Kelly (28 page)

The
Glomar
has another very important capability—rescue and retrieval of submarines.

Lockheed’s participation in
Glomar
was to design the mechanism that would pick up an abandoned Russian submarine sunk to depths of 15,000 feet. Skimping on static testing of the remotely-controlled titanium arms—failure to conduct one last test before the retrieval attempt—resulted in less than 100 percent success. The sunken submarine had been located and was being lifted. It was two-thirds of the way up when one of the arms failed, and part of the sub dropped back down. The rest was recovered, however, and it was informative to our submariners.

Later, one of our submarines was lost in the east Atlantic. We suspected that it might have been the victim of the game of “chicken” the Russians like to play with other subs. But there was nothing capable of descending to 9,000 feet to search for it—even for inspection if not retrieval. So the value of the vehicle is indisputable—militarily and commercially. The expense of restoring
Glomar
would be great. Just the cost of maintaining it in dock runs high—about $30,000 a month. But its usefulness is clear. It would be a handy gadget to have in operation.

Not all of our weapons are military. Some are economic. The most important airplane for the future, to my way of thinking, isn’t a transport, isn’t a bomber, isn’t a fighter. It is the crop duster. Why? We are going to have to feed an awful lot of people in this world. We must keep our ecology in hand, save our forests, seed the fields, fight fires, control weather, and
even—should there be nuclear explosions and environmental contamination—spray to accelerate diminution of radiation.

There is nothing dramatic about this airplane. It just might be the airplane most important to more people than any other. I’d like to think that airplane was one for peaceful purposes.

A
T
S
TAR
L
ANE ONE
S
ATURDAY
morning in a recent spring, we branded 52 calves, ten more than at roundup the previous year. The day began early for Nancy and me as we greeted 64 friends, neighbors, ranchers, and cowhands arriving to work or watch and share in the traditional barbecue that followed. It is one of the regular rituals we enjoy on the ranch—probably our favorite.

The roundup actually began the day before. My neighbor rancher Dee McVeigh brought nine of his cowboys to join our hands in combing the hills to round up all the cattle. All but one wild cow, that is, which escapes us every year. She’s more deer than cow, she’s so fast. We go after them all—calves, cows, and steers.

Some of the steers and the dry, non-bearing cows will be sold. The new calves, six to eight months old, will be sprayed for flies and ticks, innoculated in one mixed shot against hoof-and-mouth and several other diseases, have their eyes sprayed for pink eye, and be castrated and branded—a star with an L offside. All the cattle normally get shots once a year and are sprayed twice.

Before day’s end on Friday, all the cattle had been driven into several holding pens awaiting the next morning’s action.

On Saturday by 8
A.M.
, we were organizing the hands into roping groups—several teams of three or four men on horseback. Their first chore was to separate the calves from the cows, then divide the calves into groups of about ten. One group of
calves at a time was herded into the main corral for the job at hand. We change cowhand teams with each group of calves.

Halfway through the morning we take a break to have coffee, soft drinks, and sweet rolls.

This is hard work. Yet many of the men are gray-haired and over 70 years old, a few 75. They’ve been roping all their lives. As in piloting, experience is what counts. There are some young ones coming along, too, among them our foreman’s son, Larry Erickson.

The branding irons I handle myself. My good friend of many years, Dr. Lowell Ford, handles the surgical assignment, aided by a young woman who is a veterinarian’s assistant. Dr. Ford, no veterinarian, joins us every year just for the fun of participating in the roundup. He comes from Kernville now, where he has helped to establish a much-needed clinic. A versatile man, a humanitarian and intellectual, he has taught philosophy of religion at Occidental College. He found this totally compatible with the practice of medicine.

By the time all the calves have been worked through, the job is done for another year. It is mid-day, and time for the barbecue.

As a working hand, I retreat to the main house to shower and change and return in my “padrone” outfit—western pants, embroidered shirt, and big Mexican sombrero. That is my role for the afternoon.

The barbecue setting is a grassy hollow under the shade of several huge ancient oak trees. The barbecue pit is a permanent fixture here, and the coals already are glowing. Long tables with benches have been set up. A bar has been created from a large box set on end; and soft drinks, beer, wine, and stronger libations are dispensed. An array of dips and chips is spread over one of the tables.

It is a congenial crowd, and newcomers do not remain strangers for long.

After the snacks are demolished and several rounds of drinks downed, the serious food arrives—barbecued sausages, tritip steak, beans, several kinds of salads, and an assortment
of desserts. There is food enough to fill any hungry cowhand.

Then we play poker—some of the old hands and I. It’s a wild game, with each dealer calling what type of game will be played with that hand. Nobody wins or loses a lot, but the game is a major event on the day’s schedule each year.

Before sunset, the group gradually drifts away and we drive back up the hill to our house—Nancy and I and a few family members and friends who will stay overnight. Each time of day and each season presents its own special type of beauty in these mountains, but I think sunset at the end of a satisfying day’s work is my favorite time of all.

Even with a full-time foreman, there is plenty for an interested owner to do on a working ranch. Nancy took to ranch life enthusiastically from the first, as had Althea. Both of us are involved with everything that goes on there—reviewing the work schedule with Lee, tilling the soil, planting our oat hay, crop dusting against the invading mustard, harvesting, baling, and storing the crop.

We had a good crop that year, and by late summer had 10,000 bales of hay stored in three barns awaiting sale at higher prices during the winter. Many ranchers have to sell on harvest, because they haven’t sturdy barns with cement floors to keep out gophers.

Before all the bales were picked up, however, the whole crop was endangered by a fire that swept over 135 acres of the harvested area. It was started by a spark from the machine that picks up the baled hay—despite a spark arrester, practically new, and twice inspected. Lee had been working late on an extraordinarily hot day in mid-summer. It was almost dark when he shut down the machine and left the field. By the time he arrived at his house, he turned to see flames against the darkened sky.

The interdependent feeling found among ranchers and farmers still, the same spirit of frontiersmen who knew they required each others’ help, sent a neighbor to the south of us to drive over with a truck bearing a water tank. He is a man we had yet to meet. The help was much appreciated but not needed.
Firefighters with three helicopters and two water bombers arrived within minutes of being called and put out the fire within an hour.

There have been other fires in the area from this same source. The spark arresters on these machines are made of ordinary galvanized wire screening and burn out in about a month’s time. They meet the legal requirements, but obviously that is not good enough. I am designing new spark arresters of stainless steel for our equipment.

Another crop we harvest each year at the ranch is walnuts from about 40 trees. This is not a paying crop, though. It’s a Christmas present for friends.

It is out of the question to try to raise a vegetable garden, much as we should like to do so. There are too many gophers that we’ve never found a way to eliminate.

Our riding horses we take care of ourselves. I presented Nancy with a new Palomino, and she rides frequently. My own horse is ridden so seldom anymore that I have about given up that activity. I do not wish to be thrown and get a broken back at this time in my life.

I do spend a great deal of time rebuilding the machinery—keeping the trucks, tractors, and other equipment in condition. I still love working with machinery. I can spend as much time as I have in my shop. It is so well-equipped that we very seldom have to call on outside help. This has been a big part of my enthusiasm for the ranch—keeping all the equipment running. I think that without it, the expense of running the ranch would be about twice what it is.

Most of the major projects I’ve wanted to build on the ranch have been completed now. One of the first projects I undertook when I bought Star Lane was to build a combined dam and bridge over the creek that runs through the ranch. I had to decide whether to stress it for just a hay truck or a heavier load such as a Minuteman missile. The missile won out. Anything of that weight could safely be carried over the creeks on my ranch. Should the day ever come when weapons need to be dispersed from nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base,
or elsewhere, Star Lane won’t be a bottleneck to their being deployed in the surrounding mountains.

My work always has been exciting to me and still is. Very serious study, while demanding, always has been a joy. I literally love aerodynamics, mathematics, physics, machinery—all the tools of my trade. I consider myself very fortunate to have lived my professional life doing exactly what I always wanted to do.

The fantasizing I did as a boy, imagining myself to be Tom Swift, I still do—but now as Jules Verne, stranded somewhere on an island with no ready-made means of escape. As I swim across the pool at the ranch or at home in Encino, I pose problems to myself. How would I make an airplane from absolute scratch? How would I find the ore, dig it up, smelt it? How make steel? How devise an engine, carburetor, ignition system? What could I build? Tractor? Ship? Or, not so isolated as Verne, what could I accomplish from scratch using only the tools at the ranch. The mental challenge is entertainment for me.

Not all of my heroes have been in fantasy, though. There are a few from real life. Dr. Charles Kettering, for many years in charge of research for General Motors, is one. I learned a great deal in just reading about him and how he operated, though I never met the man. He headed an excellent laboratory and made many important contributions—among them the electric starter for automobiles that made it easier for women to drive.

It took a hard crank to start the engine before that.

Thomas Edison is another of the men I most admire. He was such a prodigious inventor and so tenacious in pursuing a goal. He was not afraid to go off into untried areas, not afraid of criticism for doing so. He not only was interested in invention—e.g., the electric light bulb—but followed it to practicality.

My own life has come full circle. It’s a long way from the harsh climate of Northern Michigan to the luxuriant mountains and valleys of Southern California. But the same elements are there that I so loved in my boyhood. The ranch is my hideaway
in the woods, the horses and dogs are my pets, the shop is my most enjoyed hobby, and, of course, my library is extensive. The same good things—just a lot fancier and more of them.

Once again I have a happy home life. Nancy and I divide our time between Encino and Star Lane. I continue to work several days each week at Lockheed and travel frequently to Washington for consultation on aerospace matters. Nancy accompanies me, and we enjoy the social exchange with many different people. Whenever we have time back in California, we spend a three-day weekend at the ranch.

It’s a quiet life there—usually golf at Alisal and dinner out on Friday. Nancy is a good cook and we enjoy the time to ourselves without help in the house. We have our live-in housekeeper, Carmen Loayza, in Encino and our two police dogs, Wolf and Prince. In the first year of our married life we spent a family Thanksgiving at the ranch and Christmas in Encino.

On the way to completing this book, I was detoured by Dr. Jerome Sacks for a triple bypass heart operation—my second. It had been nine years since the first.

The final chapter of my life is not yet written. But if God should call me tonight, I will have had more than my share of it all—poverty and wealth, struggle and success, obscurity and recognition, sickness and strength, sorrow and joy, happiness and love.

More than my share.