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Mac Edward "Blacky" Rowen was born in 1910 in Arizona. He was staying at the Beverly Convalescent Hospital in Ridgecrest where Walt Bickel was for a short time. An article came out in The Ridgecrest News-Review about how Bickel and Blacky had been friends back in the old days, and had been reunited while convalescing.
Blacky had been a famous movie flyer, and had been one of the pilots in Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels, that was recently featured in the movie The Aviator. I didn't know anything about all that then, I was more interested in his work with Pancho Barns. He was said to have been Pancho's bodyguard and pilot around The Happy Bottom Riding Club. This was a Rosamond dude ranch, Airport, alleged whorehouse, and hang out Air Force test pilots, like Chuck Yeager.
On a visit to see Walt, I made it a point to seek out Blacky and managed a short interview before the hospital management threatened to have me arrested. It was always my habit to bring Walt some little trinket when I visited him. He especially liked natural things I picked up while hiking in Last Chance Canyon. If I brought him a shiny rock or a flower he would tell me all about it, and that would always spark a story.
On this trip I didn't have anything to give, but found a small feather in the Beverly Manor parking lot. I had put it in my pocket, but had forgotten to give it to Walt during our visit. So when I went looking for Blacky, it was still in my pocket.
I had asked a young buxom nurse where I might find Blacky Rowen "Why he's right there, the man with the beautiful blue eyes," she said, pointing an old geezer in a wheel chair who appeared to be sneaking a puff from his pipe. He wore a blue plaid shirt, a blue angels' hat, and had matching eyes that sparkled indeed.
When I reached for a card in my shirt pocket, I also found the small gray feather. I took it out with the card and said, "here's a present only a man who flies can appreciate." I'm not sure why I said this next part; perhaps I was just trying to make the simple gift seem more important. "I don't know what type of bird it's from, but maybe if you put this under your pillow tonight, you'll dream of flying all the places the feather has been."
Old Blacky beamed and accepted the feather as if it were gold. We became instant friends. I asked him to tell me about himself. He gave the usual biographical stuff, saying his father had been an Arizona druggist, but he had grown up and went to school in Pomona.
He said he really didn't remember much about Pancho Barns in her last years. "The last I saw of her she's heading to Chicago in a new Cadillac. I found out later she died and was half eaten by her dogs."
I asked him what he did for Pancho's infamous Riding Club. "Well," the old turtle-necked rascal said with a twinkling wink, "You might say it was my job to take care of the 'horses' and look after things for Pancho."
He used to fly for Fairchild Aerial Survey, shooting aerial map photographs. "I'd hold her right at 20 thousand the whole way. I loved to fly the Steelman. She's a good little biplane with lots of power from a 450 in her nose," he recalled.
He told me that he used to fly for the movies, and that he worked with Frank Clark who was his chief pilot, in filming Hell's Angels. He was going on, talking like the drone of a Steelman with a 450 in the nose, and then he did a most amazing thing. He started talking about flying, just the pure act of it, the sovereignty, and how he loved it. He took out the feather and toyed with it. "It was about freedom in the early days, you could fill your tank and go anywhere. I used to love going to Mexico. I'd follow the coast. One time, the time I remember the most, the sun was setting and I knew I should head back to L.A. but I just kept her going south…"
Suddenly, I was in that plane with him. I could see sky turn from blue to purple and the stars came out. There was a warm wind in our faces, and endless possibilities up ahead. Blacky was young again and full of life. When the moon came out Blacky said he knew there would be enough visibility to land anywhere. I actually saw the moonlight on the Pacific below, and the waves crashing against the shore. Where are we going, I wondered? "There's this village I know about," he answered from the dream he was sharing.
What the town's name? "I don't remember, San Something or El Somewhere. It doesn't matter. What matters is There's this half moon bay and a road that works as a landing strip. There's a little village there with music, food and life."
What are we going to do there? Blacky looked at me and smiled. "Boy, we gonna get our po possed." I was considering the meaning of my po, and the possibilities of getting it possed in some moonlit Mexican fishing village.
When suddenly I hear, a most officious voice. It was a nurse, and not the nice young buxom one. She was older and in a slightly different uniform, indicating she might be in charge. "Sir, sir, what are you doing? Why are you interviewing this man? Why are you bothering him?"
"Why this is Blacky Rowen, he's a living legend in aviation history, I'm just interested in, flying, I mean, talking with him," as she brought us crashing down from 20 thousand feet.
She backed way for a few minutes but glared at us from across the nurses' counter. The magic of the interview had just been poisoned. I felt my blood pressure rise. I noticed that Blacky had wet his diapers, and we now sat in the smell of his urine. I was trying to get back to our discussion when the nurse finally had enough and came flying back in my face like an angry wet hen. "Just what do you think you are doing? Why are you interested in this man?"
"I told you. I'm interested in what he has to say. I'm a free-lance reporter. I'm doing a story. I'm here to visit Walt Bickel, and this man is his old friend. I'd like to visit him in peace if you'd just go away and leave us alone," I told her impatiently.
"You don't have a right to come in here and start interviewing people and taking their pictures," she insisted.
"Blacky," I asked. "Do you mind talking with me?"
"Why no," he announced, flicking the feather. "I'm really enjoying it."
"Do you mind if I take your picture?" I asked gesturing with my camera.
"Course not, go right ahead and take all you want."
At that point I raised my camera and blasted off a shot or two that included the offending nurse. The scene became an encounter between Jack Nichelson and the tyrannical Nurse Ratched in "One Flu Over The Cuckoo's Nest."
"You better watch yourself," she warned.
"Lady, if you keep bothering me you'll become part of my story and wind up on the front page of the L.A. Times." That was perhaps a mostly empty threat. What with the Bickel War in full swing, I had talked all sorts of reporters and had been included in television and various news reports regarding Bickel's situation. I had my stories published in several publications. I might have been able to drag this incident at the convalescent hospital into some story, but that wasn't likely.
"You don't own this man, he's not a child, and he didn't give up his constitutional rights just because he got older. Now leave us alone!"
This sent her off looking for an administrator. It definitely put a chill on our talk. My hand was starting to shake from anger. "Who is that woman Blacky?" I ask.
"I don't know who she is. To me she's just another nurse. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing or not by talking to you, but I can't see anything wrong with it."
About that time the sweet young nurse came over to us. She seemed to want to apologize for her boss' rudeness, but indicated with her eyes she couldn't say anything. I liked the loving way she threw here arms around Blacky's shoulders from the back of his wheelchair. He buried his head in her ample bosoms, and she asked if he was doing okay. I asked if I could take her picture and she consented. I made a good shot, but at about that time Nurse Ratched showed up and announced she was calling the police.
"Good," I said. "Do what ever it is that you have to do. Have your lawyers call my lawyers." At this point the woman picked up the phone. I took a photograph of here as she dialed. In spite of my bravado, I began to see the possibility of spending the rest of a sunny afternoon in the Ridgecrest jail. I decided not to be captured so easily.
"I've got to go Blacky see ya later."
"You know, this feather really works. I've always wanted to go up to Alaska, always figured I'd follow the railroad tracks north till I found it. Think I'll go there tonight."
"Take old Bickel with you if he'll go. Tell him there's lots of gold up there."
"You bet I will," he promised with a wink of his sky-blue eye. I left Blacky grinning down at the feather.
The sweet nurse followed me, and suggested I leave by a back door. She took me through a labyrinth of passageways to a door that opened right by my bus, and asked," is my picture really going to be in the L. A. Times?"
"No," I told her. "I'm just a freelancer. I have no idea who might publish my stuff."
"But if you do, would you put my name in the story?"
"What's your name?"
"Rayona Hunt," she said with what sounded like a slight southern accent.
All right, if I ever publish this story, I'll put your name in it.
I came home, wrote out a rough draft from the visit. I was interrupted with several calls from Beverly Manor's legal department. I warned their lawyer that he wasn't scaring me, and suggested he would be wise to contact his own public relations department. By harassing me, all he was doing was make the hospital look bad, while making my story more interesting.
Indeed, eventually a public relations person called apologetically asking that I not tarnish the hospital's good name. Truth was, I was putting all my time into writing stories related to Bickel's fight with the Bureau Of Land Management over his mining claim. I didn't have time for other stories. My little encounter with Blacky and the hospital was interesting, but off topic. I put Blacky Rowen notes and photographs and a file where they stayed for almost 18 years. I guess it's time they flew free.
I'm told Blacky died a short time after our visit. I'm sure, at least in his dreams, he made one last flight to a better place. In my dream, I imagine the lovely Rayona in the back seat of a Steelman biplane with her arms thrown lovingly over Blacky's shoulders. There are stars in the sky, and moonlit railroad tracks 20 thousand feet below. With a steel ribbon to follow, Blacky, heads north to Alaska. In his Blue Angel hat, I can also see a magic feather that makes such dreams possible.
