The A Cappella Handyman: Cat Hair in the Wing Tanks

Cat Hair in the Wing Tanks

That’s enough to spoil your day or whet your appetite to know how the rest of the song goes, and so this is our Departure Point for this flight on a Thursday column. How DOES cat hair get into a set of wing tanks? And do we mean wing tanks as in AIRCRAFT and holders of fuel for same? Yes we do! Wing tanks connect to fuel pumps and fuel lines which lead to fuel intake manifolds and eventually to fuel carburetors and/or fuel injectors. The fuel mixes with oxygen in the air supply and we have ignition, combustion, power, AND LIFT OFF and eventually cruising speed and altitude. Now sustain that with good piloting and ground control monitoring to flight towers everywhere and we have safe air travel.
However, cat hair on the other hand, is long, stringy, often times matted, criss-crossed with cat bedding materials, outside leaf fragments or God only knows what else a cat might come into contact with during its day of neighborhood travels and/or turf protecting. Thistles? Dustballs from under the couch? Your guess is as good as mine if you’ve ever owned or observed a cat on its daily patterns of travel.
Then too, how do these two subjects meet, cat hair and wing tanks? Wing tanks are imagined to be manufactured and inspected and maintained in the best of cleanroom environments and cat hair, well, it could blow in from just about anywhere, even on a technician’s clothes traveling from home or from that employee lounge where that friendly, semi-feral cat is befriended by all, treated to employee lunch scraps and helps keeps the local mouse population under control.
Now suppose you’re operating a small airport in some out of the way location, hardly a turbulent wind blows through your only windsock at the top of your quonset hut-like part-hanger and business office, and Ajax, part Border Collie and Alaskan Sled Dog naps soundly on the front rubberized but tired Welcome Mat. It’s a quiet but sunny day. Travelers arrive from out of town, in need of directions and their CEO is enroute to the next larger town over and they’re in cell phone contact, and the corporate jet is sputtering in the sky, trouble is in hand, somebody’s singing that song about “cat hair in the wing tanks” and everybody is a little neurotic on what exactly is wrong with the corporate jet. Can your small landing field accommodate a small jet landing and rumbling off and beyond your paved tarmac into the extended cow pastures? Do you have help available from Cousin Sim over at the local cafe to flush out a wing tank, possibly two, and remove the suspected cat hair? Ohhhhh, my God! (Story to continue next week! – PB)

Did Queequeg know Cursive?

There’s still a magic
to getting something by snail mail
with a real postmark and knowing
that it was licked and stamped
and dropped through a mail slot
and hurtled through all
that high-speed equipment
and carried up another walk
and dropped through
another mail slot again
Somewhat like lighting
a whale oil lamp
and seeing a whale harpooner
like Queequeg ladened down
with facial tattoos and hurling
his harpoon through sea foam
from the front of his boat
and knowing that we too
are probably icons of a passing time
where kids labored on
their cursive writing between blue lines
printed on off-white paper
with small wood chunks still in it
made from a paper factory
somewhere at the outskirts
of some forest in
ChristKnowsWhere, America.
Long before Trump and his
mediocre-but-moneyed dragoons
laundered Russian money
successfully and stacked his cabinet
with millionaire-mannequins
and destroying the nation’s agencies
and began speaking in
Russian sign language.
When does Robert Mueller’s
Impeachment bus arrive
and are all the cell wings
freshly painted at Guantanamo?
Bernie needs to finish up
his Inauguration seating charts.
Imagine: a legitimate election
in the US without Russian vodka
in the applause track!