Helo Ride for Kicks

Sunday Mornings we usually watch the Sunday mornings news programs. First, NBC and then CBS. I think it was NBC that had a piece about Sophia Loren making a movie in her 80s and her son is the director. Anna and I went to the Radio City Music Hall about 1970 and saw the Rocketts and then the movie SUNFLOWER. Before the movie Sophia and her director husband was asked to stand up. She waved. Then on the CBS News they had Steve Martin on. It was mostly about Steve teaming up with a NEW YORKER cartoonist for a project. We saw Steve Martin in person at the Southern Music Hall, on Piedmont Avenue AT Broadview Plaza in Atlanta, about the same time period as our NYC trip.. Steve Martin, then, was a brunette, but he had his banjo and arrow through the head prop. I don’t remember if we knew of him before we saw him in person or not. He kept the crowd roaring with laughter. At the end of the CBS Sunday News they always have a nature scene of a bird feeding her young or something. This morning it was butterflies fluttering around the flowers at Cape May, New Jersey. Cape May! When I was stationed in New Jersey with a helicopter squadron (HU-4) our pilots were doing training flew over Cape May often, especially flying the nudist colony at Cape May. Our division officer had to log in I think 50 hours of flight training a month. He was always bragging about Cape May and I asked him to let me go on one of his missions. So, I went up with him one day in a Bell Helicopter. Hot Diggy! We were going over a nudist colony and wave at the naked girls and they were going to wave back! Here is a picture of me in a Bell Helicopter. When we got high up, still over the huge hangar he said watch this! We went straight up very high. The big hangar did not look big at all. Then he said watch this! He turned off the engine and props quit working. He took both hands off the controls and we fell. And we kept falling with him looking at me laughing. I was cursing him, officer or not! Which made him laugh even more. The ground got closer and closer. Suddenly on its own the engine turned itself on, the propellors started spinning seriously hard. It let us down gently. What I did know was the helo science of auto-rotation. As the helicopter got closer to the ground it was like a fan, with he blades spinning, It turns itself back on. Well! But what does that have to do with Cape May?