I just saw your site dedicated to The Arfons Brothers and Doug Rose and I just had to write you.
My Aunt Mary Glinsky lived down Pickle Road from the Arfons's when they were growing up. She baby sat Art when he was a little baby many times. I had the pleasure of meeting both Arfons Brothers and Doug Rose in the mid 60's when I was out there visiting. Doug Rose was sitting in a wheel chair tuning a jet engine running at part throttle, on a stand and chained to two huge eyebolts in the floor. One of Walt's trucks was parked in front of the engine as a stopper, but my car was behind the truck!
If the eyebolts had broken, the engine, truck, and my car would have been driven clean across the street into a house, and we all would have been toasted!
My cousin Pat told me that when Art got his J79, he told the neighbors it was going to be loud the first time he fired the afterburner. Pat said it destroyed a chicken coop, unoccupied thankfully, and was credited with breaking windows a mile away, when he fired the full afterburner the first time.
Your site brought back some pleasant memories!
8-30-03
Chip, I thought of a few more small anecdotes about the Arfons Brothers and the Pickle Road gang.
My cousin Ed Glinsky told me that many a time they would see one of the Arfons Brothers' home made Allison powered race cars fly past their house at what they were told was in the 140 MPH range. That had to be awesome!
Supposedly one of the planes they bought as surplus was flown by Art under every unfinished bridge on the Ohio turnpike as it was being built too. I'm not sure where I learned that, or indeed if it is true. Art was a gateman on a Higgins landing craft during WWII and had the only Higgins boat in the South Pacific with a motorized ramp.

Thanks again for the wonderful memories!
Richard Coleman