Stephanie at Facebook.com/BananaStephanie and Facebook.com/WITLFM.