It Was a Dark and Stormy Night,

50 years ago today when the passenger in seat 18c, one "Dan Cooper" by his own account, leaped off the aft staircase of Northwest Airlines Flight 305 with $200,000 in ransom money.

It was - like today - Thanksgiving Eve.

Roger McGuinn and his lyricist, Jacques Levy, wrote a song about it - "Bag Full of Money" - in the vein of Woody Guthrie's "Pretty Boy Floyd". In July of 1972, he and the remnants of the Clarence White-era Byrds recorded it. A year later Roger re-recorded it for his first solo album.

Dan -or D.B. as he is commonly, mistakenly known, was never found, but in 1980 almost $6,000 in disintegrated, rubber band bound bills were, on the banks of the Columbia River near Vancouver, WA.

Maybe he survived the jump, but - landing in the river - the money was lost with most of it washing out to sea. That might explain the 1980 recovery.

More likely he perished in the attempt, ended up impaled atop a tall pine.

I know it's wrong, because threatening to blow up. an airplane is no longer considered "cool", but I like to think he made it. Maybe he used the money to buy a motor inn, with a heated pool. Maybe he managed it from behind a shabby tiki bar while drinking his bourbon and soda.

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