Plans That Made God Laugh: A Tale of Aviation, Perseverance, and Faith

By Capt. Jim "Bluto" Allen

"If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."

Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV ) says, "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Jul 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887389134

Capt. Jim "Bluto" Allen

Captain Jim "Bluto" Allen is a retired Navy Reserve captain and a 737 captain for United Airlines. He grew up in Sioux City, Iowa, and Coffeyville, Kansas, and earned an aerospace engineering degree (with honors) at the University of Kansas.He flew as a naval flight officer in the EA-6B and as a naval aviator/instructor in the EP-3E and T-34C. He flew as a defense contractor in the King Air 350 in Afghanistan. He served in combat operations in Bosnia and Hercegovina, Iraq, and Afghanistan, earning numerous commendations, including the Bronze Star and Air Medals. He transitioned to a career as a commercial airline pilot in 2013.

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Plans

That Made

God Laugh

A Tale of Aviation, Perseverance, and Faith

Capt. Jim Bluto Allen

greyscale Trilogy Publishing logo

Plans That Made God Laugh

Trilogy Christian Publishers

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Copyright © 2023 by James Allen

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 979-8-88738-912-7

E-ISBN: 979-8-88738-913-4

Acknowledgments

There are a lot of people that had a positive influence on my life and this work. I highly value my friends, family, and teachers at E Street elementary school in Ramey Air Force Base, Puerto Rico, Zion Lutheran School in Rapid City, South Dakota, Saint Paul’s Lutheran School and Herbert Hoover Junior High School in Sioux City, Iowa, Roosevelt Junior High and Field Kindley High School and Coffeyville Community College in Coffeyville, Kansas, and the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

I also hold sacred my friends from Sioux City and Coffeyville, my friends I knew in Lawrence, Kansas, specifically Triangle Fraternity. My friends and colleagues from the Navy in AI, VT-10, VT-86, VAQ-129, VT-6, VT-31, VP-30, and especially VAQ-132, VX-9, VQ-1, VT-27, and VT-28; also, the friends and colleagues from JCCS-1, Fleet Forces, Seventh Fleet, and the NEPLO community, from AMRDEC, the simulators in Corpus Christi, the defense contractors I flew and worked with in Afghanistan and United Airlines: they all played a part in my story.

If I don’t name someone specifically in this writing, it’s simply because of the space and word count. I’ve had so many great friends and leaders in all of these areas. I thank you all for influencing me and helping me on this journey.

I recently lost some dear friends I would like to acknowledge: Dustin Harrison, a fellow defense contractor pilot, was killed in January 2020 in a terror attack in Kenya. He was a week from returning home from his last trip to see his dear wife, Hope, and his daughter, Heaven. My Navy flight school friend, Chris Kirkham, passed in January 2020 after an unexpected illness, and we lost an outstanding mentor and captain, Chris Campion, at United Airlines in the fall of 2019. My uncle, Herb Hildebrandt, passed away in March 2020. Herb was like a surrogate father to me when I was attending the University of Kansas in the 1980s, and he will be sorely missed by my family.

Of course, I can’t say thank you enough to my kids, Jay and Megan, for your support and understanding. It’s been tough growing up with a dad who was gone a lot. My ex-wife, Laura, had a tough job running a household with an absentee husband, and I appreciate all her efforts. I am sorry that my pursuit of a dream left her behind, and I know there are many regrets and sadnesses. Laura’s parents were very supportive through it all, and I appreciate that.

In every story, in every life, there is conflict. There’s a saying, Everyone is bad in someone’s story. (I know I am the bad guy to someone, and I apologize for that.) My story isn’t an exception. I had conflict with some people. Most of the people that I wrote about in a negative light, I spoke of by their title and not their name. It’s not my intent to badmouth anyone or insinuate that they are heartless or evil people.

There are people who presented obstacles in my path that caused me to take a detour and radically change my plans. They forced me to face a challenge and got in my way. They shaped my path. I wouldn’t be where I am if it hadn’t been for them. I hold no grudge. I don’t mean to offend anyone, and I don’t believe that anything I say should be hurtful. (Bluntly, though, the litmus test should be: if you didn’t care what I thought back then, why do you care now?)

I want to thank the pastors, chaplains, and counselors who have guided me over the years. Specifically, I want to thank the Navy chaplains at NAS Whidbey, including the chaplains at the Electronic Attack Wing and Patrol and Reconnaissance Wing and their leadership, who all aided me in a rough time when I was facing my biggest challenge and change during my divorce.

I also want to thank and acknowledge all of the authors and support staff that helped me put this together. Michael Waitz of Sticks and Stones Freelance Editing spent a great deal of time with the manuscript. Ghislain Viau of Creative Publishing Book Design helped with the cover, and I got some mentoring from Pete Hunt of Whidbey Island, Washington, and Leland Chip Shandle, a former squadron mate of many of my friends, who has penned a few of his own writings.

I especially appreciate the support and mentorship of Stephen Rodrick of Rolling Stone magazine. His biography of himself and his father, The Magical Stranger, renewed my interest in this writing project. His story begins in a similar way to mine. He’s almost exactly one year younger than me, and he lost his father almost exactly one year after my dad passed away. Our fathers were both military aviators, and our lives were changed drastically at age thirteen after their deaths.

Stephen’s father, Commander Peter Rodrick, was the CO of an EA-6B Prowler squadron in Whidbey Island, Washington, at the time of his tragic accident, and I eventually flew in EA-6Bs in Whidbey. I met one of the main characters of The Magical Stranger, Commander James Tupper Ware, at a gathering in Anacortes, Washington, and he later introduced me to Stephen. I am honored that Stephen met with me for lunch to discuss my book.

Obviously, I want to thank God for the many blessings and challenges in my life. That is why I have written this story. Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV) says, ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’ I believe this, and I want to share my story as an example of that prophetic verse.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Chapter 1:

Chapter 2: College

Chapter 3:

Chapter 4: EA-6B Prowler Training

Chapter 5: Carrier Aviation

Chapter 6: Scorpion New Guy

Chapter 7: New Challenges

Chapter 8: Back from First Cruise

Chapter 9: Second Deployment

Chapter 10: Adriatic Wrap-Up and Marriage

Chapter 11: China Lake, Jay, Megan, and Pilot Training

Chapter 12: EP-3 Aviator

Chapter 13: World Watcher

Chapter 14: Wing Weenie

Chapter 15: Instructor Pilot

Chapter 16: Cross-Country

Chapter 17: The World Stopped Turning

Chapter 18: Saudi Arabia

Chapter 19: Mom, U-2s, Las Cruces

Chapter 20: Getting Out and NYC

Chapter 21: Southwest

Chapter 22: Back to Corpus, Camber, and AMRDEC

Chapter 23: JetBlue

Chapter 24: Not Going to Make It

Chapter 25: Reflection

Chapter 26: What Next?

Chapter 27: Acronym Within Acronym Within Acronym

Chapter 28: Back from Iraq, Afghanistan Next

Chapter 29: The Interview

Chapter 30: Tailhook

Chapter 31: Navy Reserve

Chapter 32: Fleet Forces and United

Chapter 33: Seventh Fleet, NEPLO, and Back to Whidbey

Chapter 34: Guam, Eclipse, and Unexpected Change

Chapter 35: Exile, Hurricanes, Typhoons, and a New Chapter

Afterword

About the Author

Foreword

I f you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. I’ve heard this phrase a number of times. I’ve had a bunch of plans in my life. I often joke that I’m not on plan B; I’ve gone through the alphabet so many times. I’m on plan C-Q. I started this writing project in 2005 after reading Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Life . I was struggling with my career goals and all the obstacles I was facing to accomplish my dream. It wasn’t working out as I had planned.

The Purpose Driven Life stated that everyone has some talent that seems to come naturally. I was always told that I write well. I wrote articles in newspapers for the Navy, newsletters, papers in school, family letters at Christmas, etc., that people liked. I was told I write in a conversational style and that I’m a good storyteller.

I’ve also had a dream as long as I can remember: I wanted to fly airplanes for a living. I think I have faced more obstacles than usual to get this dream accomplished. But through a lot of faith and perseverance, I finally accomplished my dream. When I tell people how much I went through to accomplish my goal, they often wonder how one person could have gone through all that. So, I’ve decided to write about it and call it Plans That Made God Laugh.

I intend to make the book an interactive experience. I’ve posted pictures on a website, www.plansthatmadegodlaugh.com, and I have a YouTube channel—A Pilot’s Story: Plans that Made God Laugh. Hopefully, those links will make the pages of the book come alive through photos and videos.

I’ve heard this saying before: A winner never quits, and a quitter never wins, but a person who never quits when he never wins is crazy. I’m that crazy! I’m also a Christian, but I definitely can’t claim to be a model one. My faith is deep, but I also have a (typical aviator) twisted sense of humor and like to drink beer (trying to do less of that). I try to go to church, live in the word of God as much as I can, but I make mistakes, and I need God (sometimes more than others seem to). I pray a lot.

I’m not sure how this is going to turn out. It could be a diary. It could end up being a memoir that my kids and grandkids can use to figure out their old man. Or it could end up being a bestseller. Who knows? I want this writing to be: first, my testimony to my faith in God; second, a story that might bring hope and guidance to someone who needs encouragement; and third, a story that entertains people. It’s not meant as an ego trip to make me famous. I want to make God famous, as they say.

My intent for this writing is that someone reading this story may see my example and know that no matter what life throws at any of us, God always has a plan, a better one than expected. Life isn’t just an endless series of missteps and hardships. There is hope. Don’t give up!

I will warn readers up front: I name-drop in this writing. I can’t claim any fame in aviation. I always considered myself the Naval Aviation equivalent of Bob Uecker from 1980s baseball announcing fame (if you remember him). I was never famous, but I can walk among people who are, and they recognize me. For a nobody kid from Kansas, I feel very blessed to have had the opportunities and experiences in my life, and I’m in awe of some of the people I’ve met.

Chapter 1

Growing Up

I guess I was predisposed to an aviation career. I was born in 1965 in Columbus AFB, Mississippi. My dad, James Robert Allen (Jim), was a B-52 pilot in the US Air Force. He was a tall, lanky captain when I came into the world. He was a Lutheran and took us to church most every Sunday he was home. Although he was faithful, he was pretty rough around the edges. But he was a hero to me.

He grew up in a home with an absentee father who was an alcoholic back in the ’30s and ’40s. Times were tough for him and his big brother, Tom. My grandma, Clara Allen, had to work because my grandpa, Charlton Bliss Allen (known as Jack because my great-grandfather thought his given name was too fancy), wasn’t bringing money home consistently. Clara was basically a God-fearing single mom (because Jack wasn’t home). So, my dad and his brother were often left to fend for themselves.

My uncle Tom took the brunt of a lot of abuse when my grandpa was home. I think that led to the problems he had later in life. My dad attended a Lutheran boarding high school in Milwaukee to avoid a lot of that drama. I know my dad loved us and wanted our life to be much better than what he experienced growing up. But he struggled with his own demons, involving alcohol, and sometimes could be like The Great Santini of movie fame.

My mother, Henrietta Hankie, was something of a dreamer and a worrier. I think the life of a military wife caught her by surprise. She was a small-town Kansas girl with a college education. My parents met in a Lutheran college in Winfield, Kansas, when my dad was studying to be a minister, one of several vocations he pursued before he settled on flying for the Air Force.

My dad went from Milwaukee to St. John’s College in Kansas after a short stint in the Navy as an enlisted submariner. His Navy stories were that he got a hernia loading a torpedo and, at one point, had his camera confiscated when he took pictures of a ship colliding with his submarine; the collision delayed a deployment to Korea. In his young adult years, he had a wandering heart trying to find his calling.

He’d dropped the plans of being a minister to learn to fly in the Navy. He went through the early portion of training, only to see one of his friends die in a terrible training accident at Whiting Field near Pensacola. I read one of his letters to his mother describing his drop on request from Navy training because he felt it was too dangerous.

He then went through all the training to work at the Tennessee Valley Authority on hydroelectric dams before eventually giving flying another shot with the US Air Force. The Air Force initially denied his request for training since he quit the Navy. But he scored so high on the entrance exams they took him into their aviation cadet program.

After completing multi-engine training in the B-25 Mitchell, he asked my mother to marry him. I don’t know all the ins and outs of their dating life. But he had continued to pursue her throughout all his travels and training while she went from St. John’s to a short stay in Kansas State University and eventually graduated at Washburn State in Topeka, Kansas, with a degree in psychology. She was working at a state mental hospital as an intern, helping a patient who had schizophrenia.

After getting married, my parents moved to Knob Noster, Missouri, where my dad flew the B-47, and they started a family. My two sisters, Johnette (aka Johnnie—my dad wanted a boy) and Mary, were born near Whiteman Air Force Base. They were eventually transferred to Columbus AFB, Mississippi. I came along in 1965.

After years of issues, my dad’s parents were together as they aged. There was a lot of resentment between Clara and Jack Allen. He was a cantankerous old man. Apparently, as a young man, he was jilted by a woman he really loved. He married my grandma on the rebound. He never got over the first love and began to drink because he didn’t really love my grandma, and he stayed away from home a lot.

This is not a pleasant story. She was so distraught over how her life had progressed that one day, Clara thought of suicide by gassing herself in the kitchen oven. But she had two boys to raise. So, she vowed to do the best she could for them. She worked as a secretary for an electric company in Sioux City, Iowa. After he retired, Jack was allowed to live in the house she purchased. But only if he stayed in a room in the basement and left her alone.

Jack had one request of his son, Jim: Give him an heir to the family name. Jack had numerous brothers and uncles who had all failed at having a son. My dad’s older brother, Tom, had no family. So, Jack kept after my dad to have a son. Jack was dying of lung cancer in a VA hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, when he got a telegram about my birth: Allen’s not done yet. Grandson 5 1/2 pounds James Charlton 3 AM X-XX-XX [the date].

Despite all the problems Grandpa Allen had (most self-inflicted), he died a happy man after news of my birth. My sisters told me my dad put a big banner on the front window of the house announcing my arrival.

Our family had its share of dysfunctions, and although we were a little guarded toward each other (we weren’t big on hugs or I love yous), we knew there was love present. And going to church and Sunday school was a big part of that.

My earliest memories were as a small toddler in a small duplex on base in Grand Forks, North Dakota. There, my dad stood alert as a B-52 pilot during the height of the Cold War. After North Dakota, we moved to my dad’s hometown of Sioux City for a short time in 1969. My dad was overseas in Vietnam, and I guess he thought we’d make Sioux City our home, so he bought a house where we could live while he was gone. His plan was that we’d move back for good once he was out of the Air Force.

I remember quite a few things about Sioux City during that time: Turning four years old, watching the Apollo space missions on television, and seeing men walk on the moon, and I remember my Major Matt Mason Space Crawler and toy Air Force pilot helmet that would catapult my imagination to the stars. I also remember having an imaginary friend I called Goby, and I remember Sunday school, wearing my little suit, singing This Little Gospel Light of Mine, holding my index finger up as a candle, as directed, and blowing it out.

Also, each week in church, it was a matter of time before my mom would take me outside for being loud, and I always was traumatized by being told to be quiet. Funny how most churches later found a place to send the kids outside the big people church.

When Dad came back from Vietnam, we packed up everything and moved to Ramey AFB, Puerto Rico. The remnants of the base are still there today as the Rafael Hernandez Aguadilla International Airport and Coast Guard Air Station Borinquen. I started kindergarten there at the D Street elementary school, a Department of Defense-run school on a cliff overlooking the Caribbean. We had a petting zoo outside the classroom.

It was fun living on an island, with lots of trips to the beach, flying kites on the school grounds, riding on the back of dad’s motor scooter, and listening to the tree frogs at night. They made a kokee sound that my dad told me were Go to sleep! birds that were there for five-year-olds.

Oddly enough, forty-eight years later, I got to visit Aguadilla again as a first officer for United Airlines. The first trip there was amazing to me, especially because the hotel used to be the Ramey AFB hospital. The house we lived in was three blocks away from the hotel. And my school building was still there. The magic and nostalgia of the place wore off after about my sixth Aguadilla visit, a staple trip for LA-based United crews.

In 1970, we left Puerto Rico for the Midwest. This time we moved to Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota. My last couple of months of kindergarten through the second grade were spent at Zion Lutheran School in Rapid City, South Dakota. There were a lot of kids in the neighborhood and in grade school with me. In the winter, my mom would make a neighborhood ice skating rink by running the garden hose all night after the first big freeze.

My dad was gone a lot back then. He bounced back and forth between Vietnam and alert life in the Dakotas. I didn’t know that much about his B-52 career. I did know that he volunteered for a dangerous assignment, flying the O-1 Bird Dog forward air control aircraft in Vietnam, to the chagrin of my mom. I knew my dad loved flying, and I caught that bug.

We lived in Sioux City for a short time in 1969, then from 1973 to 1978. Sioux City always feels like home to me. We lived in a nice suburban neighborhood with lots of kids, a creek, and hills; we had dirt clod fights, hiking, forts, snowball fights, sledding, and a lot of good childhood memories. I had paper routes, bicycles, motorcycles, and I went to Saint Paul’s Lutheran School from third to sixth grade after my dad retired from the Air Force. I also had Saturday morning confirmation class at St. Paul’s in seventh and eighth grade.

My dad was home quite a bit there, at least for the first couple of years. My mom started working there since my parents had a pact that my dad would work the first twenty years they were married and my mom would work the second twenty. She used her psychology degree to begin a career as a court service officer for people who were arrested for drunk driving.

Being a househusband didn’t turn out to be my dad’s cup of tea, though. He pursued a number of different jobs. He worked for a while at a hardware store repairing lawn mowers and chainsaws. But I think my mother and he were at odds, and he wasn’t used to being a homebody, so he went to a truck driving school and worked a while as a semitruck driver.

He was gone a lot during that time, but he came back with stories of where he’d been, including one trip to Valparaiso, Indiana, to pick up a load of popcorn. He had actually met Orville Redenbacher on that trip.

It probably wasn’t as exciting as some of the things he’d done and the people he had met before. (We had a picture in my parents’ room of my mom and dad at a formal Air Force event, posing with Barry Goldwater, for example.) But it was exciting to me, as Orville Redenbacher was someone from TV.

We knew our parents weren’t really happy with each other at the time. There were a lot of arguments, mostly about his drinking. There were times my parents seemed to compromise. At one point, my dad went to an alcohol treatment center for a month, and then he tried Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) for a while.

My dad really wanted to get back into the flying game somehow. He worked at a local fixed base operator, pumping gas and moving small airplanes around, and eventually moved to Texas. His reasoning for going was to get some of his FAA ratings at a school in Dallas. But we knew my parents just needed a break from each other.

My time in Sioux City was about as normal as my life gets. With the exception of being a military brat with frequent moves, I don’t recall too many things that weren’t normal childhood fare. However, things got really crazy when we were getting ready to leave in 1978. Dad had moved to College Station, Texas. He took a little time away from my mother in Texas. He actually stayed with my aunt and uncle (on my mother’s side) for a while in Houston. Then, he decided that if we moved to Texas, things might work out better for all of us. This was the first big plan that didn’t work out, as far as my life was concerned.

Just before we were getting ready to move (we’d already sold the house in Sioux City and were closing on a house in College Station), my dad lost his life in a car accident. He died after falling asleep at the wheel of his little Toyota pickup within a mile of the rental property he was living in. He had driven late from my uncle’s lake lodge near Livingston, Texas. After being thrown from the vehicle, his body was so badly injured that we had a closed-casket funeral for him.

Obviously, the funeral was a painful experience. I was thirteen years old and wasn’t ready to grow up so fast. There were a lot of people who knew and loved my dad, who showed up, paying condolences, telling funny and touching stories about a funny and amazing man, and offering advice and encouragement. He’s in a better place, I kept hearing. My aunt Dorothy said it had happened for a reason, that possibly all hell would have broken loose if we’d moved to College Station. But who knows? All I knew was that I missed my dad. And when you lose a parent at that age, their hero status just goes up in your mind.

By this time, my sisters were both in college. It was strange going from a family of five down to two. I tried to keep up some semblance of a normal adolescence, but it was difficult with so much going on, only one parent and no one else in the house, and so much uncertainty. It was tough.

My life as a teenager was complicated. Some people may even question how I got into a career in aviation or the military with such a checkered past. Early in 1979, my mother decided we’d move to her hometown of Coffeyville, Kansas. This announcement was a surprise to me. My sister Johnette was home from college in Vermillion, South Dakota. She asked me, So, what do you think about moving to Coffeyville? My answer was a loud and disappointed, What? No way! I had always thought Sioux City was a place with nothing to do. But now, we were going from a small city of 80,000 people to an even smaller rural town of about 14,000.

I had visited a number of times to see my grandparents in South Coffeyville, Oklahoma. The Hildebrandt family was a loving and warm Lutheran family, with Nick and Mary as the grandparents and my mother and her five brothers and sisters. The Hildebrandts were a stark contrast to the Allens in Sioux City. My empty nest grandparents were frequently visited by all my aunts, uncles, and cousins while we lived in Coffeyville.

Despite the stability of visits with my grandparents, the restlessness of living in a small town started to drive me nuts. I was used to a bigger bunch of kids to run with in Sioux City, and I didn’t have much in common with the people of Coffeyville. The culture shock was incredible. I couldn’t believe there were actually teenagers who listened to country music and wore cowboy hats and big belt buckles.

I was in the honors level math and science classes, but I soon grew disillusioned with that group. I wasn’t much of an athlete, and I felt out of place. I wanted some adventure and excitement, which one really couldn’t find in a small town. I also felt like my life wasn’t very fair. If Dad had still been around, we wouldn’t have been living in this miserable place. Why did I have to get stuck in this existence? Other kids had normal lives. Other kids didn’t have to deal with this. Why was God punishing me? Looking back, I realize I had a bad attitude.

Then, I found the wrong crowd. I started hanging around with some guys who were into skateboards, going to rock concerts, smoking cigarettes and drinking, and marijuana. At first, I said, No, I don’t do that. Maybe when I get older and go to college. But the peer pressure kept coming. Shortly after I started hanging around with these guys, I saw what they were capable of. The seemingly just fun guys I was hanging out with stole things out of cars and houses to buy beer and weed and had some unsavory friends I didn’t know about. I really didn’t enjoy the ride I was on, and I wanted off.

As God’s will would have it, I discovered I was somewhat allergic to marijuana (or what we had was laced with something). It made my heart race and my blood pressure go through the roof. I ended up in the hospital on one particularly bad night. I know it probably scared the crap out of my mom.

And after that incident, she went into action behind the scenes. Under the guise of going car shopping, my mom took me to a large Victorian home next to a church in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. I soon found out this house was the home of the Palmer Drug Abuse Program (PDAP). Headquartered in Houston, Texas, PDAP was a twelve-step program that closely followed AA in its tenets. Yet, it was tailored toward keeping young people off drugs and gave parents a support group to deal with their kids.

That visit took me out of the group of bad kids I was hanging around, and it probably saved my life. I was part of the PDAP program on and off for a few years. There were some interesting people I met there, including one girlfriend and a few buddies, including Michael Anderson.

Michael was almost like a big brother to me. He’d had a pretty intense life, part of it as a high-end burglar. I could elaborate, but there isn’t enough room for his full story here. He struggled with drug addiction and was anxious about the fact that he had to turn some people in to avoid prosecution. He later ended up in prison himself. I visited him in prison from time to time when I was in college. He was turning his life around after I joined the Navy and was selling home security systems in California. I assumed everything was going well with him. But I learned in 2001 that he had died under nefarious circumstances in a drug-related incident in Phoenix. I had become too busy with family and the Navy to reach out to him, and I wish things had gone better in his life.

There were some other rebellious activities I pursued in high school. I was an honor student, but I also hot-rodded cars. The auto mechanics crowd at the vocational-technical (vo-tech) school was a fun bunch of guys to hang out with. They were good ole boys whose first priority was their vehicles. They still drank beer and smoked cigarettes, but most of them weren’t big on drugs.

We drag-raced on Buckeye Road, south of town, and then cruised Eighth Street. Having a hot rod car was one of the only things that kept my sanity in a small town, and it actually helped me find a better set of friends to hang out with. There was a cultural barrier, though. They knew I was taking some advanced-level classes, and they used to call me old Einstein in a Southern accent.

My 1975 Firebird had a 350 cubic-inch engine with a four-barrel carburetor. I tinkered with it a lot, changed and overhauled carburetors, and did a complete engine overhaul twice. I changed out transmissions, changed the exhaust system, and put a high-performance camshaft in it. I was in auto mechanics class half of the day throughout my junior year.

There was a stretch of road between Dewey and Copan, Oklahoma, that had four lanes with guard rails on either side. My speedometer went up to 140 mph, and I buried it a couple of times to around 165–170 mph. I got pulled over a few times, but never at that rate of speed.

I was clocked at forty-eight miles an hour in a thirty-mile-an-hour speed zone. I decided to fight the ticket in court. The judge was a good ole boy, and the police officer who pulled me over never showed up. The judge said, So, I’m sure you have a good story for me, but I don’t want to hear it. Since the officer didn’t show up, what I’d like you to do is go talk to that man over there, and maybe we can work out a deal. It was a pleasure doing business with you. I don’t want to see you here again. I ended up paying about one-quarter of the cost of the ticket. I never went to that court again.

Despite my days in PDAP, I managed to get in trouble when I was hanging out with the auto mechanics crowd. I was offered some weed one night. I didn’t want to seem like a wimp, so I smoked it. However, I was still nervous about what it might do to me. I decided if I drank a bunch of rum, it would counteract whatever bad reaction I might have to it. However, drinking that much and not having a buddy system in place led me to get arrested and put in jail for a night.

The dispatcher at the police office was related to one of my aunts, and she was surprised I was there. I think he’s an honor student, I remember her saying. She called my mom, and my mom told her to keep me in there. She came and got me in the morning. I ended up going back to PDAP for a year, staying sober the whole time.

I never touched any drugs again after that. It was back in the ’80s. It was tough being in a small town without a father. It’s no excuse for that behavior. But I managed to overcome it. I suppose it means nothing now since marijuana is legal. There’s no way I would ever mess with it now, though.

I had a girlfriend in high school who lived in a mobile home, and her dad was my favorite mechanic in South Coffeyville. He had respect for me because he knew I wanted to go to college and make a better life for myself. But his daughter eventually told me I was a pantywaist for wanting to go to college. In her mind, real men didn’t go to college. That relationship was doomed.

The author (as a young boy) and his family stand in front of two cars; the mother and one sister are holding pets in their arms.

Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, 1971

Henrietta Allen (my mom), Johnette (now) Shockley (my older sister), me, Mary (now) Oliver, and James R. Allen (my dad).

See more photos in the gallery at www.plansthatmadegodlaugh.com.

Chapter 2

College

I went to junior college in Coffeyville for a year. I probably wasted that year by not moving on. But I did get some of the prerequisites out of the way. I wanted to go to the University of Kansas. I heard they had a great aerospace engineering program, and I had always been interested in planes and flying.

So, in 1984, I moved to Lawrence, Kansas. The first semester at KU was an eye-opener. The classes were much harder than I’d been used to. I met a girl from the Kansas City area and threw into that short-lived relationship a lot of the insecurities I felt about being away from home and being in a more challenging academic environment. The relationship lasted two months with some heartbreak.

The only time I ever had in my life when I doubted the existence of God was during this period. I felt fairly alone on one particular occasion, fueled by anxiety about the stress of the Aerospace curriculum and breakup, like I was having to face life on