Rocky the Flying Squirrel
After you’ve been in it awhile you realize aerospace is like crack cocaine – once you do it, you can’t live without the high from the maddening pace and complexity; everything else is too easy.
Aviation’s roots spring from early airplane manufacturers like Boeing, who founded United Airlines as a mail service. And since airplanes found their first widespread use in war, it should come as no surprise its highly structured and regulated foundations are derived from the military. Even today many of its systems and operations spring from deep-seated military-style specifications and procedures. But there are sectors of the industry, particularly as you move down the supply chain, that remain very entrepreneurial and wildcat in nature. Fast-paced and complex, projects invariably operate on the edge of profitability. It isn’t an easy living, but it’s surely interesting and sometimes even an adrenalin rush.
Following the crack cocaine theme, it sort of follows there are some goofy people in Aerospace. Smart, but goofy. Those people create stories worth repeating. And today, the story of Rocky the flying squirrel seems like a good place to start.
Jerry was our best on-site liaison mechanic. Lately he had moved into leading our product site support group. Short, stocky and very personable, he had an inexhaustible energy for wanting to make people happy. It didn’t hurt that he had a round cherubic face and a smile that made him look like a jolly Cheshire cat. While he was a skilled mechanic, he could also tell a tall tale with the enthusiasm of a God-fearing southern evangelist. Jerry had a way of mixing his magic elixir with just enough real ingredients to pass the smell test, and there was always someone who would vouch for the tale.
This was one of the first Jerry stories I happened to be around. It actually occurred in Mobile, Alabama, a couple years before the Watermelon Run. I’ll tell you about the Watermelon Run in next week’s installment. It was 1996, and we were in full swing executing a contract for 173 complete interiors on Northwest Airlines DC9 airplanes. It was pretty crazy because we had ten different installation sites across the country going all out, and we had to have liaison people at each site. Needless to say, some of the guys were better than others. Jerry was in charge of all of them, running around from site to site trying to keep it all together.
He had hired a guy, I’ll call him Seymour, to take care of the Mobile site. Seymour had previous site support experience and by all accounts was pretty capable. Jerry had finally made it back home for a few days when AIM’s President, Mark Potensky, came storming into Jerry’s office wanting to fire Seymour for unauthorized charges to his company credit card. Nobody knew what the charges were for yet, but when a line item on your credit card statement says “George’s Pet Shop” it’s probably a good bet it’s not work related. Anyway, Jerry told Mark by law he had to bring the guy back to Seattle before he could fire him. So, of course, Mark said, “Well then, Jerry, you better get your ass down there and bring him back. Then fire him!”
Jerry dutifully caught a flight to Mobile and found Seymour. AIM had rented Seymour an apartment in Mobile for the year he would be there. On the way back to the apartment, Jerry started quizzing him about the charges. “Seymour, you know why I’m here? Mark saw a charge on your company card from a pet shop. He wants to fire you, so you need to level with me – what’s going on?”
“I was getting lonely down here, what with all the overtime and being in a strange town and such,” Seymour meekly replied. “I thought a pet would be a good idea to keep me company and I always wanted a flying squirrel,” he went on.
Jerry did a double take. “A what!? You’re joking!”
“Nope. I found a pet shop that had one, paid the 300 bucks and brought it home. I thought it would be cool.”
Jerry looked at him in disbelief.
The squirrel had a cage and all, and Seymour said he would leave him in the cage during the day while he was at work. Well, the squirrel didn’t like being cooped up like that, and one day he finally chewed his way out. Seymour came home to find an overactive squirrel ransacking the apartment. A chase ensued. Over, around and under furniture, toppling lamps, scratching walls, tearing drapes, he finally caught the squirrel, only to be bitten. That was it. Seymour got angry and hurled the flying varmint across the room, crushing him against the far wall. Oops, so much for that little fella’.
Now Seymour felt bad about losing his temper, so he gave the little guy a burial in the garden. He was not derailed by this little misadventure, though. Seymour still longed for his dream pet. So back to the store he went to buy a second flying squirrel. Only this time, he didn’t have enough room on his own credit card, so he used the company card intending, he said, to pay it back.
Suffice to say, the second squirrel faired no better than the first. He had put this squirrel in the closet, but it didn’t matter when the squirrel chewed his way out. Between Seymour and the two squirrels, the apartment was completely trashed. The squirrels had torn and chewed through everything imaginable, and what was left Seymour had basically destroyed trying to catch them.
Jerry told Seymour there was no way they could ignore this situation, and sent him packing to Seattle where Mark awaited to seal his fate. The apartment was so bad, Jerry had to stay behind to have new carpet and drapes installed, furniture delivered, the holes in the walls repaired and everything disinfected. To heap insult upon injury, Jerry also had to sub for Seymour for a couple of months until a new guy could be hired to take over. But, Jerry never tires of telling that story. And neither do I.
