Here are my illustrations.
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HERE’S HOW THE PLOT TOOK OFF….
In 1999, the cables stolen from an aircraft junkyard cut off the oxygen always supplied to airplane passengers. In this case, a chartered Lear jet flying from Florida to Texas slowly asphyxiated PGA Champion golfer, Payne Stewart, 3 passengers, and 2 pilots. All were dead, 2 hours before the jet ran out of fuel and crashed about 900 miles from their destination to Dallas. From the crash site’s bloody debris and twisted metal, investigators found only Stewart’s mangled golf clubs and his gold wedding band.
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I know it’s not happy golf talk,” I asked Harry Hurt III, my editor at Travel and Leisure Golf, “but are you guys covering this?”
“Why would we do a story about that?” he asked, editor double-speak for ‘Tell me what’s sexy enough about the idea so the sales staff can use it as a pitch to convince advertisers they definitely want to advertise in this hot, juicy issue.’
“Because a lot of people in your readership are rich enough to own airplanes and charter jets. They’ll want to know if they ought to worry about crashing like Payne and his buddies did.”
It was a ballsy topic for a golfing magazine, but as I pointed out, of 2,049 airplane crashes the year before Payne’s flight to heaven, only fifty-two of those crashes involved commercial airplanes. Amateur golfers were one of the non-commercial airline’s most lucrative markets. Unlike a car, there aren’t a lot of diverse outcomes to a plane crash. You go down, end of story.
With Hurt’s okay, I went on a mission to figure out why 6 people died, like oxygen-starved Icarus.
My Illustrations of being lured into a Junkyard with my microphone and pencil.
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Caution is incomprehensible to me. It was an aviation insider who told me where to find the ultimate scammers. I found 4 of the perpa-profiteers. They smiled with Hello’s and handshakes. ‘C’mere’, the leader-of-the-pack waved me to follow the well-dressed foursome into a giant warehouse located on the side of a junkyard packed with busted, broken pieces of airplanes.
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“I’ve never before been to an airplane junkyard.” I was hoping to appeal to their chauvinistic instincts, the old “damsel in distress” routine. It opened a lot of doors for a lady reporter…. Twenty-first-century Mayan warriors with high cheekbones, cocoa butter skin, and broad shoulders.
“We understand from our friends in the detective unit that you’re a reporter on a very, very interesting story,” he purred, raising his eyebrows.
I raised my brows back as if it was the password to a top-secret club. Why couldn’t I hear the klaxon bleat of the danger siren whooping, smell the smoke of a three-alarm fire erupting in my brain?
“Do you know about it?” I asked.
“Plane parts? Sure.” He grinned, exposing rows of perfect molars that glowed gold behind his mocha cheeks. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”
My Illustration of Lawyers’ invasion as I pretend I am innocent and wise.
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In just 2 years, too loaded, too often to drive, I was pulled over by law enforcers observing the weaves and near-misses induced by my displays of driving drunk. In each pullover, I was confident I’d get away with faking sobriety. Miraculously, I managed to ‘pass’ the heel-to-toe 10 steps, and the finger-to-nose with eyes closed tests. Try it. Even sober those aren’t easy!
I was told my booze-breath and pronunciation of: ‘Hey-Woe, Oth-Uh-Fuh. Any Pwob-Hum?’ resulted in 4 flunked roadside breathalyzers.
The publicity of ‘A Well-Known’ reporter arrested 4 times for drunk driving! brought a barrage of lawyers hoping to defend my profound lunacy.
Illustration of court: Penguin with white hair is Judge; 1 Guard in green and another on a monkey’s back. I’m the howling dog on the bench. The little person in red is my lawyer bolting.
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I chose my nice neighbor. His advice? ‘Next time, refuse the breathalyzer.’
I had already refused 2. Massachusetts’ law is if a driver refuses the blow, it implies she or he will blow .08 or beyond on the breathalyzer scale and, yes—arrested! Refusal 3x? License is revoked for life.
The good news, my lawyer said, I hadn’t killed, injured, crashed or hit someone, or something. A district court judge wasn’t impressed. He ordered a one-year mandatory prison sentence.
Illustrations of a 21 year old trying to climb the fence. 6 months for a sale of 1 gram of coke to a cop.
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My lawyer patted my back to cheer, ‘What a score!”
Adding, ‘Only less positive ‘thing’ is that ‘mandatory’ means no days knocked off one year. If it was a ‘direct’ sentence, you could have earned ‘good time’. Y’know, prison tasks like sweeping and toilet cleaning and no displays of… yuk..what’s called ‘cage-rage’, yuk-yuk.”
My glare stopped his pathetic humor. He made a more pathetic try with,
“You and I ought to look into ways to publicize how wrong it is to punish alcoholism or drug addiction. Two problems to be helped, not punished.” He put a wrap on his pathetic performance by looking at his wrist with a look of awe, as if he didn’t know he had a big fat gold watch I’d probably helped pay for.
“Gotta go make some calls and have a bite to eat.”
Here’s an excerpt from a NPR listener
‘A vast audience of those venues learned all about the still on-going, black market selling death. Remarkably, Ross’s material had insignificant response and zero formal action to round up the vile ‘perps’ to be raped behind bars.
Like many women, Ross did not seek supportive help to alleviate the pain of the assault she’d hidden, made worse by low self-esteem brought by minimal praise for her work. Ross opted for drugs and alcohol to go numb and give it all up.
As many people know, the spirits have a toxic grip on sanity.
In just 2 years, being too loaded, too often, to drive, I was pulled over from oblivious styles of driving drunk. I was confident I’d managed to ‘pass’ the heel-toe, finger-nose tests. I’m told it was my booze-breath and pronunciation of ‘Hey-Woe, Oth-Uh-Fuh. Any PwoBum?’ resulted in flunking 4 roadside breathalyzers. It took those 4 arrests for me to finally acknowledge I should select one of the sudden barrage of lawyers. The publicity of my profound fuck-ups of ‘A Well-Known’ reporter to be ‘easily’ resolved and surely promised more clients.
My Illustration of Lawyers invading my peaceful belief I am wise and rational. When I am simply Insane. Due to the lunacy imposed from the haughty and moronic attempt to drink and drug away the depth of my pain.
I chose my nice neighbor. His advice? ‘Next time, refuse the breathalyzer.’
I refused 2 more. Based on the Massachusetts’ logical law that to do so implies: The driver obviously knows she or he will blow 0.8 on the breathalyzer scale. Therefore: TOO DRUNK TO DRIVE!
The good news, my lawyer said, I hadn’t killed, injured, crashed or hit someone, or something. A district court judge wasn’t impressed. He ordered a one-year mandatory prison sentence.
My lawyer patted my back to cheer, ‘What a score!”
Adding, ‘Only less positive ‘thing’ is that ‘mandatory’ means no days knocked off one year. If it was a ‘direct’ sentence, you could have earned ‘good time’. Y’know, prison tasks like sweeping and toilet cleaning and no displays of ‘cage-rage’. The word for being punished for being an alcoholic. That, of course, should be helped, not punished.
But, gotta go make some calls and have a bite to eat.”
I’m the dog on the bench howling. Woman guard (left) Judge, Penguin above, guard with chains riding a monkey—one of many nicknames for prison officers guarding the ‘circus’.