When I lived in Alaska we would often roam the main concourse at Anchorage International Airport at night. You didn’t need a ticket for a flight or a reason to be there. We went because it was a place that you could walk around in in the dead of winter in your shirt sleeves. We also went because there was a decent restaurant that served the best Monte Cristo sandwiches I’d ever tasted.
One evening, after devouring my Monte Cristo I was approached by a man maybe a little older than me. He asked my group about the need for a proper ID and something about an airline-issued half-fare card. I think the man might have been Dale Lavon Thomas who on the next day, and at gunpoint, hijacked a Wien Consolidated Airlines 737. He demanded to be flown to Havana. A flight attendant on her first solo trip persuaded the hijacker to return to Anchorage to let off the passengers. The plane then headed for Vancouver before flying on to Mexico City with a flight plan ending in Havana. Dale, sometime mid-flight, had decided he wanted a larger, long-range jet and returned to Vancouver where he was arrested by a Royal Canadian Mounted Police inspector.To a Hijacker who Left this Morning I I saw you I think, it was last night and alone your gentle voice, and soft, asked us, our friends, on the value of proper ID for the use of a borrowed but not possessed half-fare card and you were gentle but alone and perhaps I caught some energy from you. I don’t know what your business was so late at the airport and all you said was that you’ll have the bread by morning and could leave. And now I hear the plane has gone to Cuba and I know it was you, don’t ask me how but maybe your questions or maybe you and your gentle voice, and soft, gave you away, but I know. II Seems like things weren’t going your way seems like you don’t always get what you want seems like you’ll never get up and seems like it’s always over but mostly it never really began. Well, friend, I feel for you. —October 18, 1971
To a Hijacker who Left this Morning I I saw you I think, it was last night and alone your gentle voice, and soft, asked us, our friends, on the value of proper ID for the use of a borrowed but not possessed half-fare card and you were gentle but alone and perhaps I caught some energy from you. I don’t know what your business was so late at the airport and all you said was that you’ll have the bread by morning and could leave. And now I hear the plane has gone to Cuba and I know it was you, don’t ask me how but maybe your questions or maybe you and your gentle voice, and soft, gave you away, but I know. II Seems like things weren’t going your way seems like you don’t always get what you want seems like you’ll never get up and seems like it’s always over but mostly it never really began. Well, friend, I feel for you. —October 18, 1971