How I Started Flying (Part 2)

We didn't fly again for a while, but Al came over more often. He was loud and liked to laugh and was as strong as an ox. Whenever we had to move something he would say, “Hang on --” pick whatever it was up, and move it.

Someone gave us a refrigerator. We were trying to get it up our narrow stairs – me and his nephew Franky on the top end, him on the bottom. Finally he said, “Hang on ---” slid it down where he could get underneath it, then carried it all the way up to the second floor on his back.

I would tell my father about these various feats on our Sunday afternoon visits. My sister loved Sunday afternoons because she was treated like a princess and said and did and got whatever she wanted. I usually sulked, not liking her highness very much while I was missing out on another chance to fly, or at least talk about flying.

I told my father about the flying and he sternly reminded me that he had introduced me to Bob Alsop – a real pilot, and had taken me along on a flight in a DC-3, piloted by a former Captain in the Indonesian Air Force.

I remembered that flight vividly because the airplane was so cool – not like a commercial plane with rows of seats, but benches and tables and carpet and cabinets and glasses! The Indonesian Air Force Captain didn't say much – he smiled a lot – likely because he was flying from Newark to Pittsburgh, and not over some steamy Indonesian jungle, I figured.

We landed in Pittsburgh for some reason, then turned around and flew back. I was eight and didn't understand that the cabinets were there for a reason. By the time we landed in Newark, my father and his friends were all staggering off the airplane.

I resented that for a long time – even at eight I knew an airplane flight was something special, not to be sullied with drinking. My young mind had no words to express my feelings, which feelings now would be expressed in words, thusly: “How can you not just sit here and look down upon the world below? How can you not be mesmerized by the sound of those big engines? How can you not be overwhelmed that you are flying?”

My father was a bartender at an airport bar called “The Ramp,” built at the end of a ramp off Route 22 near Newark Airport. It was always dark inside, and I remembered my father telling stories about different people that came in – the good ones were all “regulars.”

He said Buzz Aldrin was a regular, and he brought home some Apollo memorabilia which gave weight to his claims (my mother later trashed a lot of those items after he left, saying I didn't need them. They included a signed letter from the Apollo crew saying “wish you were here” and a tie clip Richard Nixon had given Buzz Aldrin).

He also has several regulars who were “MIT Graduates,” “Business Owners”, “Cops,” and “Pilots.” These titles offered in tones that implied respect was due.

He took me to work with him once in a great while. I found it mostly boring, except for the shuffleboard game that needed liberal doses of rosin from a bag to make the pucks slide. As far as I could tell Business Owners and Cops and MIT Graduates and Pilots mostly sat on tall stools and talked so quiet I couldn't hear what they were saying when I pretended not to listen and then every so often would erupt with a roar of laughter, with one of the group repeating only half the punch line, which usually included a reference to a Priest.

Back home it was the regular routine of school, after school fights, walking home with a big, over sized briefcase filled with books I never read, pretended to do homework, while reading about astronauts or airplanes or British Sea Captains in the Napoleonic Wars. Our second floor apartment was always hot, so I slept with the windows wide open, listening to the various sounds of Hillside, New Jersey – car horns, the big fans at the church next door, the people next door yelling, the kid across the street listening to really loud music, the rustling of leaves in the wind – all the sounds that provided a dull continuo accompaniment to the booming bass line of New York City.

Al was over all the time now, and we would talk about flying. I knew all there was to know – I had a subscription – the cover had my name and address right there -- to Flying, and had read all there was to read – in the Hillside Library, at least. He would laugh and say, “Flying's not all in books – you gotta experience it!”

Yeah, right, how am I supposed to experience flying when you won't take me up?

As I got older I realized what was keeping us from going up – Al had three daughters and was paying child support an alimony to that, that (I learned all sorts of new words). He was working as a laborer and even $25 a month dues plus $25 per hour for the airplane was too much.

He and my mother eventually married in a simple ceremony at the Hillside Town Hall. We celebrated with a cake and a few friends.

I ran track in High School and slipped Aviation magazines in my textbooks so I could have something interesting to read during class. My reasoning in math class was if these “problems” have already been solved (see the back of the book), why are we wasting time on them?

I enjoyed meteorology because it had direct application to aviation. Physics did, for a while.

But history continued to grip me. All those walks on the Plains of Abraham, imagining the French line facing Wolfe and his Redcoats, the terrible defeat, the mortal wounds to both generals, the end of the French regime, and the descent into darkness that was British rule – those poor, poor people – all of it captured me every summer, as if the city of Quebec was one giant treasure trove of dramatic lore. Here was life and death lived to great ends, victory and defeat, French language and culture against the infidels.

So I usually listened in History, and read the assignments.

English was ridiculous noise to me – why am I regurgitating this sentence in ways no one speaks or writes? Why must I place the words on crooked lines?

French was an absolute farce. My poor teacher – a multilingual Scot with balding head, funny glasses, and strange mannerisms -- spoke French and German fluently. I spoke French as well – wasn't that enough? But he insisted we know verb forms and tenses – who the heck cares? I just say it in French. I can understand what your saying. It works. Give me an A.

My semesterly trip to the Guidance counselor should have been recorded and replayed to save everyone time – The counselor would read the teacher's comments “Has ability, but does no homework. Working way below ability. Does not pay attention. Daydreams.” Then she would say there would be no way I could be a commercial pilot with these grades. I'd dutifully haul the paper home, my mother would feign anger, I would lose television privileges, the track coach would tell me I'd be off the team if I couldn't maintain a C, and – after a week – it would all blow over and life would return to normal.

Al – now my stepfather – didn't fly anymore and he rarely talked about flying. Money was tight and that, that --- well, she was squeezing him for everything he had. He and my mother had two sons. I now had brothers. The oldest slept in my room. I was 17 and very proficient with diapers and bottles and midnight crying fits.

After High School I joined the Air Force – my father had been in the Navy in World War Two and he said, “Don't join the Navy.” I figured he knew what he was talking about. Al had been in the Air Force. I figured the Air Force had lots of airplanes, so why not?

After four years of working inside a Nuclear Weapons Maintenance facility, on the far side of the base from the B-52s – despite making rank very fast --I decided the Air Force was not for me.

Years passed – three children, several careers, a return to Reserve and even Active Duty service, transfer to the Army, my own business – and the closest I got to airplanes was seeing them overhead. I couldn't not look when I heard an airplane overhead.

Then September 11th -- I met my youngest brother in Palisades, NJ, and we drove over the GW bridge on September 15th and stayed through the 16th working on the pile.

When I started flying business travel commercially again I was disgusted and appalled at how people were being treated. Sorry, TSA folks, but I'm one of the good guys, and still have the dust of WTC 1 and 2 on my boots to prove it.

As much as I was traveling I thought about personal flying – maybe this would work?

I sued all the proceeds of an unexpected Tax refund to start ground and then flight training. Three months later I was holding a Temporary Airmen Certificate. I was a pilot!

I flew to several appointments in rented Piper Cherokees. I even took a C152 a couple of times. I would leave early in the morning and be home for dinner. This is great! I thought.

But the company decided the liability was too great -- “What if you crash into a school?” -- and therefore forbid all personal business flight.

My reason and my money supply were dried up. I quit flying and didn't fly again for five years.

I thought about flying frequently, but the reason and the money just weren't there – I had no good reasons to fly.

Then I remembered what my stepfather said, the first time I met him – he flew just for fun.

Maybe I could fly just for fun also? Did it really have to have a reason? A Mission?

I called a local flight school and asked about biennials. A week later I was flying a 152 trying to figure out how to land all over again. After another session, it all came back and soon I was flying – I rented the airplane and flew to Wheeling and back with my son – just for fun.

But I also wanted to go places – and going places meant a schedule and meant weather. If I wanted to be a pilot why not be a real pilot and get all the training I could?

I would call my stepfather once a week or so and we would talk flying. I called him when I passed my IR, my commercial, and then my CFI. I flew my family to upstate NY where they now live (an 11 hour trip by car was 3 hours in a Piper Archer) and finally got to take my Dad for a ride. There were thunderstorms nearby but I had them in sight so I took him up and we flew over his house and over the St Lawrence. The storms were approaching so we landed all too quickly. We went back to their house to visit some and one of my Dad's friends stopped by. He was a new pilot and had a Piper Cherokee 180 but had scared himself a few times -- “Are you an instructor?”

“Not yet, but I'll be back after earning the rating and we'll go flying.”

Now we're scheduled to go fly up this July.

Now my dad talks about getting a Challenger – a small ultralight that stalls at 25 knots or some such. He wants it just to fly around just for fun.

Isn't that what it's all about?