I’ve heard many Boomers–especially in the South–tell you that “no one had air conditioning.”  That’s simply not true.  When Chet and Myrtle moved to Palm Beach in 1957, they made sure they stayed cool with this unit, a Worthington RWC-609 5 ton water-cooled unit.

Chet and Myrtle also faced some of the other problems endemic to Palm Beach.  One of those was climbers, like this cat:

Fortunately the cat wasn’t insufferable like some of the other climbers in Palm Beach!

One problem they didn’t have to deal with was ARCOM, the dreaded Architectural Commission, which holds the power of life or death over real estate, as one poor chap from Switzerland found out.  Below is the bedroom addition under construction.  Now that it’s more than fifty years old, it probably has historical value!

Chet signed this photo of his WACO ZQC-6.  He loved this plane but evidently they’re subsequent designs didn’t suit him; his next one was a Howard DGH-15.

More information about Chet’s WACO is here.  My thanks to Audrey Gibbons for furnishing this photograph.

Probably the closest friend my grandfather had during his aviation adventure was J. Earl Steinhauer, an important figure in American aviation in his own right.  After World War II he was the Assistant General Manager of Fairchild Aircraft in Hagerstown, Maryland.  One of the aircraft they produced was the C-119 “Flying Boxcar” which saw service in both Korea and Vietnam.  Below are some sketches of the plane, a couple with Earl’s name on them.

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My thanks to Robert Nowakowski for furnishing these images.