In the late 1950s when the Old Harbor Life Saving Station was still on North Beach, it was owned by a man named Howard Rose. Mr. Rose lived in or near New Rochelle, NY and very often would fly his single engine Cessna out to his “castle” on the beach.

Apparently Mr. Rose was known for crashing his planes periodically so no one was surprised when he landed on the beach one day, didn’t see that a piling (telephone pole) was buried in the row of seaweed at the high tide line and hit it. He wiped out the landing gear and flipped the plane over. To the best of my knowledge, he was not injured. At least not seriously.

Because North Beach doesn’t exactly lend itself to quick, easy access for the purpose of plane removal, the insurance company sought bids to “walk” a crane from the Nauset Beach parking lot to the crash site. A distance of about 10 miles.

The insurance company only got 2 bids. They got one from Eddie Crowell (Crowell Construction, Inc.) in South Dennis. They got the other from Fred W. Crowell Construction in Harwich Port. Each one bid over $1,000.

Back in the late 1950s that was a lot of money, so the insurance folks reached out to the Orleans Police Department to see if they knew someone who might do it for less money. Police Officer Russ Boyer knew that I had been towing on the beach for a couple years.

Actually I had set up a truck for towing on the beach since the only alternative to removing a disabled vehicle from the beach was to have Judah Eldredge or Herb Wilcox use their Dodge Power Wagons to winch them 10 miles up the beach. Very time consuming, not to mention expensive. With my truck, I could just hook them up and go.

During my senior year in high school I lived on the beach, sleeping under the truck. (it had a lot of clearance which was really handy when it rained.) I did all kinds of repair work on the beach buggies down there and, in return, they fed me and took me under their respective wings.

Anyway, Officer Boyer stopped by my workplace (Bill’s Sunoco in Orleans) one day and asked me if I wanted to bid on the plane’s removal. I said I would take a look at it and let him know the next day.

If you are unaware of the name Tommy Dennison then you haven’t lived on Cape Cod very long. Tommy, as everyone local knows, was the only man in Massachusetts in the 20th century to be convicted of piracy, which carried a sentence requiring he be hung by the neck on Boston Common. Instead, he ended up being fined a hundred dollars.

I was hanging (not literally) with Tommy quite a bit back then so I called him and asked him to ride down the beach to check out whether we could do it or not. Like me, Tommy didn’t simply accept that we might not have the capability to tackle something like this. Off we went.

When we got down there, Nathan “Than” Higgins, (caretaker for Howard Rose) had already removed the wings and had placed them on racks that he had built on his pickup truck. The rest of the plane was intact. The landing gear was wiped out but there was enough left to attach a winch cable to.

My truck was a 1950 Ford ½ ton pickup with a flatbed body that I had built. Underneath the decking of the flatbed I had created a box lined with re-bar and had poured about 800 pounds of concrete for ballast which gave incredible traction on the beach since the weight was directly over the rear axle. On the flatbed deck, tight up against the back of the cab, I had mounted a 5 ton Beebe Bros. winch. It had to be hand cranked but worked very well.

Tommy and I both felt we could do this easily so we headed off the beach to contact Officer Boyer.

It probably would be only fair, in the interest of full disclosure, to state here that I was slightly under the legal drinking age of twenty-one (by 4 years±) AND it is possible that there might have been some alcohol involved in some of our individual and collective thinking.....just saying.

I contacted Officer Boyer and told him that we would do it for $100. He asked if I was serious. I said yes so he said he would pass it along. Neither Tommy or I expected that they would accept the bid so we put it in the back of our minds. The next day Officer Boyer notified me that the insurance company accepted my bid and that we should proceed with the job as soon as possible. I contacted Tommy and we discussed what we should take for equipment.

After much thought (remember the full disclosure) we decided that the extent of our extra equipment should be limited to one 12’-2" x 12" to be used as a skid. We gathered one up and headed down the beach. When we got down to the plane, “Than” suggested that we use some blocking to block out the springs because half ton truck springs probably wouldn’t handle the weight of the plane. He cut some blocks, we stuck them in and we were ready to go.

Loading the plane was easier than we anticipated. We set the 2 x 12 in place and cranked the plane up onto the flatbed. We continued winching it onto the truck until the fairing on the nosecone of the engine just touched the back window of the cab. That was okay except for one thing. There was so much overhang that when we tied the plane down, the front wheels of the truck lifted off the ground. We knew that this was way too easy so far.....oooops!

Tommy’s dad had a small junk yard. I had spent a great deal of time there so I was really familiar with what was in there. Tommy confirmed that there was a truck in there that had the same cab as mine and that it was in good condition, including the glass. Problem solved.

I winched the plane’s nose cone right through my back window until the fairing wedged between the top and bottom of the window frame. That brought the weight forward enough that the front wheels stayed on the ground by themselves.

With two volunteers sitting on the front fenders to keep the wheels on the road enough to steer, we headed off the beach. It wasn’t fast because it was very bumpy but we made good progress until something started slowing us down.

It seems that I had some air in the brake lines. One of those lines ran kind of close to the exhaust system which heated the brake fluid, expanding the air in the lines which, in turn, applied brake pressure. Every few miles we would have to stop and let a bit of brake fluid out to relieve the pressure so we could continue.

Once we got off the beach and into the Nauset Beach parking lot, we got a police escort and headed for Chatham Airport. It wasn’t a fast trip but we finally got there and Wilfred Berube, airport owner/manager instructed us to back the truck into the main hanger. I did so and airport personnel quickly rigged the plane for lifting.

They lifted the plane off the truck and I drove it outside where we were told to wait. Shortly, the insurance company adjuster came out and handed me a $100 bill. Tommy and I looked at each other, I tore the bill in half, kept one and gave the other to Tommy.

We drove directly to Fuller’s Package Store in Orleans, gave owner Reggie Higgins both halves and told him what we wanted and we didn’t need change. He did. We immediately drove back down on the beach and didn’t come back until Reggie’s box was empty.