St Croix Valley Skydiving Club-Osceola, Wis

Nice video. Go Low Bucsko, and Debbie are the only two that I recognized.

No new info on Stickman. I've been laid up in the hospital due to a skiiing accident. I hit a tree and the tree won.

Maybe now that I am home and disabled to some degree, I'll have some time to look into the whereabouts of Stickman.

Pete

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I've been laid up in the hospital due to a skiiing accident. I hit a tree and the tree won.

Pete

Pete hit the treeeee and the, treeeeee won...... Dude!!! You've had your string of bad luck for the year. I told you to stick to safe shit like leaping from airplanes. Proz and I are talking about a bike trip out west this summer. We'll have to stop in and say hello. Do you think you can stay alive that long??

Oh yeah, I can stay alive until then. I'm learning how to play Bingo, checkers, etc, rather than doing things that are really fun, like skydiving, hanggliding, skiing.

Definitely, look me up when you head out west. I'm 20 minutes south of downtown Salt Lake.

Pete

PS: The left broken knee cap shows my plate mounted on my tibia from my hang gliding accident on 7-7-7. And yes, I now believe I am accident prone and will stick to gardening!

To bad about the Skiing accident. Not a good way to spend the spring..

The hard part of this ordeal is not the injury, but rather no longer doing the skydiving thing, etc. I believe we're wired differently from the rest of the population that makes us true adventure seekers.

Sure, I can ignore my parallysis and my knee injury, and go skydiving, but I think my wife would throw in the towel.

Pete

My first jump, tandem, was with Jon Quist the summer of '90. I went back after the fatal accident and took the AFF course. I made 27 jumps all toll and wish I had continued but personal matters wouldn't allow me to continue. I miss it and want to jump again someday. Bill took videos of some of my jumps but I don't know where they are now. Shame I don't have them anymore.

I wish i had taken pictures of the DZ, the partys, the skydives.

As I get older, those memories grow fonder. I'm sure I'm not alone on this issue.

Pete

Jon Quist was my Dad. I'm jumping now down in texas. This next Feb. 2011 will be 20 years since the accident.
I always wanted to hold a little boogie in Osceola. Maybe this next year?

I remember one winter me and my buddy Dave, crashed at his small apartment with at least two loads of skydivers sleeping shoulder to shoulder with the hopes of skydiving the next day in 10 degree temperatures. The living room floor was covered with people and sleeping bags.

His apartment in downtown Osceola, was decorated with skydiving photos and rigs scattered about for some rigging work. On one wall he had a picture of a Lodestar with a prop feathered taken from another aircraft. I asked "Q" what happened. He said, "an engine went out, and we jumped." It took most of the day for the jumpers to hitchhike back to the club house after that jump. God only knows which state they jumped into.

We pretty much took over his apartment. He never complained. His thoughts were, "great! I can skydive tomorrow!" It was soooo cold, but we jumped anyways in the middle of January. As long as the ceiling wasn't too low and there were enough jumpers...(well sometimes there weren't) we skydived.

Rigger Rat, Landrew, Big Mike, Bergy, Miles, always seemed to be there, rain, snow, or shine.

The club house was pretty much a dump, but there were always good tunes playing on the cheap cassette player, which was more important than a clean place to sleep, or pack a parachute.

Good times!

Pete

Hey old man, some one who remembers the good times, and the old friends we used to jump with. I think I can add to the stories from Osceola, even some good Ernie stories. How about the day that Ernie looped his 182 just to see if he could do it. If I remember right, we were sitting on the ground waiting for Ernie to land when he put it into a dive and pulled it over. And how many times did we have to bail out when he ran out of gas. I remember when JQ could not get stable and I threw him out at 7200 and held on to him till he stabled out. Never had a problem after that. Not to many people know the fun of riding the beacon at 2:00 in the morning with a cold beverage in hand. How about the nights at Tommy's with Dick Sykes, Dan Burt, Trombley, the Allens, and of course Art was always in the middle of it all. Of course it was always fun when we got together with Charlies group Mason, Wes, the Quaids. Does anyone remember what they used to call the in jump up there before they move the row of breeding shacks out of there. I think it was only about 100'x100' on a good day. It was always a challenge but good for a free beer from Charlie. Sorry to hear about Art passing away, the man fell like a rock, straight down and fast. And the stories about him, but for another day.

Tommy's (Cascade) has almost as many stories as the drop zone. Don't forget Curt, Rod & Deidre - Black Russians. My getting the ticket for passing on the right in town on my '68 Triumph Bonneville. If I wasn't wearing my jumpsuit I'm sure I wouldn't he wouldn't have stopped me.
Remember jumping at Charlies with the uppers at 30-40kts into the 'clearing'. Next jump the winds went 180. I think I was pretty good putting the PC between the trees.
Me and Mason playing the 'gay' couple in a number of Superior and Thunder Bay bars always makes me laugh. Would probably be funny even today. Others would need to know just how big Mason was to get the humor of him doing a 'limp wristed' Hello there big guy.
Jumping off the balcony at the Thunder Bay hotel during that winter meet - what was I thinking...
Will have to get the old log books out one of these days. Also planning on looking for the slides I've got from jumps and doings on the Osceola airport nad at Art's farm.
Remember the beacon ride and the local cop coming in and asking if we were the one's up there. Wonder if he actually believed me when I told him it couldn't have been us - we're skydivers and wouldn't do anything as unsafe as that. The sight of only a tree or two above the fog, the light sweeping over the fog making them look more like clouds was such a great sight - I want to do it again; right now, right after I grab me another beer. Who's coming...

If I remember, when you were jumping off the balcony at the hotel, didn't the picture of the Queen that was hanging on the wall by the balcony show up missing about the same time, and then just happen to be hanging in the hanger at Osceola the next weekend? The desk clerk did not like us very much that night! Don't forget the nice 6' beer sign that came from one of the Stanton meets. They didn't like us there either if I remember. They thought we were to wild or something. I came across a picture of all of us from about 70 or 71 when we rented the DC3 from St Paul Airport. That was really a site watching that old thing lift off the runway at Osceola. At Charlies it wasn't if you had ever landed in the trees, it was how soon before you landed in the trees.

Am I correct that Earnie got kicked out of Osceola due to too many close calls and went to Baldwin to fly jumpers?

One time I heard he had an engine go bad due to overheating and everyone bailed out. After Earnie landed, he pulled a birds nest from the cowling of the bad engine.

I don't think it was Ernie alone. I always thought he was pretty safe (by my standards at the time) - of course those times I had to land with him... Well, let's just say the sliding it in at a 45 degree slip, 60 degree down, for a short field landing on the grass... Butt pucker time. I do remember saying I'd rather jump.
I think it was more the whole group. Maybe being mentioned a time or few to many at the town meetings. Someone breaking the toilet at tommy's because we locked the door on someone and they put feet on door and pushed back on toilet tank... guess what happened next. We did fix it up - latter in the week. And then there was also lots of spilled beer and laying in the street in front of the Cascade after just the right amount of Black Russians. Then there was the always 'funny'... [maybe latter]
Moving from the airport to Art's farm may have slowed the jumping down and people started going other places. Internal disagreements moved a bunch of people to Baldwin. Can't beat that runway and open area. Moving back to the airport again... Who knows.
I felt Ernie was as safe as most small field jump pilots.
Of course I was only around from '68 to about '83 when the family duties, kids, job travel worldwide for weeks at a time, bad knee, too many high wind/low cloud days go me back on the motorcycle if I felt bored with normal life.

So what is Stickmans real name?

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So what is Stickmans real name?

Fuzzy memory has it as Scott S. (more in a PM)
He's hiding out on Cedar Lake, at Meisters Grill & Bar (Near Star Prairie, WI).
I ran into him last year and gave him my email and web address but haven't heard from him. I believe he said that Matt B. has been in contact by email with some of the St. Croix Valley Skydivers Club members and may have started an informal newsletter/contact list a while ago.
I'll be getting up there 'real soon now' and leave a note at the bar for him if I do not run into him while there.

Thanks for the post mark. So, is it true that Earnie flew his plane into a parked pickup truck at the end of the runway while a couple were making out in the back? It was at nite after a sunset load.

This is another story I'd like to confirm as true, or fiction.

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is it true that Ernie flew his plane into a parked pickup truck at the end of the runway while a couple were making out in the back?

True in that the front wheel smacked into the back of the little pickup cab. The couple in the back (JQ & ?) had just gotten out after I strongly suggested that the truck should be moved off the centerline of the runway. Took a couple of tries to get them out.
We had just seconds before started backing off from the truck as the plane got lower and lower.
The plane cleared the fence, about 10 feet behind the truck, by about 5 feet.
Plane was landing to the west. My car was about a wing span and a half to the south of center line, another was to the north and JQ's truck right on center line - front wheel right into the upper part of the rear window. Couple of minutes before they were atanding up against the rear window watching the plane come in. Very lucky no one hurt and no fire...
I think the plane softly flipped but can't picture it right now. Will probably remember now that it has come up again.

Just another normal day at Art's farm...
That's my story and I'm sticking to it - although there may have been some refreshments involved that I'm forgetting about.

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So what is Stickmans real name?

Scott Staples.. If you hear from him pass my contact info along to him...

Mike Branch AKA Crispy

863.797.5218

Photo of Stickman

Were you up at Osceola the day that a jumper just got done putting students out (I believe that it was Rod) and bailed out himself only to find that he had a static line wrapped around his foot? The only problem with that is that the other end was still attached to the plane. Luckily he was OK and Ernie just happen to carry a hook knife in the plane and all turned out well except for a few pair of soiled shorts. After that I think we all started carrying hook knives. When did stickman start jumping? Trying to figure out if I knew him?

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Were you up at Osceola the day that a jumper just got done putting students out (I believe that it was Rod) and bailed out himself only to find that he had a static line wrapped around his foot? The only problem with that is that the other end was still attached to the plane. Luckily he was OK and Ernie just happen to carry a hook knife in the plane and all turned out well except for a few pair of soiled shorts. After that I think we all started carrying hook knives. When did stickman start jumping? Trying to figure out if I knew him?

Middle seventies I think.. I met him 1976....

Okay, so we got some real older timers on board. Someone painted on the club house roof, "Goofy Lives!" This pertained to the guy that was flying a DC3 in Alaska and went in due to being over loaded with salmon and an engine going out on take off.

Question: What was Goofy's real name?

People would say there's a curse on the Saint Croix Valley Skydivers in that whenever a pilot would get a bigger plane to drop skydivers from, they parished soon afterwards, eg: Robbie, Goofy, and some other pilot that had a Lodestar, aka Loadstall.

Your thoughts?

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Okay, so we got some real older timers on board. Someone painted on the club house roof, "Goofy Lives!" This pertained to the guy that was flying a DC3 in Alaska and went in due to being over loaded with salmon and an engine going out on take off.

Question: What was Goofy's real name?

Gary Hannah. Greg Wirth, also an early-70s Osceola jumper, died in that crash as well.

Glad you enjoyed the ride!

Bob Larson
D1900