Wild Willy

October 30, 2023

Wild Willy, Chelan, Washington in the 1980s
October, 30th, 2023

Back in the 1980s, I was an aircraft mechanic based in Edmonds, Washington on Puget Sound. I also had good friends in Chelan, Washington on the east side of the Cascade Mountains.

My friend Nick ran and owned Chelan Airways which was a floatplane operation flying up and down the 50+ mile length of Lake Chelan.

Nick had a friend named Wild Willy. I think they went to high school together. In any event, Nick and Wild Willy smoked, drank, and liked women very much.

Wild Willy was an aircraft mechanic and had his own little hangar and business out at the Chelan Airport. The airport was up on a bluff probably about 1,000’ above the town and Lake Chelan.

Nick would hire Wild Willy to help me do work on Nick’s floatplanes down at the dock on Lake Chelan so we became friends. The three of us would go to the bars after work and have a few drinks and laughs sharing stories.

I stuck to beer and didn’t smoke. I sure enjoyed the stories. Wild Willy’s name was no lie. He had a Harley Davidson motorcycle and tended to get DUI citations on his way home along the lake road as he rode home.

He crashed it at least once damn near ending up in the lake.

Back in the 1980s, Chelan was full of drugs, mostly cocaine. The workers in the apple orchards, both Mexican and Anglos, would use cocaine to help them work through the day as they picked apples or pruned the trees and did other farm work.

The cocaine also helped with recreations.

Wild Willie had an American Indian girlfriend named Annie. I remember seeing her sunbathing in a bikini at the hangar one afternoon. Annie was completely covered in freckles from head to toe. And I mean thousands of freckles.

Annie had a good figure, brown hair and eyes, and a very kind smile. She was very nice but didn’t talk much.

After working for Wild Willy at his hangar one winter rebuilding an airplane that had crashed in the lake, he owed me about $6,000.

He never paid me. So I packed up my tools and drove home over Stevens Pass to Edmonds.

Years later I got a phone call from Wild Willy. Nick must have given him my number.

Willy had joined Alcoholics Anonymous and one of the steps of the 12-step program to sobriety is to ask forgiveness from all those you’ve wronged.

Of course, I told Willy not to worry about the money he owed me. “Forget it.” I said. “Glad to hear you are doing okay.”

Willy said, “Thanks.” And hung up. I figured he had a lot of phone calls to make.

I never heard from him again.
TJM