the story of a life of a C 131

Peru days anti narcotics. 

It was an LBJ plane. 

The U.S. State Department used a specific Convair 580 (also designated as a VC-131H) for counterdrug and logistics operations in Peru, operating under the bureau of international narcotics affairs. 

This aircraft, registered as N7146X (serial number 54-2815), was transferred to the Peruvian National Police in 1990, where it was registered as PNP-025.

 Registered as N8448H before delivery to the USAF as C-131D 54-2815 in 1954. 

Converted to a CV580/VC-131H in 1966 then to the US Navy in 1978. 

To the Department of State Bureau of Narcotics as N7146X then to Policia Nacional del Peru as PNP-025 in 1990. 

Returned as N7146X and stored at Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ in 1993.

 Left in 1996. To the United States Marshal Service as N723ES then to the IFL Group in 1998. 

Converted to a fire bomber for the Province of Saskatchewan as C-GSKQ in 2008. Still operational in 2025.

Original Airframe: The plane began its life as a U.S. Air Force C-131D.

Conversion: It was heavily modified into a turboprop CV-580 (VC-131H) configuration.

State Department Service: Operated under the Bureau of Narcotics (now the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs) in the Andean counterdrug theater, after which it transferred to Peruvian police operations.
Later Usage and Status

After being returned to the United States in the mid-1990s, the aircraft was subsequently used by the U.S. Marshal Service (registered as N723ES) and eventually underwent conversion to become an aerial firefighting tanker in Canada.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=36421352794146071&set=a.170610946313714

I just learned that the Union Pacific Railroad was created by President Abraham Lincoln, to build a transcontinental railroad connecting the nation

 https://www.up.com/about-us/history

I've seen a lot of Hollywood celebs run for pres, including WC Fields, but never until now seen the Marx brothers for Vice Pres

https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/61/

before the people realized how badly the politicians treated them, the politicians had no reason to fear meeting with people that had pitchforks in hand, and outnumbered the suits

I wonder when the greed and corruption became so well known that the tide turned from respect of politicians to despise. Probably after politicians quit wearing beards. It must have been before Nam. Obviously anyone in New York City and Chicago were familiar with it, I bet that they still teach Tammany Hall in public school.

I would guess the Illinois governor streak of prison sentences isn't over yet, nor California governors facing recall, and the District of Columbia consistently has the highest rate of federal public corruption convictions, followed by Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota, Kentucky, and West Virginia.

There once was a blanket cover up by reporters for the illegal activities of politicians, maybe they were stuck in hero worship mode due to WW1 and WW2, Sgt York, Charles Lindbergh, Chesty Puller, Chuck Yeager,  and Glen Armstrong, etc. But somewhere, things turned to where reporters went out to shine a light on the crimes and shames. 

I suppose it was some time after we stopped electing farmers (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, Carter) and it became only possible to get elected if you were a millionaire without a job. 

https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/393

1974, Cape Lookout, North Carolina Outer Banks. Just another example of rich people (state banking commission) with insider information scamming the govt for millions, 1.869 Million to be exact (in 1973 dollars)(lifelong friend of the state senator, chairman of the state senate committee of natural resources)

According to the article in the New York Times, locals would buy old, cheap cars, put oversized tires on them, and drive them on the islands because transporting four-wheel-drive vehicles was difficult and expensive.

There were no cops, and so there was no registration needed, so the vehicles were simply left when they died, becoming part of the landscape. 

I can verify from life experience that poor people do not pay to have dead cars taken to junkyards.

Karen Duggan, a park ranger assigned to Cape Lookout National Seashore. “I’ve even seen a picture of a Duesenberg out there. When the cars got stuck or no longer ran, they just left them there.”

the Historic Resource Study prepared in 2010 for the NPS confirms that a sizable tract of land near the lighthouse and the Cape was bought for speculative purposes by Charles Reeves, Jr., a local entrepreneur, who had plans for a marina, hotels and airfield

The Reeves House was used to house the film crew for the 1966 TV commercial for Chevrolet Impala

He laid out plans for a sizable second-home development and eventually sold his land for $6500 an acre, which doesn't sound like too bad a price but was probably pretty good for undeveloped rural property in this area. Before the park was created it probably was worth less than 1% of that price.

This rich landowner collected hundreds of junkyard cars, as a beach stabilizer (rip rap) to build up the dunes near his property. 

A lot of locals thought he was just making a show of wanting to develop his property to jack up the purchase price when the government bought it for the new National Seashore. 

In 1966 the Federal government established the Cape Lookout National Seashore, a fifty- fourmile stretch of the Outer Banks from Portsmouth Island to Cape Lookout.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leonandloisphotos/6501573777/in/photostream

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leonandloisphotos/albums/72157602259797157/with/1480632423

The 1,500- 3,500junked cars and the squatter shacks were just the latest residue of a long history of human activity on the islands that became the National Seashore.

A passenger ferry from Harker's Island visits Cape Lookout, but beyond that there are only a few small launches such as the one from Davis serving the area. 

All food, ice, tanks of propane gas, gasoline for beach vehicles and the vehicles themselves must come over in those launches, which can handle only one car at a time. For this reason, an incredible series of automobile graveyards exists on the Core Banks.

 Like nearly all national park areas in the eastern United States, CALO was carved out of privately owned lands rather than out of the comparatively trackless public domain on which most early western parks had been mapped. While most of the permanent residents of the islands had already left by the time the National Seashore was created, protracted land-acquisition conflicts with major property owners like the Core Banks Gun Club and with individuals who owned fishing or vacation cabins remind us that creating the national parks, especially in the east, superimposed Park Service-defined landscapes on vernacular ones.

https://www.nps.gov/calo/learn/management/upload/CALO-HRS-Final-for-GPO_covers.pdf

https://boysontheedge.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/19730912%20Press%20Conf%20Sen.Staton.pdf

https://www.nps.gov/calo/learn/management/upload/Coast-Guard-Station-Boathouse_hsr_508_reduce.pdf

This May 1971 article states that cars were abandoned here due to the 15 dollar each way fee by the ferry, and the car owners opted to abandon the cars and save 15 bucks

By 2013, the round trip ferry price was 80 dollars

https://boysontheedge.com/documents/

It's conjecture, but based on human nature, nothing out of the ordinary to say that the locally rich, making friends with the famous tourists, encouraged more rich out of towners to visit, and be guests (everyone loves to hang with a celebrity, Babe Ruth, Sam Snead, Bob Timberlake and many politicians were guests.) 

Franklin Roosevelt visited the Lodge (where the Mott family found rest and refuge from their strenuous European travels and social obligations) owned by Jordan Mott, son of the inventor of the anthracite coal stove, (one time Mayor of NYC) friend of the Czar of Russia and the German Kaiser, as well as Roosevelt, a titan of industry. https://cabinculturesobx.com/jordan-l-mott-iii-177/  (image above, FDR getting into an ox cart at Mott's Lodge)

and here's one factual story of how that came to be part of the Outer Banks:

Due East of Shell Point of Harkers Island, Edwin Binney built his camp. Binney, the inventor of crayons, developer of effective black-wall tires, won medals at the World’s Fair and was an avid sportsman. 

His daughter, Dorothy, flew with Amelia Earhart on several record-making flights. Their friendship severed as Earhart came to later marry Dorothy’s spouse.

Charles A. Seifert, owner of the Coca- Cola franchise in New Bern, N. C., bought two lots from the Cape Lookout Development Company in 1927 and is thought to have built the present house the following year. His brother David owned a Coca- Cola franchise in Roanoke, N. C., and he may also have had a role in the building’s development and use over the years. Historically, the house was painted red and white and almost from the beginning was given the moniker, “Coca- Cola House” or “Coca- Cola Building.”

So, that's how I spent my last 2 hours, unintentionally discovering more uber rich cabin culture, starting with a post on Rip Rap, the "Camp/Cabin culture" following recent posts on the Adirondack Cabins, and the Marquette private escape, and the Georgia quail hunting, ending with a 66 Impala commercial, and feeling like I made an episode of Connections with James Burke

 https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-publication-of-adventures-in.html

https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2019/05/a-small-place-named-big-bay-that-henry.html

https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2022/03/georgia-quail-dog-wagons-part-of-quail.html

https://www.nytimes.com/1974/10/13/archives/wood-field-and-stream-auto-graveyards-on-core-banks.html

https://archive.nytimes.com/wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/the-secret-buried-cars-of-north-carolinas-core-banks/

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=5112086995478746&set=pcb.5112103175477128

https://npshistory.com/morningreport/incidents/calo.htm

https://www.flickr.com/photos/captainflexible/6929319575/in/photostream/

https://npplan.com/parks-by-state/north-carolina-national-parks/cape-lookout-national-seashore-park-at-a-glance/cape-lookout-national-seashore-driving-on-the-beach/

done for President Truman’s plane, the “Sacred Cow.”

The Douglas Aircraft Company built a special plane for the president with an elevator so the wheelchair bound president could be boarded easily. 

The plane’s official name was “The Flying White House” but it was better known as the Sacred Cow because of its heavy security. 

President Roosevelt used the “Sacred Cow” to go to the Yalta Conference in 1945 to meet with Churchill and Stalin to discuss postwar Europe. This was the only time he used the plane since he died 2 months later. President Truman used the plane during his first 27 months in office.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=2386148155071569&set=gm.2811476045690895&idorvanity=186487028189823

Here's the original design

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1735087839836763&set=gm.819814074857112

President Truman had a Douglas DC-6 aircraft built specifically to use as Air Force 1, and at the suggestion of the aircraft’s pilot, President Truman named it The Independence in recognition of his hometown, Independence, Mo.

The aircraft was painted with the cartoon face of an eagle from cockpit to nose and a wing design on the fuselage.

https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/195804/douglas-vc-118-the-independence/

https://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-one-planes-harry-truman-the-independence-2025-9

https://vintageaviationnews.com/aviation-museum-news/interior-douglas-vc-118-independence-close-temporarily.html

Does anyone else remember some public school history class lesson on the 1930s gas station bathroom cleanliness movement, and who was the woman in charge of that?

 I thought it was Eleanor Roosevelt. I was just fact checking to see what that was about, and verify it, and that's when I discovered that I was wrong. 

A lot of gas station companies made a big deal about marketing their chain of stations as having the certified cleanest... but the 1st lady had nothing to do with that. 

I am/was, under the notion, that Eleanor was on the road on some national tour to make a big deal about gas stations, and their bathrooms, getting with the times, and having clean, hygienic, bathrooms for kids and wives to use. 

After all, us guys are animals, and most don't give a damn where we empty our bladder. Fishing, hunting, trapping, snow showing, hiking, snowmobiling? I've done it all, and when nature calls - we all know, we often are no where near a porcelain fixture

During the Franklin Roosevelt administration, with a significant push from Eleanor Roosevelt, the Works Progress Administration built 2.3 million sanitary outhouses in rural America to combat diseases like hookworm and typhoid fever. 

These outhouses were an improvement on previous designs, featuring a concrete vault below ground, a sealed lid, and screened ventilation to prevent flies. 

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=800346505561657&id=100067589442135&set=a.193762796220034 
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/04/business/gas-station-bathrooms-history

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-07-17-hd-21624-story.html

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/in-search-of-the-roosevelt-outhouse-in-new-england/

Conversely, or ironically, Eleanor Roosevelt High School has almost five thousand students, but bathrooms are often either closed or left in a state that simply isn’t usable. Why? Adult supervision and oversight is obviously lacking, because bathrooms  - and students often using them for smoking, vaping, etc etc. So, the school found that cutting back on the number of bathrooms results in the stalls ONLY getting used for the intended functions, as the long lines and peer pressure don't let clowns screw around instead. 

https://therooseveltreview.org/29709/uncategorized/bathroom-closures-across-campus-update-photos-to-real-examples/

Bobby Jones and President Eisenhower, Augusta 1953, and one simple design of a golf cart.

 

https://www.savacoolandsons.com/item-65053.html

Dang, I meant to post this yesterday... Marine Capt. Joe Foss, a fighter ace who received the Medal of Honor was the reason there's a Super Bowl

Foss receives the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Franklin D. Roosevelt in this 1943 photo as his mother, left, and wife look on.

Foss was hooked on becoming a pilot at a very early age, so determined to fulfill his goal that he hitchhiked 300 miles in 1940 to enlist in the Marine Corps Reserve and enroll in the Naval Aviation Cadet program.

He shot down 23 enemy aircraft during a prolific six-week period in the fall of 1942, and three Japanese planes in January 1943.

Covering 60 missions, his squadron -- nicknamed Foss' Flying Circus -- was credited with 72 confirmed kills, with an impressive 26 attributed to its fearless leader.

 in December 1963, Foss - then the commissioner of the upstart American Football League - sent a letter to his NFL counterpart, Pete Rozelle, to suggest a matchup between the leagues’ respective champions.

"The establishment of a World Series of professional football is necessary to the continued progress of our game if we're to be true sportsmen and not merely businessmen in sports," Foss wrote in his seven-paragraph letter. "Pro football has now attained the status where many regard it as our national sport. What could be more fitting then than for us to match baseball in having an annual classic between the leagues."

Foss’s influence over the birth of the Super Bowl is undeniable. While he was not the only AFL official calling for a championship game against the more established NFL, the leagues were only two months from a merger and less than a year before Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers cruised to victory in the first Super Bowl by the time he stepped down as AFL commissioner in 1966.

https://www.military.com/off-duty/wwii-fighter-ace-and-medal-of-honor-recipient-who-helped-give-america-super-bowl.html

the only Submariner, and motorcycle riding, and humanitarian minded president (his work with Habitat for Humanity and eradication of Guinea worm disease is non pa·reil)

 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10170409866575361&set=pcb.10170409866800361

from 1962-1972 the bare aluminum on the outside of Air Force One (the VC-137C) was so highly polished that they used baking flour as an abrasive to polish it.

Anything more abrasive than flour would scratch the pristine shine they had. 

 ‘And they said that “Gold Medal Enriched” was the best for polishing. 

 ‘So, that’s how scuff marks on the shiny bare aluminum on the outer skin of 27000 and 26000 were removed back when I was a pilot in that wing.’ 

https://theaviationgeekclub.com/89th-airlift-wing-pilot-tells-why-gold-medal-enriched-flour-was-used-to-remove-scuff-marks-of-the-vc-137c-air-force-one/

the government felt it needed new helicopters to transport the Pres off the yard... so it blew 5 billion tax dollars, without checking to see it the expensive waste of dollars new choppers could do the job. They can't.

Instead of verifying that the new bulletproof taxis could successfully operate on the White House lawn... (in the words of Sikorsky's rep: "to validate and ensure the aircraft meets that specific operational requirement) the govt blew 5 billion dollars instead buying 20 new helos that won't be used. 

That's probably 500 million potholes that could have been fixed, or 25000 miles of repaved highways

So... the the Lockheed Martin / Sikorsky VH-92 Patriot has such hot exhaust, it kills the lawn. It's an issue that was initially identified in 2018.

Because of this unrelenting problem, the new VH-92 is only carrying White House officials or Secret Service personnel instead of the president himself and is restricted to landing on paved surfaces, the report said.

Older VH-3D Sea King helicopters will continue to transport Biden from the iconic, traditional South Lawn takeoff spot.

The govt sought to replace these aging aircraft with the newer VH-92 systems under the $5 billion program, and has already secured 20 of them from Lockheed Martin, Sikorsky's parent company.

In early 2021, the Department of Defense's operational testing and evaluations office determined that "the damage was found to be primarily due to engine exhaust, auxiliary power unit exhaust, and discharge of aircraft fluids onto the grass."

https://www.businessinsider.com/new-marine-one-helicopters-cant-carry-president-biden-report-2024-4

For about 40k, they can install a damn landing pad in the White House lawn where for decades helos have landed, and will continue to land, and NOTHING else occurs...... and then they can use the new helicopters... I bet some asshole politician is determined to NOT allow that to happen, and instead, insist on blowing more tax dollars on some other half ass solution

Caroline Kennedy, the girl... in front of Caroline, the Kennedy family private twin engine Convair CV-240

the Kennedy family bought the plane in 1959, and donated it to the Smithsonian in 1967

https://www.si.edu/object/sweet-caroline%3Aposts_857e8b644ce623e2d40168e0daaa661a

https://kennedy-photos.blogspot.com/2013/02/page-2.html

how dang cute, running to meet his dad who's getting off the helicopter on the South lawn.

that's pretty adorable. 

Notice the tire? Hence, falls into my " things with wheels that are cool" zone. 

https://kennedy-photos.blogspot.com/2013/02/page-2.html

the luxury of an Olds for the motorcade of Jackie Kennedy in Pakistan 1962. She seriously did a LOT of publicity good will visits in so many other countries that no 1st lady has even tried to do since

https://kennedy-photos.blogspot.com/2013/02/page-2.html

You can read all about her travels and vacations in the book by her secret service agent, Clint Hill, 

My Travels with Mrs. Kennedy  https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/travels-with-mrs-kennedy_clint-hill_lisa-mccubbin-hill/35615840/item/56079584  I read it, it's a real good look at history BY the guy who was there. Not by someone researching what happened

great photo of that cool old style of helicopters I like the design of

1961, Jackie and daughter Caroline use the Army to give them a ride at taxpayer expense to their horse ranch. 

Yeah, waste of taxpayer dollars so the elite can enjoy the lifestyle of the megawealthy, instead of paying for schools to get text books. Seriously. It boggles my mind how much money is wasted by politicians in lifestyle stuff like this instead of filling potholes, fixing bridges, funding the education system... etc. 

Great photo, but, serious waste of money. Kids can't get a good satisfying lunch in public grade school? How much did it cost for the motorcade, it's security detail, the fuel, etc? Could have paid for a month of better meals in any school. 

https://kennedy-photos.blogspot.com/2013/02/page-2.html

JFK's 61 Lincoln Bubbletop limo... in Peru

https://kennedy-photos.blogspot.com/2013/02/page-2.html

publicity moment for the press, as it had just arrived, and they are demonstrating how it's adaptable having a hard top, or bubble top, and below... that the parade seat elevates the dignataries

https://kennedy-photos.blogspot.com/2013/02/page-2.html

JFK in a Studebaker? Dang... that's a lot less prestigious than that drop top Lincoln. In fact, I looked around, and could find no other examples of JFK in anything less prestigious than a Ford

Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1960... pretty sure

https://aadl.org/aastreets/site14c/aastreets_motorcade#comments

that's not a blizzard of snow, it's just more confetti than I've ever seen in a parade

this was Mexico City, 2 million people lined the route to shower JFK and Jackie, as they were the first Catholic couple to lead the USA, and visit Mexico, where Jackie spoke fluent speeches in Spanish. 

And without the confetti