oldbaldguy
Registered User
I don't know where this should be posted of even if. I used to get carried away with myself and transfer events to paper, usually just so I could go back and read about things I'd half way forgotten. When I got the 12, the airplane sort of begged me to start doing that again. I've attached one mini-chapter that happens to be one of my favorites. I'm sure all of you all have been there and have experienced a Jimmy of your own. There are others but this one is my favorite. I ain't no Cloud Dancer (we use plastic, not paper) and I don't usually share, but here goes:
Part Five: Old Timer First Timer
I’ve been lucky enough to give several people their introduction to the joys of light airplane flying. Most of these first rides went very well; only a few ended ingloriously. One first-timer years ago lost his composure when he realized he was a couple of thousand feet above the Alaskan tundra in a contraption he had discovered only moments before to be nowhere near as sturdy as his car. Another young man who would eventually become a doctor with a penchant for treating trauma victims almost lost his lunch while we flew straight and level over the piedmont of Virginia, and more recently a strapping young man who longed to skydive but had never before flown ceded control of his favorite burrito blue plate special to a little zip-lock bag I carry in the back of the airplane for just that purpose. Such things happen to the best of us, aviation being the humbling preoccupation that it is.
Just after we moved back to the genteel and sunny South, my wife and I were delighted to make the acquaintances of a vibrant octogenarian pair recently transplanted from Mississippi. Over hors d’oeuvres at a gathering one night, I discovered Jimmy and he discovered I have an airplane. Jimmy always wanted to fly but was thwarted by bad timing at every turn. He signed up for pilot training during World War II just in time to be told the military didn’t need any more pilots. So he decided to become a navigator only to discover the war would be over long before he could do much navigating. He did confide that he was lost from start-up to shut-down on the only C-47 navigator training flight he ever made. He ended his term of service working in the officers club. Jimmy also said that he’d always wanted to fly in a light plane, but never had in all his 82 years. His wife said she wished somebody would give him a ride just so he’d quit talking about it. I stopped hording the boiled shrimp long enough to promise to take him up.
It was a bit chilly but otherwise perfect on the day I decided to call Jimmy. After clearing it with his spousal unit, he left for the airport without hanging up the telephone. I found him later in our little terminal building where he’d organized the counter staff into a search party and sent them out looking for me because he thought maybe I’d left without him. I said, “Jimmy, are you ready to go?” He allowed he was. “Do you have a jacket?” He allowed he did, a fine leather flight jacket. I noted that he also wore two pairs of sox, sweat pants under his Dockers, a sweater, a flannel shirt, gloves and a hat. It was fortuitous that the Super Cruiser is a bit wide of beam because Jimmy would not have fit in a lesser airplane.
Because he'd been in the Air Force and was a mechanical engineer by trade, I assumed Jimmy knew the basics of airplanes and aviating. It turned out he probably knew more about the dark side of the moon than flying. We did a quick lap around the Super Cruiser before climbing aboard. Jimmy gave it the usual once-over, drumming his fingers on its fabric skin, then grinned sheepishly at the thought of flying away in a device shaped from steel pipes and bed linen. Getting him into the back seat turned out to be a more arduous exercise than I’d anticipated, joints, sinews and such at his age being not as supple as they once were. Once I got him in and buckled up, the questions started. Right in the middle of my safety briefing and explanation of the cabin environment he’d want to know the most disassociated things. “What’s this?” he asked, poking a big black knob with a single finger. “That’s the throttle,” I replied. “Oooh, that’s the throttle,” he mused, looking down his nose at it as if he’d never heard of such a device before. The concept of a headset and microphone was completely foreign: “Now, why do I have to wear this?” “So we can talk to each other in the air,” I said. “Oooh. So we can talk to each other,” Jimmy said to himself as another mystery was born. As we taxied out, he was amazed and a little spooked by the way various things seemed to move of their own volition in his little world back there behind me. Later as we flew along over the lakes, woods and hills where we live, I would feel the control stick twitch in my hand every now and then. Once back on the ground and just before he got out of the airplane, Jimmy twanged first one then the other of the exposed cables that connect the control surfaces out on the wings to the sticks inside and asked what their function and duty might be. I realized then that what I’d felt in flight was Jimmy plucking my control cables like so many banjo strings, trying to figure out what they did for a living. When I explained that they went to the ailerons, he nodded, “Oooh, they go to the ailerons,” having not a clue what ailerons are or what they do.
Among the many things I love about flying my own airplane are two that I love the most: the physical act of manipulating the controls in order to commit aviation and the simple pleasure of watching the world roll by below me like a never-ending carpet of staggering beauty. Jimmy, on the other hand, was fascinated only by buildings, the bigger the better. As we motored along, he would peer out his windows at some of the carpet mills and plants around here and opine to himself through the headset mic as to what might go on inside and why they needed such a sprawling edifice in which to do it. The farther we traveled from civilization, the more likely the buildings in question would be chicken houses, something about which Jimmy was a bit of an expert. He was quick to share with me many of the details of chicken houses, such as typical square footage, the accepted ratio of length to width, the preferred orientation to the compass, and the optimum number of chickens per square foot of area. His knowledge of chicken houses was dizzying.
Our wanderings eventually led us back to the airport. Altitude I’d gained to get us over the mountains needed to be shed in order to make us compatible with the airport traffic pattern. I usually do this by combining a steep turn with a vertical reversal that can cost me as much or as little altitude as I’d like depending on how aggressively I perform the maneuver. It’s fun to do and my old Cub doesn’t seem to mind, but it can be a bit vexing to people in the back if they don’t know it’s coming. “Jimmy!” I said into his headset. “How you doing back there?” “Oh, I’m doing just fine,” he replied and he was. “We need to lose a little altitude before we get back to the airport. Are you up for it?” “Oh, I think I’ll be alright,” was all he said. So I did my little whifferdil and when it was all over and we were straight and level again, Jimmy was still back there and none the worse for wear.
Once we were back in the pattern awaiting our turn to land, I had to shush him in order to use the radio to announce our position and intentions to anyone who cared to know them. Jimmy complied, but I could still hear him whispering to himself as he tried to figure out where we were and what we were doing. He was a model passenger, but you can imagine my surprise when, as we were lined on short final and I glanced over my shoulder to look for errant traffic, I found Jimmy’s face wedged in between the window and me, just inches away. He had not come this far only to be denied every detail of the landing. “Oooh,” I heard him breathe. “I wonder what that big O and one means. Do they give runways a number these days?”
Back on the ground and extricated from the confines of my airplane, Jimmy confided that he was disappointed his flight had not lasted longer. He told me that he had long wondered how the giant smoke stacks of a nearby power plant might look from above and had puzzled about the layout of the local paper mill because he was unable to discern it from the road. He allowed that he might be compensated for not solving these two thorny mysteries if he could take with him a well-worn and out of date sectional he’d found stuffed into my seat back along with the barf bags. Jimmy, it seems, is a big fan of maps as well as chicken houses. Of course, I let him have the sectional – it was a small price to pay for the privilege of expanding the horizons of a man who had waited more than eight decades for me to get around to it.
Part Five: Old Timer First Timer
I’ve been lucky enough to give several people their introduction to the joys of light airplane flying. Most of these first rides went very well; only a few ended ingloriously. One first-timer years ago lost his composure when he realized he was a couple of thousand feet above the Alaskan tundra in a contraption he had discovered only moments before to be nowhere near as sturdy as his car. Another young man who would eventually become a doctor with a penchant for treating trauma victims almost lost his lunch while we flew straight and level over the piedmont of Virginia, and more recently a strapping young man who longed to skydive but had never before flown ceded control of his favorite burrito blue plate special to a little zip-lock bag I carry in the back of the airplane for just that purpose. Such things happen to the best of us, aviation being the humbling preoccupation that it is.
Just after we moved back to the genteel and sunny South, my wife and I were delighted to make the acquaintances of a vibrant octogenarian pair recently transplanted from Mississippi. Over hors d’oeuvres at a gathering one night, I discovered Jimmy and he discovered I have an airplane. Jimmy always wanted to fly but was thwarted by bad timing at every turn. He signed up for pilot training during World War II just in time to be told the military didn’t need any more pilots. So he decided to become a navigator only to discover the war would be over long before he could do much navigating. He did confide that he was lost from start-up to shut-down on the only C-47 navigator training flight he ever made. He ended his term of service working in the officers club. Jimmy also said that he’d always wanted to fly in a light plane, but never had in all his 82 years. His wife said she wished somebody would give him a ride just so he’d quit talking about it. I stopped hording the boiled shrimp long enough to promise to take him up.
It was a bit chilly but otherwise perfect on the day I decided to call Jimmy. After clearing it with his spousal unit, he left for the airport without hanging up the telephone. I found him later in our little terminal building where he’d organized the counter staff into a search party and sent them out looking for me because he thought maybe I’d left without him. I said, “Jimmy, are you ready to go?” He allowed he was. “Do you have a jacket?” He allowed he did, a fine leather flight jacket. I noted that he also wore two pairs of sox, sweat pants under his Dockers, a sweater, a flannel shirt, gloves and a hat. It was fortuitous that the Super Cruiser is a bit wide of beam because Jimmy would not have fit in a lesser airplane.
Because he'd been in the Air Force and was a mechanical engineer by trade, I assumed Jimmy knew the basics of airplanes and aviating. It turned out he probably knew more about the dark side of the moon than flying. We did a quick lap around the Super Cruiser before climbing aboard. Jimmy gave it the usual once-over, drumming his fingers on its fabric skin, then grinned sheepishly at the thought of flying away in a device shaped from steel pipes and bed linen. Getting him into the back seat turned out to be a more arduous exercise than I’d anticipated, joints, sinews and such at his age being not as supple as they once were. Once I got him in and buckled up, the questions started. Right in the middle of my safety briefing and explanation of the cabin environment he’d want to know the most disassociated things. “What’s this?” he asked, poking a big black knob with a single finger. “That’s the throttle,” I replied. “Oooh, that’s the throttle,” he mused, looking down his nose at it as if he’d never heard of such a device before. The concept of a headset and microphone was completely foreign: “Now, why do I have to wear this?” “So we can talk to each other in the air,” I said. “Oooh. So we can talk to each other,” Jimmy said to himself as another mystery was born. As we taxied out, he was amazed and a little spooked by the way various things seemed to move of their own volition in his little world back there behind me. Later as we flew along over the lakes, woods and hills where we live, I would feel the control stick twitch in my hand every now and then. Once back on the ground and just before he got out of the airplane, Jimmy twanged first one then the other of the exposed cables that connect the control surfaces out on the wings to the sticks inside and asked what their function and duty might be. I realized then that what I’d felt in flight was Jimmy plucking my control cables like so many banjo strings, trying to figure out what they did for a living. When I explained that they went to the ailerons, he nodded, “Oooh, they go to the ailerons,” having not a clue what ailerons are or what they do.
Among the many things I love about flying my own airplane are two that I love the most: the physical act of manipulating the controls in order to commit aviation and the simple pleasure of watching the world roll by below me like a never-ending carpet of staggering beauty. Jimmy, on the other hand, was fascinated only by buildings, the bigger the better. As we motored along, he would peer out his windows at some of the carpet mills and plants around here and opine to himself through the headset mic as to what might go on inside and why they needed such a sprawling edifice in which to do it. The farther we traveled from civilization, the more likely the buildings in question would be chicken houses, something about which Jimmy was a bit of an expert. He was quick to share with me many of the details of chicken houses, such as typical square footage, the accepted ratio of length to width, the preferred orientation to the compass, and the optimum number of chickens per square foot of area. His knowledge of chicken houses was dizzying.
Our wanderings eventually led us back to the airport. Altitude I’d gained to get us over the mountains needed to be shed in order to make us compatible with the airport traffic pattern. I usually do this by combining a steep turn with a vertical reversal that can cost me as much or as little altitude as I’d like depending on how aggressively I perform the maneuver. It’s fun to do and my old Cub doesn’t seem to mind, but it can be a bit vexing to people in the back if they don’t know it’s coming. “Jimmy!” I said into his headset. “How you doing back there?” “Oh, I’m doing just fine,” he replied and he was. “We need to lose a little altitude before we get back to the airport. Are you up for it?” “Oh, I think I’ll be alright,” was all he said. So I did my little whifferdil and when it was all over and we were straight and level again, Jimmy was still back there and none the worse for wear.
Once we were back in the pattern awaiting our turn to land, I had to shush him in order to use the radio to announce our position and intentions to anyone who cared to know them. Jimmy complied, but I could still hear him whispering to himself as he tried to figure out where we were and what we were doing. He was a model passenger, but you can imagine my surprise when, as we were lined on short final and I glanced over my shoulder to look for errant traffic, I found Jimmy’s face wedged in between the window and me, just inches away. He had not come this far only to be denied every detail of the landing. “Oooh,” I heard him breathe. “I wonder what that big O and one means. Do they give runways a number these days?”
Back on the ground and extricated from the confines of my airplane, Jimmy confided that he was disappointed his flight had not lasted longer. He told me that he had long wondered how the giant smoke stacks of a nearby power plant might look from above and had puzzled about the layout of the local paper mill because he was unable to discern it from the road. He allowed that he might be compensated for not solving these two thorny mysteries if he could take with him a well-worn and out of date sectional he’d found stuffed into my seat back along with the barf bags. Jimmy, it seems, is a big fan of maps as well as chicken houses. Of course, I let him have the sectional – it was a small price to pay for the privilege of expanding the horizons of a man who had waited more than eight decades for me to get around to it.