Michael Ludden's Blog, page 6

And then it ignited…

This post first published on Oct. 26, 2013…

One of the great perks of Florida journalism was covering the space program during the heydays. Back in the day, people used to line up along the beach in Cocoa to see a launch.

And when it was time for the first shuttle to go up, a million people crammed in, shoulder to shoulder. Got there early.

That was as close as the public could get, but it was miles away.

If you had the right creds, you could get to the press site, 3.5 miles across Mosquito Lagoon from the launch pad. Now, if 3.5 miles sounds like a long way to be from a rocket launch, you’ve never been that close.

Let’s just say whatever you see on television is a ridiculous imitation of the blinding light, the roar, the thunderclap-pounding, chest-bruising barrage that is about to wash over you like a tidal wave. The folks who wanna stand lean into it.

The first launch had been a ticking clock for years. Delays… safety concerns… debate… fixes.

Money.

More delays. Like a lot of folks, we went and came home, went and came home, camped out in the parking lot with buckets of fried chicken and large quantities of unauthorized sustenance. Always waiting for Go.

Generally, the countdown’s gonna run down to mebbe nine minutes and some change, even on a bad day. It’s when you start getting into those final-minute checks that you’re most likely to see red lights start to blink.

Well on April 12, 1981, the lights stayed green. The clock kept ticking. And in the concrete bleachers, under that galvanized roof, a sea of reporters and tv guys from all over Florida and the U.S. and the world started to get out of their seats, started walking, quickly, down toward the water.

Stopped talking.

And then it ignited. Main engines hammering so hard you could see the frickin engine nozzles shaking like they were about to fall off and even the damn tail was shaking. (Something else to fix later.) And then it started to lift off the ground.

Slowly at first, as if it were too big, too heavy to compete with gravity. And then unimaginable acceleration… glorious, stunning, violent. The flames underneath, so brilliant it was painful to watch. And yet it danced into the heavens as if it weighed nothing at all. Disappearing all too quickly.

Look around at all the hard-case journos. Screaming, tears flooding down their faces, sobbing, arms raised, hands clasped. Somebody’s hanging on to a railing. And then the shouts.

“Oh my God!”

“God bless America.”

“Brezhnev… kiss my ass!”

You want to take the stick?

This post first published on Oct. 14, 2013

I’m getting what they call an orientation flight. Public relations. Who cares? I would cut off my arm to get in this thing.

Friend of mine drives me out to the airport, a smallish place south of town where they can do stunts and not be in anybody’s way. She’s gonna watch. From the ground.

Safety lecture first… parachutes, etc.

I sit in the back. We’re getting ready to hammer it and he says… “What I like to do to start is called a performance climb. I’m gonna lift the wheels off the runway, put the jet on its tail and hit the burners. We’ll go straight up, very fast. Are you cool with that?”

Are you kidding?

We do the climb, we run around up there, sitting atop a jet engine that can knock down a house, destroying the clouds. He catapults, stunts. And I dunno if the jet jockeys do this for everybody to make em feel special, but at one point he says, “I’m gonna put it into a high-G turn. We’ll see how you tolerate it. If it’s too much, call out on your mic.”

I watch the meter roll up to about 6 and half Gs. I’m flexing my stomach hard, to keep it where it’s supposed to be. You do not see this flying Delta, but in turbulence, these wings rock like whitecaps in the wind.

“How was that?” he says.

Do not stop on my account, I say.

At which point, he says… “It seems like you’re real good with it. I was supposed to practice today and ran out of time. If you don’t mind and you got no place to go, we could run through the show. Take about a half hour.”

I was figuring my flight would be 10 minutes, at best. I tell him it sounds something along the lines of spectacular.

We are booming a pirouette into the sky when he says… “You wanna take the stick?”

Three guesses, pal.

So I get to climb and dive and spin and bash my frickin head against the sides of the cockpit from pushing the thing too hard. We go into a steep climb and he tells me to level it off, at which point we go weightless.

“You need to be a little more sensitive with the stick,” he says.

“I am available for more practice,” I say.

I am flying with a guy who spots a smokestack miles in the distance, says we’re gonna stick our nose in it (after a few intermediate steps). Proceeds to hammer inside loops, outside loops… a whole lot of stuff where I cannot see the ground and, in fact, have no idea where it might be at that particular moment.

We are screaming out of a high speed turn when I see our nose is now pointed straight down, dead center on that smokestack.

Finally, we gotta quit.

I am trying to find some way to thank the guy.

Can I buy you a house?

We float lightly onto the runway, climb out. My friend and chauffer runs outside, wants to know if I threw up.

Hell no. Are you kidding? That was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.

Wish I could say the same, she says.

But that thing you did, going straight up off the runway. That was bad.

 

A punch that would turn you into kindling…

 

 This post first published on Oct. 10, 2013…

I think this whole mixed martial arts thing came out of the old Tough Guy Fights. That’s when promoters figured out guys would show up in droves to see amateurs try to destroy each other.

I showed up for one of the early ones. Staggered fights, based on weight. The lightweights first. The heavies at the end.

I get there early. They’re just putting up the ring. Out comes Solomon McTier. Guy’s in his 50’s, owns a bar a few miles down the road. What you need to know is Solomon was a Golden Gloves champ… here and abroad. And the fact that he was the sparring partner for many years for Muhammad Ali.

I‘m hanging out ringside when Solomon walks in, asks one of the guys: “Is this so and so’s old ring?”

It is.

“I remember it had a soft spot,” he says.

And he spends the next 10 minutes tiptoeing around, lightly bouncing on the mat, moving his feet a few inches at a time. Until he finds it.

The fights begin. Some drunk from the audience stands up, says he can fight. They put him in the ring. Somebody else gets in with him. Kicks his ass.

It goes like that.

Then the main event. Solomon walks out in a silk robe. And out steps a grinning tyrannosaurus who looks like he could pick up your car with one hand. His arms are bigger than my thighs. 24 fights. 24 victories. 22 by KO. All those fights, by the way, took place behind the walls at Florida State Prison, his home for the last 10 years after the misunderstanding that ended up with a guy getting killed.

He’s about 25. When they meet center-ring, Prison boy is real tempted to laugh at Solomon, who now sports a good-sized gut and gray hair.

Prison’s gonna make quick work of grandpa.

They begin to circle each other, throwing jabs, sizing each other. Solomon can toss a fist out and have it back in front of his chin in about the time it takes for you to blink.

But prison boy can dance. And he can throw a punch that is so scary you think it would turn anything it hits into kindling. A few clinches. Mostly Solomon’s keeping his distance. He looks a little worried. Prison’s got a big smile.

I’m sitting right outside the ropes. And I’ve memorized the spot, still wondering what it means.

A couple of rounds in. All of a sudden, Prison lands a huge shot on top of Solomon’s chest, right at the shoulder. Solomon’s arm falls. It’s hanging, dragging down by his ribs. He’s trying to hold it up and retreating across the ring.

Prison thinks it’s a ruse and waves at Solomon to get back on the horse. But Solomon’s hunched over and Prison is not the most patient guy. He closes in and starts knocking the crap out of him. Solomon’s bobbing, weaving, taking most of the hits on his arms, leaning back into the ropes. He’s dodging the worst of it, but you know it’s just a matter of time until one of those haymakers sends him into next week.

Solomon’s shuffling across the ring. And guess what? He’s getting real close to that spot.

Now he musters one last charge. He goes after Prison. But then he takes another shot. Seems like a glancing blow, but it rocks him back. Prison closes in. Solomon’s leaning heavily into the ropes.

He’s timing it.

As Prison lunges, Solomon throws himself backward, bouncing off the rope just as Prison sinks into that soft spot. Solomon is moving, hard, fast, the right arcing over Prison’s head.

Cocky don’t live here no more.

Prison is airborne. He floats back, suspended, a look on his face that says he has just lost any recollection of life on this planet.

Lands with a thud. Big thud. After several minutes, they give up trying to get the boy to make any sense. They cart him off like a fat child still learning to walk.

Folks want Solomon to hang out, take some bows.

Nah. Gotta go. Nice seeing ya.

You are now leaving the United States…

I’m heading out to the Yoruba Nation. This place is off a rural two-lane south of Yemassee, South Carolina, where you pass a sign telling you when you’ve left the confines of the U.S.

This is still the U.S., to be truthful about it. But you are in the middle of nowhere.

Some law enforcement types are real interested in this place. They think it’s a hideout for a bunch of guys robbing banks up and down the east coast, collecting food stamps on their off days. I don’t know about that, but I can tell you, I only see a couple of women in the whole place, very young. Everybody else is male and ripped.

Could be just the time of day.

It’s basically a camp in the woods at the end of a dirt road. Some buildings made out of plywood, under the trees. Metal roofs. Not much to it. Music playing on a loudspeaker someplace. You can pay a few bucks to see the place. Or you can say you’re a newspaperman looking for the head guy.

I get directed to a small building where we sit on some mats. It’s a dirt floor. One of his wives brings us some water in a jelly jar. Colorful rugs and African art on the walls. A broom made of straw.

Charming guy, funny, articulate. He’s actually from up north, but he spent some time in Nigeria and started this place to be about religion, getting back to your roots, disavowing materialism, being authentic, connected with the ancient culture.

They live pretty simply out here, drive into town once a week for necessities. We talk awhile about what people believe, how they choose to live, what’s important to them.

This place is still getting its start. In a few years, there will be more people. The tourists will come to see dancing and sculpture and festivals.

Right now, it’s in the 90s and we’re sitting on the ground. The air is not moving. I swat at some flies.

He smiles, cocks his head. We push open a little door, duck through an opening.

Aahh.

Much bigger room. You can stand up in here. Air conditioning. Stereo, big TV. Stretch out the kinks, drop into a nice, soft chair.

“You want a beer?”

The jet went down in a residential neighborhood…

This post first published on Nov. 10, 2013

It was Kenner, Louisiana, outside New Orleans. July 9, 1982. At the time, it was the second worst air disaster in U.S. history. All 145 on board died, along with 8 killed on the ground.

You could never walk around the wreckage these days. Somebody would have roped it off. Back then, it was just a matter of following the smoke.

Pan American Flight 759 dug a trench three football fields long when it came down. Some said it flew too low and hit a tree. Later, they decided it was wind shear.

Sudden fire. The jet spewed blazing fuel all along its path. It smashed everything to bits. In the branches of trees above the smoking fuselage, you could see tattered pieces of clothing. Just short of where the jet came to rest was another tree. High up in a crook was a stuffed bear. At first, I thought I’d spotted the body of a child.

Early on, it was just rescuers, cops and firefighters and airport safety crews. They showed up with bags of ice and gloves and body bags and masks.

Mute, staring. Doing everything they could. At first they hurried. But then it sank in. This would take days, weeks. They gathered up scorched shoes, tires, twisted bits of metal, parts of suitcases, anything that looked like it could have been human.

Dignity, gone. Families, gone.

Impossible angles, trees snapped off, blasted into kindling, a burnt-out car, a slab without a house on it, the slab split in two. A refrigerator.

I was there all day, and all day long I heard people scream, “there’s a child in that tree!”

This was the neighborhood so close to the runway a little kid got famous one day.

He threw a tennis ball in his back yard. Threw it up into the air and hit a plane.

 

Surrounded by elephants…

This post first published Oct. 18, 2013

I’m heading out to find a circus taking a break. It’s winter time. The Clyde Beatty show is hunkered down out in the middle of nowhere, waiting for spring. I drive a couple hours, find the place. There are lots of old buildings and sheds and clusters of cages stacked high, some old railroad cars. You can hear lions roaring, which is pretty cool. But there aren’t any people. None.

I start hiking across this field. Way in the back there’s a big barn. Still nobody. I get to the barn. Knock. Nothing. I go in. From bright sunlight into total darkness. It’s gonna take days for my eyes to adjust.

I start shuffling slowly into the room, then stop, realizing I can’t see my hand in front of my face. Just the slightest sense of creepy. Probably a better idea just to wait a minute.

So I stand there. Not sure if it’s my imagination, but I think I can hear something. A faint… touching. Mebbe it’s a mouse tiptoeing across a bed of hay. I’m concentrating now, hard. Another touch off to my left. I wait. I still can’t see.

Another, but I’m not sure. But now there’s something else. A sense. I feel something – in the air around me. Take my hands outa my pockets. I’m just beginning to be able to see. I’m in a room, a smaller room than I expected, with high walls. There’s that sound again. Now it’s coming into focus, the wall. And it seems to be coming closer. It’s more of a circle. It’s becoming a circle.

Elephants. A bunch of em. Every one of em, staring.

I walked into their barn. They surrounded me and I barely heard squat. They’re stepping feather-light. How do they do that?

Closer now.

At the same moment, this is perhaps one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced and mebbe not so cool. You start wondering if the small human has done anything that might aggravate the pachys. It’s not like I had permission.

I can see the door behind one guy. I walk up to him.

Up to his thigh.

I give it a slap. Not a hard slap. Not a stupid slap. But a firmish, confident slap, the kind you use when you move elephants aside on a regular basis. Coming through, I say.

Big Boy ain’t movin.

I’m committed. So I squeeze. It is not easy. He stands firm. I get skinny.

Shut the door behind me.