First Blog, An Introduction

OK, this is a new blog, probably numbering somewhere up in the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions currently on the Internet.  If you are reading, good for you!  I humbly hope you are interested enough to continue reading this entry and those which will follow over the coming months and years.

My name, of course, is Joe Clark, as noted across the banner above.  I have made my living doing the two things I have loved doing – flying and writing.  I am not a famous writer or pilot, but as I said, I have made my living at the two things I love.  So I am well ahead of the game.

As far back as I can remember I have always liked airplanes and knew I would be a pilot. Similarly, I have been drinking coffee for as long as my earliest memories. The coffee first started as a joke when I was an infant. I was cranky and my dad, who was from Cuba, put some of his Cuban coffee in my bottle. I liked it. Ever since that moment, I have been drinking café con leche, when I could, coffee otherwise.

You might ask how the name Clark comes into play in Cuban society. Well, as it turns out, my ancestors were pirates. Two brothers from England, of which one was my great grandfather seven generations back, acquired letters of marque from the King of England to run wild through the Caribbean. From what I learned, they had a wonderful time chasing Spanish galleons and giving the Spaniards hell. For two years, anyway. After that, one of the brothers decided to return to England. The other, stayed in Havana, Cuba and married Maria Del Pilar Mir on April 21, 1800 in San Francisco de Paula, Regla, Havana, Cuba. If your last name is Clark and you know you have a lineage going back into Cuba, we are related. Every person named Clark, from Cuba, are direct descendants of Thomas and Pilar Clark.

It is my Cuban heritage to what I attribute my natural taste for coffee.

The flying, I don’t where that started. I have always known I would be a pilot. From the moment I was born until I entered school, those were the two constants of my life — aviation and coffee.

When my parents divorced in 1959, my mother settled in Tampa, FL where her brother lived. At the time, and ever since, I have not known what precipitated the divorce; it was, I determined, none of my business. I would have liked to see her remarry, but that was something she did not do. One thing she did do was move her children from Southern Alabama. For whatever her reasons, she decided Tampa was the place to be.

It was from Tampa, living in the approach path to runway 18L, where I would truly come to love flying—and reading—and then writing.  And that is how I got here just now, at 12:24 a.m. on this Thursday morning writing this, the first entry to a new blog.

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© 2010 J. Clark

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