Fuddy Duddy

When my brother and I were young growing up in Upstate New York, if we heard a plane fly over, no matter how high or how far away, we would run outside and look up.

Even now in LA, if I hear something other than the all-too-common Bell helicopters the cops and TV news departments fly, I usually check it out. If there’s something really different sounding or particularly loud and large, Audra and I rush to the one of our balconies to see what it is. One of the undocumented perks of living in Hollywood is that every pilot—military or civilian—feels they have to do a Hollywood fly-over at least once in their career, resulting in an unofficial year round air show of sorts.

Yesterday, Audra told me she saw a large aircraft flying low while I was at work. After asking her some key questions and showing her pictures of several planes online, we determined she had seen an old Boeing B-17 ‘Flying Fortress’ A WWII era bomber like the title plane in the movie “Memphis Belle”.

B-17s always make me think of my brother. I’m not sure how often he heads for his back yard in Eastern PA when he and his boys hear a plane, but in college he used another tactic to get his ‘plane on’: On at least one occasion, my brother stumbled from a weekend party and made his way down the hill from Geneseo State University to a small nearby airport that was home to a collection of flyable war planes including a B17-G nicknamed “Fuddy Duddy”

Fuddy Duddy Flying over Geneseo, New York

There are no locks on the hatch of a B-17G, so he climbed inside and felt his way through the surprisingly cramped aircraft in the dark and climbed gingerly, reverently, into the pilot’s seat.

I sat in that seat once myself during a tour that my father and I took during regular museum hours. We were the only two on the tour, so getting to sit in the cockpit and explore the inside of the aircraft was a rare treat.

That particular B-17, “Fuddy Duddy” never saw combat but has been in two Hollywood movies and lived on three continents. She was built in the waning days of WWII in 1945 and served in the peacetime Philippines until 1955. In 1959 she was sold to the civilian world. Columbia Pictures was one of her first owners. She was flown to England and used in the Steve McQueen movie “The War Lover” along with two other B-17s. In 1969, under a different owner, she was filmed in Hawaii for the movie “Tora, Tora, Tora”.

Fuddy Duddy was then converted to and flown as a tanker (probably fire or pesticide) in Arizona 1981-1985 and sold to the War Plane Museum in Geneseo where she was restored to a WWII era bomber and where my brother, my father and I encountered it. This was the first time the plane had actually gone under the name “Fuddy Duddy” the name of another aircraft that served 94 missions out of Rattlesden England before being lost to a mid-air collision in December of 1944.

I was in college and living in a vacation home on the Eastern shore of Canandaigua Lake when one day I witnessed Fuddy Duddy flying a mere hundred feet over the lake with a P-38 fighter giving chase, it’s propane guns blazing. I believe the stunt was promoting the Geneseo “Wings of Eagles” Air Show.

As far as I knew, until last night, Fuddy Duddy was still parked at the National War Plane Museum in Geneseo, but after a little research online, I learned that, after a short stay at the Wings of Eagles Museum in Horseheads, NY she was sold to Martin Aviation in Orange County. Now she resides on a tarmac at the John Wayne Airport in Costa Mesa, just a mile or two from a good friend of mine.

I actually found Fuddy Duddy using Bing Maps. It was like seeing an old friend as I zoomed in and saw that distinctive wing shape emerge from the planes parked around it.

 

The knowledge that Fuddy Duddy was so close made me both happy and sad. I think it’s cool that I could go see her if I wanted to and it’s conceivable that I might even be able to talk my way into a ride-along one day. I also feel for the air enthusiasts in the Genesee Valley. That aircraft was a great source of pride. I don’t know all the circumstances under which they sold it but I know it must have been very difficult for a lot of people to see it take off and from that airstrip for the last time. It must have been harder still when it left Horsheads, New York for Southern California. It just doesn’t seem right to me that VB-17 297400/Fuddy Duddy/K*E isn’t in Upstate New York anymore.

Some days it’s hard to accept that Joel T Johnson 01-29-65 doesn’t live in Upstate NY anymore either. Due to a series of circumstances, I haven’t even visited home in two-and-a-half years!

Many years before I moved to LA, the song “Hollywood Nights” by Bob Seeger always bothered me. Especially the line “He spent all night staring down at the lights of LA, Wondering if he could ever go home”.

Of course he could go home, why couldn’t he just go home, visit, move, whatever... ‘Can’t go home’; get in your car and drive stupid!

After having lived here for a few years, I heard that song again and it hit me like a ton of scripts (Hollywood bricks). Against any prediction, I had actually moved to Hollywood and taken up with a beautiful woman. Even though she had not left me, I understood the song now, I got that line that had pissed me off so many years ago.

As a result of my decision to move, I have changed. I’m no longer Rochester Joel, or Canandaigua Joel. No matter how much I love and miss my homeland I have become someone else: California Joel; “Malibu Joelee” if you will.

My snow shovel calluses are long gone, I bristle at cold I once laughed at, my skin is somewhat tan year-round and my Rochester accent has faded considerably (though a nasal “A” still escapes me once in a while I’m told).

On more than one occasion I have even used the word ‘dude’ and I wasn’t even joking.

I miss it my old home and the people who I know there. I miss the Lillac Festival, Red Wings games and Abbott’s Custard. I miss a place where four lanes of traffic seems like a lot. I miss My hometown: Canandaigua, the lake, the courthouse, Rossi Music, Cheshire, the Company Store. I miss my wonderful parents and the house I was raised in.

I miss Wegmans dammit!

Even though I love where am and couldn’t do half as well with my job skills anywhere else right now, I have this have a fantasy of one day being bi-coastal. Not just coming home for visits but reclaiming my New Yorkerness by hangin with my Upstate bretheren for months at a time, not days.

In any case, my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary is this August and, if I have to walk there on stilts I will be there for it. I am also going to be playing some of my original music at one or more venues in the Rochester/Syracuse area; exactly where and when I don’t know yet.

I have been rehearsing my songs and will be posting a video of my efforts with a different song each week. This first video you may have already seen on Facebook. It is a little humbling for me to watch as there are still many things to work on but that’s the reason I am making these.

I don’t know if my old friend “Fuddy Duddy will ever fly the skies of New York like I know I will, but here’s hopin’.

Hmmm. Maybe writing a song about her will help grease my way into at least riding along on a flight!