Fritz Kahl This is Me

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1. 1. Pecos Enterprise, News

   www.pecos.net/news/archives/10 - [Cached]

   Published on: 10/18/1996   Last Visited: 6/8/2006

   Marfa Mayor Fritz Kahl brought greetings from the 19-member merit

2. 2. First,

   www.bigbendquarterly.com/marfa - [Cached]

   Published on: 7/1/1988   Last Visited: 2/16/2002

   Fritz Kahl
   
   They appear each night in the desert near Marfa. Bright, pulsating lights that move about. No one has explained what they are - yet
   
   ...
   Fritz, he said, had been the flight instructor at the old airbase and had been residing in Marfa ever since.
   
   ...
   Fritz wasn't in. I was told by his helper that he was out counting ducks along the Rio Grande with the game warden and would return within the next hour. I sat and waited. Finally I heard the sound of a light plane landing, and I watched a burly man with a cap on his head emerge. Fritz Kahl has been a resident of Marfa since 1943, when he came to the air base to train pilots. Since then, he had become the owner and operator of the Marfa Airport, a business that enjoys its biggest activity when the border patrol planes land and take off.
   
   "When I came here as an instructor, we heard people talk about the lights," he told me. "Thirty years ago, it was a lot easier to see the Marfa lights, because there weren't as many lights out there competing with them. There were no electric lights back then and no four-wheeled vehicles, so the lights were easier to see. There are Marfa lights, but they've been overrated and over-publicized. So many asinine stories have come out."
   
   For instance?
   
   ...
   Fritz delivered this remark with a thoroughly disgusted air. What, I asked, about published re ports of pilots dropping flour sacks to mark the location for investigators to fine the next day? Fritz acted insulted when I asked this.
   
   "No flour sacks were dropped," he scoffed. "I've been either instructing at or running this airport for the past thirty years. If someone would have flown out and dropped flour sacks, I would have known about it." Fritz seemed adamant in his denials of any supernatural cause for the lights, yet he admitted that they exist. What, I asked, did he believe they really were, and why hadn't he ever found out for sure? Fritz let out a long chuckle. With a grin, he told me, "The reason people come to see me about the lights is be cause I chased them in an AT-6 air plane. Me and another pilot got a fix on them and tried to fly to that spot, but when we got up in the air, we couldn't see them. I kept getting lower and lower, until finally the fellow in the back seat started shouting at me to get out of there because we were so low he could see the yucca plants." So one can't see the lights from the air? "I have never seen them from the air. A few years back, Sul Ross University did a study on the lights and tried to find out what they were. I had three people in a plane with me, and one of them was the editor of the Alpine news paper.
   ...
   Fritz gave him clearance and sat back down. I then asked him just what he thought the lights were.
   
   "Well, the logical explanation would seem to be either static electricity or geophysical activity. I think the Marfa light are a local natural phenomenon. Whatever they are may not be that unusual, but they only appear here, not in other countries. Or it may be that they are something common to other parts of the world but very unusual to see in this country. "We have the right conditions for St. Elmo's fire in the spring of the year. It even appears on the horns of cattle.
   ...
   Fritz offered a last comment: "I still say the best way o see the lights is with a six-pack of beer and a good looking woman. But if you still want to talk to someone else about the lights, you need to see this geologist who lives in town. He drives right up to them." "I've seen those light ever since I was a little kid," commented Murphy. "They got to be phosphorous. Can't be nothing else."
   
   ...
   "You go see Pat Keeney," said Fritz, ignoring Murphy.
   ...
   I was be ginning to see why Fritz Kahl had given up the idea of pursuing the lights long ago. I was also beginning to see why the residents of Marfa were satisfied with the fact that the lights were there and that was all they needed to know about them.
   
   So that leaves me here at my computer. I had intended to get good photos of the lights from close up so as to explain the mystery. I was able to accomplish only half of what I set out to do, but I still have a good story to tell. My final conclusion is that the lights are there.

3. 3. Calendar

   www.flygliders.com/calendar.ht - [Cached]

   Published on: 7/22/2007   Last Visited: 10/15/2007

   Contains good advice on oxygen, landout kits radio antennas and more, from the handout of the 1960's created by legendary Marfa Contest Manager Fritz Kahl. An essential checklist for flying in west Texas.