1905.
   Telephones. Telephone companies. This is what my father was born
   into. The Age Of Electricity. But he wasn't the company man sort
   of guy. He did love things with wires in 'em though. Motors too. 



   Radio led to the Army Air Corps & South America, where he stayed
   after discharge, building radio outposts for Juan Trippe as he
   built Pan Am, and later Panagra. My father loved the adventure,
   but appreciated as well, more probably, the life lessons; people
   the world over are the same. Just as he'd disdained distinctions
   of class, ethnicity too mattered none to him. The Ugly American
   was all over the place down there & anathema to him. A rebel.



   That link below blew me away. A simple mention of TAMPA. My Dad
   established their Miami base 36 years ago. I worked there twice
   in the '80s. Extensive pre-employment polygraphs both times; my
   office had a bonded warehouse door to the colombian import side
   and the flight line. All federal security agencies filed copies
   of these tests. I was attending flight dispatcher school at the
   time as well, in my utter innocence actually; A horrid fate....



   The narcoguerillas kidnapped & killed his old friend William
   Griebling of Ibague, Colombia. Others used to try to get him to
   work his DC-7 for them. They weren't remote or abstract to him.
   Neither was doing things for our government, like a Xmas run to
   a beach on Cuba with a load of gas for Castro. That was the one
   government story he would tell me, implying others...



   But TAMPA? Extraordinary renditions?? Please God no. I Googled up
   TAMPA's recent history and saw new leadership in 1998. Whatever.
   I don't want to know. But about my Dad, I do. I hate not knowing
   what it is even that I don't know...



   But I do know this: he wouldn't have liked what we've come to...
   Or done to this world... And it's people.