Paul Brenner
My father was career Air Force, so my five sisters and I moved every three or four years while growing up. Our family’s military stations included Edmonton, Alberta; Great Falls, Montana; Montgomery, Alabama; Washington DC and a pair of four year tours at Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida panhandle. Like most air bases, Eglin had a superb golf course. When I finished delivering newspapers each morning, that’s where I spent my teen summers.
I wanted to fly airplanes like my dad and did well enough in school for an appointment to the Air Force Academy in Colorado. My first assignment after graduation was pilot training in Phoenix, Arizona. Nowadays, AFA grads jockey for coveted pilot training slots, but during the Vietnam Era, flight school was automatic. Next came a two year stint in Minot, North Dakota, followed by a three year flying tour in Honolulu.
The airlines were hiring pilots in the late ‘70s, and I left Hawaii and the military for TWA. Six weeks into my new career, the airline furloughed us all in response to another OPEC oil embargo. One Friday afternoon we were gathered in a Training Center classroom, issued two weeks severance pay, wished best of luck in our future endeavors and shown the door. Those in our class with families to support were devastated and scrambled to update their applications with other airlines. As a bachelor, the initial shock was quickly supplanted by a sensation of freedom. For the first time in my life it was my choice where to live. I hopped on Interstate 70 westbound, headed for the Colorado Rockies with absolutely no job prospects in mind.
My furlough from the airline would last six years, long enough to establish another career. I used what was left of my GI Bill to become a certified flight instructor. A local engineering company in Grand Junction was looking for a pilot to fly their twin-engine Cessna and they were hiring engineers as well. With my civil engineering degree from the Academy, I filled both slots.
My new bachelor friends in Grand Junction were all avid outdoorsmen, and an adventure was on the schedule most every weekend. Summers were consumed by fishing trips. The fall brought dove, then deer and elk season. Winters were the best: duck and goose hunting on the Colorado river, pheasant hunts in Kansas, and quail excursions to southern New Mexico and the panhandle of Texas. My friends had one other common attribute: a Labrador retriever constantly by their side. It wasn’t long before I had a retriever alongside as well.
I was recalled by the airline in the mid-80s and faced a dilemma, what to do with my roommate, a black Lab named Jack. An outfitter friend, Alan, took in my dog, and me as well when I had a long enough stretch of days off from work at Chicago O'Hare, and later New York. In return, I bid fall vacations to help with his father’s business guiding elk hunters during archery, muzzleloader and rifle seasons.
At my 20th high school reunion in Florida, fate again smiled upon me. I ended up seated beside our Homecoming Queen because her date had consumed one too many Goombay Smashes at the beach. We married that fall and were blessed with two daughters in the early ‘90s. We moved to southern New Mexico just prior to the birth of our second daughter and have lived there since.
