When I was a child in northern Maine we lived in Van Buren which is about as far north as you can go without leaving the USA. Nearby, in the city of Presque Isle was Loring Air Fore Base. Loring was a SAC base where the big B-52 bombers were based and ready to attack the Soviet Union if necessary. I remember going there as a Boy Scout on a field trip.

There was a plane crash while we were living there. One man was killed. It was big news in a small community. I remember it clearly.

Yesterday I learned the rest of the story.

I was at the Continental office to pay for my ticket home in May. Next to me sat an old man. He was not the genteel version of age nor was he a fit and trim good looking old man. This man looked like a cadaver. With only a little makeup he could have played in any of the zombie movies that have been so popular over the years.

We got into conversation. It turns out he was a medic working at Loring when that crash occurred. He was on the team that recovered the wreckage and the body of the man that was killed. He says the biggest piece of him was an eight pound unidentifiable gob of meat. They identified him from bits of teeth they picked up at the site.

The dead man was the radar operator in the plane. The pilot realized they were going to crash and ordered the radar operator to bail out. Records show that he ordered the man to bail out twice. Then he left the plane. When they found the man's seat they found that the safety harness was not buckled. Apparently his fiancée was waiting for him on the tarmac and he had released the harness so he could jump out of the plane as soon as it rolled to a stop. When the pilot ordered him to eject he didn't have time to get it back on.

So, here I am separated by at least 40+ years and half the globe from that incident and I meet a man who can tell me a story from my childhood. Isn't life wonderful?