TIBOR THE TERRIBLE
“All should strive to learn before they die,
what they are running from, and to, and why.”
Tibor arrived in Montreal penniless and speaking only Slavic languages, yet well before I knew him he’d established a chain of studios specializing in child photography and become modestly wealthy. This despite his being a demonstrably average photographer who’s very appearance tended to frighten children, and even small dogs. He’s my best example of someone you have to love, even while they’re filling you with dread of whatever they might do next.
As an adolescent in the Sudetenland when the Nazis invaded, Tibor ran for his life with hoards of others into Russia, and a few weeks later was learning to fly Yaks. Soon, the way he told it, some visiting general demanded a demonstration just when all the ‘real’ pilots had… become unavailable. Since he was about the best they had at the moment, though still in training, he was called on to exhibit skills they all wished he possessed.
He did okay until the landing part. By way of remediation, Tibor was given thirty days in the brig to think it over before climbing back in the cockpit. Presumably that would teach him not to make any more bad landings! Little could those commanders have suspected that half a century later bad landings would be Tibor’s specialty…
He was spinning this yarn the day we met, while getting us stuck in traffic — in a town so small there was controversy about whether to install that county’s first stop light. I sat beside him in his mile long ‘70s Continental as he accomplished what I would have thought impossible before I saw him do it, simultaneously blocking both lanes of the only through street. Horns were blaring from left and right, and I was wishing I could crawl under the seat as he concluded his tale with the triumphant words, “Should have been dead fifty years ago, I don’t give a s- -t.”
Tibor flew from our field for several years and always displayed the most abysmal judgment, consistently landing his Cessna like a glider, but his glider like a Cessna. He once stalled in so high and so short that his tailwheel fell off from the impact before he coasted through those blue lights onto the end of pavement. Took a friend up once, a power pilot who’d never been soaring, got them out of range and was gliding back too slow in sink when - really, I wouldn’t make this up - his guest convinced him they were falling short and took over! Speeding way the heck up was what it took, and they reached the runway on a straight-in glide. Tibor got quite a kick out of that.
Then one year he wanted to attend an airshow an hour’s flight away, and went there in his decrepit 150. He arrived a little late and the event had already begun, so of course the airport was officially closed. But Tibor just flew on in as usual, without calling his approach… Representatives of the FAA happened to be in attendance, duh, and that’s when Tibor was found to have never held any kind of American flight certificate!
So just when we all were sighing relief that he’d not be terrorizing us anymore, we got a call — from Tibor. Said he was finally ready to throw down some real dough for formal instruction, and I would have the honor of being his instructor. Oh joy.