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Excerpts from Abe Peña's  popular publications

All material used with the kind permission of the author, given to me personally.

from CHANGE COMES TO THE VILLAGES

"Airplanes

“Airplanes have always fascinated me. When I was a boy in San Mateo, New Mexico in the 1930s, I remember listening and looking up with excitement when an occasional plane overflew the village.

In time, I could tell a two-engine propellor plane from a one-engine simply by listening to the sound. In those early days of aviation, the planes flew relatively low and slow. They were easy to follow, especially for young eyes. Flying was in its infancy. The Wright brothers had flown the first flight at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903.

At the Fernandez Ranch, a mile west of the village, they had a landing strip on the edge of a meadow, and occasionally planes landed there. The ranch got its own plane in the early 1940s, and built a hangar next to the big red barn. Transportation was changing.

I remember one 4th of July coming to Grants with our parents to watch the parade and attend the rodeo and other festivities. We stopped at Damacio Tafoya's house, and Vidal Mirabal, his brother-in-law, was there. Vidal suggested to Dad to go with him to the airport and take a plane ride. He said the rides were advertised for $3.00.

We waited on the ground while the biplane gave them about a twenty-minute ride over the area. They were both smiling when they got back on the ground. Vidal said, “Boy, that was fun up there!” And Dad added, “It was pretty nice.” It was the first time I had a chance to be close to an airplane. I touched it. My heart was racing while standing close to that beautiful plane, and I said to myself, “Someday I'm going to pilot one of these machines.”

My first plane ride was a flight with Mr. Floyd W. Lee, owner of the Fernandez Ranch, to Albuquerque some 60 miles away, in the Bonanza piloted by the ranch manager Pete Mocho. Flying at about 8,500 feet altitude, it took us about 30 minutes. I recall being a little nervous when we took off, but delighted to go up in a contraption that had fascinated me for so long. Wow! What a sight! It was a clear day, and I thought we could see the gentle curvature of the earth on the horizon.

In June 1950, when the Korean War started, I applied for pilot training with the U. S. Air Force at Kirtland Air Base in Albuquerque. While in the process of examinations, I received a draft notice from the U. S. Army to report to Fort Ord, California for basic training. In military terms, the draft notice had priority over the Air Force application, and my dream of piloting a plane for the U. S. Air Force literally went down in flames.

After completing basic training, I got eight days leave with orders to report to the Veterinary Meat Inspection school in Chicago. The assignment made sense. I was raised on a sheep and cattle ranch, and had a degree in Animal Science from NMSU. From Fort Ord, I took a train to Los Angeles and flew my first commercial airline flight from L. A. to Albuquerque on Trans World Airlines.

The plane was the famous Constellation, one of the best airplanes that ever flew. The beautiful airplane took off from the Los Angeles airport out to sea, then turned inland and over the mountains east of the city, where the “Connie” started tossing around a bit. I was holding my breath and tightly grasping the arm rests. Four elderly ladies were in the lounge area playing cards, and one sensed my anxiety and quietly said, “It'll be okay, son, we'll be over the mountains soon.”

When I was discharged after two years of military service, I enrolled in private pilot training at Cutter-Carr Flying School in Albuquerque. They had a field on the west side of the city, near the corner of what is now Coors and West Central. I felt it was important to learn to fly, for both personal and for business reasons. First and most important, I simply liked to fly, and, second, coyotes were killing more and more sheep on our ranch, and several ranchers were starting to use airplanes to try and control the coyotes from the air. I wanted to be prepared if we ever resorted to that measure.

During the first flying lesson, the instructor took the controls and we took off in the Cessna 120 to the northwest, into the wind. He taught me the basics of flying while maneuvering over the hills near the Rio Puerco. When we landed, he said, “Okay, now you take the controls.” His name was Stubblefield. We called him Stubbie, and, shame on me, I cannot recall his first name.

He got in the passenger side, which also had controls for the instructor. I recall trying to keep the plane rolling straight ahead on the rough dirt strip, and working the throttle at the same time. The Cessna finally lifted, wobbling a bit, while I held my breath and so did the instructor. I'm sure he had held his breath hundreds of times with student pilots over the years. He smiled at me and I tried to return the smile while concentrating on the controls of the climbing airplane.

After two weeks and about eight hours in the air of dual instruction and hundreds of take-offs and landings, Stubbie told me to land the plane. When I turned the engine off on the ground, he turned to me and said, “Okay, Abe, you're going to Solo, you take it up yourself!”

I stopped breathing for a moment. Still, it was the step I had been training for, but I didn't want to show my nervousness. With bravado, I gunned up the engine and yelled to Stubbie, “You just watch. This will be the best take-off you've ever seen!”

I listened to every change in the sound of that engine as the realization dawned on me that I was up there alone, Solo! I remember making the sign of the cross, and saying a little prayer, hoping He was listening. After about 30 minutes in the air, I returned to the field, where they took a pair of scissors and cut my shirt tails. One tail was given to me, and the other was tacked on a bulletin board where many other shirttails were hanging. Stubbie made a little speech and presented me with a Solo certificate. At that moment, I felt like I was ten feet tall!

Cross-country training followed, including a few practice landings in Grants. When I had about 15 hours in the air and on track to get a pilot license, I got a letter from the Fulbright Foundation. They notified me that I had been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study sheep and wool production in Australia, and departure was two weeks away.

I cancelled the flying lessons, got my passport, said goodbye to my loved ones and to my friends, and took the train to Vancouver, Canada to take a passenger ship to Australia, and from there sailed to the land of the southern cross to study for a year. After a year of study, I sailed around the world to Naples, Italy and eventually home on the Queen Elizabeth.

When I returned to New Mexico after sixteen months of travel and study, I went to work as sheep foreman of the Frank A. Hubbell Company, Cerro Prieto ranch, in Catron County. Following marriage to Viola Cisneros of Santa Fe, I took up flying again. She died a thousand deaths every time I went up, but she never asked me not to fly.

About that time, several of our close friends, including Bill Hubbell and Hi Overton, were killed in plane crashes while fighting coyotes from the air, attempting to save their sheep. With some regrets, I put the keys away and have never piloted a plane again.

I still look up when I hear an airplane overhead. My eyes are not as good as they used to be, and jet planes fly faster and higher and are harder to see, but I still get excited when I see or hear an airplane in the air."