Abilene (cue the music), Abilene (sing along) . . .

Yes, I am fairly certain the song was not talking about exactly the same town, but its a nice town anyway and it was a beautiful day on the 16th.  The flight up was uneventful.  Its been a busy few days so I need to catch up.

When we arrived at the airport, Jim Curtis came out with a curious look on his face.  Jim owns the agricultural spraying, flight instruction, aircraft rental and maintenance service at Abilene Airport.  I don't think he knew what to make of us hauling a certain amount of tonnage out 21T, but he was sympathetic enough.  I asked him about getting over to Green Ford to rent a car for a day, and he was kind enough to suggest just taking their crew car instead.

That's it by the tail.  Apparently when the city get's new police cars they place the old cars at the airport and elsewhere in the area.  Ours still has the searchlight mounted in the driver's window post.  This draws interesting looks as we make our way around town, but does not have quite the impact as the Crown Victoria we were given at Grosse Ile MI a few years ago, but that's another story.  This one got us around just fine for what we wanted to do. 

We checked into our motel and in a short while got together with Dave and Karen Jerabek.  These are great folks we met at Walter Reed a while back when our daughters were receiving the same treatment for exactly the same kind of cancer in exactly the same place.  They subsequently retired.  Dave is a physical therapist at Ft Riley KS (just up the road from Abilene in Manhattan KS), Karen does volunteer work, and their daughters are both doing fine.  They took us for a great Italian dinner in Salina KS while we caught up.  By the way, you'll have to take my word for it that there are few trees in downtown Salina.  Its not completely barren, but close -- as if they either started killing trees and relented, or got rid of them all and thought better of it later.  Either way, I don't think I can count them as an exception to the "no trees downtown" theory" merely because I did not take pictures.
  

The next morning found us off to Eisenhower's boyhood home, museum and library, all conveniently located in Abilene.  The home is actually right where it was when Eisenhower was growing up, original foundation and all.  Its a small place to be raising seven boys, but they apparently knew something everyone else missed about raising sons because so many of them went on to prominent careers. 

The museum has a little Mamie Eisenhower, then a lot of WWII, followed by some President Eisenhower material.  All in all a very nice museum that tells the story of a very capable man without the more recent style of deifying the guy. 

There is a line of reporting that suggests the only reason Eisenhower advanced so rapidly was because of personal relations with some Brits while a Lt Col.  The truth is more like he was shaped over a lifetime.  West Point, duty training tank crews in WWI, then a series of assignments as executive officers or aides to the likes of Pershing and McArthur where one typically learns how senior leadership actually makes things happen.  By the time WWII arrived, he was already pretty well known.  Gen Marshall knew who he was getting when he brought him up to run the Army Operations division before we got directly involved.  One thing led to another at that point and the rest is the familiar story. 

Inevitably, the trip through downtown Abilene leads one to the usual conclusions about cities and trees.  Just for the record, there are trees just outside the downtown area (see Eisenhower's home).

And so, after a bit of lunch, we retreat to the airport, thanked JIm for his hospitality, and we're off to Colorado Springs.  The actual route is to Limon CO where they have relatively cheap gas, then to Meadow Lakes, CO, just NE of the Springs.  It has gotten cloudy in Abilene as

the day went on, and got progressively colder with lowering ceilings as we headed west.  When we finally got to Meadow Lakes, Mike Lackey was there to put 21T in the hangar of a friend of his for the next few days.  Mike and Deb took pity on us an put us up at their place in the Black Forest area just east of the Air Force Academy grounds.  Dinner and a lot catching up with good friends. 

After retiring from the AF, Mike flew for Southwest for a time, and in his spare time he and Deb started a small company called "UFlyMIke".  You can find them online at www.uflymike.com.  This is an interesting story, but one I'll save for next time.