Crock’s Thoughts

First days are supposed to be memorable—at least in a good way. First day of school? That mix of nerves and excitement. First day at work? New shoes, fake confidence, and coffee breath. One of my early aviation interviews? Let’s just say… grand theft radio.

I was interviewing at a freight operator called Southern Air Transport. Yes, that Southern Air Transport. The one that may or may not have been a CIA front… 🤷

Psst… okay, ummm… scoot a little closer and I’ll let you in on a teeny-tiny secret. 🤫 It was closely tied—like, I could tell you more, but then I’d have to kill you—to the CIA. Seriously, do a little digging on the Iran-Contra affair and suddenly the whole thing feels less “freight operator” and more Tom Clancy novel audition.

So, anyway… I showed up early, résumé freshly printed—yes, back before LinkedIn or, really, the Internet. We still used printers back then. My tie was straight, and I was doing my best to look like someone who knew exactly what they were doing. I even wore my coolest aviator sunglasses. For good measure, and maybe a few brownie points, I went for that secret CIA agent look, too.

I parked my Jeep, locked it up, and walked inside feeling cautiously optimistic. Well, kinda sorta…

The interview itself went well. We talked all the normal stuff: airplanes, experience, yadda yadda… I even nodded thoughtfully at all the right moments. Things were looking promising.

Then I walked back to my Jeep, still riding that post-interview confidence. You know… tie slightly loosened, thinking yeah, nailed it! Well, hopefully. Until you start overthinking things, and then, maybe I didn’t nail it.

That’s when I discovered it! That rut-row-Raggy moment! Someone stole my radio!

Not the whole Jeep. Not the wheels. Not even something dramatic like the ratty old seats. Just the radio! Ripped out and gone, leaving behind a sad, hollow dashboard.

I stood there staring at the empty hole, doing that slow head tilt people do when your brain refuses to accept reality. Of all the things to steal… an old Jeep radio? I mean, congratulations! You now own half of a very questionable sound system. One that’s been rained on more times than a county fair corn dog, mostly shorted out from the top down, and mainly only played an AM polka station on a loop.

Oh, and let’s not forget the crown jewel: a cassette deck! That’s right! Somewhere out there, a thief is cruising around thinking, “Sweet! Now all I need is a 1989 Bon Jovi tape and a pencil to rewind it.”

So, there I was… freshly interviewed at a company with a spy-movie backstory, standing in the parking lot staring into the hollow dashboard of my Jeep like, “Wow! Is this part of the background check?”

For a fleeting moment, I wondered if this was some kind of top-secret CIA initiation test. “Let’s see how the candidate handles loss under pressure,” I imagined them saying, somewhere behind tinted glass. Maybe it was an undercover ritual. You know, aviation’s way of weeding out the weak. I don’t know… but what I did know was that my beloved 1980s polka-playing radio had vanished into the classified abyss!

To this day, I’m still not sure if I got the job because I impressed them… or because they figured anyone who loses a radio during an interview clearly needs a win.

Either way, I got the job. And I learned an important lesson that day: always remove your radio before interviewing with the CIA. Just saying… 🤷‍♂️ 😂