Hey! God, Was That You?
Coincidences from over Five Thousand Flight Hours and Forty-Four Years
by
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Since landing and exiting the plane at Imani I had detected a strong, pungent, putrid odor, but couldn't discern its source with so many villagers surrounding the plane.
The five village men I was to fly stood together with their personal effects in small woven bark bags slung over their shoulders. From under the pilot seat I removed a small bathroom scale, placed it on the ground and weighed each of the men on it; I scaled their bags separately and loaded them into the cargo pod under the plane. The heaviest of the men may have weighed 100 pounds.
While weighing the fifth man I could see through his woven bag. Inside was what appeared to be a dead pig carcass, sliced neatly in half, foaming and covered with crawling maggots...the source of the odor. My stomach turned. I jumped to my feet and ran a ways down the airstrip to breathe some fresh air, and at the same time began a one-way conversation with God.
Lord, I didn't come here to fly dead pigs! I could be piloting a nice air-conditioned jetliner, making decent money...
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About the Book
In Hey! God, Was That You? author Ron Gluck, bush pilot and international relations liaison, glances back in time anecdotally revisiting flying, language gems, and conversation slices occurring from 1963 to 2007 in Papua New Guinea; Cameroon, Washington, D.C.; and New York City.
In this memoir, he narrates how he flew five thousand accident-free hours mostly in single- engine planes over uncharted mountainous terrain of Papua New Guinea and later in Cameroon—a safety he attributes to God’s grace and to quality aircraft maintenance by fellow JAARS specialists.
Hey! God, Was That You? asks, is not the living God, maker of heaven and earth, still involved in weather, ideas, timing, and answering prayers?
About the Author
Ron Gluck, a JAARS pilot, flew five thousand hours transporting linguists into remote areas of Papua New Guinea, and Cameroon between 1965 and 1981. At eighty-one, he reflects on more than forty-four years of unforgettable flight and international liaison coincidences. He and his wife, Ruth, live in Arlington, Virginia.