Thanks for some interesting stories about a side of aviation I have only had some brief encounters with.
I was waiting in Key West one night while my pax were off dining and dancing. ETD was 0300 local or so and I had plenty of time to wander around the ramp and Flight Service like a lost soul. Then a call came in from a DC-6 that was inbound from El Salvador (I think) with one engine out that hadn't feathered. I think they ran one engine so low on oil they had to shut it down, when they found it stuck in flat pitch. As if that wasn't enough trouble, the Cubans had then tried to get them to land on that benighted isle and now they were trying to make Key West.
We all went down to watch when the DC-6 was on finals, quite a while later. A set of real bright lights appeared, followed closely by a large aircraft. It made the midfield turn-off, pulled up on the ramp and then parked by backing up (!) in a blast of grit. It looked about as difficult to park as a VW beetle, actually. That might have had something to do with pilot skill, though.
A lot of little brown guys and one tall Yankee in cowboy boots came down. The Yankee pulled a comb out of a boot, groomed his greasy pompadour and then told us how they went across the Gulf of Mexico at low level with the little brown guys airmailing crates of avocados out the emergency exits. All the little brown guys had that 'thousand yard stare'.
That gave me something to think about. Not least, I always wondered if some shrimper out on the Gulf was surprised by being bombarded with a crate of avocados.