Warbird Information Exchange

A Lineage Rekindled

Tad Houlihan

Format ISBN Price
Paperback (5x8) 1425909507 $9.20

http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/It ... 29671.aspx

About the Book

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This story is an account of events in the lives of two brothers of solid Minnesota farm stock, and their sole living relative, an elderly maid and heiress to the Herjolfsson family estate.

The brothers had returned from World War II having served in the Royal Canadian Air Force as decorated combat pilots. Now far from the daily excitement and grandeur, that of dashing Air Force pilot officers they were seen by prim Aunt Julia as wallowing about in a state of affairs lacking in any show of the kind of gumption true to their ancestry.

Embarrassed by the blight they had placed on the family name Julia agonized over a method to get her beloved nephews back on track.



About the Author

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Born and raised in a small town in northern California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, he started flying during WW II and at age 19 became a B-17 Flying Fortress pilot. After the war he found work flying for nonscheduled airlines until called back to active duty in the Air Force to fl y C-54’s on the Berlin Airlift. At the outbreak of the Korean War it was off to fly C-47’s and C-54’s in the Combat Cargo Command until his return to civilian life in 1953 and returning to civil air carriers, finishing his commercial piloting career as personal pilot to the president of a major US corporation based in San Francisco in 1990.

The author and his wife, Genevieve, have made their home in the US Pacific Northwest.



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No sooner had he left the flight deck and entered the adjoining radio and navigators compartment when Banjo heard a loud and clear: “Holy Sheeeeitt”!!!! from Jammie.

Startled and turning quickly in his seat to look back toward Jammie he saw his brother coming toward him, walking backward very slowly.

“What the hell’s happened, Jammie...monkeys get loose?”

“We’ve got a god damned snake aboard...it’s right on top of one of those crates of bananas...spitting at me...Now isn’t that just one dandy little situation!!!???” Jammie said

in a tone of voice several octaves higher than usual.

“Get the fire extinguisher, the CO2...give him a shot of that stuff!!!...it oughta’ freeze him in his tracks, don’t you think?” Banjo shouted back at his brother, at the same time feeling the hair on the back of his neck standing straight out, and as hot as it was in the cockpit, he felt a chill run up and down his spine.

Jammie immediately turned around and jerked the fire bottle from it’s hold-down fixture at the cockpit entrance way. Cautiously he proceeded toward the menacing reptile, fire extinguisher extended at arms reach and in readiness. Now, with the bottles nozzle extended to it’s full reach, some 18 inches, Jammie proceeded forward to do battle out of Banjo’s line of sight. Banjo couldn’t put the plane back on autopilot as it was too turbulent for that, it had to be hand flown. He couldn’t help his brother other than try to maintain the bucking bronco of an airplane in as level and stable a flight condition as humanly possible, wondering all the while what they’d do if the damned snake made it’s way into the cockpit.

Jammie approached the snake at a snail’s pace, extinguisher nozzle aimed directly at the Cobra’s upraised, fully hooded, and hissing head. At about two feet separation between nozzle and the yellowish brown colored snake it struck out at the nozzle. Jammie pulled the trigger at that same instant and held it open for a full five or six seconds. This created a large cloud of frozen moisture which obscured the snake from view. There was a moment of sheer terror after the cloud cleared when Jammie noticed the snake was no longer atop the crate of bananas. He instinctively jumped backward, in escape, crashing against a bulkhead stantion and dropped the fire bottle as a result.

“What the hell’s happening?...the son-of-a-bitch get you, Jammie?...are you alright?”

“Oh, there the son-of-a-bitch is...frozen solid....on the floor!” Jammie spoke in a manner more as if talking to himself.

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