We have a neighbor who is a young adult. I don’t know his exact age, but I think he is in his twenties. We often talk about gardening with him and we have gotten to know his mother and his maternal grandparents during the time that we have lived here. His grandmother has a small greenhouse operation from which we purchase our tomato plants and some of our annual flowers. Another thing I know about this young man is that he is in the same line of work as his mother. In a recent conversation I learned that he will be working on Labor Day while his mother has the day off even though they work for the same company. He will be taking advantage of the extra pay for working a holiday. She has more seniority and therefore has more days off than he. Our conversation with him sparked a conversation between my wife and I about the different options for meaningful work and a workable economic path for young adults in today’s culture.

When we were High School students, there were several options for our classmates upon completion of secondary education. Some went into the military, though there were more military options for men than women in those days. Some went to college, which is the path we followed. Some went into apprenticeship programs offered by several trades. Some followed their parents into family businesses. I have a high school classmate who recently retired from a retail store that now is run by his daughters. His entire working life was in the same store, in the same building, as had been his father’s career. His grandfather founded the store some eighty years ago.

I had the option of joining my father’s business. He had taught me how to fly and I was a licensed pilot. I hadn’t pursued advanced ratings, but he would have fully supported me in doing so. Had I wanted to focus on the farm machinery side of the business rather than the flying, there would have been a job for me in that business, too. I wasn’t pressured, however. My father was supportive of my education and proud of my educational accomplishments. After I had completed my degrees, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the college from which I earned my undergraduate degree. Our shared degrees was an important bond between us.

So I became a minister. I never lost my interest in aviation, however. When we were called to our first parish, in North Dakota, I became a bit of an airport bum. I would spend some of my spare time at the airport, talking with the pilots, looking at the airplanes and such. I couldn’t afford to own an airplane at that time, but I rented one from time to time and continued to fly as a hobby. I would occasionally fly to a church meeting, but it wasn’t really practical transportation for that phase of my life.

One of the airplanes that came to our rural airport on a fairly regular time in the summer was especially fascinating to me. It was a repurposed T-28 armored airplane that had been repainted from its military colors and bore the registration N10WX. I loved to talk to the pilot and hear about its missions. The airplane was operated by the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in cooperation with the National Science Foundation, and the Institute for Atmospheric Sciences for the federally funded National Hail Research Experiment (NHRE). It was a cloud seeding airplane, equipped with systems that fired pyrotechnics into storm clouds. The small explosions aerosolized silver iodide. When everything worked right, the silver iodide caused the moisture in the clouds to freeze more quickly. The result was more hail stones that were much smaller than what otherwise would have fallen. The airplane was operated by SDSM&T from 1969 to 2005.

By the late 1970’s when I became familiar with it, it had earned a few hail dents in its armored surface. Of course any on flying surfaces had been quickly repaired, but there were a few “battle scars” on the airplane. The airplane was designed to take much more intense turbulence than the light aircraft I flew. I couldn’t help but recognize that it had a back seat which was empty when it went on its missions. The plane had, after all, began its life as an Air Force training plane. I tried several schemes to get a ride back there. Of course the leaders of the program were well aware of the limits of the insurability of such a venture. Insurance companies weren’t going to tackle the liability of having a passenger on dangerous missions. I was at that time working part time for a radio station, and I tried to convince them that it would be good press to have me go on a ride. Ours was a very small market station, however, and the project didn’t need local press. I got to sit in the cockpit on the ground, but I never got to fly in that plane.

I remembered that airplane as I read an article about the on-going Alberta Hail Suppression Project. There are still major projects that engage in cloud seeding. The Alberta program operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week from June 1 through September 15. It employs a team of 13 pilots flying five aircraft. The program has its own dedicated radar station staffed by five meteorologists. It has an operating budget of $3 million per year. What caught my eye, however, was where that money comes from. Back in the ‘70s I saw the insurance company as a barrier. They wouldn’t grant permission for me to ride in the plane. But in today’s world, insurance companies are funding cloud seeding in big ways.

Hailstorms cost insurance companies big money. A single storm in June 2020 resulted in 70,000 claims costing roughly $1.4 billion. That makes cloud seeing a cost effective proposition for insurance companies.

The planes are still flying. The pyrotechnics are still occurring in the clouds. Had I followed my father into the flying business there is a very slim chance I might have been able to get a job flying one of those planes. As it turned out, however, I became a minister. I’ve never gotten a ride near a thunderstorm in an armored plane.

I don’t regret my decision, nor the path my life took. However, I still take notice when there is a story about cloud seeding planes. It would have been fun to have that experience.