Ernie and the Pilot

      Missing.

     It made the radio headlines for a day or two, probably some television news stories, maybe a newspaper or two.  A private pilot in the Colorado Springs area took off from a small airport popular with small plane owners, Meadow Lake Airport or something similar. His destination was somewhere in Nebraska.  He was flying a small experimental plane, probably one he built himself.  He failed to arrive at his destination.

     The story had a brief follow up three or four weeks later.  A rancher found plane and pilot in his pasture some forty or fifty miles east of his departure airport.  The rancher had been on a routine cattle check when he came upon the wreckage.  The FAA or NTSB was investigating.

      The story would have crawled under the rocks and yucca plants of my memory and composted into the landscape, but for a turn of events.

      The Lutheran churches in our small communities are served usually by “supply” pastors (euphemism for guys who aren’t too good at their job, maybe down on their luck, maybe looking for a short-term job to get them to the point they can retire) or young folks fresh out of seminary.  The small churches can count on a different pastor every two or three years. 

      The old guys go on to retire or find another interim job somewhere.  The enthusiastic young guys and gals who are good at their job get gobbled up by the big churches somewhere who can afford to pay a decent salary.  The not-so-good ones may stay around for up to three years before the congregational bell-cow (or surly bull so as not to be sexist) and followers raise enough hell with synod authorities to get them sent on their way.

      Thus, Ernie came to town, fresh out of college, young, energetic, friendly, engaging, popular, with a young wife to match.  She taught music in a neighboring school district.  They had no children at that time.

      They both were from somewhere north and east.  We said they had a Wisconsin accent.  They said words like “soary” (“sorry” that rhymed with “soar”) instead of “sarey” (to rhyme with “are), the correct way to say it (in our Eastern Colorado opinion).  They almost said “aboot”, meaning “about”, but not bad enough for us to accuse them of being Canadian.  It didn’t really matter.  We loved them anyway.

       They could have been from North Dakota, too, but they were probably from Minnesota.  That was fine.  After all, we have roots in Minnesota, too, “ya know.”

      Mom or probably the Goodwife decided it would be a good idea to invite Ernie and Wife out to the farm on a weekday evening for a barbecue.  I think the menu was Japanese, including teriyaki. 

      This time, chicken accompanied thin-sliced beef on the charcoal grill.  I was young in deed and not experienced in grilling chicken.  I knew it had to be done well to insure no one suffered from salmonella.  Not a chance.  These bite-sized pieces could have been substituted for the ball on the rubber string on a paddleball toy.  It would have bounced as well or better.

     Pastor Ernie was of good Scandinavian extract and didn’t allow his occupation to interfere with sipping a beer or two before and during supper, so it was a pleasant evening, vulcanized chicken notwithstanding.  The beef, fried rice, and cucumber salad were palatable.          

      A good storyteller, Ernie got started on telling us of a very recent experience he had had.  Among his flock was an undertaker. His father was a competent ambitious man who bought a small funeral home in a neighboring town.  He purchased the Limon facility and relocated.  He also bought a few other homes down I-70, as far as Burlington.  He closed them all except the ones in Limon and Burlington.  He was the only funeral facility in much of Eastern Colorado, Brush being the closest one to the north and Lajunta or somewhere to the south.

     The funeral director was a stalwart member of our Lutheran church, as was his son, who took over for his father. The son became a good friend and supporter of Pastor Ernie.  The day came when the son had two or three funerals on the same afternoon, all out somewhere in the big outback.  His staff was stretched thin.  He needed someone to answer the phone at the main headquarters in Limon.  He prevailed upon friend Ernie.

     Ernie could sit in the funeral home office and work on his sermon or do whatever pastors do when not visiting or counseling parishioners, while maintaining church office hours.  The telephone would probably not even ring.  Sometimes, three or four days go by without a call, the mortician assured Ernie.  Somebody would be back in the office in three or four hours.  Shouldn’t be any problem.

     Ernie acquiesced.  He hadn’t sat in the funeral home office chair long enough to warm the seat cushion when the phone really did ring.  The El Paso Sheriff’s Office was on the line.  They needed the coroner or his representative at an airplane crash site as soon as possible.  (In rural areas, the mortician often doubles as the coroner.)  Ernie tried to explain the situation.  He had no experience, was only the answering service, couldn’t do any investigation.  The Sheriff insisted.  There wasn’t much investigating involved, but there was a body to be removed.  You are the representative.  Get out here, now.

      What to do?  Ernie turned to another parishioner and friend, Tom.  Tom came to town as the manager of the local Co-op Grain Elevator.  When it folded, he opened his own grain brokerage.  Later, he would run a used car business and oversee a successful mechanic shop associated with the car business.

     A young lady came to town to teach grade school.  She was a lifelong Lutheran.  She joined the local congregation soon after moving to town.  When she and Tom met and hit it off, he joined the church, too.  They became pillars of the institution.

     Tom, like Ernie, tried to find a way out, but friendship and duty overrode his protestations.  Together they dug out a spare hearse.  They equipped themselves as well as they could in their inexperience, taking gowns, gloves, masks, body bag, anything they could think of they might need.  This was the days before cell phones.  No way to call the mortician and ask for advice.

     It was also the time before GPS.  Following the Sheriff’s instructions, they headed west on 24 until they came to the deputy’s car.  He directed them down a county road to another deputy, who opened a gate and pointed the general direction to follow.  Ernie and Tom bounced the hearse across the prairie into endless grass and sky.  Dodging creeks and soapweed, eventually they saw yet a third police car, sitting on a hill upwind of the crash site. Lights flashing, the deputy and his car kept bovine and avian gawkers from the wreckage.

     As they approached, the deputy got out of the running air-conditioned car.  Tom and Ernie approached the deputy to find out what the deal was.  He pointed and said the body was in the mangled airplane downwind below.

     “What do we do?”

     “Get the body out of there.”

      “Can you help us out here?  Neither of us has any experience in this sort of thing, being a pastor and a businessman.”

     “Your problem.”  Just like the hard-boiled New York cop on television.  The doughnut eating one.

     As they approached the wreckage, they understood the deputy’s upwind distance from the site.  Donning robes, gloves, masks, preparing the body bag, they procrastinated as long as they could.  Nobody came to their rescue.  The deputy braved the hot day, standing outside of his air-conditioned car as he watched from a scent-free distance.

       The face masks may have protected them from infestation, but did nothing to reduce the stench.  Eventually they set about maneuvering the decomposed remains out of openings in the mangled metal.  They knew nothing of odor reducing sprays.  They brought no tools.  With whatever pieces they could find in the wreckage they managed to get the remains out of the wreckage and into the body bag and the bag loaded into the hearse.  The body bag contained the odor fairly well.

      Ernie spared us the details.  We were after all enjoying a meal and its aftermath.  One of the things that made him a good preacher was his ability to tell a story.  Our horrified imaginations supplied the missing details.

      The boys retraced their route across pasture, down county road, along Highway 24 and back to the funeral home.  Sure enough, a staff member was there to hear their story and take over from there.  Our boys returned home to strip, throw their clothes in the laundry, jump into the shower to try to wash away the day’s events from their memories as well as their bodies.  Supper didn’t really beckon to either man.

      All this Ernie told with a glint of humor and amusement, but it was apparent that both qualities came after the event, certainly not during it.  We had listened attentively, our imaginations titillated by those missing details.   The story wasn’t quite done.

      About a week or two later, the mortician called Ernie with an invitation:   “Care to ride along to Brush with me?  Your pilot friend has an appointment with the crematorium.”

     Ernie had decided during the gruesome part of the adventure that if the funeral director ever called again, he was busy, couldn’t possibly get away. He stuck to his guns and declined the invitation.  The coroner / funeral director supplied a bit more information.  An autopsy revealed that the deceased pilot had suffered a heart attack, was probably dead at the time the plane impacted the ground.  At most, the crash administered the coup de grace, but was not the main cause of death.  Case closed.  No need for the FAA to investigate further.

    The story over, we went on to other subjects. Our pleasant evening came to an end.  Ernie stuck around another year.  The school where his wife taught closed its doors for good.  Ernie got an offer for a much better job.  Time marched on.  We got a Christmas card or two.

    Now, we remember Ernie not as that young Lutheran preacher, but as the man whom fortune crowned Coroner-for-a-Day.”