CHAPTER 2
West of Vacaville, California
Sunday, 13th December 1964
I had recently turned twenty-two, had all of my hair and, like most drastic changes to follow in my life, this current upheaval came akin to a bolt from the blue; shattering my comfortable young existence. For on this day I was required to grow up all the way. It’s strange how the responsibilities of manhood can descend on one without any warning, similar to the arrival of a ton of bricks.
When this event occurred, I was standing on a slope southeast of Bald Mountain, not too far below Gray Pine Trail’s ridgeline, at the edge of a grove of gray pines. It was a wild, unpopulated area that would eventually become a part of the Sugarloaf Ridge State Park. I remember there was a high overcast that day, and everything seemed to be wet from the winter Pacific storm that had been pounding California for the past three days. Except despite the day being grey, damp and cold as I recall, in contrast, the air held a heavy, deathly-still quality.
Several yards upslope from me rested the tortured fuselage of a 1956 Cessna 310. I had loved that light, twin-engine, five-place aircraft. It had been modified with a 1962 paint job – white over royal blue – giving it a smart, low-drag, sleek appearance.
Over the past year I had cleaned and waxed every inch of this amazing craft, both inside and out, and had performed minor maintenance; making me intimately familiar with it as any lover should be. Additionally, when I wasn’t rough-necking on my dad’s oilrigs, I was flying this beautiful twin on business and pleasure trips for my dad’s company: “MAC Drilling.” It had literally been my pride and joy.
Now it lay jumbled and broken as if some errant, giant child had grown weary of it, casting it onto the edge of this grove of gray pines. Striking the ground with such force - driving several tree trunks through its wings - indicated the wings had totally stalled out and weren’t generating any lift prior to impact.
The left engine had been ripped from its mounts and buried itself into the soft, wet floor of the woods roughly fifty feet in front of the light twin. While the right engine had careened, more or less downslope, 150 feet before burying itself in a like manner with shame.
The cockpit and cabin appeared as if the same giant child had reached in with both hands and literally ripped it apart vertically. Currently both the cockpit and cabin areas were empty; the pilot’s chair was missing.
The only thing recognizable was the tail section; it was still fairly intact.
My father, Michael Albert Chisholm, had been flying the 310 and was its sole occupant. At this point in time he had been 48 years of age, weighed in at 250 pounds, and was two inches taller than me at six-foot-four. In appearance he could have easily doubled for the actor James Gandolfini, in his role as “Tony Soprano” of the hit TV series The Sopranos, – thinning hair, broken nose and all - only without the Jersey-mafia accent.
James Gandolfini
Because of his size and bearing, coupled with the fact he’d been an ex-prize fighter not afraid to use his dukes, everybody in the oil business - a fairly pugnacious group of individuals - had always referred to my dad as “Big Mike.” They did so with respect. Having grown up around this persona, I strongly felt - as did everyone else I came into contact with who knew my dad - that Big Mike Chisholm was indestructible.
At present, however, I’m forced to come face-to-face with two very brutal truths, dear reader:
People can die in airplanes – violently, quickly and tragically.
My father’s indestructibility was a youthful fallacy.
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