Undocumented Procedure

by Brian Christofferson

In a rural area in northwest Montana, a couple often left the hot tub for bed when the mail plane flew over their house on its way towards the state capital.
Tom, a beekeeper and apiary inspector, referred to the mail plane pilot as "10 o'clock Charlie," signaling to Tom to call it a night. There were other, less flattering descriptions of the footprint left by the noisy Aero Commander on its nightly rounds.

Undocumented Procedure is a glimpse into the world of that pilot flying the mail run in the mid to late eighties.

It is a love story about a pilot who met a psychologist.
"I am just crazy about her."
He wonders, no, he hopes that if she knew, she might say, at the very least;
"You are a sad case of human detritus. However, 40 or 50 years of intense personal therapy may just right your rudder."
The book tells part of the tale of three young children who resulted from the union of those two opposites.

The story is also an incremental tragedy, it details the deaths of ten pilots. The hero learns or determines, in his own mind, the cause of each of the crashes that took his friends. He struggles not to make the same mistakes and spends his time in the cockpit developing methods and procedures to stay alive.

348 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 8, 2014

About the author

About the profile photo: at the tail end of the first book in the Montana Pilot series, "Something you need to know About Pilots," comes a boy-meets-girl scene where a newly hired airmail pilot is doing dishes to pay for his dinner. A lovely lass, a friend of the cook, passes through the kitchen and with a sweet smile says, “Hello.” As she disappears, the fly boy chokes out, “Hello!”
Later that night, as the pilot takes off into the Montana skies to deliver the mail, the young lass may have gone out for a night of dirty dancing, but she soon surrenders to the man who would wash her dirty dishes for the next 40+ years.
The Hardy Boys provide the hook in grade school and reading becomes the primary inside pastime with time out for Gunsmoke on Sunday nights. Ian Fleming makes the teen-age years even more exciting and when the James Bond flicks make it to the local theater, life transforms into unbearable deliciousness.
Following a stint in the Air Force during the Vietnam era with Heller and Vonnegut as guides, the foundation is laid for the Montana Pilot series by a marriage, the sprouting of a family and a thirty-year career as a professional aviator.