THE ORANGE GROVE
By
Ron Fox
One character from my border flying days who will
always have a spot in my heart, was Steve Stevens. He
was a big man who liked to chew on cigar butts. Ex-Air
America, I never saw him flinch. If there ever was an
epitome of the familiar character John Wayne played in
the movie “Flying Tigers”, Steve was it. He was a roll
your sleeves up kinda guy. He usually wore jeans with
cowboy boots and a lumberjack type shirt. He rarely
showed any emotion except for an occasional smile and
wasn’t real talkative. He never bragged about his
exploits, but you could tell the way he handled a DC-3,
he had been in plenty of tight spots with them. A lot
of guys, during a difficult maneuver, would grit heir
teeth, squint there eyes, stick out their tongue or
screw up their mouth. Steve’s eyebrows may have gone up
a little, or he might have rolled that cigar butt around
in his mouth a couple of times, but that was usually it.
It seemed like the more dangerous a maneuver was, the
more he liked it.
He was the only captain we had who would fly into
the Orange Grove. From the stories I had heard about
him, I was the only pilot we had crazy enough to go with
him in there. I was qualified as captain on the DC-3 at
the time, towards the end of my short border career, but
we were having trouble finding anyone who wanted to go
into the Orange Grove, so I volunteered to be his first
officer. The fact that Steve had put two Curtis C-46’s
down in a matter of a couple of months in the Sierra
Madres at night, both in thunderstorms and walked away
from both of them didn’t help. What that told me was
that he was either very good, or very lucky. Either was
a plus for me. Skill flying the bush had been a very
big part of my continued existence. Luck may have
played a bigger part, it’s always hard to tell which was
predominant.
Steve was enjoyable to watch flying an
airplane. His big, sure hands moved over the controls
with precision. He never fiddled with throttles, prop
levers or mixture levers. He set them exactly where he
wanted them and left them alone. He pushed, pulled or
turned the yoke effortlessly. His coordination of
ailerons and rudder produced the smoothest turns I have
ever witnessed. I have seen a lot of good flying, but I
have never seen flying this good without the pilot
working hard at it. Steve was good and he enjoyed it.
The Orange Grove was situated in mid-
eastern Mexico, further inland than most of our other
strips. We had to arrive at the mouth of the river we
would be following near dawn in order to see it. We
followed this winding river for about a half hour after
leaving the coast. I had no idea where it was, having
never seen its location on a chart. I was along for the
ride, and some ride it was.
I was enjoying the hard turns, close to
the river surface as we followed its meandering course
up into rolling foothills. Watching Steve provided not
only entertainment, but an increasing admiration of his
skills. My admiration was soon to soar in the next few
minutes because I was soon to learn why no one wanted to
go into the Orange Grove.
After about a half hour of IFR flying, (I
Follow River), we came around a bend and suddenly found
ourselves very close to a steep group of mountains off
to our right. Almost as soon as I saw the mountains
close to the river, I looked to my left and saw a small
valley with a small pasture of green grass next to a
large grove of what must have been orange trees. The
grove and the pasture extended from the base of a small
hill at one end and ended right at the edge of the river
on our left. The river suddenly took a sharp turn to
the left which Steve followed, now flying along the
length of the orange grove which now marked our left
downwind leg for landing. I didn’t have very much time
to survey the area because as soon as we turned
downwind, Steve called for the gear down, followed
quickly by half flaps. Slowing, beginning our base leg
turn, I was able to see what was our proposed landing
area more clearly and the sight was impressive. We
would have to turn a sharp base leg turn to final to
avoid the hill at the approach end of the pasture and
sink rapidly in order to get the airplane down on the
ground in enough time to stop. You see, the end of the
pasture was defined by the river. And right across from
the river were several high mountains. There would be
no room for a go-around. This was a landing you had to
do right the first time.
Steve maintained a high enough speed in
our descent to handle the steeply banking turn
to final, all the while dropping like a rock. Before he
had even come out of the turn he called for full flaps
and I responded immediately. The engines were at idle.
I recall we were about twenty to twenty-five knots over
stall in a high sink rate. At what seemed like the last
possible moment, Steve pulled the yoke all the way back
into his lap and the nose of the airplane came up high.
Normally such a high nose attitude was associated with a
climb, but Steve was using the last of our flying
airspeed to arrest out sink rate. We slammed down on
the ground and, upon first contact, I popped up the
flaps. I knew we had to get as much weight on the
wheels as we could in order to maximize our braking.
Without the luxury of anti-skid, Steve was milking the
brakes heavily and we came to a stop with plenty of room
to spare. Other than a navy aircraft carrier, it was
the most exciting landing pattern I had ever
experienced. It was a real rush. Without so much as a
sigh of relief, Steve turned to me and said, “Ain’t
this a great strip?”
“I love it!”, was all I could think to
say. “My knees are shakin’ a little bit, but it’s the
best ride I’ve had in years!”
Our trip home was uneventful. After
taking off empty we just headed out to the east to find
the water as quickly as possible. Smugglers were always
safer when out over the water, well away from the
coastline.
Steve was a free-lance pilot who worked
for several of the operators from Brownsville, McAllen
and Laredo. Since he was pretty busy most of the time,
I didn’t ever have another opportunity to fly with him.
My border-flying career was nearing its end.
I have kept in occasional touch with Steve
over the years. He’s now past sixty and was one of the
few pilots who flew the border for many years without
ever getting captured or killed. I had, for many years
afterward, hoped to be able to start a small FAR Part
135 airline which allows pilots to fly beyond the age of
sixty so I could hire him to fly for me. It would have
been a real service to many young flyers to be exposed
to his skill.
Copyright 1998, BUSHPILOT, all rights reserved.