The Thing About My Dad

He was my father and his name was Dan, not D.B. That false moniker was just some stupid thing that a reporter got wrong at the time, but then the rest of the press repeated it over and over again until his true name didn't matter any longer. Hey, trust me, that was fine with us. We liked it that way, but they got the rest of the story mostly correct, and I can finally talk about it now.

"No funny stuff or I'll do the job." Hell yeah. That was my dad. I loved him. He taught me how to live freely. How to breath right. How to make it to the next day. I loved him.

You know my dad too. Or, at least, you have heard about him. I know you have. Everyone has heard the story.

Okay, so first off, you have to understand that back in 1971 things were very different than they are today. You could just walk into an airport and pay for a ticket with cash and no formal ID. It was that easy. And that's what he did.

Secondly, there was very little in the way of security screening. I mean, this was thirty years pre-9/11 and seventeen years before Lockerbie. No one was really thinking about the threat of hijacking all that much. No security cameras covering every God damned square inch of the terminal. Fuck. It must have been so easy back then. I've robbed three banks and six armored cars since I turned nineteen and, trust me, it all took a lot of planning and none of it was easy. (Plus I had to watch my best friend Mikey get smoked right next to me, and I took one high in the shoulder that day in Houston.)

And lastly, my dad had cojones. Grande cojones! I never saw him sweat anything. One time when I was about fourteen years old we were eating breakfast at the local diner down the street from our house and three biker dudes from Oklahoma came in and started causing a ruckus pretty quickly. When one of them started getting rough with a waitress my dad immediately stood up, smashed his coffee mug over one of their heads, drove a butter knife into the rib cage of another and challenged the third guy to a fistfight. I grabbed my own butter knife and stood up as well, but that challenge was not accepted. My father was not a big man, but when you looked into his eyes you knew that he was all business.

So anyway, on November 24, 1971, my father boarded Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727 aircraft, from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington. I wasn't even born yet. Once the plane was in the air, Pops told a flight attendant that he had a bomb. Then he demanded $200k and some parachutes when they landed in Seattle. After releasing the passengers on the SEA-TAC runway, he told the flight crew to refuel the aircraft and begin a new course to Mexico City, with a refueling stop in Reno, Nevada. Pops flew planes in Nam and he knew more than a thing or two about aviation. Pops wasn't stupid.

The demands were met and about a half hour after taking off from Seattle, Pops opened the aircraft's rear door and parachuted into the night, somewhere near the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington. He deployed his chute successfully, landed safely, and made it back home with the money. He wanted to use some of it to send me to college, but I was too much like him. College simply wasn't in the cards for me. But our family lived a good life in a small town just outside of Austin, Texas and my daughter is currently going to school at Texas Tech and some of that money is paying for her tuition and rent and various other living expenses right now. (I have also stacked up a few dollars over the years, and never spent a day in prison. Pops taught me well.)

Yes. My father was a criminal, but he was an inspirational figure. He proved that the human spirit and free will cannot be constrained by the laws of man. He took that money but never hurt anyone in the process. One of the flight attendants - they called them stewardesses back then - actually said that he was very polite and left her a large gratuity for the drinks that she served him. She liked him, even after the fact. He told me he liked her too, and if he wasn't faithfully married he would have strapped her with one of the extra parachutes and grabbed her hand before the jump. As it was, the plane touched down without him, as planned, with all crew members safe and sound.

My father died of lung cancer in October of 2003. I loved him so much and I still miss him right now as I write this. He smoked Marlboro reds his whole life. When that day came I hugged him and I cried a few tears and then I left the hospital and went to a nearby convenience store and I stole a Snickers bar, just for the fuck of it. I just wanted to do it. I think I just wanted to steal something in his honor.

I'm releasing this memoir now because my oncologist just gave me about three months to get my affairs in order. I've been smoking Marlboro reds since I was a kid, and I have a few other unhealthy habits as well. Fuck it. I'm not some life addict, eating quinoa and jogging myself to death every day. How many days do you really need anyway?

I just know that a lot of people are interested in the truth of this story, so there it is. Now you know. I can't help you with any follow-on questions at this point. My time is growing very short and I'll be gone by the time you read this. You're just gonna have to take my word on everything here. But trust me, my word is good.

So go get you some. Fuck the rules. Life is short. Take what you need. Just try not to hurt no one if you can avoid it.

THE END