I wasn’t the only environmental activist in the ‘60’s. One of the more illustrious was an Easter Airlines pilot named Lane Guthrie. In those days as a plane landed the unburned fuel was blown into the air as a safety measure. Less to explode and burn in a crash. But we were fighting to pass the Clean Air act then, not so good for the environment, that! One day Lane just refused to do that. I was in my early ‘20s when we met. He was in his late ‘50s near retirement. He was fired. The Air Line Pilots Association went to bat for him. He kept his salary, benefits, and retirement and was free to spend full time fighting for the environment. On Easter Airlines nickel! I met his daughter Janet as she was coming up to become the first woman to compete in the Indianapolis 500.
Lane was interesting in so many ways. South Florida is underlain by limestone from the bryozoan reefs during the climactic optimum, about 5000 yrs. B.C.E. The earth was 5 degrees warmer and South Florida was under water. He built a machine to cut into the ground and make building blocks, for his house. He had this huge rectangular quarry pit in his front yard. And oh, yeah, somewhere in there were two of his fingers!
He planned to grow tropical fruit as part of his retirement. He had a tamarind tree in his yard, it is in the Legume family. Back then it was listed on A1 sauce as one of it spices. Thanks to my mother’s abuse (the story I un-published), I am the opposite of brave about food. He pulled pods off the tree and made me taste it. He asked what I thought.
“Interesting”
HE said,
“When I grew up in the South that what we were taught to say when you don’t like something”.
He planted an avocado grove. Next thing he knew a church bought the land to the east of him. They built a very tall worship hall, blocking the sun from his grove for half of the day. There was nothing he could do about it. There’s a disorder called Shingles, Lane would point to the church and say HE had the worst case of “Shingles” in Dade County. Miss him!