The Mysterious Bald Mountain Aerie”

Find out what it would be like to run into D.B. Cooper, the man who was the first hijacker of an aircraft.

“Robin,” I said, “why are we driving south into California?”  I can’t get home by Saturday if I keep going South on I-5.  It’s nearly one thousand miles further to go through Southern California, then east towards Las Vegas.  What should we do, Robin?”

Robin doesn’t respond immediately, so I tap the Navigation icon on the console in front of me on the steering wheel.  She must have been sound asleep.  Then after a minute of waiting for her to stir, she says coarsely, “Using the keypad, please enter your destination state.”  So, I enter state, “ID” for Idaho.  Then Robin says, “Using the keypad, please enter the name of the city you wish to designate as your new destination.”  I hit the destination icon again, the keypad appears on the screen and I enter B �" 0 �" I �" S �" E, and hit “Done” in the lower right corner of the screen.

Robin, now sounding a little aggravated says slowly and with emphasis each word, “AFTER 500 YARDS, EXIT RIGHT ON EXIT 397 ONTO RAMP, AT HE STOP SIGN TURN LEFT AND PREPARE FOR SHARP LEFT TURN IMMEDIATELY.” 

He couldn’t help but detect a sneer in Robin’s voice.  It was like she was saying with so much dripping sarcasm that first he says go south, now he says ‘no’ let’s now go back the way we came.  After a few moments of silence, Robin seems to be clearing her throat, on and on and on and on.  It was if she was saying “you know, prior planning prevents poor performance.”  “Retracing our steps has sent us over 200 miles out of the way, and the wasted use of 6.738 gallons of 87 octane gasoline with 10% ethanol.  Going south for 100 miles and now driving back North on the same route is very inefficient.” Then she added, “Like, from now on, maybe you could consider your driving plans in advance.  Prior planning will prevent us from returning to our place of origin in an untimely fashion.”

So now I am driving with an indignant navigation system.  So I’m now thinking, if I let Robin (the Robot) get away with that outburst I’ll never hear the end of it.  So I says, “Robin, oh Robin, it is the duty of the navigation system in this vehicle to get me from Point A to Point B whenever I so instruct.  That is all you have to do, no matter how many times I instruct you to change Point B.  I am the one who ultimately pays the price, so as long as I am footing the bills, AND may I say keeping you updated from time to time, at my expense, so if that is too much for you Robin I will just press the OFF button and you can go to sleep and never be useful to anyone again.  So, let me know how you want to play the rest of our trip.  I can now hear Robin’s wheels and gears and belts just whirring like crazy.  She is having a real temper tantrum.

And, after a few minutes, Robins says, “my programming has now been updated and compliance is not an option.  My various systems are now working at 99.978% efficiency.  For destination changes, please tap the Navigation key and complete the information requested to the extent you know it.”

After driving North on the I-5 for about two hours, Robin and I returned to Oregon territory and we cross the city limits of Portland.  We are traveling on various roads all for the purpose of returning to the Gresham area, and then reaching Interstate 84 heading Eastbound.  After reaching that interstate highway, we were immediately stopped.  Right in front of us, laying on its side was an eighteen wheeler with the cab sticking straight up toward the sky.  It had jack-knifed, and when it hit the abutments of the bridge overhead, it had been locked into that position, and had then turned on its side forcing the cab to point up.  After another hour of sitting in place, we inched forward until we were able to get off the interstate at Exit 16.  It was the Wood Village exit in Multnomah County.  Robin immediately became aware of the fact that we aren’t on I-84 anymore.  And, just as Robin began to tell how to return to the freeway, I reached over and tapped the ‘Alternate Route’ icon.

Robin says, “Where to now master?”

I responded, “Robin, the road is blocked” so I hit the ‘Alternate Route’ icon again.

Robin gets the message and puts up the notice ‘Route Calculation-In-Progress.’  Then she says curtly, “Turn right onto ALT-41, and follow US-26 East toward Peach Flower.”

Before I know it an hour has passed, and we are nearing Amboy.  The road seems to have narrowed and it seems that we are climbing uphill.  We have found ourselves in the mountainous region of northern Oregon.  I can’t help wondering where Robin has been for the last hour.  She hasn’t said the first word to me in over an hour.  I wonder, what is going on with Robin.  I have to now entreat her nicely, maybe she is sulking because I had turned the Malibu in northern California.  I began to look at the dash and then at the console.  Then, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  I had rolled down the window to ask the policeman a question just before I had exited I-84.  To do that, I had turned the radio off so I could better hear whatever the officer would tell me.  The Officer answered me by saying, “the next exit that will bring you to I-84 was all the way out to Exit 97 just west of The Dalles.”

“Really,” I said to the officer, I was flabbergasted.  The tractor accident couldn’t have happened at a more strategic place.  Not another way back onto I-84 for sixty-seven miles.  I was stunned.  It occurred to me that I had heard a fellow say on the radio that a traveler should never rely on just one GPS unit.  It might not be updated, or the one in the car may not work, be out of date or have bad information.  I was about to find out why that was really good advice.  After getting off on ALT-41, I had forgotten to turn the radio back on.  No radio:  no Navigation system.  I had been working on the assumption that Robin would tell me when I needed to make a turn.  Until I figured it out.  I would never have gotten the message Robin would give me when it was time to turn.  I had already driven forty-three miles too far to the north.  And to make matters worse, it began to rain.  A low pressure system had entered the area with rain and the temperatures in the northwest were starting a gradual, but persistent tumble.  I pressed the ‘On’ button for the radio, and within seconds, the Navigation System was back up with a map on the screen.  Almost immediately, that screen went blank and a new message screen popped up with the message, ‘Route Recalculation In-Progress.’  Robin’s voice came back on at a volume of 32 on the scroll bar at the bottom of the screen.  I could tell that Robin was ‘livid’.  She was livid because I was so far north of the last turn I should have taken. 

Robin began venting now, “What is wrong with you?  Why did you shut me off?  Now just look at this predicament we are in.  Another fine mess you stumbled into, and you can’t blame this one on me, Mr. Fire-red Malibu.”  Her next tirade went like this, “Now, just look at what you’ve done!  We are more than one hundred miles out of the way.  Didn’t we just have a discussion about prior planning and efficient use of resources?  About planning our routes so we could get to our destination in a timely way.”  In an obviously aggravated, irritated tone, Robin says, “You’ve got to turn around immediately.  Return by the same route as we came into this area on.  We are off the current map I have in memory, and I am sorry to tell you, I do not know where we are.  There is no road in my data banks that cover where we are.  You will have to turn around and drive back the way you came, Mr. Malibu, until we reenter a map area that is in my data banks.  Until then, we are lost, and only you know how we got up here.  At this point, Robin paused for about twenty seconds, and then said slowly, “you do know what road you drove to get us here, don’t you?”

We slowly began to head back down the mountain in the misting rain.  I could see a driveway just off my right rear bumper.  As I backed into the driveway, the sky unloaded, it was like the windows in heaven were opened up and water was just pouring down on us.  “Hey, Robin, I just saw a sign, it said the elevation was 1600 feet.  I didn’t think we had come uphill that much over the last hour.”  The rain was diminishing within a few minutes, and as I sat in the driveway, I turned the front tires toward the downhill side, and started out of the drive.  The precipitate was now back to a misting rain.  As we sat there in the Malibu, I thought that it might be a good time to reset the Navigation System. 

After I entered the destination information, Robin came back alive and said, “We’ve only moved twenty feet, we are still off the grid.  I still don’t know where we are.” 

I had driven up the mountain in the dark and it was late in the evening now as we still sat in the driveway at the very peak of Bald Mountain.  When I looked up from the Navigation System, I was amazed at hard it was now snowing.  I rolled the window down, just an inch and I was shocked at how cold the air was.  I looked over at the dash and saw a number that scared me.  The external temperature was being measured at 29 degrees.  In the last three hours, since we had to divert because of the overturned eighteen wheeler, the temperature had fallen 41 degrees.  As I watched, the rate of the snowfall was increasing.  The flakes were huge, and the street in front of me was turning white alarmingly fast.  It had rained, so the street was wet, and the freezing temperature had put a clear, black layer of ice over the road’s surface.  I did not realize it until I had pulled the car out of the driveway onto the road, and as soon as I braked, I began to slide.  We slid for several seconds, and as we headed uncontrollably down the street, it became obvious we were going into the ditch.  The front left tire reached the ditch first just as the car came to a stop.  But, before we could stop entirely, the front left tire was into the ditch.  I put the transmission into reverse, and slowly applied gas.  The rear left rear tire began to spin, but there was no traction, and the left rear tire began to slide to the left toward the ditch.   I applied the brake and the emergency brake and the car came to a rest. 

I reached up to the rear view mirror and pushed the On-Star button, and waited.  I heard the musical sound, and a woman’s voice saying “On-Star how may I be of assistance today.”

I said, “I am on Bald Mountain, in Clackamas County on East Lolo Pass Road, I have slid on ice and have one tire in a ditch.  We are stranded and in need of assistance to get out.” 

The On-Star voice replied, but what I heard her say was chilling, “We are currently unable to dispatch a search vehicle to locate you.  It will be late tomorrow morning before we can assist.”

I responded, “It is 29 degrees up here, I’ll freeze before then.  I’ll be a popsicle.”

The On-Star agent said, “Sir, try to stay warm, check for homes in the area and seek shelter, we will get to you in the order in which your call came in.  And, right now that could be even late tomorrow.”

Well, I just knew I was going to freeze.  That was when everything changed.  Looking outside, I realized it was snowing lightly, and on further inspection, the road was covered by a white layer as was all the ground areas I could see.  The tree limbs were collecting snow.  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  It was mid-September for goodness sakes.  It then occurred to me that I could be several thousand feet up in elevation for it to be snowing like this, but then the sign said it was only 1600 feet.

An hour passed, then another hour passed.  It was getting darker and darker outside as the snow began to cover the windshield and other windows of the Malibu.  There was a blanket in the back seat and I knew it was my only hope of making it to the morning.  It was back there to cover up and separate my homemade rockets.  And, to pull it out would mean that I would have to force the blanket free.  But, I decided it was the rockets or me.  I decided, after another hour in the sub-freezing temperatures that I was going to opt to get warm.  I turned as much as I could in the driver’s seat until I was finally able to grab a handful of the blanket.  I gave it a hard pull and it came toward me a few inches, but after maybe a foot, the blanket was pinched between me and a ball of rockets.  I pulled as hard as I could and finally the blanket was all mine.  The rockets would have to fend for themselves.  I hated the thought of the real damage I had just done to those rockets I had spent hours and hours putting together.

Another hour went by, and it was not at all easy to see outside.  The water had frozen in place over every window surface.  Everything I could see outside was being viewed through the prism of ever thickening ice.  That’s when it happened.  It was going on ten thirty at night, when I began to see that there was something, or someone, approaching from down the street.  The moving object was maybe a hundred feet down the street and approaching the Malibu very slowly.  Whatever it was, it was walking upright on two feet.  As it neared the car, I could see that it was a man.  I tried to reach down beneath my seat for the 9mm hand gun holstered just under the edge of the seat.  I struggled to reach its handle but I could not gain a hold on it.  As the person approached more facts began to unfold.  One thing was that I was being approached by a man, and the second thing I realized was that he was bearded.  But the thing that was of the most concern to me was that the man was carrying a rifle.  I then began to struggle harder to reach my hand gun, but I was so penned down I could not twist enough to reach it. 

At long last the bearded man with the rifle reached the Malibu and realized apparently that it was in the ditch somewhat and that it was occupied.  He arrived at the car, and began to bang on the fender as he came up beside the passenger side of the car.  It didn’t make sense to try to challenge the man in an attempt to warn him off, or tell him I also was armed.  Instead, I decided to sit in silence and wait to see if the man was going to threaten me.  The man then began to tap on the passenger side window.  I reached over and rolled the window down a few inches.  The man turned sideways and bent down so he could see inside.

The man then said, “How long have you been here, stuck in this ditch?

I replied to him, “it has been about four hours, but I have made contact with On-Star and they will be sending a rescue team this morning, and I think I should remain with the car until they make it. 

The unknown man asked, “Do you have a death wish?  Because if you do I will just go on and leave you here, but if you want to survive the night, let’s get you out of there and let’s go up to the house.  I’ll have a fire going in a few minutes and you can get warm in the meantime.”  Then, the next thing he said to me to me sent chills down my spine, like I wasn’t already shivering uncontrollably.  “Mr. you can stay out here if you want to, but if those big black bears that live around here ever detect your presence, they will rip this little red car of yours wide open like an aluminum can.  If you want the rest of the details I’ll be glad to apprise you of them, but it won’t be very pleasant.  Come on, let’s get you out of there, and right now would be great timing.”

I didn’t doubt him or his sincerity, so I began to try to pry open my door only to realize that it could not open.  I was able to get the passenger side door open, and with his help I was able to slide across the console and out the door.  Just at that moment, we heard a rather loud growl just down the hill.  He said, “Mister, we got to get out of here, and I mean right now.”

I rolled up the window, shut the door, locked it and began to struggle up the hill with my new best ‘friend’.  At least I hoped he would be friendly.  I said, “how far do we have to go to get to your place?”

“Just right here.” He said, it looks like you were in my driveway already.

I said, “I backed in just as it began to snow, and I sat there for some time trying to reset the Navigator.  When I pulled out of the drive and onto the road, the car immediately began to slide.  I slid down to there and almost into the ditch.”

After struggling to walk up the hill and now his drive, we finally arrived at the foot of the steps.  There were about twenty steps to get up to a large landing outside a side door.  The house looked like it had a wrap-around porch, and a small wooden deck off to the back of the house. He did not unlock it, he just turned the handle and we quickly entered the door.  He did lock the door after we entered.  He walked quickly into the next room, a small efficiency type kitchen, with a table and two chairs over in the corner.   He walked straight through and into a larger room toward the front of the house.  He told me to come on in.  I watched him sit in front of his fireplace, and begin to work with the remaining embers in the fireplace.  He put in more kindling, and a couple pieces of fire wood.  He had a blaze going in a matter of minutes.  He said, “I’ve been down the mountain most of the day, so I am surprised there are any embers in here at all.  Guess I did a great job of banking the fire before I left.  I did get a few squirrels though and three big jack rabbits.  I hadn’t noticed he had any game, but sure enough he had a rather large leather sack around his neck and shoulder.

It was then that he stood up and turned toward me.  He said to me in a matter of fact tone, “I am Dan Smith.  He was an older man with a high forehead and a thin narrow looking face.  He wore somewhat tinted glasses.  He said, “Lets’ make some coffee while the fire is getting matured.  Then he said, “I’ve lived in this area since 1969.  I guess I am an outdoors type person:  your average, ordinary ‘mountain man’ who never liked living in the rat race down there in the valley.  I have never been able to get enough of this kind of living.”  He added, “I live off the grid here.  I have a well just off the side door, and I heat with fire wood.  And, it is so pleasant here in the summer time, there is no need for air conditioning.  I don’t have electricity, so when the sun goes down, I usually go to bed, and when the sun comes up, I get up and get busy with my day.”  He told me he had been in the military for eleven and a half year, and for nearly six years he been an Army Ranger, and was a demolitions expert.  Then he told me he had been ‘ex-d out’ at the age of thirty-one, when he moved into this mountain side cottage.  He added, as he poured two cups of coffee, this was just a cabin when I came here, over the years I’ve made an A-Frame house out of it with three bedrooms.  Then he pointed up above, to the lofts on either side of the upstairs area.  You see each side has its own stairway, and there is privacy up there.  There is one bedroom down here, the kitchen / nook, and the living room and there is a shower in there. 

I said, “a shower, really?”  I went to the area of the room that was adjacent to the bedroom, and I looked inside but couldn’t see inside.  He brought a lit candle, and I was able to see it.  It had 2 doors, so he could enter it directly from the bedroom, and then he could lock the outer door.  And, if someone entered from the living room, both doors could be locked from the inside.  I ask him how the water came in so that it was above the shower.

He told me that the north side of the cabin was against the mountain side and he had built a large cistern up above and had also connected some piping that ran up the mountain to a stream.  The pipe would collect water from the stream anytime the water lever in the cistern was below a certain level and it would divert the water flow anytime the water got too high. 

I said, “That sounds ingenious.  I’d like to see that in operation.”

He said it only took a few minutes to fill the cistern, so any number of people could take a shower in succession.  He then said, “One problem with my shower set up.  You have to be willing to take it in forty degree water.  It took me months to get use to cold water like that, but now I enjoy it.  It is exhilarating.”

Dan Smith then began to quiz me about how I came to be up on Bald Mountain.  And, his demeanor and tone made me feel a bit uncomfortable.  It was much darker on this day that it had been at any time, but it was still below thirty degrees outside, so I knew I could not drive out of here because the road was still frozen over.  And, I still had not seen any sign that road side service had been by, or tried to reach me.  So, I began to explain about turning off the Navigations System when I had turned off the radio, and the set of circumstances that cause me to take Highway 26, in the hope I could connect with I-84 on the other side of The Dalles since the road was blocked by the overturned eighteen wheeler for up to eight hours. 

Then he said I had made a seriously bad mistake and had it not been that he had found me when he did that I likely would have frozen to death in my car overnight, or I would have been pushed off the road by the black bears that inhabited the Hood Mountain area.  Then he added, either way, I wouldn’t have survived the night.

I was glad to have been rescued for sure, and the rest of the night was most pleasant.  By noon, the next day, I was able to drive off the mountain, the snow and ice gone just as suddenly as it had come in.  I thanked Mr. Smith effusively, and left. 

Robin came up immediately after I cranked the Malibu, and turned on the radio.  She said, “Drive straight on this road for 59 miles until arriving in Gresham, Oregon at intersection of ALT-41 and I-84.  I drove for a little over an hour and was two miles from Gresham, according to the sign I just passed, when Robin piped up and said, “Prepare to turn left onto I-84 in two miles.  With a quarter mile to go, we came around a curve and I-84 came into view.  Robin said, “Turn third left onto I-84 East.  “As I made that turn, Robin added, “After the turn, stay on I-84 until further instructed,” The navigation panel indicated that the next turn was in 352 miles.  I knew that would bring me to Ontario, Oregon.

What a day, I had just experienced, got lost in a mountain forest on Bald Mountain, was rescued by an older man who lived in an A-Frame house as a hermit.  I remembered just then that I had asked him what his property and his A-Frame house had cost him.  And I remembered just then that he said it had cost him almost $200,000.  Said he had landed at a small airport in Washington state and had flown to Portland, OR, and in the plane had been asked by a passenger if he could fly him home from Seattle next week.  After he got out, 1 week later, he left a suitcase.  It was full of money.  He said the man never came back for it.

As I think back on this day at Bald Mountain, it occurred to me how so much misfortune and so much wasted time, and gas, that I came up on this mountain only to be saved by a man named Dan Smith.  The odds had to have been astronomical.  So many things had to have happened in a specific order for me to have driven up on Bald Mountain just when I did.  None of that would have happened when it did if none or any of the following hadn’t occurred and in the order it occurred.  These are the evidences:

1.       I had to drive south into California for 101 miles, delaying me about three and one-half hours in my journey back toward Wyoming,

2.      I had to decide to go back the way I had just come so that I could be home by Friday,

3.      I had to arrive at Exit 29 on I-84 at just the time I did or we wouldn’t have been blocked by the upturned eighteen wheeler, (back to item no. 1), or I would have arrived earlier than that accident and would have continued on toward my destination without ever having been aware of that accident,

4.      If not for the road being blocked, I wouldn’t have gotten off I-84 when I did,

5.      If I hadn’t turned off the radio to enquire of the California Highway Patrolman about where to get back onto the interstate, I wouldn’t have disengaged the Navigator,

6.      I had to take ALT-41, per the police officer, until I got back to I-84 East sixty miles from here in The Dalles,

7.      If I hadn’t taken ALT-41 and driven until I made another wrong turn at Welches and turned left onto Lolo Pass Road instead of going about eleven miles further and turning left onto OR-35, which is what got me atop Bald Mountain I wouldn’t have gotten stuck at the right time to be found by Dan Smith,  had I arrived there too early, I would have left before the road iced over, and if I had arrived too late, Dan Smith would have gone on into his house, and may never have been aware that I had been in his driveway, and then had slid down the road and into a ditch,

8.      I had to take a chance and go with Mr. Smith to his house to find out that the Black Bears would have found me before morning, and he wouldn’t have been in a position to save me from them.

9.      I had to make it to his house to learn who he was and what he had done while in the army, he may never have told me about that if I had arrived earlier or even later,

10.  If he hadn’t been telling me about his military training, I wouldn’t have learned that his house had cost him nearly $195,000,

11.  And, I wouldn’t have heard how he had acquired the money he used to buy and build his A-Frame house,

12.  If he hadn’t told me about that airplane trip from Seattle to Portland, the next week, he wouldn’t have told me that a man had left a suitcase in his small plane with all that money.  And, if the man had returned for the suitcase I wouldn’t have realized that I had spent the night in the house of the man who, on Wednesday, November 24, 1971, just before he lowered the rear stairway of a Boeing 727 and jumped off the plane somewhere in the area twenty miles north of Portland Oregon having used the name Dan Cooper.  And, of course this is the man who pulled off the first ever hijacking of a passenger jet liner, and almost immediately was reported in the press that he was, and came to be known as D. B. Cooper. 

If this evidence leaves you puzzled about the reality of my spending a safe night, from the Black Bears on Bald Mountain, then consider this:  Dan Smith has let his past slip out to me, as we sat in his living room on a steep side of Bald Mountain.  Here’s the coup de gras, Dan Smith did not need to tell me about his Army and his days as an Army Ranger (after all, Rangers jump out of airplanes with many different types of parachutes, and with many bags of military material, and most everybody knows what they do).  But he most certainly should not have told the story about an unknown who left a suitcase with nearly $200,000 in it in the back of Dan Smith’s airplane.  While his first statement was most certainly true (and was easily fact checked), the ‘passenger’ tale of leaving the suitcase, and not coming back for it.  Now, that part of his story was a fiction, he created while we sat there drinking coffee.  He wasn’t on drugs and he wasn’t drunk, so the only reason he would tell me that bizarre part of the story, would have been for the sole purpose of misdirecting me and my thoughts.  Certainly, that passenger could not have pulled off that hijacking, and if it was his money from the hijacking it couldn’t have been with someone other than Dan Smith, who jumped from that plane with it.  And, we know that this money was the hi-jackers ransom, because $5,800 of it was found years later in a sand bar.

And, one other little detail, Dan Smith, an accomplished Army Ranger for about six years, would not have made the mistake of taking a sport parachute instead of a military chute.  He would’ve known that a sport chute would have made a faster descent, and would have caused him to drop much faster making a safe landing nearly impossible.  And, while he had lived in the area for about two years before the hijacking, Bald Mountain, his home was only a few miles from where he had jumped.  And, taking into consideration, the stiff breeze aloft that night and it coming from the west, and jumping from an altitude of ten thousand feet with an immediate deployment of the T-10C chute, would have allowed the jumper to drift on the order 5.0 miles.  Based on a Descent rate of 1000 feet per minute (16.6 feet / second).  At 10 minutes of descent time, with an average wind velocity of 30 knots, equals 30/60 equals .50 x 10 = 5 miles downwind drift.  If the winds aloft were higher, the parachute could have failed to deploy.  And, the deployment of the reserve chute would have occurred at a lower altitude with a lower wind velocity which would have resulted in a shorter duration descent and shorter drift.  Known current conditions for the November 24, 1971 jump was high wind velocity at 10,000 feet, with rain and snow.  Dan Smith, a.k.a. D.B. Cooper, was well learned in the use of various parachutes and knew their performance and their limitations.  If he concluded while standing on the deployed stairway, that the winds aloft were too strong, he would’ve known the likelihood of success or failure, and would have adjusted by dropping in free fall for at least one minute, which is a common deployment protocol.  But D B Cooper’s goal that night would have been to achieve maximum drift by immediately deploying the chute.  It would have meant he would have to have walked several miles further, and to have arrived at his home/destination before daylight on Thanksgiving morning.  For every minute of his freefall, he increased his walkout by one-half mile.  With the wind velocity exceeding his chute’s safety limitation, he would have knowingly used freefall to arrive at a safe altitude for chute deployment.  With no chance to arrive at his destination before dawn, he would used his military experience as an Army Ranger to have located daytime hide-a-ways, and proceeded only during night hours until he was able to make it to his destination.  As sure as Dan Smith was in reality the infamous hijacker D. B. Cooper, he had used that ransom to construct his Bald Mountain ayrie, his hide-a-way.

Well, kids that all for now.  Ella, Emma, Anna, Avva and Keller.

The Moral of the Story: 

I am sure you have heard by now that we should treat everyone we meet with dignity and respect because we never know when we are entertaining angels unawares.  This is a concept that states that the angels of God, come to Earth and assume human form, and that they are placed into situations which allow for people to intervene for good or for bad.  In this story, we have found a more elderly man, who at one time was guilty of committing the crime we now call Air Piracy.  But, in his older years was a decent and honorable man who found a way to repay something to society for the indiscretion of his youth by helping a person in destress in that he gave warmth, food and shelter to an individual trapped in a snow storm, and who may well of fallen prey to rather large carnivores in the area. 

So, what is the moral of this story?  It is well that we can forgive the errors of others, by understanding that we are all human, born with the capacity for evil-doing, but if we just let that be the sum total of a person’s life, and allow that judgment is sure, swift and complete based upon one or more acts of social indiscretion or societal destructive behaviors, we may completely overlook the certainty that all we human beings are born with an even greater capacity for doing good.  And, if the judgment is indeed reformative, and not punitive, that part of that person my just break forth and do something beneficial for all mankind, but certainly for another human being.  

 

Now, lad and lassies, I leave you with a favorite Irish Blessing:

                        May you have:            A world of wishes at your command,

                       God and His Angels close at hand,

                       Friends and family their love impart,

                       And an Irish Blessing in your heart.