Over the next 11 months we will be sharing the Memoirs That Made Me Who I Am. These are compiled stories written about the life of a former Gallup resident Eugene Leone. Before his passing, he wrote, “It is with great delight that I share these stories from my heart, which have been inside for many years. My desire is that the reader would be able to go back to a time that was very real and may have been lost through the years.
56 December 2021
Chapter Six
The Guided Flight
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This adventure occurred during the time I was anxiously waiting for my 18th birthday. Only then could we be inducted into the Army Air Force Cadet Training program. My dad had given me a job that needed to be done but was not imperative. He said simply, “You want to go for a short trip?” “Where to?” I asked. “To check out the gold mine that Oliver and his partner are working at in Blythe, California.” Oliver was a brother to my dad, and my uncle. Oliver was the only intellectual in the family being a metallurgist for the United States government, and living and working in Boulder City, Nevada. Oliver’s partner was also a metallurgist, and together are the claims of the new owners.
At our arrival at the Blythe Airfield, the young guy doing some paperwork said, “Are you driving a 4-wheel drive vehicle?” When we said “no”, he said we would have to call old Cal, the resident crop-duster to fly a message up into the Granite Mountains telling the miners that we had arrived and to come get us in the 4-wheel drive. The next day, old Cal said he would make a small parachute to let the message down easy. Cal had gone into his old toolbox to find a suitable weight to attach to the parachute. He attached the message lines to a monkey wrench weight and reached across the bench to hand it to me. I thought it might be too heavy, but this was no time to bring up trifles.
