I'm looking out over the golf course, and I see that the trees have shadows today. The sun is shining weakly through a thin layer of altostratus. Our weather has been a yucky mess for the past week, the temperatures pivoting around on the freezing point with some insipid precipitation and an anemic sun. The forecast for next Sunday is semi-clear and warming. I'll call the FBO and reserve the Piper Archer II for a few hours; it'll be a special thing to do. It'll be my last time.
I remember clearly the first airplane I saw. I was six years old and out playing on the sidewalk when I was frozen in awe by a tremendous roar. I looked up to see a huge, graceful shape emerge from over the row of hills, pass across our valley, and disappear on the other side. I can still recall the image that was etched in my mind: the long, tapered wings with their two engines and exposed tires. Today, I know it as a DC–3—then it was the god of power and all good things.
I began drawing airplanes in my pulp-paper Big Chief tablet at school. These drawings, too, are engraved in my mind. The plank-shape wings, the wheels looking as though they were taken from a covered wagon. I was looking more at the sky than at the ground before me.
The next airplane I saw while playing with the other kids at morning recess. Another roar, and a stubby shape appeared over the trees. It rolled over onto its back and crossed the valley low and inverted. This one had two wings, with rounded, star-adorned tips—a Grumman F3F. Authorities turned a blind eye toward such antics at the time; there was a war in Europe, and pilots were seen as glorious knights in leather jackets. Crossing the hills on the other side, the magical being rolled upright. Just as it passed from my sight, my young-boy's imagination heard a loud "Pop!"
"It crashed!" I yelled and took off running after it. I chased it for 55 years.
Other lives entered mine. School, the Navy, more school, marriage, children, a career. Instilled in my being was a sense of responsibility to others' needs. Events walled me away from the airplanes, but never my heart. My drawings of airplanes became more realistic. My shelves were lined with books by Gann, Shute, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and Kershner—books with the edges stained by much handling.
At an age when most men are in the full flush of their careers, I took inventory. All debts had been satisfied. There was no longer anyone to point their finger at me and say, "Pay!" All were now happy but me. I went to the airport.
The most significant event in the training of most pilots is their first solo flight. Such wasn't the case with me; my first solo was merely a continuation of what Dave Boyd had been teaching me, and I felt as though he were still sitting right beside me. My greatest thrill was when I was told that I was to sit in the pilot's seat. The next greatest moment was reading Dave's endorsement in my logbook under Remarks: "Touch and goes. One go-around. Good job." Praise from Valhalla.
The third-greatest happening was the FAA examiner's signature approving my certificate, which occurred on August 7, 1977. Under Remarks that day is the endorsement "Private checkride. Satisfactory. Douglas R. Anderson." I had followed Doug back into the office after the flight, not knowing whether I had passed—they like to keep you guessing. He sat down, pulled out something, and wrote on it. I can't remember his words, but there seemed to be an admonishment that this was only the beginning of my training. Yet the words were in the affirmative. I recall feeling stunned. I had snowed this guy! There's no way I'm good enough to fly an airplane!
The days of wine and roses were only beginning. I was taking folks for rides in the air; it didn't matter who—just give me an excuse to fly. I was infected with the need to share my happiness. I sold my firm on the advantages of time and money saved by having a private aircraft, and was using airplanes to make the clients happy. Hours under the hood, more hours learning aerobatics. Cherokees, Archers, Arrows, Skyhawks, Citabrias, Grumman Americans, Cessna 152s. Anything with wings.
Cross-countries, touch and goes, the Civil Air Patrol, blood delivery, and low-level survey flights; a foray into barnstorming with my Operation Kid Lift flights; vacations enjoyed more for the getting there, because I had flown; the wonderful folks I met at the airports and the airplanes they proudly showed me; the time spent looking across a wing to the ground and loving it because of the way the problems that had seemed so overwhelming down there now faded to their true dimension of nothingness.
For the past five years, the entries in the logbook have been tapering off. Other events were building to push the flying aside. I was no longer using an airplane for business purposes. Those who I once took flying were now gone. Changes.
One of the pearls of wisdom in the Desiderata reads: "Take kindly the counsel of years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth." Another time for personal inventory; a time for looking back on the flying—what I have learned, what it gave me, and who I am today. I could easily make aimless holes in the sky, but I am not a person to allow something that has meant so much to me become a mere toy.
I'll want a sunny day. One hundred nautical miles to the northwest is an airport constructed during the war for the training of B–17 pilots. The times I've been there, I dreamed of the thunder of engines. The walls in the old terminal building are covered with images of thousands of airplanes, and there's a coffee machine in the room upstairs, where a pilot can look down on the ramp at his airplane. Yes, that's where I'll go. On the return, I'll get down low to cross the farms. Maybe there's a six-year-old kid down there who has never seen an airplane.
William V. Lainson, AOPA 603149, of Omaha, Nebraska, is a 3,500-hour private pilot and semiretired civil engineer. He's considering returning to the skies in an ultralight.
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