“Hi. My name is Steve Keshner, and I’m an attractive female bookkeeper.”
The woman on the phone laughs, “One Moment.”
“Hello, this is Will Deals, can I help you?” A man’s gravelly voice.
“Hi. I’m Steve Keshner, I’m an attractive female bookkeeper.” More laughter, from Will this time.
That’s how in 1983 I came to meet Mr. William Macon Deals, Will Deals, an even sleazier fellow than me. His illegal, sexist ad in the Jacksonville Times Union and Journal intrigued me:
Aviation Company seeks attractive female bookkeeper.
I had just moved to Jacksonville, Florida with the last of my ex-wives. I was a forty-year-old kid, a loser, selling used cars by day, an Adjunct Professor of Accounting at Jones Business College at night. That is, I was doing nothing, going nowhere. Time to settle down, settle in, get the old life in order.
Though I’m neither female nor attractive, Will Deals invites me to come in and talk about the job. Deals’ Aviation, a flight school, charter outfit, and maintenance facility, was a ragtag affair located in the corrosion corner of Craig Airport.
According to Mr. Deals his bookkeeper had left him, he had no outside accounting firm, and no financial statements for the past seven months. To prevent his life from being too easy, he was also converting his bookkeeping system from manual to electronic data processing.
“You need an accountant, not an attractive female bookkeeper,” I advise. “I can’t afford an accountant.”
“How much are you going to pay your attractive female bookkeeper?”
“Two hundred dollars a week.”
We look at each other for a while, sizing each other up. Deals blinks first, and offers me two hundred a week and flying lessons, to become his attractive female bookkeeper.
“I accept. “Will” I ask, “what led you to advertise for an attractive female bookkeeper?”
“I meet a lot of pretty girls that way,” this real dry with no hint of humor. “Oh.”
That’s how I became “Keshy,” an attractive female bookkeeper, and how I wound up in the aviation business.
The first person Mr. Deals introduced me to was his Chief Flight Instructor, Ms. Madeleine Bruckie. Madeleine had one glass eye and a body odor problem. I later learn that this condition is an occupational by-product of the many trips made between an air-conditioned office and those hot little airplanes. Back and forth all day, sweating, cooling, re-sweating, re-cooling… B.O. Central.
Madeleine would become my first Flight Instructor. She was a remarkable woman, a single-parent who had fallen in love with flying in Ohio, working days as a waitress, and learning to fly at night. As a one-eyed wonder, Madeleine had somehow managed to obtain the waivers necessary to become not only a pilot, but a Flight Instructor as well. She was one tough, competent cookie, Ms. Bruckie.
After meeting Madeleine, I was introduced to the other flight instructors. They were all foreign born kids, in the States to learn to fly, and to eventually try to get flying jobs with any major American carrier. The flying opportunities are far more plentiful in the United States than in Europe. Unlike the rest of the world, we allow foreign pilots easy entrée to fly for American carriers. Most other country’s rules are very restrictive as regards entry into their pilot pool.
When Madeleine took me out for my first flight lesson and taxied me onto the active runway, she told me to firewall the throttle, “go as fast as you can down the middle of that concrete strip.” What a rush. On that first flight, I fell in love with flying, and never wanted to be an attractive female bookkeeper or anything else, ever again.
Madeleine gave me ground school training, before and after each lesson. Leaning over the charts, the center button of her flight shirt would occasionally pop open, encouraged by the weight of one of her remarkable and unsupported chests. Madeleine’s nipple would poke through her blouse, and wink at me. Transfixed, I could never remember which of Madeleine’s eyes was real or glass, and which would catch me staring. I was never caught admiring Madeleine’s “third eye,” but thoroughly distracted, I never learned much from her ground school sessions. I’m sure that if she thinks of me today, it’s as a notvery-bright ground school student, with limited powers of concentration.
I was able to squeeze in flight lessons between work assignments, and I was fortunate enough to be taught not only by Madeleine, but by Maxellende DeCorte, “Maxie,” a brilliant, young French aviatrix; Oystein Aaro, capable in the air, a dick-led Norwegian disaster on the ground; Stigo Brandvik, a wild and crazy Norwegian guy; and Perry Dervas, a Greek with attitude.
The day came that I finally soloed, and my heart was in my mouth. Alone, I was flying alone…what a feeling, initial niggling fear immediately washed away by a flood of freedom. After I landed (I never wanted to come back down), all these wonderful young pilots took part in the post-solo ceremony. Using a pair of office shears, they cut off the back of my shirt, the traditional “clipping of the wings” in aviation. They all signed and dated my torn shirt-back, and presented it to me, along with a Polaroid of the occasion.
After catching up his accounting mess with Maxie’s help, at Will’s request I created a “Rembrandt,” which enabled Deals to con the purchase of a flight school on Jekyll Island, Ga., as well as the avgas concession. I was now very popular with Mr. Deals, his wife Nancy, and all the flight staff. That popularity was not to last long…what have you done for me lately?
Mr. Deals fired me after only a few months on the job. I discovered that Will was cheating his lease-back owners. Creating phony maintenance invoices, he was charging them for parts and repairs that their aircraft never received. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind deceiving institutions, banks or insurance companies, but these owners were people we all knew and liked. I was fired a few days after confronting him with the evidence of his fraud. “There must be some mistake Keshy, I’ll look into it.” Two days later, I was let go with the explanation that I was now superfluous.
I was no longer an attractive female bookkeeper, receiving free flying lessons. Now I had a real problem…addicted to flying, an expensive pursuit, I’m unemployed, broke, and another of my marriages is coming apart.
During the months as Keshy the bookkeeper, I’d ingratiated myself to all the flight staff. Straightening out their payroll problems, doing their personal income tax returns for free, even getting many of them a pile of money back from prior years’ mis-filings.
Most importantly for these foreign flight instructors, I was good at finding them “husbands” or “wives” to marry, dealing with their Petitions for Permanent Residency, and going with them to their meetings with the Immigration Department. These sham-marriages allowed them to stay and to work in the United States.
By this time, my four-year marriage to Ilsa had come apart. Her inability to tell the truth about anything, significant or not, overcame my positive feelings for her warm affection and intelligence. I didn’t love her anymore.
On the road again, I’m on my own again. Another failed marriage, no career, no savings, no credit…now how do I afford flying?
I moved in with Captain “0” and Stig Brandvik, “Stigo.” Suddenly, my flying problems were solved. Oystein and his buddies were all working two jobs. They were flight instructing during the day, and flying night freight jobs in twin engine Navajos and Aerostars. Always exhausted, they would take me along these nights to do the actual flying, while they slept in the seat nest to me. These guys were multi-engine flight instructors. So they were getting paid to sleep, and I was flying twin engine, complex airplanes, logging lots of hours, and I was doing them a favor. They were also signing my log book, the record of hours I needed toward my ratings…okay!
My days were spent begging, borrowing, and stealing flying time…. anything to build flying hours towards these ratings. Eventually, I had enough hours logged to test for my licenses: private pilot, instrument rating, commercial, multi-engine and flight instructor. After accumulating fifteen hundred hours, I was allowed to take, and able to pass my Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) check-ride. I could now legally fly for pay…I had arrived.
Two years had gone by quickly and eventfully. Geri Banion, a good, loving friend I had known for years, did me the favor of falling in love with me, as I had with her. Between Geri’s full time job for the Hamilton Collection, my flight instructing days, and my pizza delivery nights, we were able to afford an apartment together. Marriage seemed like the logical next best step.