airdisaster.info

These internet relationships are strange.

By Gordon Baxter
October 2005

I have this wonderful recurring dream where I have died and gone to heaven. First heavenly thing is I notice I can fly. I just move my arms like a big bird, streamline my tail, and in a gentle climbing turn leave all the sounds of earthly grief far below. Along with it comes the warmth and light of understanding and knowing that someday they will all understand too.

Ahead are some low hills, adding climb power is effortless, better than an empty 172 into a cold wind. I crest the summit and gaze down into a green valley that somehow I always knew would look like that. It is a broad grassy pasture, there are Jennys and Stear-mans parked all over the place, some flying without going anywhere, like the biplanes of Bartlesville do. There are a few puffball cotton clouds, a gentle warm wind moving their shadow across this aerodrome. I turn on final, set up an approach to a small group of pilots wearing leather jackets, summer helmets and goggles gathered around some of the parked airplanes.

I touch down quietly, walk up to the group, being careful of my manners as the new boy should.

A tall slender guy, good looking, dimpled chin, sort of tousled hair, turns toward me, holds out his hand. It’s Charles Lindbergh. I would know him under a pear tree. He sort of laughs at the confusion on my face, says, “Hi Bax, see you made it. There were a few times back there when we would have bet either way.”

It’s the Lindbergh before fame made his life a hell on earth, the pilot Lindy, “Slim,” among the old airmail pilots and some awful looking DH-4s. I recognize his Jenny. The patches in the fabric, one wire wheel still sitting on the rim, tire missing, just like it looked the day he brought it in to Kelly Field and they made him move it off the airport. “That's your Jenny” I risk. “Oh sure, but I just like to keep it close to me. The airplane I fly here is that one over there.” I look in the direction of his gesture, see a small biplane I had missed. It is an S.E.-5A, Army colors, yellow wings, dark fuselage. “I got the feeling from your books how much you liked that little pursuit ship.”

“Yup,” said my hero, “you didn’t think they would issue me that heavy-wing Monocoupe did you? This is heaven.” He paused, the bright light of the author came into his eyes. “You read my book?” he asked softly. I told him I had read it at least twice. Lindbergh moved a half step closer, lowered his voice, “Which one?” I was thinking how heavenly authors act just like authors even up here. “All of them,” I honestly told him.

“Really?” Lindbergh reached out, touched my arm. “Which one twice?” I told him his classic Spirit of St. Louis I had read three times, got something different out of it each time. And I had read his Wartime Journals twice, started keeping my own journal as a result. Lindbergh laughed, looked around, “Come on, you need to get checked out in a Jenny, I understand you are already an experienced Stearman pilot.”

“If by experienced you mean a few excursions out into the high grass and some dragged wing tips, I sure was an experienced Stearman pilot all right.” He laughed softly, and as we walked toward a Jenny, all bright in 1918 army colors, he put his arm over my shoulder. I like to have died. Then had to stop and laugh at myself. I’d already done that.

The cowling was off the Jenny, laying there in the soft grass. A fierce-looking fellow, dark mustache, dark deep-set eyes and wearing a golfer’s cap on backwards was hunkered down in front of the Jenny with a lot of plumbing parts scattered around him and his tool box open. “Bax, this is Glenn Curtiss. Mr. Curtiss, Bax here used to write for Flying magazine.” Curtiss glanced my way, “Yeah, I read his stuff. And thanks, Bax, for naming that little girl after my Jenny.” I just gulped and stared.

Curtiss’ big, square-knuckled hands were back at work on hoses and clamps. Halfway to himself he muttered “I’m gonna get this thing right this time. After all, this is heaven, ain’t it? I always believed I should have made this OX-5 air cooled, but I let ‘em talk me out of it.” Curtiss shook his head in regret. Then seeing the brighter side, as folks in heaven always do, he said, “But isn’t that a good-looking engine? We all stopped and stared at the broad 90-degree vee of the engine, and its open air overhead valve system. “You know the army bought my V-8s from 1912 to 1927, then I brought out that beautiful D-12. Hadn’t been for Charles Lawrence and that dizzy ring around of cylinders he made for Wright and called the J-5 Whirlwind I’d had it made.”

“Don’t knock that J-5,” Lindberg said with mock severity. Curtiss looked up and grinned at him, “Oh yeah, that thing kept you dry all the way to Paris didn’t it.” Both men laughed. Curtiss directed his intense gaze to me, “You don’t have to worry about the single ignition on this engine up here. The Boss is in charge of all things of light, which includes electricity. It’s only this plumbing you still have to worry about.”

Being only in my first day in heaven I had to ask why God didn’t make the plumbing perfect too? “Oh, plumbing is of the devil. Always has been. The spirits of dark run through pipes. Plumbing is only a system to contain treachery. Nothing we can do about it here long as Satan still has so many buddies down there on earth.” I pondered this.

Looking for the lighter side I said to Mr. Curtiss, “Well, not many people know you first put your engines on a motorcycle and were called the ‘Fastest Man on Earth.’ And personally I think your invention of the aileron, the third axis of control, is the most important thing you ever gave us.”

Curtiss looked up at Lindy, “See there? Some of them do know. Here, you want to check this guy out, let me get it all back together for you.” Curtiss stood up, spread his grease-stained hands and powerful arms like Moses, and in an instant the OX-5 engine assembled itself, cowling snapping into place last. Curtiss stood back, said “Now that’s heaven. Putting a job back together is always the worst part.” I thought of Dick Bach. He had already claimed the angels could do this kind of work back on earth and sold a million books to goofy teenage girls for it. “Get in. I’ll prop her for you.” And Lindbergh nodded toward the rear cockpit.

Now I always get the hoo-hahs, the fan-todds, the gleeks and the check ride twitters, but this time I just settled down in that Jenny knowing it was all going to be okay. Nothing had changed, it was just a matter of where I was coming from now. “Off!” called Curtiss, pulling the big S-carved wooden prop through a blade or two after Lindbergh called “off” back to him.

“Contact,” said Glenn Curtiss. “Contact,” said Charles Lindbergh, and I saw the switch move on the panel.

Curtiss took a deep breath, heaved down on the riveted brass edge of that propeller blade, using the momentum of his effort to turn, duck and run away from the front of the Jenny which had barked to life and was now running smoothly. What did you expect? This is heaven you know.

Lindy raised both hands in the air for me to see. The Jenny, having no brakes but only a tail skid in the turf, was trembling forward. I peered around the cowling and the knicker-knacking rocker arms, advanced the throttle and light as a goose feather we ran briefly and ascended into the sky. Thrilled to the core I said out of habit, “O Lordy.” And a deep voice right beside me said “Yes?” This place is going to take some getting used to.

The Jenny flew like a wicker basket of marshmallows riding a feather mattress. I grinned till my teeth kept drying out, did a few tentative wire whistling steep turns. Lindbergh patted the top of his helmet, I shook the stick, he took it. Oh how he made that Jenny sing. An elephantine loop, a frozen motion hammerhead stall, even an Immelman turn, the engine spraying us with a baptism of rusty water at being upside down and not liking it much. My hero turned, grinning at me, held up both his hands again, I took it. I was expecting to be airsick as usual, but my belly was nothing but laughter. Heaven indeed! And you know I got a brush-the-grass three pointer landing first try, now elevated from my ham-handed earthly self.

Parked at the flight line I saw what was unmistakably a 1918 SPAD pursuit ship down at the end and a fellow in jodhpurs and puttees leaning against the cockpit. “That Rickenbacker?” I whispered. Lindbergh nodded. “You can visit him tomorrow. We know he is your other hero, but you’ve had enough for one day. After you check out in SPADs he’ll invite you to fly a dawn patrol with his pursuit squadron.”

“What if I get shot down?”

“Oh you will, the green guys always do, but getting shot down here is like on TV. You just get up and come back the next day.” Lindbergh stood there a minute, enjoying my wonder.

Then said, “You can have a Stearman or a Jenny here, whichever you’d like. Or one of each if you wish. This is heaven.”

I stood looking toward the Stearmans, was surprised to recognize one I had last seen flying at Bartlesville. It was the softly gleaming deep plum-colored, fully cowled and wheel panted 450 P&W Amazing Grace that I knew belonged to Mike Danforth. “Has anything happened to Mike?” I wasn’t sure how to ask about such things up here. “Oh no,” chuckled Lindy, “That’s God’s Stearman. He liked it so much he had a copy made for Himself.”

So God flies a 450 Stearman. Didn’t really surprise me very much, and from that moment on I knew I had found my heavenly home.