Being retired for a while now I feel bad for the folks that have to work or go to school… I remember very well days when the airport would call. The lights would go out on a runway because of the rain. It usually meant that an electrical vault was flooded and filled with water and shorted out the circuits. Fun, fun, fun…..It didn’t take long for me long to fix that. It was that phone call at the early hour that was the pain…Today, I sort of wish I could go to the airport and make a runway check. That was the fun part of the job especially when it was busy. Between flights I would get clearance from the tower and make a run down the main runway to check the runway lights and pick up debris…Yes debris…Pieces of rubber from blown tires and a few times the baggage door that wasn’t closed properly and blew off. Bird parts….Poor birds that the plane hit. One time I picked up a tail cone from a United 720 that fell off because the tail hit the pavement when he landed with the nose too high. At times I would be half way down the 2 mile main runway and a 707 or 747 would be landing right behind me…As I was turning off the end to the taxi way at about a 100 miles an hour, I could the see people looking at me out the windows…Talk about good timing….One morning the alarm radio woke me with the news that a plane almost hit a maintenance vehicle that was on the runway…..Its feels uncomfortable when the news is about you….I had a great job and loved what I did…Thank you for your love and guidance Dad…..I was one of the electricians that put in those 3 lights on the top of the mountain at the approach of runway 15 at Bradley International Airport in Connecticut……
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