MAC McDOWELL: We may have found the owner of that old pilot’s
helmet – and one heck of a story.
You may remember we had passed along an email from a Birmingham,
Mich., man asking if our readers might be able to identify the
owner of an aviator’s helmet containing the name, “Mac”
McDowell.
“I believe that helmet belonged to my father!” writes Scott
McDowell from Port Allegany.
As for the story, it’s a doozy. RTS readers with long memories
may remember the saga but, for the rest of us, we pick up Scott’s
letter:
“Quite a few years ago, I rewrote, for the Round the Square
column, the narrative of a flight in 1948 my father De, also known
as ‘Mac’ McDowell, took with pilot Ty Leslie, both of Port
Allegany.
“They had taken off from Toronto and got lost trying to find
Emery airport. Very low on fuel, and using the light from a Zippo
lighter to read instrument panels, they made a dramatic landing in
a field near Bradford after local police enlisted the help of
passing motorists to line their cars up on the field and turn on
their headlights.
“Accounts of the adventure were carried in area papers at the
time. It’s very possible this was his helmet.”
Needless to say, we passed along information to possibly reunite
Scott with what appears to be his father’s helmet. Scott tells us
his dad has been gone 10 years now “but it would be a hoot if this
turned out to be his helmet.”
OUR ODDITY: “Getting a Big Mac at the Bradford branch of
McDonald’s is unlike any other fast-food experience. The burgers,
fries, sesame buns and drinks are identical to every other
McDonald’s, of course, but is there another drive-through with a
working oil well in the parking lot?”
To Bradfordians, of course, this is a pretty ho-hum experience.
But Patricia Demjan passes along a write-up on our “unique”
McDonald’s that appeared in a book titled, “Weird
Pennsylvania.”
“There it is, on the left, as you drive up to the menu and
loudspeaker, is bird-beak armature dipping up and down, bringing up
about 30 gallons of crude a day, as it has been since the 1870s,”
it continues.
