8 July 2019 – Remembering Flight – Part 1 of 2

Flight is one of the great accomplishments of the human race. From Leonardo Da Vinci’s flying machine drawings, to the Wright brothers, to the Space Station, our fascination with leaving the ground has persisted without respite. Another aspect of our lived experience that seems to persist is childhood memories, however sentimental or traumatizing they may be. This poem (parts 1 and 2) combines both factors: flight and childhood experiences (ages 10 to 17). You will notice that the poem is anchored by a flight lesson, liberally paused to give narrative voice to other aspects of flight – the most memorable being accidents. 

Accidents are the identifying feature of aviation for most people, whether or not fear of flying attends. The statistics show that far, far more people die in motor vehicle disasters than in aircraft misfortunes. That fact doesn’t seem to keep people from being horrified by an aircraft accident in an outsized way in contrast with car and motorcycle casualties. Perhaps, this disparity is due to another statistic: walking away from an airplane crash is a rarity. Also, a high number of people die at once in airplane mishaps. Maybe that’s why the dramatic impact of air accidents exceeds ground calamities; however, I have another theory. The days when people started riding horses for transportation, or hitching them to carts and coaches are ancient history. When motorized vehicles took the stage, we still stayed attached to the earth. Flying is a different mode altogether. You know the old saying, “If God meant us to fly, he would have given us wings.” That old saw hints at the fear many had, and still have, of leaving the ground. It just ain’t natural! That’s what scares us: the absolute dependence on the reliability of an aircraft. Unlike ground-operated vehicles/animals, you can’t step out of airplane in flight to fix it. (See Part 2 of the subject poem).

As for the persistence of childhood memories . . . well, read the poem.

Remembering Flight – Part 1

I had to wait until my feet could touch the rudders

My father said so, though I asked for wooden blocks strapped on

I had to wait until with a cushion, my nose peaked over the airplane’s

My father said the butt booster was FAA sanctioned

Many flights before this one, me wide-eyed in the right seat

My Father easy in the captain’s left

But this lesson – unlike others – my first genuine flying lesson

My first wing dip into the great blue beyond

Many times, Dad called me to the airport to sweep hangar floors

to clean wheel wells, to polish wings, to fuel travelers’ planes

rent them cars, sell them aeronautic charts and new plotters

and, I like to think, Dad liked my company as much as he did the help

When he did engine overhauls on the Beechcraft D18 – N80017 –

I sat left seat pulling levers, flipping switches, wearing his U.S. Air Force hat . . .

(Just now, a memory rises hard and sweet of when my Father was old

By then I was a hotshot, thirty-years-into-corporate-consulting type

One week I flew to St. Louis to work with Boeing

I made it so my dad could tour the plant and “fly” the 727 simulator

but he quietly declined saying he had a chance to fly right seat

with a doctor who had a restricted medical certificate

not flying, mind you, just a right-seat passenger, a ride-along

To watch aircraft assembly, to sit in a grounded machine

had no appeal compared with flying the Blue One lifting his wings)

. . . As I was saying about that first lesson when I was eleven years old,

my father said we would just “fly around the patch,” practice a few takeoffs -

the easy part - and let me shadow him on the much harder part – the landings

He sent me out ahead of him to the tied-down Cessna 172 chocked and held

like a filly in the gates quivering, rocking wing to wing

me walking across the asphalt ramp with the butt booster cushion under my arm

jangling the keys to Daddy’s Cessna, not his T-Bird

He told me to go out, take the checklist, and begin to execute the steps . . .

(Because of all those checkpoints, I developed the habit of checking everything

throughout my life, checking twice and thrice – stove gas, car keys, house locked)

as if every movement and thing had a place and reason, to be confirmed

                                    and checked again to be sure

                                                to be certain

                                                            to stay alive

                                    for these checklists’ purpose: to survive)

. . . My father loped across the hot tarmac apron 

tan baseball cap shading his olive face, wide feet slapping, heel to toe

I had barely begun the preflight checks, so I picked up the pace and tried to

look like I knew what I was doing – which I did – sort of – 

as an outcome of all those hours flying with him . . .

(The sounds of his feet and the propeller I was inspecting raised up

a memory of a different Cessna 172 on a day when the rain fell hard and long

on the metal hangar roof under which I swept the cement floor - 

the floor imprinted with my five-year-old feet, pressed by my father

despite my noisy protests while, like landing gear, I pulled my legs up to my bottom

until my uncle Arthur gave me an ice cream bar and thoughts of cement cracked away 

But as I was saying, the rain fell relentlessly – the Cessna pulled up outside,

engine idling, propeller turning one moment, the next ca-thunk interrupted the rotating blades

and a scream rose and drowned out the enduring, steady rain

I scampered to the hangar door, peeked out around the edge and saw a woman sprawled

on the tarmac, blood spouting from her right arm’s stump

her hand and forearm lay twitching some yards away

Later, her husband, the pilot, said it was her habit to hop out before he stopped the turning blades

but this time, the rain fell hard, and she raised her right arm to hold her coat above her head

Someone bound a tourniquet above her elbow, then brought her inside to wait for the sirens

I never heard if she lived. Her only story the dark stain on the semi-porous ramp’s surface)

. . . It seems strange to return to that first lesson’s brilliant day with its transparent clouds

in a near-pure blue July sky with my father jogging toward me in his khaki pants

his Air-Force-blue cotton shirt, and that flat-top baseball cap

The Cessna 172 checklist in my right hand, cushion placed left seat in the plane

Every inch of the aircraft had a place on that list; every item checked every time

A pilot who trusts her memory does so at her peril and that of anyone aloft with her . . .

(I knew a pilot once, Tilson, who skipped visually checking fuel tanks

He thought the pilot who flew another D18 just prior had surely done the fueling

Some of us happened to be watching as he sped down the runway

The tail wheel lifted off, and then the nose

At that angle, the remaining fuel in the tanks flowed backward 

quickly emptying the fuel lines – a stutter of the radial piston engines

then silence as the nose fell level and the nearly four-ton plane sank

hitting a house on the other side of Highway 13 across from the runway’s end

Tilson died for his checklist omission but he took no one with him

only some freight – the demolished house was empty) 

. . . Thinking of that lost, twin-engine workhorse as my dad arrived for my lesson, I swore

that I would never assume full tanks, and always, always check, and check, and check again

My dad boosted me up to the top of each wing so I could unscrew the fuel caps

as I had done so many times for so many planes, the high-winged ones with a ladder

Peering in, I confirmed that the av-gas sloshed near the top

He set me down, and after the preflight check, we climbed into the four-seat cabin

settling down to the procedures that would spark the Continental engine to life 

All this and more my father walked me through impressing yet again

the consequences of just one omission 

                              just one oversight

                                    one of fifty-four plus fourteen undone

                                    one pilot error

                                    one death and accountability for more

It’s a chancy business, walking away from a plane crash, so my father said 

not including acts of war that he knew well from his days in the Army Air Corp

Not one check skipped – not one left undone, prime among them calling “CLEAR” before “IGNITION”

There’s no engine, wing, or fuselage fix in the air – just the grace of a “good” crash landing

Having taken our seats – me left on my cushion, anxious to perform and to please my father-teacher

this one who knew the sky and ground and the fragile things between

precursor to Apollo yet to launch – from the Wright brothers to Lindbergh and on to us

At last, movement: Ready to Taxi, we rolled out, headed onto the ramp, to the taxiway

We turned and smiled at one another for a moment – I was giddy high

Check, check, check for traffic – roll out onto the runway taxiing faster to its end

where we turned into the wind and did the run-up with its thirteen more checks

only thirteen on top of the sixty-seven prior, counting to a final one-hundred-twenty-three . . .

(So many times, I sat right seat noting my father’s steady, measured moves

Especially in the D18 with its twin, Harley-rumbling engines, two props, and twice the checks

a sound to set hot blood coursing, not unlike the mortuary transports - the last flights home,

corpses laid flat on their stretchers, their senses of ears and eyes and all the rest gone 

                                                                                    gone

                                                                                                gone

                                                                                                            gone beyond the Blue)

Background

Fathers taking time with their children to teach them skills, or just have fun, is as old as, well, fatherhood. The iconic image is dad taking out the ol’ baseball glove to play with junior. (These days, junior can be male or female.) Then there’s the tradition of parents taking their offspring to work – usually only a single day. Think of the impact on productivity if it were once a week. Think of how much children would learn from the experience. But, as I often do, I’m diverting somewhat from the point of the above poem.

Yes, my father taught me to fly. In a way, I had to “pay” for the lessons by sweeping hangars, fueling aircraft, “helping” with overhauls, and other aeronautical basics. I say “pay,” because I thoroughly enjoyed being around the airport and helping Dad. Truth be told, I really do think he liked having me around, as much as I liked being there. We were a good team.

As I said in the introduction, aviation accidents are memorable. Some of my strongest childhood memories center on airport calamities. I have to say that these experiences taught me early that life is short and death can be swift.

Perhaps, an even more indelible memory of flight is the sheer beauty of the experience. There’s nothing quite like that panoramic view from the cockpit. Flying near cumulus clouds is another thriller. The sleek lines of most aircraft inspires. The sound of engines wakes something vital within. My Dad came home late most nights from charters, scheduled flights, student instruction. I listened for his return. To this day, hearing an aircraft overhead (it has to be propeller driven, not turbine or jet) at dusk or in the mid-winter dark, brings a nostalgia for me. A flight safely concluded. A loved one coming home. The rarity of it all.

Exploration 1: Examine your feelings about flying. Are you cool and calm? Is your level of anxiety high? Something in between? Whichever you feel, consider the reasons for your attitudes and gut reactions.

Exploration 2: When your parents engaged you in a “fun” activity, did you have to “pay” for it by doing chores, finishing homework, or other such desired behaviors? If so, have you done the same with your kids – assuming you have them. The question: Are we having fun yet?

Exploration 3: Do you understand why Dad preferred to “ride along” rather than visit the Boeing plant?

Exploration 4: What is your reaction to the checklist protocols?

Next Monday: “Remembering Flight” – Part 2 (second of two)