I was reminded of this again last fall when browsing a book store in Harvard Square. I was looking at books about Thailand in preparation for a possible trip back there this year. I saw a piece about Chiangmai International Airport and remarked that I put the “International” into that airport. My daughter was incredulous and thought I was just blowing smoke (which of course I wasn't). It made me wish two things. One, that I had told more stories about me, my family, my youth, etc., and two, that they had asked me more questions. Like that movie, “What did you do in the war, Daddy?” (An essay is upcoming related to that question.)
The point of all this, aside from setting a tone for my blog efforts, is to finally get around to writing a better caption for the airplane photo I uploaded here last month. I don’t remember the date with much precision, but I’m going to guess it was sometime in the summer of 1955.
A couple of barn-stormers had come to David City, perhaps for an air show, perhaps just because they were wandering around the country. I was much too young to remember, or even care. This was even before Richard Bach barn-stormed around the country in his Tiger Moth giving rides to all comers for $3. I do remember that these guys were giving airplane rides for a penny a pound. I also remember I weighed 60 pounds at the time, and my little sister, Donna, weighed 40. So my dad gave the guy a buck and Donna and I climbed into the back of that little airplane. We were 10 and 6 years old. Who would send their little kids up in an airplane with a stranger today?
I remember the rush of the take-off and the disappointment of the landing about 10 minutes later, but mostly I remember flying over my little home town, not much more than a mile square, and picking out my house, my school, and my church with its steeple towering over all else in the town. Donna and I giggled through the whole flight. Thirty years later I read Richard Bach’s “There’s No Such Place as Far Away,” a children’s book whose illustrations were all done in bird’s eye view. It brought me back immediately to that summer day in David City, circling the church in the air with my little sister. I don’t have many fond memories of my childhood, but this one stands out as though it were yesterday.
Arguably this experience had some influence on my current love of flying, but this day was more memorable as a negative than as a positive. On this day my dad also had his first flight, but not for a penny a pound. He rode along on a demonstration flight with someone trying to sell his plane to someone else. He was probably sitting in the back seat, and he was probably put through steep turns and stalls, and possibly even a spin. He didn’t say as much, but I imagine he got awfully airsick. Nobody should ever experience that kind of excitement on their first flight.
My father swore he’d never fly again, and he was true to his word. He died 20 years later, at 61, and never went anywhere he couldn’t drive. Nebraska, where he grew up. Iowa, where he was transferred and met my mother. Kansas, where my sister went to college. Missouri, where I went to college. Four states in 61 years. Never more than 200 miles from his birthplace. When my mother came to visit me in Hawaii, he stayed home. He missed so much because he refused to leave the ground.
Back in Hawaii I gave lots of young people their first flight. There is no kind of flying that is more fun. I always wanted those first-timers to regret having to land, not to regret ever having taken off. For the most part I was successful. I miss doing that now. I still take people up for their first flight, but they are Asians, for whom all excitement is a secret, and they are taking their first step into the cockpit of a 747, so it’s all about work anyway.
I guess I should get back into the CAP so I can once again take young kids into the air for the first time. They’ll giggle while we circle around their house, and they, too, will learn that “There’s No Such Place as Far Away.”
2 comments:
What a great story!!
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