Jim Nance

 

From age seven Bobby Russell has been fascinated with airplanes and flight. The summer of 1948 he was living with his family on a dryland farm in Weld County, when a crop sprayer landed his Piper Cub on a nearby road, then taxied and took flight while Bobby watched in amazement. At nineteen he left farming and joined the Navy with high hopes of becoming a jet pilot. Here are his words about that time and that decision, “I joined the Navy to fly airplanes. In 1962, if you had a college degree or had completed two years of college and passed a test you went straight to Pensacola. If you had less than two complete years of college but passed the test you went to Boot Camp, then to Pensacola. I was in the last group which meant that I belonged to a Boot Camp company but never attended any classes. My days were spent being a go-fer supposedly getting on-the-job training as to being an officer.”

 

 

A few weeks into Boot Camp that plan changed when he attended a lecture given to all Boots by Big Bad Dude, John Melvin "Maxie" Stephenson, Underwater Demolition Teams training unit. “He stood up on the stage in his starched greens and told us he wasn’t interested in making men out of us but if any of us were already men he was willing to talk.” Five days before Class 29 started RD checked into the Boots Barracks on the Naval Amphib Base, where his Navy tour as a UDT water warrior was a drastic change from his dream of Navy jet pilot.

In 1975 RD used his G.I. Bill benefits to attend Colorado Aerotech in Broomfield, Colorado, where he studied Airframe and Powerplant Mechanics. RD bought himself a used VW bug from Mike Sandifer, put a crushed Budweiser can between the engine cover, “trunk lid”, and frame to allow more air flow around the engine, and drove that bug back and forth to Broomfield five days a week for the next year and a half. 

 

It was there he met Jim Nance, about whom this story is written. I was reminded of Jim today when I saw crabapple trees in full bloom in our town, and came home to check on the health of our own crabapple tree, our “Jim Nance” tree, planted when Jim died in the 1980s. Seeing it healthy and blooming I started to reminisce …

 

 

 

Jim Nance was a Texan and an Air Force B-52 bomber pilot in Viet Nam while RD was a Coloradoan and Navy UDT-11 frogman. I imagine they had lots to talk about as they compared experiences and learned to fix airplanes at Aerotech. They had more in common than the military, both loving good food and pretty women.

I recall RD telling me that soon they were a group of five or so students who ate lunch together each day and learned about one another’s lives. Jim and RD graduated at the top of their class in 1976, licensed A&P Mechanics, and good friends.

 

 

 

 

 

Soon after graduation Jim moved his family to Fort Collins and became a part of the local airport crowd. He also became friends with our friends Bill West and Jack Archibald. We liked Jim’s wife, Susan, and remember her saying, “I’ve never eaten a bad meal out.”

 

 

 

RD and Jim shared an interest in experimental aircraft and made two trips back east to attend the Experimental Aircraft Association, EAA, annual fly-in, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Jim drove his van and they had fun adventures going and coming home. On one of those trips a neighbor woman of Jim’s asked if she could hitch a ride to see a relative and he said, “sure”. RD was surprised to arrive at Jim’s and find the woman sitting in the back of the van on a lawn chair! 

 

And one year on their return to Colorado they stopped at Jim’s sister’s home in Iowa and were treated to a wonderful homecooked meal, a very welcome respite from all the hotdogs in their cooler.

Jim became the Fort Collins Veterans’ Service Officer and helped many veterans with their issues. He was really good at that job. But Jim had a bad heart, and struggled with weight control and high blood pressure. He was planning a big trip to the Gulf where he planned to put in his boat and do some sailing. He was at Poudre Valley Hospital getting his health checked out to make sure “all systems go” prior to his trip, ready to be released, when he suffered a fatal heart attack. I don’t remember the exact year but I know he was too young to go.

Thank you Jim Nance for your friendship. RD and I remember. We hope you are flying high above the clouds. The Navy men say “Fair Winds and Following Seas”. I believe the Air Force men say “Blue Skies and Tailwinds”.

Fran's Photos in Argentina, 2008 - Alejandra's Family

This is my third and last post about photos my sister Fran took in Argentina in 2008. We were invited to the home of Alejandra's mother, Ana, and also to the home Alejandra's brother Eduardo, where we were welcomed with open arms and fed a delicious home cooked traditional meal. These are my favorites of the photos Fran took during those visits.

The first photo is Alejandra's brother Julio "Puche" and his son Demian

 

Alejandra and her nephew Federico

Another nephew of Alejandra's.

Marina, Alejandra's sister

Eduardo, Alejandra's brother, at this wonderful outdoor grille.

Alejandra's children, Lucas and Isabella, during a visit to the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.

Ale's brothers-in-law and their boys

Alejandra

Ale's brother Julio with his son, and Eduardo's wife Susanna

A friend in the neighborhood, with Alejandra and Isabella

Alejandra

Ana, Pam, Marina, Alejandra

Harco, Illinois, 1958

 

After school was out in May of 1958 Dad moved us from where we were living in the remote mining town of Cobalt, Idaho, back to southern Illinois, our roots, to the small community of Harco in Saline County, a former coal mining town but in 1958 reduced to two stores, one gas pump, and one church with a smattering of occupied homes.  He drove us across country in our turquoise and white 1956 Pontiac stationwagon, a long drive through Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri where we crossed the Mississippi River on our way back home.

Mom’s parents were there in Harco, living in a small home that belonged to their daughter Lillie (Toots) and her husband Roy Devine. There was a front porch, living room, kitchen, two bedrooms with a door between them, an outdoor toilet, and a cistern in the back yard where they got their drinking water. Dad’s job in the Cobalt mine had ended and he was looking for work, low on money, so we all moved into that little house in Harco with Grandma and Grandpa Smith.

I’m sure my mom was glad to be back in Illinois where she had lots of family after three years of living out west where she had no one, but for Dad it was a blow to his pride. It was quite a change for me; we were four rowdy kids, aged 11, 9, 7, and 3, with no toys, no friends, and no pets. Not everything went smoothly.

 

1958 was a tough time for Dad as jobs were scarce all over the country and in rural southern Illinois the options were few. He took a job in a newly opened coal mine but the conditions were terrible. My brother remembers Dad telling him it was cramped and wet, that he had to crawl on his hands and knees in water all day, digging for coal. I seem to recall that one weekend when he was not working there was a cave-in and that convinced him he needed to find other work.

My memories of that time are all about me, an eleven year old girl who was fussy about her food. Us four kids all loved cold cereal and were use to store-bought homogenized and pasteurized milk. While we lived there with Grandma and Grandpa we had to drink the fresh milk they got from the neighbor lady’s cow, milk that had cream floating on the top and was kinda bluish beneath the cream…yuck! And the cereal we bought at Lois’s store had been on the shelves a long time and infested with bugs. I remember adding bluish milk to my corn flakes and seeing little black bugs float up to the top…double yuck! I just remembered that neighbor's name, Maude Bennett.

Living with Grandma and Grandpa came to an abrupt end when Grandpa got upset about us kids helping ourselves to his horehound candy. Dad was offended by Grandpa’s “selfishness” and that was that. Next thing I knew we moved out of their house and into a rental just a short walk away. It was fun for me because I had my own room! Aunt Betty and Lucy came to see us and brought a couple of wood pallets and a board and made me a dresser. Aunt Betty sewed a cloth skirt to go around it and I thought it was so pretty. We had no running water so Mom walked a few houses down and “borrowed water” from a neighbor each day and carried it home in a bucket. There was a well inside our house with a rope and bucket that let us lower our milk down aways to keep it cool but the water was not fit to drink. I don’t think we had electricity either. We stood on the back step and brushed our teeth in the morning and I recall a tall willow tree in that yard. When I used my hands to separate the hanging willow branches so I could enter that space there were lots of spiders living in the branches. In the kitchen was a big cook stove where Mom built a small fire of wood kindling and coal to cook our meals. My strongest memory about that stove was Mom banked it each night and then came to bed smelling terrible! I suppose it was sulphur. Mom and us four kids were all sleeping in the same bed as Dad had gone north to Chicago to look for work.

My memories of that summer include my brother hitting bottle caps with a stick because he didn’t have a bat and baseball. He became very accurate and it served him well later when he play little league and pony league in Kankakee. And Aunt Betty brought a hoola hoop and showed us how she could make that hoop twirl around her as she laughed and wiggled her hips. None of us came close to her skill.

When fall came we enrolled in school at Brushy, a grade school within walking distance of where we lived. It was the only school near Harco. I worked in the kitchen to pay for our lunches. I liked wearing the white hat and apron, sweeping and emptying trash. I got to be a cheerleader, the one and only time in my life, as a sixth grader. I have never been athletic, always clumsy and prone to falling, so I think they must have been short on girl students that year. Mom couldn’t afford a cheerleading outfit for me so a woman in Harco who had known Mom since she was a girl paid for my skirt and sweater, short black skirt and white sweater.

My most memorable incident as a sixth grade student at Brushy was being paddled by the principal for bad behavior! I deserved it, too. There had been a PTA meeting in the evening and I was there. I roamed around and in one classroom saw a list written on a blackboard, names with marks next to them, keeping track of rule infractions or something like that. I erased all that! I cried as I walked home after being paddled and asked Mom not to tell Dad about it when he came back home.

My happiest memory of 1958 in Harco was going to the woods with Dad and Mike and helping cut wood to take back to the house for kindling and for heating the house as winter set in. Dad had one of those two-man saws and Mike and I took turns being on one end while Dad was on the other. I loved the smell of fresh cut wood mixed with damp leaves and soil in the Illinois forest. That smell cannot be found in Colorado where the humidity is low and there are no oak, walnut and hickory forests.

Dad was successful in his job hunt late that fall and went to work at Ford Motor Company, their Stamping Plant in Chicago Heights, Illinois. It was a union job that paid well and included good benefits. Dad was a welder repairman in a noisy environment before OSHA mandated ear protection.

When he came back to southern Illinois to take us to live in Chicago Heights it was Christmastime. Mom had put up a little tree with some homemade ornaments and I recall Dad stuffing that tree, ornaments and all into the back end of that Pontiac stationwagon before loading us kids and driving north 300 miles to our next home. He was proud to have found a good job and had enough money to buy us all really special gifts for Christmas that year. I remember Mom’s beautiful car coat – that’s what they called a coat that came down about a third of the way from a woman’s waist to her knees – it was a soft corduroy, a shade of green we’d never seen in a coat, like a mossy green, or lichen found on fallen trees in a forest. Dad loved to buy pretty clothes for Mom, always.

We closed out 1958 all together again, in an upstairs apartment in the home of an elderly Polish couple, named Kupietz, in Chicago Heights. That next year was full of new experiences and new places to live, for we rarely stayed in one place very long. But Dad never again was without a good paying job, something that was most important to him. He stayed at the Ford Stamping plant and commuted for the next twenty years. I can imagine a country western song about watching 1958 fade away in the rearview mirror...no regrets.

Fran's Photos in Argentina, 2008 - Art and Architecture

 

To continue with my story of the trip my sister Fran and I made to Buenos Aires, Argentina in November of 2008, these photographs were taken by Fran. I have chosen the ones I think represent art and architecture. This display of art for sale attracted us on the streets of San Telmo.

 

 

 

One of the beautiful old homes in San Telmo neighborhood with a gorgeous balcony with ornate iron railing. The plants add such beauty.
 

 

 

 

 

 

La Bombonera, home of Boca Juniors football (soccer) club in Buenos Aires
 

 

 

 

 

 

A delicate gate into a private courtyard.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can see why this old Ford Falcon caught Fran's attention. It wasn't until I used Google Lens to see what I could learn about it that I found Ford Falcons were produced by Ford Argentina from 1962 to 1991. And see that green paint? I read that dark green painted Falcons were associated with the secret police of the military junta in the 1970s, and for many Argentinians, the car remains a symbol of state-operated terrorism. Good eye, Fran.
 

 

A mausoleum in the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires. The cemetery is 200 years old and there are about 4800 mausoleums including that of Eva Perόn. We walked through this amazing historical treasure in the heart of the city, a beautiful place.
 

 

 

 

 

An outdoor scene on the estancia (ranch) we visited in Argentina.

This small building with its colorful glass panes criss-crossed with electrical wires and framed by leafy greenery is so pretty and unique.

I love this photo for its colors, doorways, and where my imagination goes when I view it.

And this photo makes me want to open that gate and explore beyond.

Another open doorway. Fran always loved mysteries. That was one thing she had in common with our Aunt Petrona Tucker, a love of reading mystery books and magazines.

Fran's Photos in Argentina 2008...the People

 In November of 2008 my sister Fran and I traveled to Buenos Aires where we met up with my daughter-in-law, Alejandra, and my grandkids, Lu and Bella. Today, seventeen years later, and two years after Fran's death, I came across a CD she mailed me with the photos she took on that visit. I haven't viewed her collection in a long time and now I appreciate her photographs so much more. I am reminded that Fran had her own perspective on life, always did. I sorted her photos and chose this group of to illustrate what she saw in the people there. What caught her eye.

This is Fran's self portrait, the very first of her photos. It was taken in our hotel room after a very long day of travel from Oregon, USA, to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

On the streets of San Telmo, a lively district in the heart of the city with art, music, dancing, and excitement.

This photo speaks for itself...a vendor making and selling cotton candy. Granddaughter, Bella is enjoying it.

This photo and the next show two men moving their display through town.

A woman above the street, on her balcony.

 

A seated crowd gathered on a sloping hill, no stands or chairs.

I don't remember if we knew what this ceremony was about.

The man is sharpening knives while sitting on the seat of his portable rig.

A meat vendor roasting fresh beef in view of the street and his prospective customers. The roasting beef smell was wonderful.

A policeman, perhaps?

A young couple with a motorcycle.

In another neighborhood, this little boy and Fran made a connection.

This is the first of several blogs I will post featuring Fran's photos taken in Argentina. This photo was taken of Fran and me by Alejandra.