(This excerpt about the Cessna 120 aircraft LRS is from the biography Edward Hadgkiss: Missing In Life, an aviation adventure available from Mac’s Fireweed Books in Whitehorse, Yukon.)

Ed Hadgkiss with his Cessna 120 LRS (Jane Gaffin Photo Collection)

Edward Hadgkiss--an ordinary man who did extraordinary things--had a warm, goofy personality that attracted friends wherever he went. A glint in his eye made him look like he was in trouble, even when he wasn't.

Hadgkiss, who radiated with a spirit and an exhilaration that comes only to those who do not waste their days trying to prolong them, would drag his willing older brother, Bill, into fun and harmless mischief, too.

Hadgkiss wrung out every precious drop of his life that was predestined to last only 27 years, less 13 days, from the moment he drew his first breath on November 30, 1942, in the British Columbia town of Haney, now known as Maple Ridge.

He loved anything mechanical and was a genius with a hammer and screwdriver. He had a feel for machinery and could coax it to do what he wanted because he under stood how the mechanism worked.

Yet all his life, he encountered mechanical misfortunes. The old adage, "If something works, don't fix it" didn't apply to him. He derived as much pleasure from "fixing" an en gine that worked fine as he did operating the machinery.

Anything with an engine offered freedom to take to the open road or sky. It represented adventure, although not always planned adventure.

He experienced his share of controlled crashes but always walked away unscathed from every motorcycle and airplane he wrecked, scratched, twisted, pranged and brought home rolled up in a ball on the back of a flatdeck--except one.

His first airplane was a two-place taildragger Cessna 120, call letters LRS (Lima- Romeo-Sierra, or “Left, Right and Senter” as his dad used to say).

Ed was on his way back to Whitehorse in his new airplane.

As long as the engine behaved like fine-tuned clockwork and the Cessna 120 sliced smoothly through the silky air, Ed slumped complacently in the pilot's seat.

His sinewy, medium-height frame was clad simply in white T-shirt and denims. The partially-unlaced boots lazed on the rudder pedals, and his finger tips rested lightly on the control wheel. The Continental's constant drone caused his eyelids to droop. And the eventless flight allowed his mind to wander.

Ed was satisfied with the way things had transpired in compressed time. He liked things to happen fast so life didn't get boring. Only ten months ago he had climbed into the Great Northern Airways Fleet Canuck trainer with instructor Robert Shoults for his first flight lesson.

Until then, his airplane experience had been limited to the barnstormers who had intro duced the Hadgkisses to air travel when Ed was too young to remember and the air plane rides he and Bill had gone on as air cadets.

Now he was flying his own airplane. And Ed felt content and secure as the little engine pulled him northwesterly, back to the Yukon.

While Ed was home to serve as best man for Bill's and Cathy's June wedding, he had pored over the Vancouver Sun classified ads and had haunted airports. At Pitt Meadows he had spotted the affordable Cessna 120 with its red trim and fresh major engine over haul.

Friends teased that the plane was too small inside to change your mind. The seating arrangement for pilot and one passenger was side-by-side; the seat to his right was empty. Company would have shortened the long, cross-country journey, for he preferred sharing his adventures.

When in Haney, Ed had invited Don Harris to come along. But Don couldn't get away. The closest company Ed had was the Cessna 140 above him that was piloted by a school teacher he had met in Prince George.

They were about a half hour from Watson Lake, the first community inside the Yukon border. Then, Whitehorse.

The hour was late, but light still remained in the June sky. At this time of year in the northern hemisphere it was difficult to tell if the sun was coming up or going down. Suddenly, Ed's breath caught and his senses were alert. Nothing will bring a pilot out of a dozy state faster than an engine's distinct voice changing sounds. A violent racket had developed. Ed pulled himself upright.

The engine, which had mesmerized him into inner thoughts only seconds ago, was in a wild shuddering rage. The whole aircraft was vibrating.

He leaned toward the firewall and pulled the throttle back to idle. He knew from the grinding and crashing that damage had been done. But he could not mentally diagnose the problem. It could be a multitude of things.

After clicking on the radio, he waited out a warm-up delay, then told his flying partner about the problem. There was no airport. He would have to make a highway landing. Ed did not silence the engine by turning off the fuel mixture and flipping off the magne tos that supplied spark to the plugs. He might need what little life could be squeezed from the engine to scale unforeseen obstacles, such as wires or to avoid a vehicle on the road below. Once shut down, he doubted the engine could be re-started. So he let the Continental idle as long as possible.

Ed was incredulous. How could the Continental 85 with a fresh major overhaul of less than two-hundred hours have betrayed him so soon? And he had only flown the plane less than sixteen hours since purchase.

He had been cheated out of his plans to land in Whitehorse and take his friends for rides. The little Cessna possibly would end up rolled into a cream-colored ball and de livered to Whitehorse on the bed of a transport truck.

Peering through Plexiglas, he kept his eyes riveted on the ribbon of gravel and dirt wind ing and twisting through the British Columbia forest near the Yukon border.

Every second he had checked out potential emergency-landing spots, not expecting to have to use them. A pilot never is; a good one is prepared in case he has to.

To lose altitude quickly, before the engine uttered its final heartbeat, he cross-controlled, dipping a wing and kicking in opposite rudder. Easing the nose downward, he slipped the lame plane toward the desired landing spot on the Alaska Highway.

Gliding down, he held the airspeed as steady as possible and his mouth tight. Ed was tense but not scared as he went through the motions of solving the immediate problem. All those hours of practicing spot landings on the runway were about to pay off. He had been trained in simulated circumstances for this moment. But it was his first emergency since earning his private license eight months before in October, 1965.

There was, however, a positive note to this crisis. Pilots expect to encounter serious dif ficulties every thousand hours of flying time logged. Since starting his pilot's training, Ed had accumulated less than a hundred hours and possibly, after this incident, could look forward to a thousand hours of trouble-free flying.

Finally, he shoved all thoughts aside to fully concentrate on putting CF-LRS on the roadbed with perfection so pilot and plane would suffer no more than maybe some bent pride.

It was an aggravating and expensive ordeal of paying to have the Cessna patched to gether by an aircraft engineer while trying to squeeze compensation from whoever in Vancouver was responsible for the original shabby overhaul job.

Once Hadgkiss flew the Cessna from Watson Lake to Whitehorse, his spirits re bounded. In the summer of 1967, he flew home to Haney to earn his commercial pilot's license and to gain more flying experience.

Oh, no! More troubles. This airplane--or at least the Continental engine--must be jinxed. He was not timid about executing maneuvers to make him a better pilot.

Any extra time spent practicing precision piloting could someday pay off. A favorite trick was squeaking through two Golden Ears peaks that appeared to give only wing-tip clearance while the belly practically scraped the rocks.

That morning, Ed had taken his mother for a flight. She loved to fly with her youngest son in the small Cessna, which permitted a deluxe sight-seeing tour over The Golden Ears. Ed had traversed the set of mountains on foot many times with the Rover crew, and Reta Hadgkiss had captured the peaks with watercolors.

In climbing attitude, Ed flew between the high peaks, popped over the top and dropped into a nose dive over the valley below where they could see the glacier. At this point, the passenger's gulp was always suspended halfway between fright and thrill. His mother was not nervous. After the initial shock, she giggled, delighted. She loved flying. When his mother was safely back on earth, Ed took Don Harris for a ride over the same route.

Don was Ed's mentor, former employer and long-time friend.

Ed, in his cute way, used to ask Don's permission to take out his future wife when Don and Elaine were still dating. Don must have consented. Ed would spruce up in a paisley sports shirt with its button-down collar, tie on his Hush Puppies™ and invite E-lane, as Ed called her, to a movie in Vancouver.

He was an avid movie-goer and liked historical fiction movies, such as Hawaii, and Walt Disney animated films, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Ed thought of adults as overgrown children. But his favorite flicks were those that focused on war fly ing, such as the Blue Max.

On the drive to downtown Vancouver in his red International camper unit, Ed bored Elane with details of how much the date cost, starting with twelve cents a mile. At eve ning's end, he gave her a verbal itemized statement that included the price of theatre tickets and dinner.

Elaine liked Ed, as did most females. Rather than a big heart throb, most young girls thought of him as a big brother and a good friend.

He generally beheld women as chemical creatures who could not think logically be cause they were emotional. Their projects could not be interesting so he saved them from boredom with invitations to a garage or hangar to participate in his.

He always needed extra hands to wash engine parts. It was surprising, the number who were interested and willingly helped. Ed patiently explained how engines worked, taught them to shift gears and how to keep a plane in the air.

But to keep rapport between the sexes manageable, he humored them. Whether a baby in a stroller or his aging grandmother and regardless of a woman's physical attributes, Ed's favorite endearment was: "Now there's a pretty girl." If the girl was the right age, he would tell his friends, "I think I'm in love."

He bestowed token gifts on family members, classmates, girlfriends and employers. He made and gave birdhouses, carved wooden figurines and cutting boards. He gave elec tric kettles so he could come by for tea; a wind-up alarm clock so he could ask for a wake-up call; apricot brandy so he could drop by for a nip after a tough day. When on an out-of-town job without note paper, he circled letters of words in paperback adven ture novels for the recipient to decode.

Ed liked attention and received it by giving in cute and subtle ways.

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Don Harris was short, stocky and handsome with dark features. His large chocolatebrown, twinkling eyes were framed with thick lashes. He was serious, a perfectionist, with a good sense of humor. He was a working man and a crackerjack mechanic. Ed respected this man, six years his senior, who could efficiently mend an engine. While working under Don's rigid guidance at Haney-Hammond Motor Freight, Ed had learned lots about machinery and driving big trucks. He was influenced by Don's unspoken atti tude: "If it works, keep fixing it, so it'll work better." Both constantly experienced me chanical calamities.

Don, an assistant Rover guide, had taken young Eddie hiking numerous times in The Golden Ears. Each mountain's rock face, which they struggled over by air, was a famil iar friend. Jutting up in the center was The Edge, peaked sharply like the United Church's roof. A climber could put one hand on the top and walk around the summit, or straddle it.

Over those mountain peaks, Ed had trouble coaxing his plane to perform. He circled round and round and round, like a gull, trying to gain altitude.

"Boy!" Ed exclaimed. "You sure are heavier than my mother! This thing is really working hard. Does she sound alright to you?"

"It sounds like a broken down power saw to me," Don said.

Ed studied the treetops. The plane wasn't gaining much altitude, but they managed to clear the peaks and drop over the glacier. Don's heart and stomach came up into his mouth. They flew down the lake, then returned to the airport.

A frown clouded Ed's face.

When the plane was tied down, Ed complained, "She doesn't sound right."

They removed the engine cowlings from both sides. Don laughed, sympathetically. A cylinder, split from top to bottom, exposed the piston and rings, and allowed oil to blow through.

"Umm," Ed said, in his glory. An engine to tear down.

He proceeded to pull it apart. It didn't bother Ed that once it was reassembled, a government-licensed aircraft engineer would have to sign off the work.

Don helped remove the pieces and parts, which were placed inside the trunk of Mrs. Hadgkiss's three-day old Envoy. Having flown the Cessna down from Whitehorse, Ed had to borrow his mother's new compact car.

Ed and Don drove back to Haney-Hammond Motor Freight's work yard, adjacent to the Harris's big house, which served as a residence and office. The Harrises were on duty, around-the-clock.

It was a beehive of activity on a Saturday afternoon, men in the shop and yard. Both sides of the road were crammed with vehicles: employees' personal vehicles and big mud-splashed freight and logging trucks and trailers, all parked nose to tail like idle cir cus elephants whose queue tapered to the baby Envoy at the end.

Don, an expert welder, was repairing the Cessna's cracked exhaust pipes, when his mom called them to lunch. The men trailed inside.

Evelyn Harris loved to feed everybody. And Ed loved invitations to her solid-oak kitchen table that brought back happy memories of good food and good times when he was employed with Haney-Hammond Motor Freight.

The men finished eating, went outside and back to work. Ed walked out to the road to get another engine part from the Envoy.

He sauntered back in good disposition, chuckling. "Okay, you guys! Who took my car? Where did you hide it?" He laughed. But joke-time was over. He had left the ignition keys for anyone's convenience to move the car.

Nobody at Haney-Hammond had touched the car.

Somebody had stolen it.

Ed panicked.

All his treasures were in the trunk. And the cost would be prohibitive to replace all those engine parts.

A week passed while he paced, fumed, grumbled and sulked. Finally, the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) telephoned to report the car was impounded at Ladner. Ed went down, paid the towing bill and drove home. The thieves, assumed to be joy-riding kids, had evidently run out of gas and ditched the car.

All Ed lost was a week's worth of time.

As soon as he and Don bolted the engine together, Ed, who had been out of the air too long, invited with enthusiasm, "Let's go for a ride."

"No damned way!" Don exclaimed. "Take it up yourself. See if it's going to hang together this time."

A friend of Ed's, a licensed aircraft engineer, tested the Continental engine, went for a flight and signed off the work.

Then Ed helped the engineer drink the pay.

Ed Hadgkiss plots a cross-country flight (Jane Gaffin Photo Collection)

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The Cessna is an excerpt from Jane Gaffin's illustrated, northern adventure book Ed ward Hadgkiss: Missing in Life. It is available from Mac's Fireweed Books in White horse, Yukon, by calling the toll-free order line 1-800-661-0508 or visiting http://www.yukonbooks.com. Author contact is jane(at)diarmani.com or visit her at http:// www.diArmani.com.

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See related excerpts: The Percival Prospector; The Super Cub; The Harvard: Built to
Crash; The Harvard: Cylinder with a History; and The Harvard: Rock of Eternity.

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