I have a U.S. Mail story that is a bit unique. I was assigned to HMX-1 which is the Marine Corps squadron that supports “Marine One” the helicopter that transports the President of the United States.
My mother use to ship me cookies about once a month. Since the hangar where I worked was a high security area you had to open up any box so the guards could inspect the contents before you could take it into the hangar.
I was a HUEY crew chief. One day right before I was schedule to leave on a flight, Security called to tell me I had a package. My flight was in about ten minutes so I ran over, took the brown paper off the package, opened the box and showed the guards it was full of chocolate chip cookies. Since I was so close to my departure time I took the package out to the HUEY and stuffed everything under the seat. A few minutes later the pilots showed up and we decided since it was such a nice day we were going fly with the doors “back and pinned”. That means that we were going to fly with the doors wide open. I always enjoyed flying that way. It was great to be flying around Washington DC with the doors wide open with the only thing keeping you from plunging to your death is a seat belt or a gunner’s belt.
That day all I had was a seat belt. About 15 minutes into the flight, as we headed up the Potomac River, I caught something out of the corner of my eye flying out of the helicopter. Then I looked down to see the round metal tin that my mother had used to pack my cookies, vibrating across the floor of the helicopter getting ready to head out the door. What had flown out the door was the brown paper that was around the package.
Since the door was wide open, and we were about 1,500 feet above the earth, I could not unbuckle my seat belt so I could grab my cookies. I slammed my foot down on top of the cookies and slowly started sliding the cookies back towards me so I could grab them. Of course by now the pilots were on the ICS asking what was going on. I had to tell them to hold on for a second. I eventually got the tin close enough to my seat so I could grab it.
That night I got to call home and tell my mother a story about how her cookies almost took out the tail rotor of a Marine Corps helicopter over Washington DC. The worst part of the story… I had to disclose to the pilots I had cookies aboard.