Nine Lives: A Convoluted Story of Passage

By Walter Atkinson

A humorous account of the life's experiences of a true Renaissance man from the perspective of his Mojo. This perspective results in a harsh evaluation in what idiotic things an otherwise smart man can participate. Experiences from ocean sailing to racing cars, and flying airplanes leave the reader belly laughing at the way the Mojo's subject makes decisions and acts upon his sage advice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Walter Atkinson
• Release date: Nov 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9780974977027

Walter Atkinson

Walter Atkinson has written three novels; It’s a Long Way From Scooba, Amos ‘n’ Andy Goes ta Sea, and Nine Lives: A Convoluted Story of Passage and has ghost written other novels for other authors. He is a retired dentist who was associated with the LSU athletic department as a member of the medical staff. Walter has written a dozen articles in refereed professional dental journals and many aviation articles in various aviation publications. He is a partner in Advanced Pilot Seminars teaching courses in piston engine management and is currently a ski instructor at the Lionshead Ski School on Vail Mountain in Colorado. His hobbies have included, racing sailboats and cars, writing, scuba diving, flying, woodworking, skiing, and hunting. Walter lives in Edwards, Colorado with his wife, Sonya, who is a ski instructor at Beaver Creek and is working on her PhD in educational administration.

Book preview

Nine Lives:

A Convoluted Story of Passage

by

Mojo

with Walter B. Atkinson

Nine Lives:

A Convoluted Story of Passage

Walter B. Atkinson & his Mojo

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Copyright © 2013 by Walter B. Atkinson

Smashwords Edition

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Atkinson, Walter B., 1949-

Nine Lives: A Convoluted Story of Passage

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ISBN 0-9749770-1-2 print version

ISBN 978-0-9749770-2-7 ebook

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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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This book has not been approved, endorsed, or sponsored by any person or entity involved in any way with Walter B. Atkinson or his Mojo.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Forward

His Aquatic Period

Nature’s Lessons

Speed Kills

Sleepy Kills, Too

Fish & Airplanes

The Learning Curve

Mother Nature

Slapping the Grim Reaper

The Last Roundup

Appendix

About the Author

Acknowledgement

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Where do I start? In the passage of every life-span or career there are so many people who help, cajole, encourage, or even try to get in the way along the path that it’s very difficult to list them all without running the risk of leaving someone out. In this case, the reverse may be true. There is a high likelihood that no one wants to be associated with this marginally mediocre literary effort.

With the above concept in mind, I offer the following acknowledgements: To all who appear in this book, I’m sorry. If you’d had any sense, you’d have taken another course. Since you didn’t, you’re stuck.

Thanks for the laughs.

Mojo

Forward

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Deep down inside every man resides a child-like apparition, which thinks what it wants, says what it wants and most dangerously, acts how it wants. In most cases, the host is able to rein in the apparition and the man appears to behave normally. In some instances, however, this libido-driven apparition takes on a life of its own, overcoming the host and exhibiting those characteristics commonly referred to in the western world as Mojo.

Since, according to William Thompson (Lord Kelvin), you scarcely have an understanding of science unless you can explain it in mathematical terms, the equation for Mojo is as follows:

Forward submitted by a woman (who insists on remaining nameless) who has endured a lifetime of observing the loss of control of men to their Mojos.

Section 1

Lives 1-3

(things he couldn’t have known)

Life 1

His Aquatic Period, BM

(Before Mojo)

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Walter first acquired my influence at Touro Infirmary in New Orleans when he was born on January 26, 1949. Understanding the explanation of Me, your narrator, in the Forward is essential. If you skipped it, shame on you. Go back and read it or pick another book.

The critical mathematical equation for my existence is:

(ME)

Let me begin by pointing out that Walter does not exhibit what some might consider normal Homo sapiens behavior. To put it mildly, he’s active; and sometimes follows thru on ideas born of enthusiasm rather than good sense. Considering the afore-mentioned, our first near death experience came in 1944 during Walter’s aquatic period, almost 4 years before my official coming out. He (Walter * 0.5) was blind and deaf and only had half of his 23 chromosomes and no me, but could swim like an Olympian. He’d been hanging around 24-7 with a country boy named Bilbo Atkinson from Scooba, Mississippi. Bilbo was a big guy with plenty of his own Mojo and took Walter everywhere he went. Bilbo was very athletic, playing football, basketball, and baseball in school, but it seems he had little regard for Walter’s existence at that point. He joined the United States Army Air Corp in 1942 and hauled his half of Walter from Scooba to Camp Shelby, and on to Chicago before ending up in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he bounced the poor boy aboard The Jolly Roger, a Consolidated B-24 bound for Hitler’s war.

The ten-man crew left Lincoln headed non-stop for a short layover in southern Florida before heading on to Natal, Brazil. On the way southeast out of Nebraska, Bilbo explained to their navigator, Roy Johnson, the where-abouts of Blue Mountain College in northern Mississippi. Bilbo had been dating a girl named Nettie who was in school there and the whole crew was making plans to scare the hell of Walter. They did.

As the big B-24 flew low up the valley southeast of Blue Mountain, Mississippi, the grandiose main building of the college loomed large on the top of the hill. Lt. Williams thought he aimed the airplane right at it, but passed about 100 feet above the roof. That would never do. He turned the big bomber around and aimed directly at the windows on the top floor of the three-story building. Williams was starring directly into the eyes of the students peering out of the third-story windows as he made the approach. Bilbo was standing between Williams and his co-pilot, Thomas Fallon, and could see the approaching target. Walter was too low to get a peek. Lt. Williams deployed full flaps, landing gear down, and 56 inches of manifold pressure on the four Pratt & Whitney turbo-supercharged radial engines and they thundered forward. The bomber was converting a lot of aviation fuel into even more noise and creating a powerful downdraft from the monstrous airplane’s flaps.

The old, red brick building had tall windows that could be opened at the tops and bottoms so, in the days before air conditioning, a circulating airflow in the classrooms made it marginally bearable to the inhabitants in the Mississippi summer swelter. Upon reaching the building on his second pass, Lt. Williams pulled the beast up just enough to clear the roof. The window tops were down and as The Jolly Roger passed overhead, the dramatic downdraft sucked the blinds and curtains out of the tops of the windows slapping them around in the turbulence. Bilbo ran back through the bomb bay to the back of the airplane and leaning out of the waste window had a clear look back at the college. As the big building on top of the hill shrunk from view, Bilbo and the rest of the crew could see the blinds hanging out of the tops of the windows and the students and a teacher or two leaning out of the lower openings watching the big bomber shrink into the distance. Walter wished he could have seen and heard it. It was something to witness. Walter was beginning to wonder if Bilbo was, in fact, trying to kill him before he ever got a chance to experience my influence.

As the weeks and months passed, there were other close calls. An Atlantic crossing in bad weather, standing guard at the airplane to keep the North African Arabs from stealing their parachutes, crazy jeep rides, and late-night poker games. Oh, and there was the idiot idea of making tent heaters out of 55 gallon oil drums and gasoline. These 15th Air Corp brain trusts Bilbo and Walter were hanging out with would drip aviation fuel into the burning contents of the 55 gallon drums to heat the tents. About once a week one of the barrels would blow up (showing that some knucklehead had no Mojo at all) and level a tent full of sleeping sergeants. That scared the hell out of Walter. What if he got blown off of Bilbo? Frankly, it scared the hell out of me, too.

Bilbo thought enough of himself to wear a helmet and flack jacket while flying, but the flack jacket stopped before it got to Walter. He was just hangin’ out in the world for any Luftwaffe fighter jock or hotshot 88 gunner to take a pot shot at him. Nervous was an understatement.

The early missions came and went without too much fan fare. Yes, they returned with holes in the airplane, once a tire blew and they landed sideways, a few engine problems surfaced from time to time, but no one in the crew had been hit. Everything was going as well as could be expected, but I was getting the feeling that sooner or later…

Sooner came.

On April 5, 1944, the 451st Bomb Group headed to Ploesti, Romania, to bomb the oil refineries that Hitler’s Third Reich depended so heavily upon to continue the war. The Jolly Roger took off late due to an accident on the runway that the Liberator ahead of them had endured. Their formation box of four B-24s was not going to be able to catch the main formation. The 451st Bomb Group had never been turned from a target and Lt. Lewis Williams was not about to be the first pilot in the group to ruin that record. He pushed his engines hard and slowly they were catching up to the main formation. As they passed the IP (the initial point of the bomb run) the IAR-80s of the Romanian Air Force jumped The Jolly Roger. IAR-80s were the Romanian look-alike fighters of the German FW-190. Bilbo was whacking away at them with his .50 caliber machine gun from the starboard waist position when a fighter’s rocket hit the fuel lines and oxygen bottles in the wing root. Instantly, they were standing in a white-hot fire. Bilbo’s oxygen line, throat mic, and electric suit (which Walter dearly loved) were still plugged in when the big guy bowed his neck and jumped out, Walter thought, This is not good. Bilbo did not have their parachute.

As Bilbo was leaving the airplane he had that Oh-my-God-I-don’t-have–my-parachute-on thought and reached back into the airplane to reach for it. It was a lucky grab for which Walter and I have been forever grateful. They were soaked in gasoline, on fire, and soon falling. And falling. And tumbling, and falling. While they were falling, Bilbo was getting beaten by the oxygen hose that was whipping around in the air—thank God it wasn’t longer—it coulda worked Walter over pretty badly but that was not high on Bilbo’s list of worries at the moment. Walter was thinking, "Damn, son, use some of your Mojo and get that chute attached and pull the rip chord. The ground’s coming up fast."

After what seemed like an eternity to Walter, Bilbo pulled the rip chord, which was still not attached properly to his harness. They snapped violently and swung out to the right about the time Bilbo’s feet hit the ground in a plowed field somewhere in Romania. Damn, what a ride! Bilbo was still on fire. Having used a lot already, Bilbo needed a bit more Mojo to get through the rest of the day.

Badly burned, with broken bones in his hand and neck and a separated shoulder, Bilbo buried his gun and codebook figuring that his war was over. He wandered to a nearby tree and sat down to ponder his situation. It wasn’t good. Bilbo was badly burned and beaten up but Walter was OK. The exhausted airman looked down to see that his boots were still burning and he nonchalantly took a hand full of dirt and put the remaining fire out. The local constabulary soon found them and hauled them into the police station. Eventually, they were taken to the hospital in Pitesti where Bilbo healed and Walter just rested. Walter was thankful to have survived, four years to the day before he would be pressed into service and 1,391 days before he was born.

Eight lives to go. Mojo or no, to this day, the United States Veterans Administration continues to deny Walter’s application for veteran’s benefits

*****

Life 2

Nature’s Lessons

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The equation was completed, and Walter finally arrived in 1949, glad to be on his own and was already beginning to become aware of my presence. Bilbo, Walter’s dad, had landed us in New Orleans where he was in medical school at Tulane University. Walter’s parents had acquired married student housing at Stadium Place, an old row of Quonset hut buildings near Sugar Bowl Stadium where many of the medical students lived. Although Walter’s mother Janice was from Tuscaloosa and had grown up in a very different environment than Bilbo, she worked tirelessly to make the tiny apartment a home. Janice was from Alabama and had grown up in a very different environment than Bilbo. She was a mid-height, thin, attractive, brown-eyed brunette and had enjoyed seeing a glimpse of society life in high school. She and her friends played Bridge, dated regularly and went to dances and other social events. Although she was in love with Bilbo she was also in culture shock. Like most veterans of the time, they didn’t have a car and rode the streetcar on St. Charles for transportation. If they needed to go somewhere not on the trolley route, someone had to loan them a car. They were as poor as church mice, but so was everyone else. In this misery, she was as happy as a pig in the mud.

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A fellow’s Mojo can be quite different from his physical presence. For example, Walter tipped the scales at barely over 6 pounds and couldn’t even roll over onto his own back or sit up, and with his bald, little head and big ears, the poor kid looked a lot like a mini-me of Mahatma Gandhi. But as his Mojo, I am six-six, 245, handsome, have an iron will and can leap tall buildings in a single bound. I have crystal blue eyes; dark, wavy hair, a clean complexion, and can run with the wind. I can lift anything and throw it as far as I want. I can walk a tight rope and swim the Atlantic before lunch. My speech is as smooth as velvet and I can woo any female alive. I have no fear of anything and am more than willing to get Walter into any trouble that boredom might bring. No one knows what a fellow’s Mojo is really like and that’s the dangerous part to the poor fellow harboring his Mojo.

Mojo’s can talk to one another without involving the conscience minds of the hosts. Mojo’s can wink at each other from across a room packed with the unsuspecting hosts and start a free-for-all in a millisecond. We have power. Occasionally, we might use it to good intention. As Tennessee Ernie Ford used to sing, He’s six foot six, 245. Kinda broad in the shoulders and narrow in the hip, an’ everybody knows ya don’t give no lip…

One fall Saturday morning when Walter was about two and Janice a break from his pestilence, Bilbo hauled us to the parking lot