Good Finish, John Farrington

I have been awaiting a post on the recent passing of John Farrington, pilot and then legendary crew, of Boston and Seminole Lake gliderport, Florida.

Florida is where I knew John, and heard some of the many stories that featured him. My own involved a retrieve of two outlandings in a pasture. Ray, the airfield eminence grise, and his wingmate Rolly, were deterred from landing on a database strip by the presence of cattle, so they put down without incident in a nearby pasture. Rolly stood guard over the two gliders, protecting them from the curious cattle that had gathered nearby, while Ray set off for a nearby farmhouse where he encountered the resident housewife. She allowed that it was not her land, but her husband's (no community property laws in Polk County?), but she phoned her son.

How to describe how badly he took it? Anger poured over the phone, and he declined to say whether he would attend to unlock the gate, repeating instead that those tow #%&*%@'s had no right to have invaded his land. Assurance that there had been no damage and that insurance coverage was in place did nothing to mollify him. And the Polk County Sheriff's office didn't have a Deputy available. So Ray called John, and John put together a team, including myself, setting off in his large truck with Miss Lillian, Ray's wife, driving Ray's car, the tow trailers in tow.

So John phones the Sheriff's office again, and this time explains that he has a bolt cutter (his master key) and a new padlock. He will cut the last link of the chain that is held locked by about 4 other padlocks, and replace it with his lock when we are finished, rendering the key to either the owner or an attending Deputy. The dispatcher told him that she couldn't gove permission for such an action. John advised her that he wasn't calling for permission, but rather to advise he of his intentions, it being now just a couple of hours until dark, and the gliders being surrounded by curious cattle held at a respectful distance only by Rolly, and that if the pilots left, the cattle would destroy the gliders and likely injure themselves.

So John *unlocked* the gate, and we both drove into the field and derigged the gliders. That's when both the Deputy and the owner's son arrived. The former was apoplectic, hopping from cowboy boot shod foot to foot. The Deputy commanded us to send out the pilots. So out Ray and Rolly went and were finger-printed and charge with breaking and entering. We, the crews, who had committed any such breaking, were left out of the Deputy's paperwork. John, however, had a fallback position: he said he would just blame it on the Canadian (Me!)

It seems that here in sunny Florida, there are laws prohibiting forcing open a locked gate, meant to deter rustling of oranges or cattle. The Deputy subsequently advised the DA that his charges had been ill-advised (the pilots were indeed not the guilty parties) and the charges were dropped. Seems John was a bit of a shade tree lawyer too.

I'll miss him indeed