FAA Report Patsy Cline plane crash last phone call

Patsy Cline’s Last Phone Call

A tribute to a legend and a visit to an artifact of the last hours of her existence, published at the exact minute of her passing + 55 years.

Patsy's Cline last phone call

Ms. Cline, backstage with butterflies and sweaty palms, Memorial Hall, Kansas City, 3 March 1963; her final show. Mildred Pierce photo

I’ve always had a queer fascination with youth and death.

Is it the great senselessness of this? That by rule, we’re all supposed to grow old and reminisce about our youth and what we should’ve done differently? Once you roll the celebrity aspect into it, you’ve got youth and death involving someone that in theory has more monumental life experiences in six months than the rest of us do in a lifetime. And perhaps that’s where obsession begins.

I find it quite strange that it took me as long as it did to find out how Patsy Cline died. And when.

Don McLean’s ‘American Pie’ sort of spoon-fed the story of Buddy Holly and The Day The Music Died to anyone whose parents had that radio in the basement, with the missing tuning knob, permanently set to the oldies station. My curiosity for that one took me first to the nightmarish autopsy reports of those three singers sudden, violent ends, and then to a much more healthy end, a 2009 pilgrimage to the exact spot of the wreck in a field in northwest Iowa.

I knew Patsy’s hits. They’d cycle through that same oldies station here and there. But I think they (perhaps purposefully) branded her as a minor ‘crossover’ star in the early rock era, not as one of the biggest stars in the history of an entire genre of music.

As you start to dig in a bit, one finds out things that teenage boys just melt for in the concept woman; a public classiness cloaked in just enough mystery to allow for a secret, just between the two of yas, offset by an offstage reputation of being able to keep up with the boys in the three categories we’re taught to hallow the most: cussin’, fightin’, ‘n drinkin’.

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As Seen at Half-Mast, Port Huron, MI

who decides to lower flags to half staff (half-mast)?

Old Glory at half-mast, plus Joe Riedy & William Horn, Kings of the Port Huron sidewalk. View on COA Instagram.

“Hot dogs will be ready in ten minutes,” William Horn, proprietor of the Carter’s Concessions cart calls out as though there were more than just the four of us standing there solving all the world’s problems.

Who sets the rules for flags at half-mast? Governors? Local officials? The ripping, snapping stars and stripes in front of the Port Huron Public Library are at 50%.

All four of us has opinions and no one has answers. All we know is that something grim happened.

Joe Riedy, a Vietnam vet and veterans affairs apostle handed out American flags on Memorial Day stamped ‘Made in China’. We agree that there’s solid ground for a constitutional amendment prohibiting the manufacture of American flags in anywhere but the US of A. Write your congressman today.

The National Guard is the only US military squadron that comes back as a unit. I lose track of what Joe is saying as my mind pictures that trip home, in the only way a civilian mind can, which is largely based on summer blockbusters about war. It occurs to me that one would find peace in returning with a squadron. That even without words, the healing wouldn’t wait for the VFW hall if you can gaze at your compatriot and know immediately, that in ways people like me will never know, you will never be alone. Hot dogs will be ready in 18 seconds says William Horn. The man’s a perfectionist.

A half mile to the east and within eyeshot is the Dominion of Canada, another nation just past a shipload of iron ore, 26 thousands tons or more, making its way up the St. Clair to the lake that gave Port Huron her name.

Port Huron, MI city hall, just across from Sarnia, ON, Canada. [Half-Mast]

Port Huron city hall and Canada just beyond her. Click to follow COA on Instagram

I tell Joe I’m second-generation railroader. His father or uncle or both worked for the railroad. “Trunk?” I ask. Grand Trunk Railroad, yes sir.

Once upon a time we all worked for the railroad and once upon time we all went to war.

“Democracy is a participatory sport,” is the QOTD. Make sure to remember that quote, dummy, I told myself. Small victories.

Joe keeps telling William to raise his prices but he doesn’t listen or is too much a man-of-the-people.

And I suppose that’s the beauty of our ten minutes across from the Port Huron Public Library where the flag flies at half-mast because the unpredictable will always happen. Never did any of us paint in broad-strokes (“X people are always ____” “political party X never can yadda yadda”). We were all most-assuredly from different backgrounds and all have had to be bigger than their own biases on any number of occasions.

Once you see how the other half lives you learn that the only thing you can come close to knowing or controlling is yourself. There’s Peace in acceptance.

And at the end I was pulled aside by a Soldier of Christ, a late-comer to our sidewalk powwow. He was a veteran of a different kind of war. In his super-terrestrial war there’s only winners or losers. You’re either in or you’re out. It’s clear cut. We agreed to disagree. On what grounds, he asked me.

“Because we’re all in this together,” I told him. “And democracy is a participatory sport.”

Evidently I’m going to Hell.

If you get an opportunity to contribute to the Buddy to Buddy program veterans assistance program please do. We’re all in this together!