Gazette - 1986

*** A Day in December, 1986 ***

Vroo o m! My bedroom window rattles. The Air Guard are out for another practice. They’re living in tthree dimensions that we glimpsed this summer on the movie “Top Gun”.

I remember that I’m meeting Marvin at the airport … Port Springfield. Our craft are docked in C-7 and F-3. We’ve scheduled a practice session later today. I throw off the covers, the crisp air makes my hair stand on end – goosebumps. It looks warmer outside with the morning sun streaming through the panes of glass.

While scurrying to the shower, anxious for that steaming heat, I take a moment to look at the map of the United States spread out across the floor of my loft. My playground encompasses a spot on the map about six by six inches. I think about the playground of an F-104 pilot, probably three feet by three feet on my map.

It strikes me how easy it is to understand differences that are arithmetic, for example 10-6=4. You know it takes 40 minutes to drive into the city but if it’s rush hour you add 20 minutes and then it takes an hour to arrive at your destination. But geometric and logarithmic functions, that’s the world of dreamers.

My world used to be a three bedroom house in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, but one day I walked to the end of the block, turned left and kept going. My world was growing before my eyes. My parents weren’t watching, how big was the world? I kept turning left. I knew in my mind that my old world, the house with three bedrooms, my bedroom had the sliding door, existed. Actually, I was halfway around the block and my home was right behind the house beside me. I couldn’t see it but I believed it existed. If I became frightened I could yell for help and someone would probably take me home.

Fascinated with the size of the world and how it just grew in front of me, I continued to the end before making another left turn. Cars zipped past me. Vroo o m! I slowed my pace and took in all the noise. I wondered where all the cars were going so fast.

Soon I rounded the fourth corner and my old world loomed into view. The streets are quiet. Back in the yard, no one even knew I was gone. I lay on the front lawn and watched airplanes with four propellers pass low overhead.

I got lost on the way home from second grade one day and my world became a magnitude larger again.

The shower over, I dress quickly in my favorite clothing, blue jeans, wild pink socks and of course my hiking boots with the purple shoestrings. I love mixing up colors on my days off, freedom to be a rainbow.

I give Sue, my fiancée, a call. Things happen fast. I met her last year, noticing her energy, bright blond hair, and something special. This past summer I started asking her out for bicycle trips – to the park, to the lake for a picnic.

A spark was started. Bicycling does that. In my teens I bought a bright yellow ten speed. It took me to school, to friend’s homes. Then on to Gettysburg, 20 miles from home. Fifty miles in a day wasn’t bad, given all the stops; to rest, to sightsee, to meet people. What did man do before the wheel was invented, and gears? He probably walked and his world was limited to those people living around the block. He couldn’t imagine going fifty miles in a day. You would have been considered a fool or at least a dreamer to have spoken of such things. My world enlarged this year to include Sue, her friends, her roommate, her family.

Sue answers the phone. I ask “Sue, do you want to go flying today?” This is new for her. Just six months ago she had to take three Dramamine just to get on a 727. Now she’s a copilot. We’re planning on getting married next September 26th. I don’t know whether she’ll have her marriage license or her pilots license first. “I’ll meet Marvin and you at the hanger,” she answers.

Marvin asked me to join him flying one day last winter. I was practicing landing in a 1947 taildragger and he must have thought I was doing ok and asked me to be a partner of sorts. With that first ride November 24th last year my playground was orders of magnitude larger. My playground, my world – synonyms.

I soloed in a Cessna 182 and a Starduster Biplane this year. In reverent awe I’ve buzzed over Oklahoma, I’ve been dazzled by the lights of Dallas so I couldn’t even see Love Field. I’ve skirted clouds at midnight, flown up the Cheat river gorge in West Virginia, camped at huge concrete airports with grass through the cracks. The World War II squadrons once stationed there now ghosts.

Flying to my grandfather’s funeral this fall, moving from Springfield, Illinois to Hanover, Pennsylvania in less than four hours, I believe the plane is more of a time machine than a mode of transportation. I move almost effortlessly from my world of family, grieving, and also the start of anew era that comes with the passing of the old. For two days I live with my sisters, brother, and parents. Equally quickly I’m back at work.

Out at the airport we meticulously inspect the plane. Take care of it and the plane takes care of you. We finish the preflight as the F-104’s come back in. The wind whistles thorough their wings as they slow to land. I stare at them knowing how much my world has grown because of the Wright Brothers and vicariously I enjoy the F-104’s supersonic flight.

This unseasonably warm day as Marvin, Sue and I climb into the sky on wings, my mind soars to heights, times and places that I haven’t yet been. I, knowing how incomprehensible the future is, on my first walk around the block could imagine traveling through the air, wings of a plane at my command. Circling higher I want to tell everyone what a great world it is we live in.

I’d like to take you flying someday, share with you the three dimensional world. Won’t you join me for a Sunday “flight around the patch?”

I’ve enjoyed sharing this day out of my life with you.