Well hells bells, you must be a Checkenginlight virgin blog reader, I'm always confused.
It's "If you build it they will come". Talking about "Baseball Ray" James Earl Jones, Costner, Shoeless Joe, (Dr) Moonlight Graham.... they all pop out of a cornfield.
John Kinsella will ask, "Is this Heaven?", Ray Kinsella replies "No, it's Iowa."
Blog reader you do have great recall of that movie, but nope, this is about the cornfield that help saved the day, making sure Kareem, Jerry West, Magic, Shaq, Kobe, Coach Chicken Wing Phil Jackson ever happened.
Xplain Lucy...
Sure! Sunday, January 17, 1960 the Minneapolis Lakers were soundly defeated by the St. Louis Hawks. The team piled on their DC3 aircraft for the jaunt from STL back home to MSP.
Ruh roh. Not long after takeoff, the plane lost electrical power, the pilots were flying blind - they tried looking everywhere for a place to land.
No instruments, no radar, virtially no vision, and oh yeah, it was snowing like crazy. The pilots descended low enough to try to see if any place was suitable to put that big boy down.
The noise of the engines had residents of Carroll, Iowa turning porch lights on, some even taking their kids to the basement... the pilots swerved around a water tower, spotted a cornfield (I ain't making this up) that had not been harvested yet due to soggy Fall weather - and they safely did put that bad boy down.
Carroll did not have any ambulances, so the town folk arranged to have a couple of hearses taken to the crash site.
It would not be farfetched for one of the tall dudes on the plane to pinch himself, then ask, "Uh oh, Is this Heaven?" No, it's Iowa.
There were no injuries. The townsfolk opened the hotel, arranged for the switchboard to open, allowing the players, pilots, team personnel to call home to announce their safety.
The players were later bused back home, the plane was repaired and farmers bulldozed the field, and three days later the plane was flown safely back to MSP. Whew.
The next year would find the Lakers, one of 8 then NBA teams, packing up a moving to LA, paving the way for LeBron, little Bronny ('de plane') and decades of championships there.
I was gonna write more but feel we're all suffering from postprandial somnolence (eating too damn much) so I figured a nap best for us all.
Today is the second busiest air travel day of the year. How many flights Victurd? More than 45,000, but safety measures are so advanced today, I wouldn't be concerned....unless... you live in Iowa... by a cornfield...
Paul Harvey (and Victurd),
Good day
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