"More disparate personalities could not be imagined!" - Brett Buck
Boy, Howdy...
Bob
Obviously I never went on an extended trip with him (and might have known better...), but Al and I talked all the time on the phone (before his stroke, anyway). Another completely unique individual, the idea of self-awareness appeared to be a completely foreign concept. The world was Al's, the rest of us are just filling up the free space and bask in his presence. He could be very helpful, too, happy to dispense advice, if nothing else, to make sure that no one else had any inputs (by definition wrong). And he really was a very, very good source. So why would you ever listen to, say, Ted Fancher, when Al Rabe was available and willing to help? He *always* ended up mad at me at some point in the conversation*, but he got over it, a week or two, hey, it's Al again, back to tell me how they screwed him at the '73 NATs, and why nothing had improved in stunt since he quit in 1979.
Bear, on the other hand, generally unassuming, the nicest guy in the world, even when he didn't have to be, a genuine pleasure to be around.
Brett
*best Al story - Al sees Les' articles in SN, and of course, that can't be allowed to go without a response, I mean, who cares about World Champion, Mr. Perfect Mr. Shirt of Stars Les McDonald when Al is available? So he writes his autobiography, which he claims is about "instruction" and "information" that people need to know, and certainly not about, say, Al's raging egomania, perish the thought. He sends it to me.
It's really good, lots of good pictures, well-written by model airplane standards. I check the page count in Word - I want to say it is *432 pages*! He is sending it to me, I think Tom McClain, and several others, and expects us to publish it in SN. I was supposed to, I guess, twist Tom's arm because he was a bit hesistant to devote the next 40ish issues of our magazine to serializing it, for some inexplicable reason. So, of course, he gets angry, can't understand what the problem might be, he built the Mustang and the Sea Fury, who cares about the rest of these pretenders. At some point in the conversation, even I get a little irritated with it, and I might have said something like "But Al, if we give you 400 pages, we would have to give Paul Walker about 50,000!". Wrong answer, apparently, he gets so angry he can't speak clearly for a few minutes, finally, hangs up. A few weeks later, calls back as if nothing happened, still trying to talk me into it.
There are other, less funny, aspects to this, but this was absolutely classic Al, completely and unabashedly oblivious. Once I understood where he was coming from, I had absolutely no problem with him, I really enjoyed talking to him, another fascinating stunt "character".
Topic: Practice Time: Burtonwood RAF Base 1978 (Read 2423 times)