Tale #23

Before TV hit Hawaii with such dastardly effect, and before I moved to the Big Island for a couple of years, I did a 10 PM radio newscast sponsored by Pan Am. (Radio newscasts were only 15 minutes long in ancient times, you may recall, and had only one sponsor. I also did one at 5:30 sponsored by Alka Seltzer and several 5 minute takes during the afternoon.) During the 1950 summit eruption of Mauna Loa --- Pan Am was flying Strato-Cruisers between Hawaii and the Coast, I think --- when an airliner landed at Honolulu and disembarked the passengers, the crew stayed on board and I joined them and the plane, which still had sufficient fuel, took off immediately and flew to Hawaii.

I rode in a little jump seat behind the pilot and the whole cabin crew crowded into the cockpit when we got over Mauna Loa. As stewardii were required to be young and attractive in those days, that in itself was was a memorable experience. In my lap I held the first of those little spring-driven audio tape recorders, which was about the size of a shoebox and the first truly portable that ever came out. The tape reels were about three inches in diameter and it was literally spring-driven; it had a little crank you stuck in one end and wound it up. The recording head required electricity, of course, and that came from a bunch
of "D" batteries in the beast. It was small but heavy.

As we got over the summit eruption --- we were initially a couple of thousand feet above it --- the Pan Am airplane driver decided he was a fighter pilot again and began a series of maneuvers that would have made me sicker than hell if I hadn't been so impressed by the tremendous fire fountains below us. In fact, they were soon more around us than below us, I swear. Strapped in the tiny seat I was trying to record some play-by-play while the pilots were hollering at each other and the stewardii were squealing girlishly and I was moderately distracted by the female chests pushing and jiggling against my head. Even at the time I hadn't the faintest idea what I was saying. When we got back to Honolulu and the station I had a hell of a hard time finding a couple of minutes of tape worth using.

Later, during the same eruption, we did it again. That time I had a better recorder and we were tied in by radio with a guy on the ground from KGMB's affiliated station in Hilo, KHBC. I had never met him, and in fact didn't meet him for another year or two. His name was Roger Coryell. (On that second Pan Am flight, the pilot was a stickler and wouldn't let a single stewardess into the cockpit. I was not distracted. Unfortunately.)

Wayne Collins
a2Darth@rcn.com