He was a friend and neighbor back in Indiana and a captain for Lake Central Airlines, flying DC-3's out of Weir Cook Municipal Airport in Indianapolis to Midwestern cities, large and small. He was personally neat to a fault, which is to say he never had a hair out of place. And his colleagues said he flew strictly by the book. Once, when I flew him from a grass strip in our small town to Weir Cook in a Cessna 182 he watched me like a hawk and I was crisp as I could be. When I shut down on the Lake Central flight line he said very solemnly that he admired my "technique." It was a rare compliment, his buddies later told me. Which is why I still can not understand how it happened to him, of all people.

It was a bitter cold early spring day with low ceilings and random blasts of rain when he approached the Monroe County Airport near Indiana University at Bloomington. Down below was a blacktop strip and a low frequency beacon. On first approach he saw the runway now and then, but even slightly below the 600 foot minimum it disappeared. He snatched up the gear and began a 180-degree missed approach. He could see scud clinging to treetops in the rolling hills. Then, once again, he was lined up, gear down, descending toward minimum altitude.

Perhaps he was excessively concerned about disappointing his IU passengers. In any event, he pulled back the rain-streaked pilot's side window and squinted along the nose. And there it was, the welcoming black streak of runway. Gear down, flaps at 15-degrees, mixture full, props set, tail wheel locked and the number one engine blowing an ear-busting roar into the cockpit. Now it was time to ease back and feel for the runway. My friend pulled his eyes back to the instrument panel. That is, he tried. He could not move from the neck up. His perfectly knotted, black, uniform tie was frozen to the fuselage. Left-handed, with his right hand still on the yoke, he tore at the tie, ripped one end from the ice and grabbed for the second tail that had been sucked into the slipstream and frozen tight.

His co-pilot, also a neighbor and a friend--a pilot of somewhat less compulsive disposition--was looking through his side window. For the next few seconds in the otherwise routine descent, he could not hear the shouts of his captain, nor did he see the captain's odd posture as touchdown approached. Then he felt a fist slam into his shoulder and with self-preservation in mind, he quickly joined a decidedly not-by-the-book effort at a safe landing.

Some months later, when my more relaxed pilot friend was teaching me how to fly a twin-engine airplane on one engine, he told me never to open the side window and stick my head out into a cold rain. That's when I asked him what in hell kind of a lesson was that. So, he told me the story about the frozen tie and, with job security in mind, swore me to secrecy.

I never told a soul.

Editor: Since we're talking about the DC 3 here anyway .. and just because it's so pretty .. here's a picture I took of the one that hangs in the Smithsonian Air & Space museum in Washington. Remember?