I promise this is the last of my blog posts about my memories. Thank you for bearing with me as I reminisce about my younger years.
Not a tall family. My Mom was very tiny at less than a hundred pounds and she stretched it to say she was 5’ tall. I always envied her petite size. My Dad wasn’t very tall either, about 5’ 8”, and as a young man he was slightly built. He tells that he was almost dropped from flight school because they told him that his weight wasn’t enough to deploy a parachute, a critical requirement if he ever had to eject from a plane. He said that he ate lots of bananas, ice cream and everything he could get his hands on and when he re-weighed he was accepted. But it always remained in his mind that if he ever had to eject from the plane, the parachute might not work for him. In the end, he never did parachute out of a plane, but he did land several planes that he probably should have ejected from. He related one incident in his memoirs when he took the plane in, saying he wasn’t able to eject:
“Before breakfast on Feb. 21, 1952, Maj. Carl Schmidt, our engineering officer, asked me to test fly one of the planes that had just come out of repair. I was only airborne about 10 minutes when I noticed fire by my feet. I tried to call the tower and then realized that the fire had melted all my electronics including my airspeed indicator and radio. I maneuvered close to the field to eject and found out the fire had also melted the lines to the canopy ejection system. Unable to eject, my only choice was to put the aircraft down on a 3600-foot runway or the beach. I elected the runway because I knew I needed someone to get me out of the aircraft. I could not lower my flaps, speed brakes or landing gear. Not having any airspeed indicator I did not want to stall out and spin in so I held a lot of speed, people who saw it guessed 200 knots, and jammed it down on the very start of the runway and started shedding parts; tip tanks, wings and tail. I used the whole runway and then some and came to rest about 200 feet off of the end of the runway. I started to take my 38 cal. Smith & Wesson, that we carried all the time, and try and shoot a hole to escape through in the canopy when an ordnance man, Cpl DeAngelo, saw my predicament and picked up a big rock and busted the canopy and hauled me out just in time, because after we had moved about 50 feet from the fuselage the ejection seat blew. About that time the Chaplin came over to the crash site to give the pilot ‘Last Rites’ as he knew I could not of survived that crash. I ended up with just a cut on my chin that took the Flight Surgeon three stitches to fix.”
Dad also told us that the medic
told him that he was consequently entitled to a Purple Heart for his
injury. And Dad immediately said that he
definitely did not want anything to do with that – as he was worried that Mom
would get the communication and needlessly panic all over a cut to his chin!
My crazy Dad. For some reason people either absolutely loved my Dad for his kind and generous heart; or they wanted to keep their distance from that crazy Marine! I’ll share a few examples…
Surveyors in our pasture. The pasture area of our ranch took up about half of the top of the mesa. The other half of the mesa belonged to the Creel family, and old Mr Creel was our school bus driver. At some point the Creel property was purchased by a developer. One day Dad saw a pickup in our field next to the old Creel property and there were a couple of fellows hammering stakes into our field. Dad rode up on his horse and asked what was going on. He was told that they were subdividing the old Creel property for the new owner, that the fence was in the wrong place, and that some of our pasture belonged to the new owner. Dad pulled up the stakes and told them to leave.
The next day they
were back putting stakes in our field.
Dad once again rode over and told them to leave and that the fence had
been there as an accepted boundary for over 40 years. They were more assertive this time and
continued to drive stakes into the pasture.
So Dad told them that he was going over to the house to get a gun, and
that he would be back and shoot out their truck tires so that when he called
the sheriff their truck would be proof that they were trespassing on our
property. He did ride over to the house
and get the gun, but the surveyors also quickly left the field. They were staying in a trailer nearby on the
Creel property, so Dad rode up to the trailer and knocked, but no one answered
the door. Someone looked out the window
and Dad heard them say “It’s that Marine from the next ranch and he has a
gun.” Dad left, went back to the
pasture, and pulled up the rest of the stakes throwing them over the
fence. They never came back.
A
pig farm. Years later a developer proposed putting up a
multi-story building right next to our property line that would have obstructed
the view of Sierra Blanca Mountain from my folks’ home. Dad protested saying
that the property agreement between him and the developer prohibited just that,
though I don’t know if that was true or not.
Dad then told the developer that he would put up a large sign that said
“SCRIBNER PIG FARM” and get a few sows to corral along that fence
boundary. After that, no more was ever
said about the project.
Private
property. One year during deer season, Jeff, my brother
was out with Dad hunting down along Eagle Creek when they came around a bend
and there was a hunter sitting there with his rifle propped up on a tree
nearby. Jeff tells that Dad asked the
hunter if he knew where he was, and the response from the hunter was that he
had permission to hunt there. At that
point, Dad informed the hunter that he was the owner of the property and that
he was trespassing and should leave. The
hunter got sassy and told Dad that there was plenty of land and he wasn’t
leaving. According to Jeff, Dad’s
response was to quietly pull up his rifle and blow the stock off of the other
guy’s rifle that was leaning on the tree about two feet away from where he
sat. Dad said, “I guess that you are
done hunting now. You’d best
leave.” The hunter was shaken but he
picked up the pieces that remained of his gun and quickly left.
A Red Cross volunteer. My Dad served as the local Red Cross volunteer for Lincoln County in a capacity to facilitate getting military personnel home for family emergencies, usually the death of a family member. During the time of the Vietnam War, I remember he would sometimes get a late call and go into his office where many phone calls later he would have arranged for emergency leave and a trip home for a soldier who was on deployment. I think he did that job for twenty or thirty years.
In 1978, my Air
Force pilot husband, Marc, was in a serious airplane crash while on a military
exercise in California, and I called home to let my parents know. I told them that I was soon scheduled to be
escorted by a fellow officer on a commercial flight from Arkansas (where we
lived) to California; that Marc had a serious brain injury, was in surgery, and
I would let them know when I found out more.
Unknown to me, Dad pulled out all of his contacts, verified how critical
Marc’s condition was, and he found a way to beat me to California where he
unexpectedly met my plane when I arrived.
A ranch home. By Christmas of 1963, we moved into our 5-bedroom home that Mom and Dad had been building on top of the mesa at our ranch in Alto. Our new home had 3 fireplaces – and I still love a fire in the fireplace on cool winter evenings. Two of the fireplaces were made of rocks that Mom had picked up on the property. She loved the stones that had a bit of green moss growing on them, and I remember her working with the stone mason to place those rocks the just way she wanted them.
A new home. Once the family had begun to downsize, Mom and Dad decided that it was time for a simpler retired life. They decided to sell most of the ranch property, and retain 10 acres on the opposite side of the mesa to build a new, smaller home where they lived together for the remainder of their lives.
Both Mom and Dad died in January of 2006, following a lifetime of much love and adventure as true partners in life.
I was very fortunate to have so many wonderful times together with my parents and family whether at home or traveling. And it has been a delight for me to write this last group of blog posts and relive those memories.
Once again, thank you for your patience during all of my musings as I shared my memories in these blog posts. While I know that my siblings have enjoyed the reminiscing, it might not have been be as welcome to other readers.
* * * * *
Key Individuals:
Robert Gordon Scribner (1923 – 2006)
Ann Hart Hughes Scribner (1921 – 2006)
Jane Hughes Scribner Simonitsch McCrary (1953 – and more)
and my four siblings: Bob, Jeff, David and Mary Ann
- Jane Scribner McCrary
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