Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

During that time I would occasionally see one or two funky looking high winged, twin engined Aero-Commanders on the tarmac at Van Nuys Airport. Being familiar with their performance and load characteristics, I could not but wonder if they were or had been involved in some import/export business. In those days it was not difficult to fly under the radar, literally, in many spots along the US-Mexican border. (Why else would the radar coverage have been so publicly beefed up?) One would assume that the plane had touched down briefly at some pre-arranged rendezvous point, probably in the Colorado or Sonoran Desert, but, who knows? With high level "air cover" they could have flown directly to Van Nuys, which, at the time, hosted an Air National Guard squadron of C-135s.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."