20 Minutes Over Devola
My Dad took me flying in Ohio. His good friend Charlie Pickering has an airstrip in a cornfield and a few small hangers. They call it Checkpoint Charlie. I spent a lot of time there as a kid, because we shared a 4-seater with the Pickerings. Dad liked to fly the family to our relatives' houses. My grnadparents lived about 4 hours away, but it only took an hour or so in the plane. Even so, it took time to drive to Checkpoint Charlie, ready the plane, visit with the Pickerings, fly to some dinky rural airport, wait for relatives to pick us up...this usually added up to about 4 hours. I think Dad enjoyed flying, so that's why we did it. I was in 4th grade when we flew all the way to the Bahamas in that tiny plane. 14 hours air time. It was too loud in there to have a conversation, if you had to pee you'd have to hold it, and there was no room to get comfortable. I think I read a lot in the plane. We even took our dog Daisy with us a few times. Mark, my brother, often puked during the landings.
Dad had a bad drinking problem that got worse and my brother and I got older. He had a few DUI arrests and spent some time in 5the county jail. The FAA took his pilot's license away, but he still drove. That was hard for Dad. It's funny, because he's a very serious pilot and he'd never, ever fly drunk. Apparently he didn't mind driving drunk.
At the time I didn't think about it much. All of a sudden we stopped taking the plane places and drove to visit relatives instead. We sold our share of the plane. It's gone now. Dad told me that the plane had appeared in the background of a James Bond movie once, one of the crappy lesser 70s Bond films.
Losing his pilot's license was a big deal for Dad. He was trained as a fighter pilot, but he flew C-130s for the Air Force for over 25 years. He served in two wars (Vietnam and the Gulf, which maybe does not count), and most of his good friends are pilots.
Last year he got his license back. I hadn't flown with him in ages. He wanted to take me up in the L2, which is a little 2-seater WWII canvas plane. It hops around on the runway, which led to the plane's nickname, the Grasshopper.
Flying in my youth was always a thrill, at least at the takeoff. I always felt safe flying with Dad. These days in the big commercial airline planes I get nervous, but the L@ is like a magic amusement park ride. We had these ancient sound-activated microphones, and up in the air Dad pointed out all kind of landmarks--my old elementary school, our house, the boathouse. We fley over our neighborhood a couple times. Things always look so different from abouve. It's a good perspective. I looked at all of the hills and imagined what they looked like beneath the trees. A denuded hill is like a wet cat.
It was a windy day, which translated to some turbulance. ad had to try three times to land, because he was looking for what he called a "down wind." When we finally did land, Dad's dog Rex jumped around like crazy. We taxied to the little hanger and once Dad shut off the engine, Mom let Rex off the leash. He bounded over to the plane and practically jumped inside with Dad, even though there's not enough room.
Things like that are why I miss home.
Dad had a bad drinking problem that got worse and my brother and I got older. He had a few DUI arrests and spent some time in 5the county jail. The FAA took his pilot's license away, but he still drove. That was hard for Dad. It's funny, because he's a very serious pilot and he'd never, ever fly drunk. Apparently he didn't mind driving drunk.
At the time I didn't think about it much. All of a sudden we stopped taking the plane places and drove to visit relatives instead. We sold our share of the plane. It's gone now. Dad told me that the plane had appeared in the background of a James Bond movie once, one of the crappy lesser 70s Bond films.
Losing his pilot's license was a big deal for Dad. He was trained as a fighter pilot, but he flew C-130s for the Air Force for over 25 years. He served in two wars (Vietnam and the Gulf, which maybe does not count), and most of his good friends are pilots.
Last year he got his license back. I hadn't flown with him in ages. He wanted to take me up in the L2, which is a little 2-seater WWII canvas plane. It hops around on the runway, which led to the plane's nickname, the Grasshopper.
Flying in my youth was always a thrill, at least at the takeoff. I always felt safe flying with Dad. These days in the big commercial airline planes I get nervous, but the L@ is like a magic amusement park ride. We had these ancient sound-activated microphones, and up in the air Dad pointed out all kind of landmarks--my old elementary school, our house, the boathouse. We fley over our neighborhood a couple times. Things always look so different from abouve. It's a good perspective. I looked at all of the hills and imagined what they looked like beneath the trees. A denuded hill is like a wet cat.
It was a windy day, which translated to some turbulance. ad had to try three times to land, because he was looking for what he called a "down wind." When we finally did land, Dad's dog Rex jumped around like crazy. We taxied to the little hanger and once Dad shut off the engine, Mom let Rex off the leash. He bounded over to the plane and practically jumped inside with Dad, even though there's not enough room.
Things like that are why I miss home.
posted by Lefty at 10:14 AM
1 Comments:
I know you had fun out there, and that is good. I wish when I visited Lancaster I had things to do and look forward to, but it always just ends up with me wanting to leave after a day. Eh!
Post a Comment
<< Home