My wife's uncle lives down the road. He did 20 years as a Marine pilot, including two tours in Vietnam, one in Hueys, one in C-130s. Flew missions during the Khe Sanh siege. Stateside he flew one of the two USMC C-9s. In other words, I am in awe of his military record.

He's a farmer since retiring, and we got along pretty good when I was at ASA and Gemini. But when I made it to FDX things changed. I started hearing around the community that he was bad-mouthing me and all majors pilots, telling everyone I work 8 days a month and make $300k a year.

We were BS'ing one day and had a few, and he lit into me about how he used to fly 200 hour months into combat for such and such pay. He's 69 now and I couldn't say much - just got out of there as quick as I could.

I sure can understand some of his resentment and what our job looks like from the outside. But if I could convey a few points, they would be these:

- ~70% of us flew military first;

- Of the remainder, probably 70% of THEM tried to get into military flying and couldn't(including me - Albie's my witness);

- I am in awe of what the military does every day;

- Maybe what we do isn't all back rubs and beer either. I flew 14.1 hours MEM-NRT day before yesterday; I'll do ~14.5 hours KIX-MEM tomorrow. That's twice in 4 days showing up at midnight to start a 16 hour duty day, not to mention crossing 9 time zones twice. Yeah I'm just an RFO. But is still ain't a picnic. I get two days off at home then off to Paris.

This contention has been around since the days of Ernie Gann. Read "Fate is the Hunter." He went to war while his airline buddies flew routes they couldn't have held otherwise.....