Tales of Time & Terror #3: Lost Pilots

Publicity photo for DuMont Network's "Air Girl and High Toad," 1984.

The offhand comment was more insightful than Peter knew: "Hey, that looks like a publicity still from an 80's show."

Sometimes a photograph is more than frozen light; sometimes, a photograph is a window to another world. The photo Peter saw, hung in a corner of Earl's office, was one such window.

The engines of time run at different speeds on different worlds; the world Peter saw but did not recognize ran ten years slow. His friend Earl was born in 1959, rather than a decade later. Earl's friend Kim, the young woman in the photo, was born in 1960.

And because time ran slow on this other world, television history was changed...

***

Actually, I can't think of where to take this story tonight - besides, I hate sticking real people into them, even when the original inspiration seems to demand it. I just thought Pete's remark, made in real life last Saturday, was cool.

The photo, of course, is of me and my friend Kim Erickson; I won a professional sitting at a draw, asked Kim if she wanted to sit in, and this amusing shot is the result.

I thought for a few minutes about what sort of title a show with this sort of publicity shot would have, and for some reason the short-lived comedy/drama "Tenspeed and Brownshoe" came to mind. Kim's scarf and my leather jacket brought an aviation theme to mind, thus, "Air Girl." "High Toad" is Admiral Woods' old callsign from back in the Freedom/Bonaventure BBS days. (I still remember Jeff Shyluk's remark: "High Toad? That's a terrible callsign!"

So I figure the show is probably set in the '50s, during the Cold War, and Air Girl is the pilot; High Toad, her mechanic. They probably work for the OSS/CIA, undermining Commie plots, maybe finding a lost kingdom or two along the way. Sounds like fun, huh? The world needs more shows like that.