Chuck and his best buddy, Andy, were doing a radio show in Chicago when their WGN host, Roy Leonard, broke for a commercial-a commercial about an allergy treatment.
Mischief beamed in Chuck Yeager`s small-bore, low-intensity blues. He arched his eyebrows and shot a prankster`s grin at his pal. Then the 67-year- old retired Air Force brigadier general and aviation legend leaned forward into his microphone and pantomimed a slapstick sneeze.
The Right Stuff, hell. This is The Fun Stuff.
”If Chuck can`t have a good time doing something, he just won`t do it,” said his wife, Glennis.
After the commercial break, the WGN host took a call from a listener wanting the name of the remote High Sierras` lake where Yeager and his best friend, retired Col. Clarence ”Andy” Anderson, fish for the elusive golden trout.
The question brought another duet of snickers and snorts from the flyboys.
”If you think I`m gonna tell you the name of the lake, you`re crazy, buddy,” Yeager said.
Once you`ve been the first man to break the sound barrier, knocked down five enemy planes in a morning`s work, survived a forced parachute jump into enemy territory, bailed out another time while burning like a Roman candle, held commands in Vietnam and the space program and earned a reputation as a pilot who could trim a buzzard`s toenails with a flick of the wingtip, who in the world is going to have the guts to tell you can`t have a little fun and raise a little more hell with an old pal?
”I`ve always said that the rules are made for people who aren`t willing to make up their own, and as far as I`m concerned that never described me and my friends,” in the word according to Yeager, chapter and verse.
The hero to fighters, fliers and AC Delco stockholders flew into Chicago last week with his friend to promote Yeager`s second assault on the best-seller list, a buddy book, of sorts, titled, ”Press On! Further
Adventures in the Good Life,” (Bantam hardback, $23.95).
In its brighter passages, this follow-up to the 1985 best-selling autobiography ”Yeager” chronicles the hunting and fishing adventures of the feisty pilot and the more subdued but equally adventurous Anderson.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid go airborne, if you will. Tom and Huck get rank. Mano a mano stuff.
More fun than aerial combat, even.
”Hey, Andy, tell him about the time you hammered that 1-90 going straight up,” Yeager said during the Leonard show. ”That was beautiful . . . it was streaming smoke straight into the ground.”
Yeager, a West Virginia hillbilly, and Anderson, son of a California fruit farmer, met in combat training over Nevada in 1942, fought together as World War II ace pilots, worked together as test pilots after the war and served together again in Vietnam. They also ran into each other, unexpectedly, on their honeymoons-to the amazement of their wives.
Although not given to sentimental gushing, Yeager speaks in mystical terms of the time that both he and Andy fired on an elk and each claimed the kill only to discover that their bullets had each hit its heart only 2 inches apart.
In an equally rare display of humility, Yeager admits in the new book that Anderson`s skill as a pilot so impressed him during training that he tried to base his flying style on his friend`s. ”Andy was what the French call the creme de la creme,” he wrote.
The two men now live just 25 miles apart on the edge of the Tahoe National Forest in southeastern California.
In ”Press On,” Yeager describes their friendship:
”Our ability to communicate without words never ceases to amaze me,” he writes. But in truth, Yeager generally communicates, cusses and commands enough for the both of them.
Anderson keeps his head down, fires off a few quick rounds now and then, and then ducks back for cover under the assault. Unassuming and introspective, Anderson is inclined to stand back and let others talk, which makes him either the perfect companion or a horrendous match for Yeager, who dominates entire city blocks with his righteous stuff.
”They are as different as night and day,” marveled Glennis, who did not make the trip to Chicago last week. ”Bud is very reticent, and Chuck is just the opposite. Chuck can`t stand peace and quiet. If everything is going along just fine, he starts something.”
As a World War II ace with 17 1/4 kills to Yeager`s 13 and as a test pilot of almost-equal renown, Anderson is up to the demands of his friendship with the B-17-in-the-china shop personality of Yeager. He also has a secret weapon. Yeager has been forced to bail out of aircraft three times in his career, and Anderson was there every time.
He reminds Yeager of that fact when the occasion calls for it, but most of the time, Anderson just carries the shovel while Yeager leaves a trail of bull, he said.
”He`s got a million of them,” the colonel said. ”It is just constant.”
As a backwoods bumpkin turned war hero and aviator extraordinaire, the bawdy yahoo Yeager has long believed that having fun was his inalienable right, along with strafing antelope, chasing barmaids and goosing bomber pilots.
And any weenies, peaceniks, left-wingers, longhairs or bearded weirdos who get in his way had better watch their tail feathers. This is not your typical heavy-on-the-starch retired commanding officer.
With the brass to back up his sass, anything is fair game in Yeager`s sights, be it astronauts (They`re the size of ”a grapefruit once you squeeze the BS out of them”); environmentalists (”gawddam tree-huggers”); trophy-fishing (”That`s like playing golf, a waste of time”) or ”Hanoi Jane”
Fonda (”They oughtta hold a celebrity shoot with her as the target”).
Yeager on the ground is just as dangerous as Yeager in the air. ”I like to kick him out the door and get rid of him,” his wife said.
The pilot, his wife and their four children spent their early years living in sparse military accommodations, including a two-bedroom adobe hut at the end of an Edwards Air Force Base runway, when Yeager was an Air Force test pilot. The family benefited little, at least financially, from Yeager`s achievements until the last 10 years, after Yeager was hyped as a heroic figure in Tom Wolfe`s 1979 book and the movie it spawned, ”The Right Stuff.” Yeager`s 1985 autobiography, which was drawn from an oral history he recorded for the Air Force upon his retirement, was a surprise hit, selling 1.1 million copies in hardback alone, and it turned up the burners on his public figurehood, bringing lucrative commercial endorsement contracts and speaking engagements.
When the mad rush to get a chunk of Chuck Yeager began, the general quickly incorporated as Yeager Inc. The corporation bills its one and only product as a consultant-for-hire and manages his endorsement contracts for batteries, automobiles, model planes, rifle scopes, air conditioners, hunting clothes and computer games. Yeager Inc. also promotes or consults to Northrup Aviation, McDonnell Douglas, Louisiana Pacific, the U.S. Air Force Academy, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the National Rifle Association. And if the Republican Party had its way, Yeager would be flying copilot to George Bush at every fundraising function from Seattle to Sarasota, his business manager said. ”They want him everywhere, but he meets himself coming in the door now and then as it is,” Glennis said.
It costs $20,000 plus first-class travel and lodging expenses to get Chuck Yeager to speak for a luncheon group these days, according to his wife. Last year he made 60 speeches. One overloaded client paid the full fee and provided a private jet to get Yeager to speak at his wife`s book club.
This year, however, Yeager has cut back on the speeches to devote more time to hunting and fishing and to stay closer to his wife, who just this week completed 4 1/2 years of chemotherapy cancer treatment. Glennis denies, however, that she wants him to stick around any more than usual.
”My husband is a lot of things, but he`s not a cure for cancer,” she says in ”Press On!” ”And if he were hanging around the house all the time, it wouldn`t make anything easier.”
His wife, whose name was immortalized and placed in the Smithsonian Institution when ”Glamorous Glennis” appeared on the side of the
experimental aircraft that Yeager rode through the sound barrier in 1947, manages the family-held Yeager Inc. from their ranch home in Grass Valley, Calif.
Yeager and his wife have two sons and two daughters, contrary to the Oldsmobile Cutlass commercial that should soon rival Yeager in air time. In the commercial, Yeager says, ”I got two kids . . . boys,” much to the chagrin of his daughters. The general wears a flak jacket when he visits the girls these days, his wife said.
”My daughters are really giving him the razz for it. He got both barrels,” Glennis said.
”That is one of the real bloopers ever made. He was supposed to say he had two boys, but he goofed it, and by the time they discovered the mistake, he was in Alaska or somewhere and couldn`t get back to redo it.”
The daughters do get equal billing with their brothers in Yeager Inc.;
each offspring owns 10 percent, and the general and his wife hold 30 shares each. The children own the rights to the first and second books, Yeager said. The general`s $37,000 annual military pension is more than enough to keep him afloat, he said. In fact, he is compensated in the form of fishing waders, shotgun shells and other gear for a good many of his endorsements, his wife said.
”When I started getting involved in talking for honorariums and commercials, I just wanted to benefit my kids. I get a salary from the corporation, and that goes into the bank . . . my retirement pay handles my lifestyle easy,” Yeager said, give or take an obscenity here and there.
In managing the Yeager Inc. juggernaut, Glennis fields 15 to 20 calls a day from presidents, princes, publicists, program chairmen and others wanting a piece of her husband`s time.
”I have no idea what his appeal is,” said Glennis, who shares her husband`s candor.
”I swear I don`t know. I guess he has an excellent speaking voice and he knows what he is talking about, in most cases.”
This ”hero business” is something Yeager has grown accustomed to. ”I might as well admit I enjoy it,” he writes in his new book, ”but for a long time I myself was just simply amazed by all the attention I was getting for the X-1 (sound barrier-breaking) flight.
”But the real reason I was suddenly a hot commodity went beyond all the exposure I was getting. . . . America needed a hero to hug, and I was it. Well, okay. . . . You also realize how lucky you are that you`re still living to see the recognition-and the problems it demonstrates.”
Yeager does not let the problems of fame keep him out of the fishing boat. Under orders from the general, Glennis guards his play time, even when the summons comes from higher rank.
”Prince Charles and Lady Dee,” as Yeager called them, requested his presence at a White House visit a few years ago, but the dinner reception conflicted with Yeager`s date with an elk. Sorry, Your Highnesses, the general is ”committed,” which is Glennis` polite way of saying, ”Gone fishin`,”
she said.
”You get a lot of thick-skinned people calling you,” Yeager said. ”It tickles Glennis when these guys call saying they want me to talk to their organizations.
”They`ll offer some huge sum of money, and when she says I can`t make it or I`m busy, they`ll double the fee. She tells them it doesn`t matter what they pay, I don`t give a —-, I won`t come.”
Recently he turned down a request to give a motivational talk to the sales staff of a cigarette company. The general doesn`t smoke and doesn`t have time for anyone who does. (Once a legendary bar-hopper, he no longer drinks alcoholic beverages, he stays away from red meat, and he walks at least three miles a day. He is not interested, however, in writing the ”Chuck Yeager Diet Book.”)
Aside from the fact that the boss wouldn`t trade a day in a duck blind for a $20,000 speaking fee, Yeager Inc. is a public relations man`s dream.
During the Leonard radio show in Chicago last week, Stuart Applebaum, a Bantam Books vice president who plays ringmaster for Yeager`s road shows, sat back in a corner of the studio, looking like the captain of a company Learjet flying on autopilot.
Applebaum worked with Yeager on promotions for his first book, too, sending him off then in a Piper Cheyenne 400 LS airplane setting assorted airspeed records as he transformed his book tour into a barnstorming cross-country flight.
”It`s just a question of pointing him and Col. Anderson in the right direction,” Applebaum said of the current tour. ”Anytime we get Chuck to do promotions we are lucky. Sales shoot up because people just like him so much, they like what he stands for.”
”Chuck`s humor can be a little rough, but you never take it personally,” Applebaum added.
The book publicist speaks from the experience of a wounded veteran. If there is ever a Purple Heart awarded for P.R. under fire, Applebaum should get it. Tall and pale and from New York, he presents a very tempting target for the rabbit-punch wit of Yeager, who manages to refer to him mostly as
”gawddam Applebaum.”
”I don`t take it personally,” the punching-bag publicist said. ”I`m supposed to be the pain in the neck urging him to always do more. But I will admit one thing: I got a haircut for this trip with him. It was a little overgrown, and I knew he would be ragging me about it in his own inimitable way.”
Yeager`s keen eyes, which were known to spy an enemy plane 50 miles away in the air, found an alternative target: a spot on Applebaum`s shirt.
”He said that he hoped this second book would be a best seller, too, so Bantam would buy me a new shirt.”
After the WGN appearance, the Yeager contingent headed up Lake Shore Drive in the Cadillac DeVille d`Elegance of Dennis Frisch, operator of Chicago Media Tours.
It was time for a little R&R at the Lincoln Park Gun Club at Lake Michigan and Fullerton Parkway.
Yeager and Anderson had spotted the gun club on a walk from the Mayfair Regent Hotel, 181 East Lake Shore Dr., to Belmont Harbor.
The two country boys were impressed that a city could offer such an attraction-fighter pilots train in skeet shooting because it teaches them how to lead a target-but didn`t think much of its surroundings, Yeager said.
”I said, `Andy, how would you like to live in the city like this,` and he said, `I `spose you could always take a sleeping bag up on the roof.` ”
On the way to the club, Anderson predicted the results of the shooting contest that was sure to follow: ”He`ll whip my butt,” he said of Yeager.
”There are a lot of shooters in the world who can outshoot him in skeet, but in the field he has few equals. I have outshot him a couple times, but you usually know who will come out of the field with the most birds.”
At the gun club, where Yeager and Anderson were received like visiting royalty, the general borrowed a 20-gauge over-and-under shotgun from River Forest veterinarian Douglas Hammer. Anderson was handed a Remington 1100 12-gauge shotgun by club employee Judy Magnus.
With the unfamiliar artillery in hand, Yeager hit 23 of 24 skeet targets traveling through the air at 60 m.p.h., with a 20-knot wind off Lake Michigan. Anderson nailed 15.
”Didn`t I tell you, he`d wax my tail,” said Anderson, who noted that he now must wear reading glasses, while Yeager`s extraordinary vision is still unaffected by age.
Later, however, as the two were leaving their limo at O`Hare International Airport, Anderson plotted his quiet revenge. Earlier in the day, the two had been given gift cases packed with high-quality fishing lures.
”Send me the best one,” Anderson said to the driver, when Yeager was out of range.
But there are a lot of downed Luftwaffe pilots who`d attest to the fact that Chuck Yeager is a hard guy to get one up on. As Anderson carried his bags to the terminal entrance, Yeager approached the driver.
”Look and see which one has the most lures in it and mail it to me,” he said with a cunning grin. ”That`s mine.”
