In the summer of 1953, after I had received my degrees from the University of Maine and Bangor Theological Seminary, and had been ordained as a Congregational Christian Minister, two dear friends of our family called on me. Mary Knight Grant was the daughter of an influential family in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, and her husband, the Reverend E. Milton Grant, had met and married her when he was pastor of the Orthodox Congregational Church there. Uncle Milton was pastor of the Congregational Church in Presque Isle, Maine, when my dad was pastor of Aroostook Larger Parish, and lived in Ashland. During those years in The County, a lifelong, intimate friendship between both parents and their children was established.

The recommendation worked. We were invited to meet with the committee. Then I was invited to candidate on a Sunday morning, and we were called to the Orthodox Congregational Church, on the Village Green in Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA. It was a wonderful move to a wonderful place for almost five wonderfully happy years! It is said, "It’s not what you know, but who you know." Really, it is "Who knows you," and in this case, "Who knows your friends!"

The first two summers after we moved into the parsonage, which was then a house behind the Manchester Library across a little street behind the Church, my best friend from Bangor Theological Seminary, (BTS) Clarence T. Hodgkins, lived with us. He had not yet been called to a church, so was happy to be employed as the Life Guard at Singing Sands Beach (commonly referred to as Singing Beach).

. It’s not possible to exaggerate the impact of Singing Beach on our lives. Swimming and sun bathing (Marian got to do much more than I, since I had parish duties!), beach parties with our neighbors, Dot and Bill Phillips and also Joe and Vaughn Cogan, and even a pre-natal experience. We used to tell Mark, our youngest son, that when his mother was carrying him, she went to Singing Beach every morning of June (he was born July 5), a more beautiful (rare) day than which is not to be found. She would dig a hole in the sand to accommodate her pregnant shape, and enjoy the beach with Dot, while our boys, Bobby and Johnny, and her twins, Bill and Phil, played in the surf. So we told Mark that he was incubated in the sand of Singing Beach like a turtle!. An oil painting and other pictures of Singing beach have graced our home from Michigan to California to Florida.

Across the street from the Manchester Library was the home and office of the young dentist in town, Dr. James Reid. Jim not only took good care of my teeth, he took good care of my "flying bug - that is , my yen to fly, which I had had all my life. Jim had a Cessna 140. It was a two-place, side-by -side, single engine plane - a big step-up from the Piper Cub and Aironca in which I had my first flying lessons.

Jim would call me from time to time, and say, " Bob, I don’t have any appointments for tomorrow afternoon. Can you clear your calendar for a few hours?" Except for very serious matters, I could! Dr. Reid was a very capable pilot, but he did not have an instructor’s "ticket". So, although he let me do a great deal of the flying, and was a patient, yet particular teacher, I could not log any of the hours we flew together as dual instruction time.

Jim kept his plane at the Beverly Airport. It, too, was a step-up from the grass field where I first flew. It had paved runways and a control tower. From Beverly, we sometimes flew up the coast, over beautiful Cape An. We would watch the sailboats, the anglers, and trollers, and sometimes we would see large commercial fishing boats headed for Gloucester. The little islands are fascinating, spotted off shore for miles. Some which are mostly rock are busy rookeries for the gulls and other seabirds. Flying northeast, we often had a tailwind (the sailors going down wind created the term "Down East") and thus, we would soon be over Portland, Maine. It would take a little longer coming home.

Other times, we flew west, over the Massachusetts Berkshires, around Mount Greylock and home, or on other days, north over the White Mountains of New Hampshire. New England beauty is inexhaustible, especially from a small aircraft.

Our most memorable trip came when Clarence Hodgkins called me from Jackman, Me. Jackman is at the northern tip of Maine, right at the Quebec border. Clarence had been called to be pastor of the Moose River Congregational Church. The Church, with the Kennebec-Valley Association of Congregational Christian Churches and Ministers, was planning an Ordination Service for their new minister. I had had the joy of marrying Clarence and Louise, and I certainly did not want to miss out on this important event in his life.

But the weekend he chose was not convenient. The Ordination Examination was to be Friday night, and assuming he was recommend for ordination, the service would follow. That was not the usual arrangement, placing examination and ordination back to back, but in cases like this, where the requesting Church was so far away from all the others, an exception was made to allow enough time for ministers and delegates (in this case, primarily from the Kennebec-Valley) to get home for Sunday services. My problem was that the drive from Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts to Jackman, Maine, was at least seven hours. That weekend we had the Pilgrim Fellowship (PF) - the High School age youth group - from the North Deering Congregational Church in Portland, Maine, coming as guests of our Manchester PF, and in addition, Dr. Marion J. Bradshaw, Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at BTS, was going to speak to our Church and Association. He was my guest.

Jim Reid knew Clarence from his Life Guard summers at Singing Beach, and he knew my dilemma over conflicting needs to be in places too far apart even for my speedy driving.

"Let’s fly, he suggested." "I’d love to be at Clarence’s Ordination. Tell him to ready another bed!"

Friday morning dawned bright and clear. I spent the morning making arrangements for our weekend guests. All was in order, and I was ready for the Jackman service shortly after noon. Jim had one final patient to see, and we were on our way to Beverly before 2:00 PM. It was early November, and there was still a profusion of color to gratify our eyes as we flew over the heavily forested area between the North Shore and Northern Maine. I was the spotter of landmarks indicated on our charts as we flew VFR (Visual Flight Regulations) over small towns, railroad tracks, and vast woods covering increasingly high "foot-hills", part of the Appalachian Chain.

Flying conditions were favorable. We had a light crosswind, and a few up and down drafts, as we got above the mountains, but we were over Jackman in about two hours. The navigational chart for the Jackman area showed two possible landing strips. One, marked "Jackman Airport", appeared to be the best bet. We circled a few times before we identified it. We were able to tell, only by an old wind sock, and the neighboring landmarks. It was a hayfield, totally overgrown. Undaunted, we turned to landing spot number two. It was labeled, "Sky Lodge Landing Strip" on the chart. We found it by flying up the street at about 500 feet of altitude, and I read Jim the big roadside sign, "Sky Lodge". We identified the "landing strip" as the front lawn of this motel, by a parked plane, and by two or three obvious tie-downs. Sky Lodge was set on a big hill with about a four degree incline. Power lines ran along the highway along the front of the motel.

The wind was blowing toward the highway. The landing strip was very short, albeit, mercifully uphill. Jim came in high enough to safely clear the power lines, and had to side-slip to get us to touch-down altitude. We didn’t bounce, and applied brakes at once in order to stop short of the heavy brush at the top of the lawn.

The innkeeper came out to greet us, and collect his tie-down fee. "That prob’ly seemed a bit hai’ah-raisin’, the fust time, " he said. "But, once you get used to it, it ain’t nuthin’."

Once on the ground, on that sloping lawn, we wondered how we’d ever get back out. As if, reading our minds, the innkeeper said, "Gettin’ out is a little hahdah." He showed us a big boulder at the top of the lawn on the opposite side from the motel. Earth had been bulldozed to make a path onto it from the rear, and to make a ski-jump-like exit from the front. "You taxi up onto the top," he explained, "and when your engine tempuchuah and oil preshuh are ready, you stand on them brakes, push the throttle till she’s a-hoppin’ and then let ‘er rip. Get that nose up right away!" he admonished, "so to clear them high tension lines."

We walked around the "catapult rock," shook our heads and pondered the coming adventure. By then, Clarence had pulled up in his car. We left our flying concerns for the moment, and went to the house to change and prepare for the ordination proceedings.

Moose River Congregational Church is a typical New England white church with green trim, set in a clump of pine trees and filled with the clean odor of pine needles and mountain air. About fifteen hardy souls had trekked up the Valley to Jackman, so with the delegation from the Jackman Church and Jim and me, there must have been twenty-five for supper in the Vestry.

He was accepted, and we moved on to the Service of Ordination. It was beautifully simple, and, I thought, inspirational. We were a happy group of friends at the Moose River parsonage that night.

Saturday morning, we awakened early, anticipating our flight back to Massachusetts. The ground was white, and so was the sky! We could tell at a glance that there would be no flying that morning. Clarence persuaded us to borrow some of his winter gear, red mackinaws and boots, etc. He rounded up a .22 rifle, a 12 gauge shotgun and a 30/30 deer rifle. Off we went into the woods that sprawl from deep in Maine to the St. Lawrence River at Quebec City. We felt like Benedict Arnold on his march to Quebec - before he lost faith in the Truths which the Declaration writers called self-evident!

Lots of deer tracks in the snow, some fresh moose signs along an old tote-road, but the only game we actually encountered was a rabbit. Clarence dispatched the unlucky critter, whom we named Louis Lapin, and Louise prepared him for supper. Meanwhile it had stopped snowing, there were patches of blue here and there in the sky, and I was getting antsy about my need to get back to my duties in Manchester.

We were out of the woods about 10 A.M. or so. Jim and I headed for Sky Lodge, tuned-in the Cessna’s radio, trying to get the latest weather for our area. Radio reception in the mountains was not very good. We did find out that the cloud cover and limited visibility spread only as far as Waterville. If we could just break through one of those openings in the clouds where we could see blue sky, and get on top of this haze and billowing cumulus clouds, we could fly southwest into perfect weather. Jim was doubtful; I was an optimist. "Let’s have lunch, and then see what’s going on come early afternoon," the sensible pilot concluded. We returned to the Hodgkins’ home for another meal.

Within the hour there were more patches of blue visible overhead. "Jim, I’m desperate to get home to check on the PF activities and to greet Dr. Bradshaw. Suppose we can give it a try?" I queried, anxiety dripping from my tone. "O.K., let’s give it another look," he responded with a wry grin.

Back to Sky Lodge we hustled. This time the radio crackled a few more encouraging words. Right overhead a break appeared in the cloud cover as big as a football field. "Say a prayer that we won’t be sorry," Jim muttered as he cranked the starter and let the Cessna begin it’s warm-up. With watchful eye on that patch of blue we taxied behind the big ledge and up onto the top of "catapult rock." Was it my imagination, or were those clouds moving? I watched the oil gauge slowly climb and silently willed the engine to "hurry up."

Finally the gauges were right and the moment had come. "You apply the brakes with me," Jim directed. The engine pounded as the throttle was opened more and more. Just as I thought the plane might turn with that propeller, Jim said, "Now!" We released the brakes simultaneously and the Cessna leaped ahead like a startled deer. Down the "ski path" in a second as the air speed indicator almost spun to 50,60,70 miles per hour. "Here we go," shouted Jim as he pulled the control wheel back. The nose of our plane went up 45 degrees and the engine gave not a sputter nor cough. We had done it! We sailed over the power lines with ten or fifteen feet to spare!

Our relief and elation, however, were short-lived. The patch of blue was rapidly closing. With a quick check on where the mountains were rising nearest us, we elected to try for that heavenly blue above the "stuff." For a few moments it seemed possible - reasonable. But suddenly we were enveloped, like a shower curtain wrapped around us.

I had heard about vertigo. Dizzy I could understand, but unable to tell up from down from sideways? I had no idea - until now this was it! Jim was vertigo, too. "You watch in all directions," he directed tensely. "If you see a tree-top or a bit of highway, or anything you can identify as the ground, tell me where it is!"

I suppose our blind flight above the pine trees and surrounding mountains was less than a minute or two, but it seemed like hours! Finally, I spotted a tree top - and a telephone pole - straight out from my opposite side. "The port wing is pointed straight at the ground," I shouted, as I pointed. Jim leveled our flight and in a moment we were under the overcast. We flew at tree top height, following the power lines and roadway back to the sign, "Sky Lodge." What a welcome sight! Eager as I had been to leave, a few minutes ago, I was a hundred times more eager to feel that lawn-runway under our wheels. Jim slipped her in again. "The guy is right, " he grinned. "It’s easier once you get used to it."

Clarence drove me to Waterville - a four hour drive at break-neck speed. There I caught a Boston and Maine passenger train to North Station in Boston. A telephone call to Manchester had assured me that Marian had checked on the PFers and they were fine, and she was entertaining Brad (the first of what proved to be many times over the next few years.) Someone would meet the 11:30 P.M. train in Boston. A young man from our Church did, and I was back in Manchester between 12:30 and 1:00 A.M. on Sunday morning.

As I began the Service of Worship that morning, eager to explain yesterday’s absence to our visiting PFers and my guest, Marion Bradshaw, the door to the sanctuary opened and in walked Dr. James Reid. He had risen at daybreak, to a beautiful clear day, and with a fortuitous tailwind, had flown home in an hour and a half.

"You should have trusted in the Lord," he teased me.

All I know is that my ordination led me to Manchester-by-the-Sea, Clarence’s ordination led to our great flying adventure, and somehow God seems to ordain more blessings that I can recount.