The Great Marijuana Plane Crash of 1979

As most of you know I occasionally get a letter from an old boyhood friend of mine, Bubba. Here is the latest.

Dear Tony,

The other day I saw Sonny Cockrell down at the doctor's. Hadn't seen him in a long time. He'd moved up north, you know. Well, he's back and living at his wife's grandma's place. That got me a thinking about that plane

crash site me and him went to way back in '79.

You see, me an' Sonny had just got off work at the cotton mill when we heard about it. We had worked the graveyard shift, midnight til eight in the mornin'. Sonny and me was lintheads, y’know.  Some folks don’t know a linthead is someone who works in a textile mill.  The lint from the cotton cloth is in the air like a fog and sticks to your clothes and skin.  It gets all over you.  We can call each other lintheads, but there’d be hell to pay if a non-linthead called you that.  

We was gettin' a breakfast of grits, eggs, sausage, gravy, and biscuits over at that mobile home that Lucille Davis turned into a small cafe. Lucille catered to lintheads like us and the construction trade.  She seemed to hire the most buxom girls to work there. They always wore tee shirts a couple of sizes too small and tight jeans. Some said there were other services offered but I didn’t think so.  People talk, y’know. Linda Sue worked there so I knew the straight story.  Linda Sue was the love of my life. I had known her in high school, and we had dated a few times.  But then I had joined the Navy and we had sorta lost touch for a while. When we met up again after my discharge we kinda hit it off. Being the only two unmarried twenty-five-year-olds in town might have had something to do with it. I’ve never went out with married women. I don’t monkey with another monkey’s monkey.

Linda Sue had been at work an hour or two before we got to the cafe. I was usually pretty tired after my eight hour shift at the mill, but seeing Linda Sue always put spring back in my step. She was the best lookin' thing I had ever laid my eyes on. I wasn’t concerned ‘bout her working around those roughnecks ‘cause I knew they'd feel the full force of her 110 pounds up side their heads if they tried to cop a feel. It had happened to me...but that was a long time ago. Me and Linda Sue had been seeing each other regularly for about three years. We had talked of getting married and decided that if I got that second hand job I was in line for at the mill we’d tie the knot.

We was diggin’ into the last of our biscuits and gravy when Linda Sue asked us if we’d heard about the plane crash. I said, “No.” She said a plane had crashed over near Sleepy Summer’s farm down near the creek.

Well, me and Sonny decided we’d take a look. It was Friday morning and I didn’t have to be back at work until midnight Sunday. I didn’t have nuthin' else to do that day but visit my old maid aunts. Mama made me go visit ‘em once a week. They were a curious lot  though. In their 70’s and 80’s they lived alone. Lord knows nobody could put up with ‘em. They were kinda weird. Toe (yes, that was her nickname) always ate her dessert first. George (Grandpa wanted a boy.) always called people by their less common name. Prissy was a dope addict. It seems that sometime way back she got hooked on morphine.  I don’t know what for. As a kid I would see her wrap a band around her skinny arm and jab a needle in it after she had melted the drug in a spoon and filled the syringe. Never realized there was anything wrong with that. Aunt Prissy was simply taking her medicine. Recently the doctor that prescribed her morphine died and her medication was getting harder to find. Several cousins were looking for sources but none had been found. 

“You gotta check on them old maid Bible thumpers today?” Sonny asked me.

“I’ll do it after we check out this airplane crash.  I promised Mama,” I said. “Wasn’t Johnny Ferguson doing some bulldozer work for old Sleepy down by the creek?”

“Yeah, I asked Johnny ‘bout it when I saw him at the pool hall a coupla weeks ago, he acted real funny about it.  Didn’t say much, like it was some kinda secret or sumpin’,” Sonny said.

It took us about an hour to get to the place Linda Sue said the plane crash was.  It wasn’t really that far away but we had to stop by the “GasSpot” to get some gas for my car.  Bucky Thompson, he runs the place, always has some long tale to tell.  You practically have to leave him talking!

By the time we got to the place where the plane had crashed there musta been at least fifty cars parked on the shoulder of the road. We pulled in behind the last car in line and parked. We had no more than got out of the car when the man with the star approached us. Good thing for us it was Bill Shaw.  I had gone to high school with Bill.  He had joined the Marine Corps the same time I joined the Navy. He wore a white hat and was a deputy sheriff. Bill was a good guy, unlike that so and so he worked for. Seems like there had always been bad blood between the sheriff of McCormick County and me. We passed the time of day with Bill, and I told him the latest Gamecock joke. He said to hurry if we wanted to look around 'cause the "big men" were coming.

It was turning into a beautiful day in early November.  The leaves on the hardwoods had changed color and were beginning to fall. It would soon be time to clean up the old Winchester Grandpa had left me and get ready to

spend some time in the tree stand waiting for that trophy buck to come by. I had put my jacket  on over my tee shirt. I only wore a tee shirt in the mill because it was hot in there but I needed the jacket to knock off the morning

chill.  As we approached the wreckage I noticed it was a DC-4. I had flown in one while I was in the Navy.  Both wings had been sheared off by the old growth pines. The fuselage and tail were a mass of tangled metal in a burned area. Dozens of people were clamoring through the underbrush picking stuff up and putting it into brown paper bags, the kind you bring home groceries in. I noticed that most of the people looked a lot like hippies left over from the sixties.   There had even been some of those old Volkswagen microbuses all painted up with flowers on the side of the road too.  I didn't get to see what they were picking up.

We hadn't gotten within fifty yards of the wreckage before some federal government looking people showed up. They had on black windbreakers with D.E.A on the backs and started chasing everybody away. Sonny and me obliged.  We were almost back to the car when Sonny said, “Hey, Bubba.  Ain’t that your old maid aunts up there?” He pointed in front of us.

“Well, I’ll be..., I think it is.  I wonder what the devil they're doing out here?”  I responded.

We caught up with them as they approached the ratty looking Studebaker they drove. “What y’all been doin’ out here?” I asked.

“Oh, Gilbert, so good to see you!” George said. Gilbert was my middle name. Very few people even knew that it was my middle name much less used it. Actually, my Mama never told anybody that was my name. She had named me for an uncle who turned to a life of crime stealing cars after I was born. The old maids all had their makeup on and, of course, their hats. Since they had never been married they said they always had to be ready to be seen by the “right “ man.

I hugged Aunt George and said, “Good to see you too!” I hugged the other two as well, but Sonny stayed well back.

“Gilbert, I hope you've been reading your Bible. The Lord is so good to us.”

“Yes, Ma’am. He sure is.”

“You know we've been having trouble finding medicine for Prissy...”

“I know.  I've been looking around,” I interrupted her.

“Praise the Lord, Gilbert!  The Lord sent an airplane down with medicine for Prissy!  The good Lord has solved our problem. He even sent Jesus to help us out!”  She said excitedly.

“Really?”

“Oh, yes, Gilbert. There’s more to it than that.  Jesus showed us how to put those leaves that fell out of the airplane into a  pipe. He lit it up and gave it to Prissy,” she said excitedly, “And you know what?”

“No, what?” I was gettin’ tired of this conversation.

“Prissy’s pain went away when she smoked it!”

“Now, Aunt George, you musta been in the sun too long.  There ain’t no Jesus around here!”

“Oh yes there is…  and there he goes!” she said as she pointed down the road.

I looked where she pointed and saw a young man with a brown beard and long brown hair and headband walking toward one of the Volkswagen buses. I had to admit he had an uncanny resemblance to that picture of Jesus in that Bible story book Mama used to read from when we was kids. 

“He just looks a little like Jesus,” I said.

What could I say?  I was pretty sure that that “Jesus” would be able to supply Aunt Prissy with medication for the days to come.

Well, me and Sonny still got a lot of catchin' up to do. I'll talk to you later.

Your old buddy,
Bubba

For a factual account of this event click "event".
FACTS A DC-4 crashed in McCormick county near Long Cane Creek on the morning of November 19, 1979, in a wooded area near a primitive airstrip. The cargo of marijuana was valued at $6.5 million. Of the 214 bales onboard 184 were confiscated by D.E.A. and destroyed. The balance supposedly burned in the crash. No one was ever prosecuted for building the airstrip, although there were rumors. The pilot and co-pilot perished in the fiery crash. The ground crew for off-loading the cargo was never found.