The Princess Di

A story of Fiction (sort of)

Written by Nathan Truzzolino

I want to tell a true story about how my Grandfather and I caused an international incident between the United States and Canada. On accident. Obviously.

Before I get into any exciting details, I must tell you first about the beautiful and noble Flathead Lake. The large piece of heaven is located in North Western Montana. It's the second largest lake in Montana; it is on the mainline of the Flathead River that flows from North to South.

Flathead is beloved by millions around the country for its cleanliness and public access to many wonderful activities. Flathead is the best lake for waterskiing. It's the best for deep-water fishing. It's the best for pontoon parting. It's the best for swimming due to its unprecedented cleanliness. Flathead is stunning to witness in person, with its surrounding mountains and Glacier National Park looming to the north like some prehistoric land out of a Tolkien novel. It's the best place to get laid. Take any girl, or guy, to Flathead for the first time, and they will melt in your hand. The glassy water and rocky beaches are one of nature's natural aphrodisiacs. Flathead is the best place to take a chick when you two are trying to save a dying relationship (it's a temporary effective but highly potent). I had to do this once with an ex; I don't want to get into it, it potentially set my life on a terrible track, but hey, man, that's how powerful this place is. It turns crazy into Miss Congeniality in one weekend.

Next, I need to bring you back to 1973. That year, my Grandfather was a budding entrepreneur in a small town called Butte, Montana, about three hours southeast of Flathead Lake. My Grandfather ran a successful canned goods factory that had been in his family since the late 1800s. My Grandfather, John Martinelli, took the company in a new and exciting direction by introducing new products and generating larger distribution areas across the country and even sold his wares into the great north of Canada.

Money was coming in by the truckload, and it was burning a hole in his polyester pockets. Some of that money was spent on fast cars. My grandfather loved to go fast.

My Grandfather was the third John Martinelli in a row. So, at random, his father and Grandfather, who both lived to the age of dirt, decreed that this young man would be called Jack from now on. He was renamed Jack because that's what they did back then when a family, like the Martinelli's, had too many Johns in the family. They sang a song in Italian of commencement, roasted a pig, had a feast and went about their week.

Jack was a pilot in the Air Force back in the day, flying missions in Korea. Getting back to fast cars, Jack fucking loved fast cars. To get that need for speed prescription filled that was left empty by not having access to a flying machine, Jack bought American muscle cars, and brother, did he live in the best generation for that expensive hobby.

Jack's wife, my Grandmother, was a nurse by trade but mainly worked as a homemaker and bookkeeper for the family business. After Jack's experienced a third near-fatal crash, this time with a cherry red Corvette, Jack's wife, Katherine, put her metaphorically large foot down and declared the Martinelli home a muscle car-free home. Katherine was sensible, pragmatic, and more intelligent than any doctor she had ever worked for, and don't think for a fucking second that they didn't know it. She sometimes intimidated her peers with her uncanny ability to recall and remember every detail of conversations, books, stories, movies, and anything else in general. A photographic memory, they would say, but who really knows. She knew how to tap into that alpha female, superior confident state and simply backed bitches down at will. She was also the kindest person I had ever met. She was a goddamn Sunday school teacher, for god sake (sorry, Grandma…and Jesus).

Katherine was so goddamn brilliant that she even had time to get her real estate license. Yes, imagine a kind, beautiful, and talented blonde-haired midwestern woman wearing one of those ridiculous gold jackets next to the tall yard for sale sign and smiling from ear to ear, knowing that if she put 100% of her energy into this hobby of hers, she would rule the western Montana market within five years. But Katherine didn't want that. Katherine wanted connections; more specifically, she wanted relationships within the real estate market in the Flathead Valley. Even more specifically, she wanted to press the flesh and grease the palms of the lakefront landowners on the west shore of Flathead Lake.

Remember when I said Flathead was the best place to take a chick? Well, Jack did that very thing to Katherine in the sixties. She fell in love with Flathead Lake the moment she saw it. Upon first glance, Katherine leaned her head out the window of the small Chevy pickup and said aloud, "I will live here one day."

Well, Katherine got that wish sooner than she expected. Ten years after that first drive up the Flathead Valley from Butte, Katherine got a phone call from a real estate agent in Somers, a small town on the west shore of Flathead Lake. The day had come. An old land baron was finally getting ready to sell his massive lakefront property on the west shore, near Goose Island (oh yeah, this enormous lake also has fucking islands; one is so massive, most mistake it for part of the shore).

The property was subdivided, and three plots are available to the public. Six were already spoken for by the descendants of the old land baron. The kicker, said the Somers real estate agent, was that it was first come, first serve. The land was going on sale in three hours, and Katherine was her first call.

On a great day, a car could reach Flathead Lake from Butte in 3.5 hours. There was no way they could make it on time.

Unless…

Katherine made three quick phone calls. One was to Jack, letting him know a plot awaited them on Flathead Lake. The second was to Thomas' TJ' Johnson, Jack's best friend from childhood, asking if Jack could borrow his one-prop Cessna airplane in exchange for a tip on a plot of land on the hottest lake in the state. The third call was to Nancy Regan.

No, not that, Nancy Regan.

Katherine called Nancy, who was married to Ron. Yes, Ronny Regan.

Ronny was boyhood friends with TJ and Jack and was certainly not an actor from California. Ronny owned a car dealership in Butte and had no political ambitions whatsoever.

Katherine told Nancy to tell Ronny to meet Jack and TJ at the Bert Mooney Airport in Butte in 30 minutes or lose out on a plot of beachfront property on Flathead Lake.

Two hours later, three property deeds were signed. On the northmost properties was the Johnson residence, in the middle was the Martinelli plot, and on the south side resided the Regans. It was the score of the century and would set up a lifetime of memories for generations of Martinelli, Johnson, and Regans.

Now let's flash forward twenty-five years. My father, Richard, is now a grown man with a nearly grown child, me, Nathan Martinelli. I'm 16 years old and spending as much of my summer break at the lake house as possible. Sometimes my cousins are up here with me doing the same, but most are older than me and have jobs they are required to be at. Most cousins are up here this particular summer week, and we have all been raising hell around the lake.

My grandparents have now moved to the lake full time and are fully enjoying their retirement.

One fateful day, I am lounging on the pebble beach, tossing rocks in the lake one at a time. Sometimes I try skipping a stone or two, then I try to get fancier and attempt to skip some rocks over the dock and back onto the water on the other side. This is one of my favorite past times and still is the most incredible time killer on a lake.

It's late morning, and the sun is now decimating my already tan body. Being on the west shore means we get the morning to about 3:00pm summer sun, which, as a young lad, sucks because you want all the best rays to come in the afternoon because, naturally, that's when you wake up. But as an older man now, I see that the morning sun is a secret ingredient to a happy and productive day.

To escape the insane heat, I retreat inside the lake house and fish a Dr. Pepper out of the basement fridge. The basement fridge is near my Grandfather's workbench, where he draws, measures, and cuts glass, then solders them together with his dangerous-looking heat knife, as I call it, to create beautiful and undervalued stained glass pieces.

This morning, my Grandfather was flipping through a magazine for stained glass enthusiasts, looking for inspiration on what to do next. He heard me rummaging through the fridge in the basement and called for me to come into the workshop.

He showed me a page from the magazine with a picture of an oval stained glass piece with a beautiful rainbow trout thrusting out of the river with a small fly stuck on its lip, looking majestic, regal, and disturbingly happy. Grandpa asks me if my older cousin would maybe like this for his high school graduation, and in my mind, I thought he would if the fish was a bong and the fly on its lip was a finely packed bowl of kush, but I kept that to myself and said he probably would.

Then, like a trained guard dog whose sole purpose is to listen carefully for uninvited noises, my Grandfather's extremely damaged and mechanically enchanted ears perk up. His head shoots to the right, where the sliding glass door is slightly slid open. The sliding glass door leads onto the bottom deck, which leads onto the path that leads to the beach. This is precisely the path my Grandfather takes with grace and speed. He is probably in his early 60s but moves with minimal restrictions or visible pain. His white dad Nikes shoot down the path, and instead of taking the left-hand path to the beach, Grandpa Jack (AKA John) goes straight, which leads to the L-shaped dock that leads out to the lake. As he walks onto the dock, his eyes are systemically scanning the sky.

I shuffle behind him, walking gingerly since I have no shoes on and the pine needles are biting this year. I heard the plane's engine flying overhead when I saw him put his hand over his eyes to shield the sun.

Blinking out the sunspots, I closed my eyes and stammered blindly over to the dock. I could only spot the two adjacent long baguette-looking shiny tubes until the sun obliterated my vision. The engine throttled down, and the one-prop seaplane slowly made its way to our little patch of the lake. I walk and stand next to my Grandfather, who is now watching the plane make its descent on the glass-like lake that is Flathead. It makes a slow and effortlessly sound landing on the water, skidding for a few hundred feet by Goose Bay Island.

I see my Grandfather's face, and a small smile starts to etch upon it. The methodical thud thud thud thud of the engines gets louder as the plane is now less than 100 yards from our dock.

The plane takes a slight left-hand turn north and then cuts back to the right to make its final approach.

To my surprise, the bright yellow plane does not come to our dock but to Johnson's dock. The plane's pilot kills the roaring engine and coasts towards the dock.

A man about my father's age slunks onto Johnson's dock to receive the approaching plane. He reaches the farthest edge of the port and waits for the oncoming water plane. The passenger door flies open, and a fishing rope is tossed out towards the stranger on the dock; he catches it and pulls tight to secure the plane to the side of the pier, which is padded with bouies, and ties off on a small foot anchor attached to the wooden boards.

What happened next forever changed my life. Until now, I had only seen old folks, senior citizens to be specific, in a particular light. My best point of reference was both sets of my grandparents. They were simply kind old people to me. They did old people things. They went on long road trips to places old people go. They frequent garage sales and volunteer at the local library. They sit and bullshit about the old days while we eat dinner at Denny's at 4:30pm.

To me, old people were sedentary, slow, and usually had a pleasant disposition. I had a pretty good idea of what old people did, wanted to do, and couldn't do. Here is one thing I knew for sure at the age of 16. Old people did not have sex. It was just off the table for them, and all that energy they usually used hooking up, they now put into arts and crafts or watching WW2 documentaries.

When I was a kid, old people liked to sit around, watch the local news and complain about how much things had changed. Old people to me joined traveling choir groups, memorized flora and fauna, collected knickknacks to give to their grandchildren, and sat in hot tubs until their skin about fell off.

The last thing I thought old people did was bone, and I'm telling you, to this day, I refuse to believe it. My perspective on fogies was forever changed that summer day on the lake.

A big man, geriatric and bald, steps out of the passenger door of the seaplane gently and handles the dismount of the rocking plane with surprising ease and athleticism.

The big man has on an open yellow Hawaiian shirt, black shorty swim trucks, thong flip flops, and mirrored aviator sunglasses. He spins back around to the plane and reaches out a meaty hand to someone inside the plane. What happened next rocked my universe.

The meaty hand now clasped a delicate and pale hand. The slender hand was attached to a tan, toned arm, which was attached to a female body that had bright natural blonde hair in a high, tight ponytail, sporting a two-piece matching black bikini with a loose white linen open blouse covering her shoulders and back. This body had long legs, shiny and muscular. The legs had feet that had no shoes. The toenails shined bright yellow, matching the hunkered man's shirt and plane. She wore a similar set of sunglasses as the meaty fella, but hers were jet black.

The siren from the plane is now detached from the meaty hand and within full view of my Grandfather and me.

The exquisite woman on the dock is about 100 feet away from us and is now using her hand to shield her mechanically shaded eyes from the sun. My eyes were still young and potent then, so I didn't need strong prescription corrective lenses to see what was before me.

My Grandfather and I are now stiffer than ancient granite statues, mouths agape, arms hanging slack by our hips. I won't comment on Grampa's stiffness, but I imagine his legs were about as stiff as my entire lower body.

There are pockets in time during one's life that feel like a supernatural being suddenly and without warning sets a large glass dome over you, one you can't see, and using a giant vacuum, sucks all the air out of the atmosphere, causing all time, air, life, thought and, existence to be suspended in animation forever.

That same experience happened to my Grandfather and me when that goddess stepped into our lives. All I could do was stare at this angel flown down from heaven. She looked like a parody of a teenage raunchy rom-com. It was too good to be true. She could not have been older than 30 and was positively (and negatively?) magnetic. All eyes were stuck on her, and I'm unsure if she was aware, but the older I got, the more I was sure she was.

That glass dome was about to suffocate the holy living life out of my Grandfather and me. We were suffering, and all I knew was if I did die, I would be ok with it. I was in my tiny Billabong board shorts, and my Grandfather was wearing a light white t-shirt with a Labrador retriever on it, pastel summer shorts, and boat shoes. Imagine if JFK had lived to be 65 and was Italian. That was my Grandfather. He was handsome and regal, and his baritone voice always made me feel safe. He would call us kids 'Tiger,' and I remember feeling that when he called me Tiger, he was breathing life into me. Instilling confidence, bravado, and bravery into my soul with one endearing nickname.

When we couldn't take the suffering any longer, a familiar angel emerged to smash the glass dome and set us free.

"TJ's in town," sang the angel. The voice came from two feet behind us. Katherine Martinelli had her hands on her hips, and she had to have one of the biggest smiles I have ever seen. She scared the shit out of me but not Jack. He knew she was there. He was too stubborn to be bothered.

"Appears so," Jack replied.

My Grandmother moved over to Jack, put her arm around his waist, and with the swift motion of 10,000 hours of practice, Jack put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her in close. They would have been married 50 years at this point. An accomplishment that goes unrecognized these days. If some stranger were to come to me and ask what is more impressive, being married to someone for 50+ years or landing on Mars, I would say being married for 50 years. That is a real commitment. Commitment is work. Work is primarily difficult. Hard work is only for some. One person can do hard work, but with marriage, you now throw in another person who must match your effort most of the time. It's rare. Maybe, it's a dying thing like Polio or phonebooks. We remember it, seeing it in a scrapbook. But now it's gone, the changing world killing it and burying it in the past.

As I stood petrified, my grandparents exchanged waves and a holler with TJ Johnson and his mysterious vixen. It's guaranteed none heard what the other said, and Katherine knew this, so she said that Jack should take me over there to look at the floating plane.

So he did.

"Come on, Tiger, let's see what it's all about."

I didn't want to go. I knew that if I were to get too close to the siren, I would Icarus myself and burn up from the sun. But her song was too tempting. Tie me to the mast! My teenage hormones will be no match!

Like a funeral progression, I ambled behind my Grandfather as we shuffled across the beach, over an invisible property line, and eventually onto the freshly sanded and pained "T" shaped dock of the Johnson estate.

TJ and Jack marched towards each other like old war buddies and embraced each other with what I can only describe as molecular-altering handshakes. I could hear both of their hand's squeak and moan from the brute force of their grip and torque. They exchanged old man pleasantries like "son of a gun," "you old crumbumb," and eventually Jack looked back at me and said, "You remember my grandson? Tiger, come say hello to TJ and…".

At that moment, Grampa Jack used his introduction of me as part of a classic sales tactic. I hadn't even realized it. He used me as the conduit to discover the goddess's name that glided down from heaven with TJ Johnson.

I stepped up, hand out, ready to be crushed by TJ, and what I got was an old man's strong arm around my neck that turned into a half-side hug embrace. He eventually rubbed his knuckles on the top of my head. In my day, we called this a noogie.

"Of course, I remember ya. Last time I saw ye, you were still in shorts and diapers, I think?" TJ spoke like Brian Cox with the tiniest hint of an accent. I later learned that TJ was born to a German immigrant father and an Irish immigrant mother in backwoods North Carolina. Funny enough, he adopted none of these accents and instead had a gentler Canadian-like accent with a slight mix of Scott.

I'm pretty sure every old person says something similar to this when they have no fucking idea who you are, but I knew that, and I was ok with it because the Martinelli's had 15 grandchildren, so it's not TJ's job to remember all of us.

I murmur something under my breath as he lets me go. TJ puts his meaty hand on my back and says in a boastful baritone voice, "Let me introduce you to Jericka."

Before I could be moved by TJ's massive mitt, fucking Jack cuts me off and stretches out his paw to Jericka first. He shakes it, schmoozes a little, and eventually does the whole, oh yeah, and here is the spawn of my seed; I guess you should acknowledge him too.

Jack finally got the hell out of the way, and TJ departed from the other direction. It was like Moses parting the Red Sea, and what opened up was a stairway to heaven.

She moved upon me faster than I did on her. She gently put out her right hand, and I clumsily grasped it with mine, and she gave a decent squeeze and said, "It's a pleasure to meet you...". She let the statement linger in the air in hopes that it would ferment into a question about the knowledge of my name.

Unfortunately, my tongue was too big for my mouth, and I wanted to say the pleasure was all mine, but I knew what she wanted to know was my name. What came out was garbled garbage.

I cleared my throat, tried again, and simply said, "Nice to meet you too," never answering her question.

I could hear Jack and TJ talking about the plane behind me, and after a few awkward seconds of looking at each other, Jerika broke the silence and asked if I lived in Montana. I said yes, and I asked where she was from, and she said some town in Arizona I had never heard of before. It turns out it was Scottsdale, and 8 years from that day, I would be living there myself, burning a permanent tan into my olive skin.

From behind me, I hear from Jack, "No, absolutely not." I recognized that tone. It was the tone when I asked to go to McDonald's, and Grandpa would say, "No, absolutely not," and then drive us to the best little burger shop in town. He would do things like that in a way that I appreciate so much more now as an adult. My cousins and I would harass Jack and Katherine to go to the local Dairy Queen, which would annoy Jack. He said we would instead take the extra 20 minutes to drive around the massive lake to patronize a Big Fork shake shack that served homemade ice cream and shakes.

Jack paid for everyone's ice cream cone, and he would get a giant chocolate shake and share it with the youngest of us. Sometimes that was me. He always knew the youngest was somehow the scapegoat or odd man out, so he made a point to care for that person the most. Jack was a protector. Katherine, the nurse, she nurtured the group of grandkids. My Grandmother never raised her voice to get her point across. Her inherent kindness and patience always got us kids to follow her directions. I can't honestly remember one time Jack had to raise his voice either because Katherine was so goddamn good. The Jordan and Pippen of child-rearing.

TJ Johnson walked over to Jericka and put his arm around her possessively. He looked back at Jack and took off his aviator sunglasses. He also asked for Jerika's sunglasses, and she handed them over to TJ.

"She's all yours, Jack," TJ said. He presented the sunglasses to us like Willy Wonka offering his chocolate factory to Charlie.

I was flummoxed about why he was giving us their sunglasses. Grandpa Jack had Lasik surgery a few months back but looked so weird without the glasses that he now just wears non-prescription transition glasses. I had my own sunglasses in the house, so I didn't need any, either.

"It's not a good idea," Jack says.

I look over at him, and he is now looking past TJ and Jerika and at the golden yellow boat plane. Then it finally dawned on me.

TJ wasn't offering sunglasses; he was offering us a fucking plane!

16-year-old me could not help myself.

"Can we go for a ride with TJ?" I asked Jack.

Before Gramps could answer, TJ blurted out, "I'm half the pilot your granddaddy is, son. He'll take ya up there."

TJ walks over to me, puts the aviator glasses on my face, then grabs Jack's hand again and puts his sunglasses in them.

"Plus, Jerry and I are wiped out. We need to go rest for a little." With this, TJ and Jack snort, and I see Jerika blush.

Being 16 years old, I had no idea what the fuck was going on. All I knew was this old guy was giving my Grandfather a plane, and we were one yes away from flying it.

I asked the question that was floating between all of us.

"Can you fly that plane?" I ask.

"Son, it's like riding a bike," TJ says. He pats my head, and with that, he and Jericka start walking toward the house. They get on the beach, and the man that helped them tie up the plane speaks with them briefly, and they all now head up to the house.

I look at Jack; he sees the glasses in his hand and then looks at me. He looks back at the glasses and then tosses them into the lake.

This part I'll never forget for the rest of my life. Jack looks at me, puts his hand on my shoulder, and says, "Where do you want to go?".

-

I didn't find this part out until I was older; the plane that my Grandfather and I were about to fly was initially called "Queen Lizzy" after the everlasting monarch, but what was so expertly painted on the tail at this very moment was something else entirely. In long and looping cursive red letters with gold trim were the words "Princess Di."

How or why the plane was given the new name was never fully explained, but I can put two and two together.

As Jack was getting me in the co-pilot chair, I could tell by his body language that he was a tad nervous. He took his time getting himself into his seat, and as he did so, he adjusted the seat height to fit his long legs. He checked a few things on the dash of the plane, then told me to grab a manual out of the jockey box. I handed a brick of laminated paper held together by three giant brass rings.

He flipped through it a little muttering to himself. As he took his time reading, TJ was back on the dock and heading towards the plane. TJ maneuvered into the small plane and knelt between Jack and me.

"Alright in here, Jack?" he said a bit too loud.

"Just doing a quick refresher. Been a few decades since I last flown a seaplane."

This didn't instill much confidence in me, but Jack was on the verge of being a God in my eyes. I've seen this man create works of art with his bare hands, command rooms with rousing toasts, and seduce wild beasts into doing his bidding. Still, the tone of his voice made me a bit worried. Then, that old God of flight came back in one statement.

TJ started to show my Grandfather a few things on the control panel, and before he could get more than three sentences out, Jack held up his hand and said, "Let's not forget who taught Tommy how to fly. We are good here, thank you".

Fuck. Jack just called a grown man Tommy. For that generation, he may as well call him a big fat pussy. I think TJ also took it that way because he got out of that plane and slammed that door loud enough to make me jump.

Jack looked over at me and smiled; he told me to push this button near the center of the large panel of dials in front of him, and when I did, the engine fired up, causing the giant wooden propeller in front of us to start to rotate. With every rotation, the motor whirred louder and louder until it was all I could hear. Jack handed me a pair of over-the-ear headphones. They smelled of sun tan lotion and roses. She must have been wearing these, I thought. It gave me a little sensation in my board shorts, and with the engine's vibration, blood started to migrate south of the border. But before I could disrupt the caravan across the border, a voice broke out in my ears.

"Buckle up, Tiger," Jack said over analog airwaves. TJ used his flip-flop leg to shove the plane from the dock and waved his pudgy hand at our departure. Me, Jack, and Dianna started to taxi out into the large clear water lake. Jack was still eyeing a few things on the panels, and after about 5 minutes of taxiing, we came up on Goose Bay Island. I have taken the canoe and paddle boat out of the island many times but have never taxied past it in a seaplane. I felt like the luckiest boy in the world.

I heard the engine throttle up before I felt it, and I will tell you, I wasn't prepared for the feeling of leaving the Earth's surface. First off, the water, no matter the calmness, is choppy as fuck, causing some stomach-churning turbulence before achieving lift-off.

The throttling-up portion felt like it took forever. One of my fillings fell out of my teeth because I had clinched my jaw so tight I started to taste metal.

I looked over at Jack and saw him in his natural element for the first time in my life. He was a fine gentleman, a celebrated businessman, a wonderful family man, and a scholar in both science and religion. I didn't know it until now, but all those accomplishments were just his side quests. Jack was, in fact, put on earth to do one thing and one thing exceptionally well, and that was fly.

Jack had a look on his face like he was seeing the Mona Lisa, not for the first time but for the 100th, and every time he did, he kept finding new things to love about it. I was so caught up in the expression on my mustachioed pilot's face that I had missed lift-off. I looked out of the front windshield and could only see the blue sky. This freaked me out, so I looked out my side window and saw the majesty of Flathead Lake as only those lucky enough to be born with wings get to experience it. I saw a fuller picture of what God had created for his pitiful subjects. I saw green trees turning blue and blue water turning green the further we flew away.

I am not afraid to admit this, but I started to cry. Little did I know that Jack was tearing up too. It had been nearly 8 years since he had last flown. I thanked God I wore the sexy lady's sunglasses to hide my tears.

I would find out from Katherine later that TJ let Jack fly his sea and land plane all the time because of a little arrangement they had for a summer back in 1988.

In the spring of 1988, TJ had bought a local bar in Lakeside, Montana, a small community on the Flathead Lake where my father now lives. TJ did most of the drinking at this tiny shore bar, and TJ also did all of his own driving.

Well, it was simply a matter of time before TJ, the drinking, and the driving all met up and had a dispute one night. TJ's car ended up in a yard, and TJ ended up behind bars. Luckily, TJ was put on house arrest instead of a nice six-month vacation in the prison city called Deer Lodge, Montana.

In the summer of 1988, TJ was fitted for an ankle bracelet that used satellite GPS technology to alert officials of his geographical location. This was court-ordered, and the mandate was TJ was to stay in his home 22 hours a day, with a two-hour window to do any kind of personal errands. Since TJ was officially retired and sold the bar, this house arrest sentence was now worse than a stay in Deer Lodge.

Jack, being the ever-pragmatic man, knew a thing or two about a thing or two and figured out how to get the bracelet off of TJ's ankle. The catch was that the bracelet was heat sensitive and had to sense human skin to stay in working and legal order.

TJ, who was always the ladies' man, was unwilling to give up a summer of his life trapped inside his lavish lakeside home. TJ knew he would die in that house if stuck there for six months.

TJ quickly made a deal with Jack that if Jack were to wear the bracelet from the hours of 8pm to 8am, in turn, Grandpa could use any of TJ's toys, including the speed boat, pontoon boat, jet ski, seaplane, landplane, four wheelers, Harley Davidson and of course his 1972 Hemi Orange Dodge Challenger.

Jack took that deal. It was to last only six months, but Jack somehow kept permission to use all these death machines long after TJ's parole officer took the tracking bracelet away.

That terrible spring night when TJ sat dumbfounded in his Cadillac as his car spit smoke and radiator fluid on that poor lady's yard somehow led to me flying high above the cold waters of Flathead Lake. I never really got to thank TJ for this wild experience, and I wish I had. Maybe he will read this in heaven. If so, thanks, Tommy. I'd wear that puppy tracker for you any day.

-

Ok, here is the question I need you to ask yourself. Alright, what happens next will sound made up, and I promise you if you think it is, just ask yourself one question and then reevaluate. Ready?

Why the fuck would I make this up? To gloat? To boast? To rub it in?

The answer to all of those is fuck no! What happened next probably irrevocably damaged my brain in ways I'll never fully understand or explore. The amount of anxiety and fear that this little escapade with my jet-setting Grandfather could only be made manageable by years of talk therapy, massive hero doses of magic mushrooms, hours floating motionless in deprivation tanks, hundreds of bottles of beers, one awful marriage and one equalizing awesome one.

When my Grandfather asked me where I would like to go once we were up in the sky, I said the first place that came to mine.

"Glacier," I replied.

Jack quickly informed me that flying over something like a National Park wasn't in great taste. Although it wasn't illegal, it was generally seen as a douche move since so many people visited National Parks like Glacier to get the fuck away from noise pollution, so I guess that made sense.

Jack did say, however, that flying near Glacier was just as breathtaking as flying over it, so we compromised on a route over the Mission Mountains and then skirt around Glacier National Park.

I wish I could paint a better picture of how majestic and unreal these mountains look from the air. When we drive up to Flathead Lake from my hometown of Butte, you have to drive up Highway 93, which cuts through the Flathead Indian Reservation. It's a beautiful part of the country, and the Mission's looms ominously in the east for most of the drive. I used to love bringing people up there for the first time and watching their faces as they got their first glimpse of the mountains.

The Missions look like something straight out of Lord of the Rings. They tower in the distance, looming over the flatland that the million-year-old glacier plowed flat. To see the Missions in the summer during a clear bluebird day is to see an impenetrable wall keeping east coasters out of our sacred land. Can you imagine being in the Lewis and Clark expedition and seeing these giant fucking mountains and thinking, "We are all going to die"?

Grandpa and I zipped south on Highway 93 to about the Ronan/Pablo area before making a U-ey and heading north towards Glacier National Park.

Now I had asked to fly over Glacier because I had only really visited Glacier one time prior in my life. It may sound odd, having spent literally every summer of my life an hour away from Glacier, but it was never on our summer agenda. I think Jack saw visiting Glacier during peak summer months as a tourist trap that only out-of-state suckers and hippies fell for. He may not be wrong, but still, I would have loved to see more of the place as a kid, given the proximity and ease of access.

The further we flew north, the more precise Glacier's wild and unmolested world came into view. The drone of the plane's engine was starting to have a strange effect on my body that only a teenager would understand. I was simultaneously being vibrated to sleep while also fighting the rush of the blood being expedited to my groin. I had to put the plane manual on my lap to cover up my "excitement" while trying not to fall asleep.

To this day, as soon as the engines start on a commercial airline flight, I begin to get drowsy. The boner action isn't a concern anymore; I am a grown man with a handle on his erection now, but back then, good luck, kid.

Half asleep and half aroused, something suddenly happened that I could never have been prepared for. A voice spoke into my head. I didn't catch what it said. It kind of sounded like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit. I looked over at my Grandfather, and he was staring at me. Both looking for confirmation that the robotic voice in our heads was authentic.

I heard his voice clear as day over the headset now.


"Was that you?" he asks, and I shake my head no.

He looks at me now that he has practiced his entire adult life. It was the Larry David, BS detector look where he tries to suss out if I am telling the truth.

Then Johnny 5 rang out in our ears again. This time, the imaginary jovial sounds of a sweet-hearted sentient robot were replaced by a harsh and jagged frequency. Not being versed in airplane radio code, here are the bits I did hear and understand."

"RACF - DELTA PAPA THREE SIX ONE"

Instead of trying to understand what the hell was being shouted into my ear holes, my child-like instincts went to using sight versus sound. I stared at Jack as he pressed the headset harder to his damaged ears and spoke in code to this mysterious voice.

My child-like instincts told me that Jack was now apprehensive about something. His eyebrows did that thing where he looks both pissed off and offended. His lips pursed so hard that it was hard to remember what Jack looked like with his lips. His white mustache seems to just overtake the bottom half of his face. He seems to be rapidly slipping down the stages of grief right next to me. He seemed to deny this new position, but I wasn't fully aware of the shitstorm we had just flown into.

Once Jack grasped who was on the radio, that denial turned to anger. And like all Jedi know, anger leads to the dark side.

I tried to ask who was on the radio, but all Jack did was put his hand up and try to listen better to his headset. He was now doing the joke-like cadence of someone trying to bargain his way out of a tight spot.

I started to panic a little myself now. My boner was still hanging around, so I was now fighting a war on two fronts. I adjusted the best I could in my tiny seat and looked out my window to see the storybook terrain that was the beginning of Glacier National Park.

Even with the new altercation taking place in my headset in a seemingly foreign language, the view from above of one of God's greatest gifts to man was so intoxicating that I entirely missed out on the part of the conversation where the disembodied voice had said, "..is a final warning. You were warned earlier to leave this airspace. Reentering this airspace is seen as an attack on our..”.

I looked out the window to see if I could see some wildlife or something never before seen by man. There had to be a few spots left in Glacier that have never been seen by human eyes.

Instead of seeing something on the ground for the first time, I was given a visual of something I had never seen before in the air. When flying in the air in a tiny plane with no wheels, the last thing you do, especially while flying over something as breathtaking as Glacier, the last-last thing you instinctually do, is look up.

That is why when a dark grey, sharp, scowling, perilous fighter jet slowly descended from the sky above, my teenage boner quickly retreated, and all contents of my stomach started to unionize into an amalgamated striking effort to no longer stand for food digestion and to evacuate from the area from which it came.

I could see the mirrored visor of the pilot in the death machine fling next to me. The Grim Reaper in a Top Gun fighter helmet was staring through me, and the acidic taste of vomit had now entered the chat.

Jack shook me out of my terror by saying one of the funniest things, in retrospect, I have ever heard or will ever hear in my entire life. Over the headset came three words I never thought I would listen to my Grandfather utter, let alone annunciate with moxie.

"God Damn Canadians!" spat Jack from the captain's chair.

I looked over at Grandpa quick and asked what they wanted. Jack told me this wasn't the first run-in our fair vessel, the Princess Di, has had with the Royal Canadian Air Force today. In fact, hours before, TJ was flying in this same airspace, having the exact same pissing match with the same Canuck fighter pilot.

"Did you tell him we're not TJ?" I asked.

"Not in those words," Jack replied.

Using my teenage brain to recall the map of the United States, for a millisecond, I thought maybe Glacier was, in fact, in Canada. My assurance of my country's boundaries returned, and I spat out, "Do they realize we are in the US?".

"I let them know that as well," and this time, Jack snickered at his statement.

More squawking came from the radio. Once in a while, I pulled out a few words like "airspace" and "territory," but nothing really explained why we were being pulled over mid-flight by a Canadian fighter jet. I couldn't understand the coded speech being used.

I look back at the jet, and it's starting to lag behind a little, causing my anxiety to spike. I had seen Top Gun enough to know it was an attacking position.

"Are they going to shoot us down?" I ask.

Jack doesn't reply, which at that moment is the worst possible thing to do or say. The Silent Generation needed to speak the fuck up for once. In my panic, I went into a zone of anxiety where I began to fidget with my hands and become hyper-focused on the jet behind us. My brain went into protection mode and rendered me useless by shutting down and shutting out the threat. The roar of the small engine was turned down to a droll, and an eerie silence consumed my ears. The radio chatter disappeared, and I felt I was back in that airless vacuum. My lungs began to tighten, and my heart rate skyrocketed.

We continued to fly straight over Glacier, precisely what we didn't want to do.

Jack finally snapped out of his own disbelief and pulled his shit together. Captain Martinelli, the United States Air Force cargo pilot of yesteryear, had returned and was now in control of the situation.

Jack reached over and touched my shoulder to get my attention.

"The Canadian Prime Minister, their president leader, I guess, is hiking in Glacier today. Mounty here thinks we are terrorists, looking to assassinate his unremarkable leader." Jack says to me over the headset. He looks at me and sees me now, looking white as a ghost, rocking in my chair.

I, of course, did not hear this explanation for why we were being tailed. In my own head, I was off feeling pretty bad for myself.

Jack hesitates for a few beats. Quickly, his face goes solemn as the plane's yoke vibrates furiously. It was at this moment that I felt a tremendous amount of pity for myself. I saw my Grandfather's old yet strong hands white knuckle the yoke, causing the muscular forearms to tense up. None of this clicked for me because I was in poor-me mode.

Here I was, 16 years old, flying in a beat-up Sea Plane with my grandpa, about to get bombed out of the sky by fucking Canadian Maverick. I'm going to die a virgin. I am going to die not seeing Blink-182 in concert. I'll never smoke weed. I'll never do any drugs of any kind. I'll never travel to Europe. I'll never get married. I'll never be a dad. I wasn't ready to die, nor did I accept it. I looked at Jack, and in that last moment of pity, I started resenting the old man. He had an entire life. He did all those things I wanted to do and then some! This old asshole was about to get me killed, all because his dumbass neighbor forgot to tell us to stay the fuck outta Glacier! Jack would be given an excellent and dignified death. I would have a short and tragic one.

What I didn't hear while falling down my rabbit hole of self-dispair was my Grandfather finally losing his shit. Instead of getting down, Jack got angry. The sort of anger a man gets when he has been through a hard life, has paid his dues and taxes and built a vital life and better community around him. A man who deserves to fly a fucking plane with his grandson without being harassed by some maple syrup-sucking loon on a summer afternoon.

Later, I would get audio of what Jack said to this fun Canadian pilot from Jack's old Air Force buddy. I won't rewrite what my Grandfather said verbatim, but I will say he had a tone in his voice that I am sure only last came out when he was flying cargo planes over Korea, taking flak from enemies below.

What Jack had nicely started to say to this pilot was that he was an American Veteran of the United States Air Force. That he had more bravery and experience in his left pinky than all of Canada had in their entire fleet. He then went on to tear into the liberal Canadian government for some reason. Next, he had some choice words to say about the border patrol. He then said some wild things about the French-speaking succession movement, and finally, when he was about to attack the Prime Minister, the plane started to vibrate violently. This was when I began to snap back to our reality. This was when US Air Force Captain Remy Drake entered the picture. Call Name: NEO.

What caused our little seaplane to rumble so intensely was that an F-16 jet had just flown over the top of us and banked quickly right to smoothly drop and steady itself in front of this Royal Canadian Air Force Pilot.

The sequence of events that follows felt like a movie. It was like a Fast and Furious film, and instead of a muscle-clad Vin Diesel sitting to my left flying the plane, it was a 60-something-year-old farm kid from Butte Montana with surgically corrected eyes and boat shoes. I couldn't believe my eyes. This was really happening, to me, also a dumb farm kid from Butte, Montana. I had front-row tickets, right up close to two multimillion-dollar fighter jets to my right, flying in tandem.

I couldn't hear what the exchange was between the two allied pilots. I saw my Grandfather smirk as the new addition to our squadron arrived, and I am pretty sure he said something to the effect of "Whoa, doggy" or "humdinger." Whatever was exchanged between the two death machines happened quickly as the Royal Canadian jet banked right and flew out of sight.

Jack had identified himself over the radio to this new stranger, and that is when I heard him say, "It's nice to meet you, NEO."

Of course, NEO was a real trigger word for a sixteen-year-old in the early 2000s. I imagined Keanu Reeves in that American jet, cool, calm, and ready to fuck shit up.

The relief that washed through my body was substantial, and only when the Canadian flyboy drifted away did I relax a little. The bad news was as soon as the adrenaline declined just a smidge, the unruly unionized protest in my guts started to cry out again, and before I had time to fully recognize the mob, I was folding my shirt into a makeshift bag, and tossing up my lunch, catching about 80% of it.

Jack put his hand on my shoulder and said to concentrate on what was in front of the plane to reorient my brain. He had failed to explain that small aircrafts like the Princess Di are not pressurized like commercial flights. This causes nausea and vomiting in almost all first-time small aircraft passengers.

He passed me over a gas station thermos, and I took it with what dignity I had left and chugged down what I was to find out later was called a Long Island Iced Tea. The thermos was, of course, TJ's. It was the best thing I had ever tasted in my life.

Jack continued to chat with the pilot, NEO, and the conversation went from a tone of respect quickly to the style of two old friends catching up. I never served in the military, and I envy two service men/women's instant connection, even upon first meeting. Jack was actually laughing with NEO.

As the American jet glided with us as we banked left to turn back towards our home on the lake, I could see the many dangerous details of the metal dragon. It had so many smooth and sharp points on it that somehow only got dimmer in the sunlight. The dark grey would turn to a dull silver and, at some angles, even look black. As we left Glacier, the jet pulled out quickly in front of our tiny prop plane, and we could see the blazing red and orange jet engine propelling the pilot with such ease.

I heard US Captain Drake give my Grandfather the go-ahead to fly home. In one of the most extraordinary fucking things I have ever heard or seen since, he pulled to the plane's left, gave my Grandfather a salute, and radioed over, "Thank you for your service, Captain Martinelli," then flew out of our lives forever. If I had to guess, Jack was choked up a little. I know I was. Then I threw up again.

-

That night at dinner, I would not shut the fuck up about the flight. My four cousins, who had decided to all wake up early that morning and go to the water park in Columbia Falls without me, kept telling me to shut the fuck up, but I simply could not. The adrenaline and excitement of the adventure were still coursing through my veins.

Jack sat at the head of the table, eating his tamales and sipping his glass of red wine. Every time I retell a moment of the flight (with a lot of flourish and exaggeration), Jack would calmly correct me, even downplaying some of the sketchier moments. I think he did that to keep my Grandmother Katherine from strangling him. She sat patiently at the other end of the kitchen table, listening like everyone else, occasionally giving Jack a wide-eyed look that communicates a thousand words, translated with one stare that the other partner knows without question what it means.

After dinner, after everyone was tired of hearing about our international incident over Glacier National Park, we kids went to the basement to play Golden Eye. The five of us took turns with the four controllers running around digital maps shooting each other in the first person.

On one of my off-games, I left the basement and headed back upstairs, where I could hear Jack and Katherine loudly watching cable news. In the evenings, Jack would remove his hearing aids and sit back in his recliner with his yellow lab, Sonny, next to him while he nursed his one and only "nightcap," usually a Manhattan. Until I was probably 25 years old, I thought a "nightcap" was a specific drink and was only corrected by my then-wife, who looked at me like I was a complete idiot when I ordered a Night Cap from a bartender in Arizona.

When I snuck back upstairs, I passed by both my grandparents. Jack is in his chair, a sleeping dog at his side. Katherine was lying on the couch, some kind of knitting thing in her lap. As I walked by, she gave me a smile, and I noticed Jack was asleep, drink about to tip in his hand. Katherine motioned for me to grab the drink, so I did and brought it to the kitchen. I drank what was left of the sweet, watered-down cocktail and felt like throwing up for the third time that day.

I quickly grabbed a Pepsi from the fridge and chugged it. Having washed out that hogwash, I returned downstairs but was intercepted by my Grandmother outside the kitchen. Feeling embarrassed, as if she knew I had just drunk the booze, I tried to play off this Mexican standoff as a scheduled meeting.

"Hey, Grandma!" I exclaimed.

She smiled and put out her hand. I took it, and she spoke in a quiet tone.

"I want you to know something, Nathan."

Katherine wasn't smiling. She had a severe look on her face, but her tone was borderline jovial. The two did not match up.

She only spoke to me like this a few times in my life. I can remember a handful of them. Once on my wedding day, my first marriage. The second day she found out I was getting divorced. The third was on the day my son was born. She was using a tone she used explicitly for me, I believed. She was connecting on a nuclear level.

"I want you to know something, Nathan. Today, you made your Grandfather's day. Actually, you certainly made his entire year."

She smiled and squeezed my hand some more. She could see in my eyes and expression that I was confused about what she had just said. She certainly knew that to me, it was the opposite. The excursion that Jack and I had today would be a highlight of my life to the day I die. She knew that. But she needed me to know I did the same for my Grandfather.

"When you get to my age, sweetie, life seems pretty well set. Does that make sense?"


I nodded yes.

"So when something like what happened today occurs to us old folks, well, it really is a treat. You flying with Jack today made him feel alive in a way he hasn't felt since his days serving in Carolina. That was a really long time ago. I am certain you will discover this for yourself one day, but when you get to our age, most surprises are not good surprises. Today was a good surprise."

I nodded in understanding.

"I guess what I am trying to say is thank you for being with him, for sharing with him that moment. Someday Nathan, you will know what sharing moments with your grandkids like that means. Sharing pieces of you that you thought were long gone. It's a joy that so few of us get to live anymore."

She smiled that smile. The one where I knew no matter what, everything was going to be alright.

With that, she gave me a hug and sent me back downstairs. I brought Sonny down with me. I sat on the old couch watching the small box TV as my cousins continued to fight it out on Nintendo. The faint smell of wood smoke and wet dog filled the room. Sonny was nosing the sliding door to be let outside, so I went out with him. We walked down to the beach, and Sonny waded out to his belly and relieved himself into the vast lake.

Next door, TJ and his rowdy friend were hooting and hollering around a giant bonfire. I could see them clearly contrasted in the dark, drunk as fuck around the fire. It sounded fun, but it looked terrible. Everyone except for TJ was slouched in their chairs with sour faces and double chins. He was still on his feet, acting out one of his drinking war stories while everyone else sat wasting away in Margaritaville.

At that moment, I knew that when I got old like Jack was then, I didn't want to be the old guy banging someone half my age, trying to fight the plight of aging with booze, drugs, and women.

I was perfectly happy being the guy asleep in a recliner, disconnecting his hearing aids so he could sleep soundly because his five grandkids were being loud shits in the basement.

TJ saw me and gave me a big wave, and I waved back half-heartedly. The hot blonde from earlier looked ten years older and twenty years sadder in the bonfire light. I clicked my tongue for Sonny to follow me back up the hill toward the house.

Dedicated to my grandfather Jack Truzzolino and his loving wife of 50+ years, Kathy.