| Biographical Non-Fiction posted July 7, 2021 |
  |
A father and son story
Money Well Spent
by J. P. Olesen
True Story Contest Contest Winner
When I was a little kid, it was a big deal for my father to ask, "Jesse, do you want to come along and run some errands?" Dad was the greatest man in the world, and I couldn't spend enough time around him.
Those feelings, and more, changed by my teen years. He was losing me to many things. So, when my dad asked me if I wanted to run some errands one Saturday, I surprised myself by agreeing to tag along. Looking back, I must've sensed it was important to him.
We drove by a couple places, aimlessly it seemed to me, that took us outside the city limits. Then, he turned the station wagon onto a gravel road that led to a little, privately-owned airport I'd never been to. In the past, my father and I often drove to our city's municipal airport. Dad had a pilot's license, belonged to a flying club with two small, high-winged Cessna aircraft, and that's where they were hangared. Driving out to check the aircraft used to be one of the "errands" I went on as a kid, but I had no idea why we'd come this way.
As we pulled into the airport's entrance, I asked, "So what's out here?" I made a point of trying to sound indifferent and avoided looking at him by staring out the passenger window. I'd become an expert at acting bored and indifferent.
"Well, I heard a few pilots flew in this weekend," he said in his quiet, offhand manner, "and I wanted to look around." With my dad, that might have meant just about anything.
Alright, I could be equally offhanded. "Oh, okay," I replied, but deep down, I was curious to see what was up. Dad's passion for flying and aircraft infected me years ago, and I'd been flying with him from the time I was seven.
The private airport wasn't much: no control tower and not even any pavement, just a few hangars lined up parallel to a single closely-clipped grass runway. Maybe a dozen aircraft sat outside the corrugated steel hangars, and about twice as many people were scattered around talking or looking at the planes. It was a gorgeous summer afternoon with a brilliant blue sky, only a few high clouds, and the gentlest of breezes blowing--what Dad called "flying weather."
Most of the planes were Cessnas, similar to what my dad flew, along with a few low-winged Piper aircraft. Two of them, however, were unique and both were biplanes: a modern, home-built Pitts Special and an old Stearman from the Second World War.
The Pitts Special was a sassy, little, red and white striped number designed for high performance aerobatics. Underneath its bubble canopy, the fuselage had room only for the pilot, who practically strapped the plane onto himself for flight. Top speed for the Pitts was about 200 miles per hour and, unlike some other biplanes, the Pitts could be corkscrewed all over the sky without falling apart. If you had the cash, aerobatics was your "thing," and were a little self-indulgent, the Pitts was your aircraft.
I must have lingered awhile drooling over the Pitts, because when I glanced around, I noticed my dad had gone on to look at the Stearman. As I walked over, he was talking to another old guy his age, who must've been pushing 50, about flying and their service during World War II.
The first aircraft our airmen ever flew back then was often a Stearman. It was easy to fly and excellent for training future pilots.
Stearmans did not have the racy lines of the Pitts I'd been lusting after. They were large biplanes with two open cockpits. The pilot typically flew the aircraft from the rear one while a passenger rode in the cockpit up front. With its big, uncowled, radial engine and long, awkward-looking undercarriage, the Stearman looked like an antique--in this case, a very clean and beautifully maintained antique. I could stand and look down at the Pitts, but the Stearman was almost ten feet tall. Fabric covered its wood and aluminum tube construction, the fuselage was painted blue, and its wings and tail--bright yellow.
"Jesse," my dad said after a bit more chat, "meet Neil Johnson. This is his aircraft. He's heading home from a fly-in over in Illinois."
"How are you, Jesse?" Neil asked, shaking my hand.
Neil was lean like me, but taller, with a long, narrow face and an easy-going grin. I liked him immediately.
"Hi! I'm good, thanks. What a beautiful aircraft!"
"Thank you. Your dad says you might like to go up in her for a ride. What do you say?"
I stole a quick glance at my father, who was giving me a keen look and a small smile. He'd set this up, and the errands had just been an excuse.
"Really? That'd be fantastic!"
"You ever get airsick?" he asked.
"Never. Wring her out!" I replied, excitedly.
Neil flashed me another grin. What I didn't say, was that even though I'd never gotten airsick and loved to go flying, I was a little afraid of heights when I wasn't enclosed inside an airplane. I'd never admitted that to my father and did not really know how I'd react in an open cockpit.
There was also a bit of . . . "suppressed awareness" . . . in play. Several years earlier, my best friend's uncle died piloting a World War II vintage aircraft when its engine faltered at low altitude, and he crashed. Things sometimes went badly flying around in old planes.
I climbed up onto the lower wing and into the passenger's cockpit. Inside, a lap belt rested on a small leather seat. Two shoulder belts ran down from the top of the seat and hooked into the buckle of the lap belt. They kept the passenger from tumbling from the plane when upside down. Neil climbed up and came forward to check that the harness was fastened securely.
"Don't want you falling out," he said, smiling.
"Appreciate it," I replied with a grin of my own any dentist would have recognized.
The propeller rotated in front of me with a high-pitched whining before the engine caught with a sputter, a belch of exhaust, and a deep growl. We sat there a moment with the engine idling, and I studied the struts and bracing wires that held the biplane's wings together.
The Stearman was a tail-dragger. A small wheel kept the plane's tail off the ground and its front end sat up, almost arrogantly, high. When moving about on land, a pilot could only see forward by pointing the nose out of their line of sight. Neil slowly taxied his aircraft back and forth out toward the grass runway.
When we reached the near end of the runway, Neil stopped and throttled up keeping his feet on the brakes to increase the engine's RPMs. I could feel its vibrations pulsating through my cockpit's floorboards and seat. Then, Neil let off the brakes and gave the engine full throttle. With a roar, the Stearman raced smoothly down the grass strip, its tail popped up as if the plane was anxious to be airbourne, and we took off steeply in a long, curving arc.
"Christ!" I exclaimed, laughing as I was pressed back into my seat. A Stearman only flies about 100 miles an hour, but I've never been in another aircraft that seemed to climb so quickly and effortlessly.
We climbed to about two thousand feet before leveling off. Then, Neil reversed course by lifting the Stearman's wings up on one side to bank the plane around in a near-vertical turn--probably, so my father on the ground could watch more than just a speck moving off in the distance.
I looked over the edge of the cockpit straight down onto the fields below. My stomach tightened, not from fear, but excitement. I'd sat beside my dad while he performed this maneuver in a Cessna, but the Stearman's open cockpit, the wind rushing past, and the unmuffled noise from the engine intensified everything. When we'd finished the 180° turn, Neil lowered the wings back to horizontal.
As we approached the airfield, Neil did a barrel roll. The Stearman swung up sideways and around in a circular motion until the aircraft was on its back, then around and down until the aircraft flew upright again. It all happened so smoothly, I hardly had time to react as the harness dug into my side, my shoulders as I hung upside down, and into my other side as we came around out of the roll.
We'd just leveled out, when Neil barrel-rolled the Stearman in the opposite direction. This time, I knew what was coming. As I briefly hung upside down, I deliberately looked straight up--which was actually down--at the ground.
This is great! I thought. So far, so good!
When we came back to horizontal, Neil flew straight a moment and then pulled up the nose of the Stearman to make a big inside loop. I watched, pressed back into my seat, as the sky slowly tilted up and up and up, until we were upside down and I hung from the harness staring "up" at the ground sliding past hundreds of feet below. Unlike the barrel rolls, it wasn't just a brief moment, and I had plenty of time to imagine what would happen if the buckle of my harness failed. A cold, tingling sensation rushed from the soles of my feet, through my calves to my knees, and on up into my groin.
Seconds later, the Stearman plunged into a long, near-vertical, curving dive that, even when pressed back into my seat, gave the illusion I'd topple forward over the windscreen and out of the aircraft. At the end of the manuever, we leveled out and were back where we began. "Looping the loop" was a little frightening as well as exhilarating.
Neil must've wanted more altitude heading back toward the airstrip, so he reversed course with an Immelmann turn. The nose of the Stearman rose as if we were going to do another big inside loop, but at the last moment, just when it felt like I'd be hanging upside down again in the harness, the Stearman did a half-roll to fly upright and level.
When we were near the airstrip, Neil put the Stearman into a hammerhead stall by climbing nearly straight up into the sky. As we gained altitude, the aircraft gradually lost airspeed until it couldn't climb any higher and hung on its propeller, shuddering. Then, the plane's nose suddenly dropped, and we fell toward the ground in a steep dive.
Neil gave the rudder pedal a kick, turning the Stearman's dive into a spin. The patchwork of fields below whirled by in a big circle once, twice, three times, as I was pushed back into the seat. It wasn't as unsettling as the dive in a loop, but I knew from my father most small aircraft couldn't pullout after three revolutions and would crash. Then, Neil kicked the opposite rudder pedal, turned the spin into a dive and slowly pulled the Stearman back into level flight. We were flying low and approaching the end of the runway.
Neil decreased the Stearman's airspeed to lose altitude, flared to land by gently lifting its nose, and nimbly touched down without a jolt. As the aircraft lost speed, its tail dropped back onto the grass. Seconds later, Neil was taxiing the Stearman back and forth up the runway and over to where the flight began.
The ride, from beginning to end, lasted fewer than 15 minutes. It was a dazzling, off-the-cuff performance, and I was elated from the ride and about not getting airsick. After I thanked him, Dad and I chatted with Neil a while longer, said our goodbyes, and then drove home.
Years later, when I too was another old guy pushing 50, driving my father to a quarterly business meeting became an errand of mine. The meeting convened hours away, and Dad couldn't make the trip by himself. He was slowly going blind and suffering from the initial stages of Alzheimer's. I was losing him and set up the driving as another way to connect as long as possible.
During one trip, I asked him about my ride in the Stearman. Dad couldn't recall much--not even who flew the aircraft--only that he arranged the flight with a five dollar donation toward fuel.
Five dollars, but of all the many, many things my father ever bought for me, that was the best money he ever spent.
When I was a little kid, it was a big deal for my father to ask, "Jesse, do you want to come along and run some errands?" Dad was the greatest man in the world, and I couldn't spend enough time around him.
Those feelings, and more, changed by my teen years. He was losing me to many things. So, when my dad asked me if I wanted to run some errands one Saturday, I surprised myself by agreeing to tag along. Looking back, I must've sensed it was important to him.
We drove by a couple places, aimlessly it seemed to me, that took us outside the city limits. Then, he turned the station wagon onto a gravel road that led to a little, privately-owned airport I'd never been to. In the past, my father and I often drove to our city's municipal airport. Dad had a pilot's license, belonged to a flying club with two small, high-winged Cessna aircraft, and that's where they were hangared. Driving out to check the aircraft used to be one of the "errands" I went on as a kid, but I had no idea why we'd come this way.
As we pulled into the airport's entrance, I asked, "So what's out here?" I made a point of trying to sound indifferent and avoided looking at him by staring out the passenger window. I'd become an expert at acting bored and indifferent.
"Well, I heard a few pilots flew in this weekend," he said in his quiet, offhand manner, "and I wanted to look around." With my dad, that might have meant just about anything.
Alright, I could be equally offhanded. "Oh, okay," I replied, but deep down, I was curious to see what was up. Dad's passion for flying and aircraft infected me years ago, and I'd been flying with him from the time I was seven.
The private airport wasn't much: no control tower and not even any pavement, just a few hangars lined up parallel to a single closely-clipped grass runway. Maybe a dozen aircraft sat outside the corrugated steel hangars, and about twice as many people were scattered around talking or looking at the planes. It was a gorgeous summer afternoon with a brilliant blue sky, only a few high clouds, and the gentlest of breezes blowing--what Dad called "flying weather."
Most of the planes were Cessnas, similar to what my dad flew, along with a few low-winged Piper aircraft. Two of them, however, were unique and both were biplanes: a modern, home-built Pitts Special and an old Stearman from the Second World War.
The Pitts Special was a sassy, little, red and white striped number designed for high performance aerobatics. Underneath its bubble canopy, the fuselage had room only for the pilot, who practically strapped the plane onto himself for flight. Top speed for the Pitts was about 200 miles per hour and, unlike some other biplanes, the Pitts could be corkscrewed all over the sky without falling apart. If you had the cash, aerobatics was your "thing," and were a little self-indulgent, the Pitts was your aircraft.
I must have lingered awhile drooling over the Pitts, because when I glanced around, I noticed my dad had gone on to look at the Stearman. As I walked over, he was talking to another old guy his age, who must've been pushing 50, about flying and their service during World War II.
The first aircraft our airmen ever flew back then was often a Stearman. It was easy to fly and excellent for training future pilots.
Stearmans did not have the racy lines of the Pitts I'd been lusting after. They were large biplanes with two open cockpits. The pilot typically flew the aircraft from the rear one while a passenger rode in the cockpit up front. With its big, uncowled, radial engine and long, awkward-looking undercarriage, the Stearman looked like an antique--in this case, a very clean and beautifully maintained antique. I could stand and look down at the Pitts, but the Stearman was almost ten feet tall. Fabric covered its wood and aluminum tube construction, the fuselage was painted blue, and its wings and tail--bright yellow.
"Jesse," my dad said after a bit more chat, "meet Neil Johnson. This is his aircraft. He's heading home from a fly-in over in Illinois."
"How are you, Jesse?" Neil asked, shaking my hand.
Neil was lean like me, but taller, with a long, narrow face and an easy-going grin. I liked him immediately.
"Hi! I'm good, thanks. What a beautiful aircraft!"
"Thank you. Your dad says you might like to go up in her for a ride. What do you say?"
I stole a quick glance at my father, who was giving me a keen look and a small smile. He'd set this up, and the errands had just been an excuse.
"Really? That'd be fantastic!"
"You ever get airsick?" he asked.
"Never. Wring her out!" I replied, excitedly.
Neil flashed me another grin. What I didn't say, was that even though I'd never gotten airsick and loved to go flying, I was a little afraid of heights when I wasn't enclosed inside an airplane. I'd never admitted that to my father and did not really know how I'd react in an open cockpit.
There was also a bit of . . . "suppressed awareness" . . . in play. Several years earlier, my best friend's uncle died piloting a World War II vintage aircraft when its engine faltered at low altitude, and he crashed. Things sometimes went badly flying around in old planes.
I climbed up onto the lower wing and into the passenger's cockpit. Inside, a lap belt rested on a small leather seat. Two shoulder belts ran down from the top of the seat and hooked into the buckle of the lap belt. They kept the passenger from tumbling from the plane when upside down. Neil climbed up and came forward to check that the harness was fastened securely.
"Don't want you falling out," he said, smiling.
"Appreciate it," I replied with a grin of my own any dentist would have recognized.
The propeller rotated in front of me with a high-pitched whining before the engine caught with a sputter, a belch of exhaust, and a deep growl. We sat there a moment with the engine idling, and I studied the struts and bracing wires that held the biplane's wings together.
The Stearman was a tail-dragger. A small wheel kept the plane's tail off the ground and its front end sat up, almost arrogantly, high. When moving about on land, a pilot could only see forward by pointing the nose out of their line of sight. Neil slowly taxied his aircraft back and forth out toward the grass runway.
When we reached the near end of the runway, Neil stopped and throttled up keeping his feet on the brakes to increase the engine's RPMs. I could feel its vibrations pulsating through my cockpit's floorboards and seat. Then, Neil let off the brakes and gave the engine full throttle. With a roar, the Stearman raced smoothly down the grass strip, its tail popped up as if the plane was anxious to be airbourne, and we took off steeply in a long, curving arc.
"Christ!" I exclaimed, laughing as I was pressed back into my seat. A Stearman only flies about 100 miles an hour, but I've never been in another aircraft that seemed to climb so quickly and effortlessly.
We climbed to about two thousand feet before leveling off. Then, Neil reversed course by lifting the Stearman's wings up on one side to bank the plane around in a near-vertical turn--probably, so my father on the ground could watch more than just a speck moving off in the distance.
I looked over the edge of the cockpit straight down onto the fields below. My stomach tightened, not from fear, but excitement. I'd sat beside my dad while he performed this maneuver in a Cessna, but the Stearman's open cockpit, the wind rushing past, and the unmuffled noise from the engine intensified everything. When we'd finished the 180° turn, Neil lowered the wings back to horizontal.
As we approached the airfield, Neil did a barrel roll. The Stearman swung up sideways and around in a circular motion until the aircraft was on its back, then around and down until the aircraft flew upright again. It all happened so smoothly, I hardly had time to react as the harness dug into my side, my shoulders as I hung upside down, and into my other side as we came around out of the roll.
We'd just leveled out, when Neil barrel-rolled the Stearman in the opposite direction. This time, I knew what was coming. As I briefly hung upside down, I deliberately looked straight up--which was actually down--at the ground.
This is great! I thought. So far, so good!
When we came back to horizontal, Neil flew straight a moment and then pulled up the nose of the Stearman to make a big inside loop. I watched, pressed back into my seat, as the sky slowly tilted up and up and up, until we were upside down and I hung from the harness staring "up" at the ground sliding past hundreds of feet below. Unlike the barrel rolls, it wasn't just a brief moment, and I had plenty of time to imagine what would happen if the buckle of my harness failed. A cold, tingling sensation rushed from the soles of my feet, through my calves to my knees, and on up into my groin.
Seconds later, the Stearman plunged into a long, near-vertical, curving dive that, even when pressed back into my seat, gave the illusion I'd topple forward over the windscreen and out of the aircraft. At the end of the manuever, we leveled out and were back where we began. "Looping the loop" was a little frightening as well as exhilarating.
Neil must've wanted more altitude heading back toward the airstrip, so he reversed course with an Immelmann turn. The nose of the Stearman rose as if we were going to do another big inside loop, but at the last moment, just when it felt like I'd be hanging upside down again in the harness, the Stearman did a half-roll to fly upright and level.
When we were near the airstrip, Neil put the Stearman into a hammerhead stall by climbing nearly straight up into the sky. As we gained altitude, the aircraft gradually lost airspeed until it couldn't climb any higher and hung on its propeller, shuddering. Then, the plane's nose suddenly dropped, and we fell toward the ground in a steep dive.
Neil gave the rudder pedal a kick, turning the Stearman's dive into a spin. The patchwork of fields below whirled by in a big circle once, twice, three times, as I was pushed back into the seat. It wasn't as unsettling as the dive in a loop, but I knew from my father most small aircraft couldn't pullout after three revolutions and would crash. Then, Neil kicked the opposite rudder pedal, turned the spin into a dive and slowly pulled the Stearman back into level flight. We were flying low and approaching the end of the runway.
Neil decreased the Stearman's airspeed to lose altitude, flared to land by gently lifting its nose, and nimbly touched down without a jolt. As the aircraft lost speed, its tail dropped back onto the grass. Seconds later, Neil was taxiing the Stearman back and forth up the runway and over to where the flight began.
The ride, from beginning to end, lasted fewer than 15 minutes. It was a dazzling, off-the-cuff performance, and I was elated from the ride and about not getting airsick. After I thanked him, Dad and I chatted with Neil a while longer, said our goodbyes, and then drove home.
Years later, when I too was another old guy pushing 50, driving my father to a quarterly business meeting became an errand of mine. The meeting convened hours away, and Dad couldn't make the trip by himself. He was slowly going blind and suffering from the initial stages of Alzheimer's. I was losing him and set up the driving as another way to connect as long as possible.
During one trip, I asked him about my ride in the Stearman. Dad couldn't recall much--not even who flew the aircraft--only that he arranged the flight with a five dollar donation toward fuel.
Five dollars, but of all the many, many things my father ever bought for me, that was the best money he ever spent.
Those feelings, and more, changed by my teen years. He was losing me to many things. So, when my dad asked me if I wanted to run some errands one Saturday, I surprised myself by agreeing to tag along. Looking back, I must've sensed it was important to him.
We drove by a couple places, aimlessly it seemed to me, that took us outside the city limits. Then, he turned the station wagon onto a gravel road that led to a little, privately-owned airport I'd never been to. In the past, my father and I often drove to our city's municipal airport. Dad had a pilot's license, belonged to a flying club with two small, high-winged Cessna aircraft, and that's where they were hangared. Driving out to check the aircraft used to be one of the "errands" I went on as a kid, but I had no idea why we'd come this way.
As we pulled into the airport's entrance, I asked, "So what's out here?" I made a point of trying to sound indifferent and avoided looking at him by staring out the passenger window. I'd become an expert at acting bored and indifferent.
"Well, I heard a few pilots flew in this weekend," he said in his quiet, offhand manner, "and I wanted to look around." With my dad, that might have meant just about anything.
Alright, I could be equally offhanded. "Oh, okay," I replied, but deep down, I was curious to see what was up. Dad's passion for flying and aircraft infected me years ago, and I'd been flying with him from the time I was seven.
The private airport wasn't much: no control tower and not even any pavement, just a few hangars lined up parallel to a single closely-clipped grass runway. Maybe a dozen aircraft sat outside the corrugated steel hangars, and about twice as many people were scattered around talking or looking at the planes. It was a gorgeous summer afternoon with a brilliant blue sky, only a few high clouds, and the gentlest of breezes blowing--what Dad called "flying weather."
Most of the planes were Cessnas, similar to what my dad flew, along with a few low-winged Piper aircraft. Two of them, however, were unique and both were biplanes: a modern, home-built Pitts Special and an old Stearman from the Second World War.
The Pitts Special was a sassy, little, red and white striped number designed for high performance aerobatics. Underneath its bubble canopy, the fuselage had room only for the pilot, who practically strapped the plane onto himself for flight. Top speed for the Pitts was about 200 miles per hour and, unlike some other biplanes, the Pitts could be corkscrewed all over the sky without falling apart. If you had the cash, aerobatics was your "thing," and were a little self-indulgent, the Pitts was your aircraft.
I must have lingered awhile drooling over the Pitts, because when I glanced around, I noticed my dad had gone on to look at the Stearman. As I walked over, he was talking to another old guy his age, who must've been pushing 50, about flying and their service during World War II.
The first aircraft our airmen ever flew back then was often a Stearman. It was easy to fly and excellent for training future pilots.
Stearmans did not have the racy lines of the Pitts I'd been lusting after. They were large biplanes with two open cockpits. The pilot typically flew the aircraft from the rear one while a passenger rode in the cockpit up front. With its big, uncowled, radial engine and long, awkward-looking undercarriage, the Stearman looked like an antique--in this case, a very clean and beautifully maintained antique. I could stand and look down at the Pitts, but the Stearman was almost ten feet tall. Fabric covered its wood and aluminum tube construction, the fuselage was painted blue, and its wings and tail--bright yellow.
"Jesse," my dad said after a bit more chat, "meet Neil Johnson. This is his aircraft. He's heading home from a fly-in over in Illinois."
"How are you, Jesse?" Neil asked, shaking my hand.
Neil was lean like me, but taller, with a long, narrow face and an easy-going grin. I liked him immediately.
"Hi! I'm good, thanks. What a beautiful aircraft!"
"Thank you. Your dad says you might like to go up in her for a ride. What do you say?"
I stole a quick glance at my father, who was giving me a keen look and a small smile. He'd set this up, and the errands had just been an excuse.
"Really? That'd be fantastic!"
"You ever get airsick?" he asked.
"Never. Wring her out!" I replied, excitedly.
Neil flashed me another grin. What I didn't say, was that even though I'd never gotten airsick and loved to go flying, I was a little afraid of heights when I wasn't enclosed inside an airplane. I'd never admitted that to my father and did not really know how I'd react in an open cockpit.
There was also a bit of . . . "suppressed awareness" . . . in play. Several years earlier, my best friend's uncle died piloting a World War II vintage aircraft when its engine faltered at low altitude, and he crashed. Things sometimes went badly flying around in old planes.
I climbed up onto the lower wing and into the passenger's cockpit. Inside, a lap belt rested on a small leather seat. Two shoulder belts ran down from the top of the seat and hooked into the buckle of the lap belt. They kept the passenger from tumbling from the plane when upside down. Neil climbed up and came forward to check that the harness was fastened securely.
"Don't want you falling out," he said, smiling.
"Appreciate it," I replied with a grin of my own any dentist would have recognized.
The propeller rotated in front of me with a high-pitched whining before the engine caught with a sputter, a belch of exhaust, and a deep growl. We sat there a moment with the engine idling, and I studied the struts and bracing wires that held the biplane's wings together.
The Stearman was a tail-dragger. A small wheel kept the plane's tail off the ground and its front end sat up, almost arrogantly, high. When moving about on land, a pilot could only see forward by pointing the nose out of their line of sight. Neil slowly taxied his aircraft back and forth out toward the grass runway.
When we reached the near end of the runway, Neil stopped and throttled up keeping his feet on the brakes to increase the engine's RPMs. I could feel its vibrations pulsating through my cockpit's floorboards and seat. Then, Neil let off the brakes and gave the engine full throttle. With a roar, the Stearman raced smoothly down the grass strip, its tail popped up as if the plane was anxious to be airbourne, and we took off steeply in a long, curving arc.
"Christ!" I exclaimed, laughing as I was pressed back into my seat. A Stearman only flies about 100 miles an hour, but I've never been in another aircraft that seemed to climb so quickly and effortlessly.
We climbed to about two thousand feet before leveling off. Then, Neil reversed course by lifting the Stearman's wings up on one side to bank the plane around in a near-vertical turn--probably, so my father on the ground could watch more than just a speck moving off in the distance.
I looked over the edge of the cockpit straight down onto the fields below. My stomach tightened, not from fear, but excitement. I'd sat beside my dad while he performed this maneuver in a Cessna, but the Stearman's open cockpit, the wind rushing past, and the unmuffled noise from the engine intensified everything. When we'd finished the 180° turn, Neil lowered the wings back to horizontal.
As we approached the airfield, Neil did a barrel roll. The Stearman swung up sideways and around in a circular motion until the aircraft was on its back, then around and down until the aircraft flew upright again. It all happened so smoothly, I hardly had time to react as the harness dug into my side, my shoulders as I hung upside down, and into my other side as we came around out of the roll.
We'd just leveled out, when Neil barrel-rolled the Stearman in the opposite direction. This time, I knew what was coming. As I briefly hung upside down, I deliberately looked straight up--which was actually down--at the ground.
This is great! I thought. So far, so good!
When we came back to horizontal, Neil flew straight a moment and then pulled up the nose of the Stearman to make a big inside loop. I watched, pressed back into my seat, as the sky slowly tilted up and up and up, until we were upside down and I hung from the harness staring "up" at the ground sliding past hundreds of feet below. Unlike the barrel rolls, it wasn't just a brief moment, and I had plenty of time to imagine what would happen if the buckle of my harness failed. A cold, tingling sensation rushed from the soles of my feet, through my calves to my knees, and on up into my groin.
Seconds later, the Stearman plunged into a long, near-vertical, curving dive that, even when pressed back into my seat, gave the illusion I'd topple forward over the windscreen and out of the aircraft. At the end of the manuever, we leveled out and were back where we began. "Looping the loop" was a little frightening as well as exhilarating.
Neil must've wanted more altitude heading back toward the airstrip, so he reversed course with an Immelmann turn. The nose of the Stearman rose as if we were going to do another big inside loop, but at the last moment, just when it felt like I'd be hanging upside down again in the harness, the Stearman did a half-roll to fly upright and level.
When we were near the airstrip, Neil put the Stearman into a hammerhead stall by climbing nearly straight up into the sky. As we gained altitude, the aircraft gradually lost airspeed until it couldn't climb any higher and hung on its propeller, shuddering. Then, the plane's nose suddenly dropped, and we fell toward the ground in a steep dive.
Neil gave the rudder pedal a kick, turning the Stearman's dive into a spin. The patchwork of fields below whirled by in a big circle once, twice, three times, as I was pushed back into the seat. It wasn't as unsettling as the dive in a loop, but I knew from my father most small aircraft couldn't pullout after three revolutions and would crash. Then, Neil kicked the opposite rudder pedal, turned the spin into a dive and slowly pulled the Stearman back into level flight. We were flying low and approaching the end of the runway.
Neil decreased the Stearman's airspeed to lose altitude, flared to land by gently lifting its nose, and nimbly touched down without a jolt. As the aircraft lost speed, its tail dropped back onto the grass. Seconds later, Neil was taxiing the Stearman back and forth up the runway and over to where the flight began.
The ride, from beginning to end, lasted fewer than 15 minutes. It was a dazzling, off-the-cuff performance, and I was elated from the ride and about not getting airsick. After I thanked him, Dad and I chatted with Neil a while longer, said our goodbyes, and then drove home.
Years later, when I too was another old guy pushing 50, driving my father to a quarterly business meeting became an errand of mine. The meeting convened hours away, and Dad couldn't make the trip by himself. He was slowly going blind and suffering from the initial stages of Alzheimer's. I was losing him and set up the driving as another way to connect as long as possible.
During one trip, I asked him about my ride in the Stearman. Dad couldn't recall much--not even who flew the aircraft--only that he arranged the flight with a five dollar donation toward fuel.
Five dollars, but of all the many, many things my father ever bought for me, that was the best money he ever spent.
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