Mirrors - Cows - Bananas Pt2

Cows, Mirrors, Bananas (the rest of the story)







Late in 1954, my father was driving around with the Manager of "United Airlines" to the airport. "Orv (my father's name was Orval), as you probably know, today’s will be the last trip of "United Airlines" and my last day as Airline Manager. Before I leave, I have to make a confession! Pete and I didn't get along very well and I was happy to see him have to go out of his way keeping the mirrors cleaned every day. Then he came up with the metal grid mirror barricades and I was disappointed that he had solved his time consuming problem.

I then came up with my devious plan. Thirty minutes before he made his first trip along the road, as I was heading up to the Airport, I would enjoy a banana and then take the banana peel and would rub it behind the steel protection grids

on every single mirror along the Stage Coach Road all the way up to the Summit. Pete Peterson would then have to follow me, never knowing what I was doing, and clean everyone of those mirrors." (NEVER MAKE ENEMIES ON A SMALL ISLAND!) Pete never figured it out and it drove him nearly crazy to think that the cows had found a way to defeat his mirror covering grid by sticking their tongues around the side and

underneath the grid, much less, every single mirror on the Stage Coach Rd...every single day of the week.......

(he literally "flipped out" over it).

As life would have it, my father kept this secret and later, in the 1960s, told only me about this conversation. And…all of this slipped silently into the recesses of time and memory, until…

Around 1980, on behalf of the Avalon Museum Society I was conducting an 8-hour audio taped interview of Johnnie Windle, my historian mentor and friend. Toward the end of the interview, when he was sharing information about his family members, we got to his younger son, Ernie, who had died some years before. He asked me to turn off the recorder, which I, of course, did immediately! I told him that I totally understood how hard it was to talk about his son, but he quickly corrected me and assured me that I was wrong about this concern. Actually, he didn't want any recording of a "Top Secret story" that he was about to tell me.

Now, off the record, Johnnie began his story. "My son, Ernie, used to work for "United Airlines", when they flew out of the "Airport-In-The-Sky". One of his "duties", not in his "job description", was dictated by the Airline Manager. Ernie, on his way up the Airport everyday, was directed to...". At this moment, I couldn't control myself, and disrespectfully interrupted him, "...”Take a banana peel and smear all of the mirrors!!!"

Johnny looked at me in horror! "NOBODY BUT ME KNOWS THAT STORY!!!!!"

"Johnny, I hate to tell you this, but Dad told me the story a number of years ago, so you, Dad, and I know the prank pulled on Pete Peterson!!!" The "United Airlines" Manager, Ernie, Dad, and Johnny are no longer around, but now YOU know the secret story of the Bananas…Mirrors and Cows!

I hope you will all help me keep this story a secret! Aw, what the heck, pass it around, it’s all part of Catalina's folklore now!!