CHAPTER 1
Herb was born September 25, 1921, to Fred L. Greer and NellieD. Greer in Chelan, Washington, a small town of about twothousand people.
Over the next ten years the town was to see its population grow, andby 1930 some 2,484 souls lived there. Chelan lies at the southerntip of Lake Chelan (pronounced Sha-lan), which means "beautifulwater" in the language of the Chelan Indians. Chelan is 159 milesfrom Seattle and 93 miles from Yakima.
Lake Chelan is known today, as it was in the early 1920s, for itsorchards, and particularly for its Red Delicious apples. WashingtonState produces more than half of all eating apples in the United States,and its orchards, nestled in the foothills of the Cascade mountainrange, cover 174,000 acres.
Herb's father and his father's brothers, along with Herb'sgrandfather, purchased an apple orchard in Quincy, Washington,located approximately fifty miles from Wenatchee, which by manyis considered the apple capital of the world. They were happyrunning the orchard for several years until one night a severefrost caught everyone, including the weather bureau, off guard.Without a warning weather forecast, farmers hadn't anticipatedthe need for "smudge pots" to counter the freezing conditions,so, unfortunately, they lost their entire crop. Smudge pots wereheaters that pumped out thick black smoke, casting a pall over theorchard that reflected infrared radiation, trapping enough heatbetween the cloud of smoke and the ground to stop the delicatebuds from freezing. Farmers would burn old tires and would usemotor oil in the pots. Unfortunately, the smoke was both a healthand an environmental hazard, so by 1950 the use of smudge potswas starting to be regulated.
Unable to recover from this setback, Herb's family sold the orchard toa company in Wenatchee and moved to Grand Coulee, Washington,where Herb's father found work helping to build the Grand CouleeDam. Once the dam was completed, the family moved to Redding,California, where Herb's father went to work as a mechanic for thehighway department and his mother was a laundry worker. Herb, theoldest of seven children, had three brothers, Don, Frank, and Harry,and three sisters, Shirley, Darlene, and Dallas.
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I was quite a handful as a kid, and I can remember breakingthe headlight on our car with a rock before I was five. On thatoccasion my father saw to it that I couldn't sit down for a week!
I can remember Don and I were quite the mischievous pairwhen we were around five and six, especially when we gotbored. One of the things we started doing was standing nailsjust behind the tires of visitors' cars. The anticipation of themhaving a flat tire on the journey made us giggle like crazy.Of course it wasn't long before my parents put two and twotogether and realized that all these flat tires only occurred afterpeople had visited us. Then you know what really hit the fan—andI don't mean feathers! We got paddled well and thoroughlyon that occasion, but I suppose it saved us down the line frommore serious penalties.
Apparently when I was very young I used to answer everythingwith "Huh?" If mom called it was "Huh?"—nothing else. Itdrove my mom crazy. I haven't changed a lot in all these years;I'm told I still use the term on occasion. Unlike most other kids,whose first words are traditionally "Momma" or "Daddah," Ithink mine was a nongender specific "Huh?"
When I was seven, something happened that was to change mylife and set me on a path that would determine what would bethe central theme of my life—flying.
Out of a clear blue sky my brother, Don, and I heard a droningsound that became louder and louder; then we saw two specksin the distance, which got bigger and bigger as the dronebecame a roar. We ran three miles to get closer, and then wesaw them, our destiny—although neither of us knew it at thetime. Two army biplanes had landed in a wheat field. Little didI know they had cast a spell over me. I was in awe and becamedriven to discover everything I could about these wonderfulmachines, and to see places that I could only imagine in mywildest dreams.
It was some time later when my father's friend, Burley Nix, theowner of the local Buick dealership, invited my dad and I to flyin his single engine, two-seater Eaglerock biplane with its largewooden propeller and wire wheels.
My dad encouraged my mother, my brother Don, and me to takea spin. In those still fairly early days of flight, you had to be quitea brave soul to risk going up in one of these contraptions but,like most kids, fear doesn't play a major role in most decisions,and when we got a chance to go up in this beautiful machine, wejumped at the chance. We took off two miles outside of Spokane,Washington, and soared like an eagle over the county where allthe houses and farms became insignificant dots and the onlything that mattered was the wind in our hair and a sense ofexhilaration that left us wanting more. I had taken the firststep toward my dream. From the moment we were in the air, weknew that this was going to be part of our life forever.
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It wasn't unusual for people in rural areas to get the opportunityto fly in those days. As part of Eaglerock's promotional campaign,"barnstormers" would travel across rural America and land infields charging people anything from fifty cents to a dollar for theopportunity to take a flight.
The Eaglerock was the creation of the Alexander...
