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My Aviation Period by George Allingham |
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Tony Roberts was a friend of mine who was involved with flying model airplanes. These were beasts with wingspans as wide as we were tall, and used real gasoline powered engines. Since we were a band of little brothers, or ‘sniveling shits’ as my brother was fond of referring to us, we all pretty much did whatever anyone else was doing. So, I followed Tony as he carried out his latest creation and with enough paraphernalia to keep a small banana republic air force up and running. He was loaded down with the airplane with its guide wires and hand controller, a mechanics toolbox, a large lantern battery with cables, and a can of gasoline. I carried nothing, one of my fortes. We went to a softball field where Tony commenced to work. He put the plane down, strung out the control wires that were attached to one of the wings, opened the toolbox which contained all manner of strange and interesting items, spare propellers, engine parts, small unidentifiable tools, large unidentifiable tools, many rags in various sates on cleanliness, glues, paints, brushes, a few marbles, a tube of BB’s, and a cornucopia of other kid junk best left strewn around the floor of your room than dragged across a field. I was particularly interested in where the marbles we’re going to come into play. “Okay,” he began. “This is what you do.” He really didn’t mean ‘me’, it was the collective use of the pronoun ‘you’. We all knew there was very little that I was going to be able to do for him other than be an observer, but if I recall correctly, ‘observer’ was an actual air corps job, so I was fulfilling an actual role…kudos for me. “I’ve done most of it already anyway. I’ve got the control lines laid out, and topped off the tank, all you have to do is hold onto the tail after I start the engine. I’ll tell you when to let go.” Otherwise there was a chance he would be standing out there holding the controller and screaming at me while I just sat there basking in the sun, enjoying the day go by, and doggedly hanging onto the tail. He must have known there was a chance I would screw up this meager responsibility because he said it again. “I’ll yell for you to let go when I’m ready. Let me show you how to start the engine.” And now the real trouble begins. “Tony, you don’t really want me to try to start your engine, do ya? I usually leave out some step that turns out to be important. You’ll just end up frustrated, and slumped over, just ask my brother. You remember when he tried to teach me Buzz.” Tony got that look in his eye of casting his mind back and recalling the day I showed them what I had learned. “Oh yeah, and you showed us using cups of water. We ended trapped on a bus having to piss like a racehorse.” “Yes, and it’s highly likely that we’re both going to end up having to piss like a racehorse again, but at least we’ll be in a field this time.” I assumed that we, like racehorses, preferred fields for pissing. I’ve always wondered if racehorses are really prodigious pissers. I’ve seen an elephant at the zoo let go, and from the look of that, they should be the ones with the reputation. So, those racehorses must really be something. “Pay attention,” continued Tony. Ah, I can’t begin to tell you how many times in my life that statement has been directed at me, with varying degrees of lack of success. I must deserve it because now my friends are even starting to say it. “Start by hooking the positive lead from the battery to the top of this glow plug and the negative to earth.” “How can your plane fly dragging around that big galumphen battery?” “Aarrrgghh! I’m just going to pretend that you’re a real boy…” “Like Pinocchio.” “Well, you do have the wooden head…prime the engine with a couple of squirts into the carburetor.” And now, the real trouble continues. “I’ve got to say, Tony, it pleases me to think that you actually believe I know anything about what you’ve just said…or that I could do any of it.” “What part don’t you know?” “Any of it.” “Well, we’ll go slow.” “It’s my only speed.” “This is the carburetor, and you squirt some fuel from that small can, not too much…” “Do all you model airplane people call it fuel, because it says gas right on that can of yours. Actually, to be more precise, it says gasoline.” “Are trying to be difficult?” “No, but it always seems to come out that way.” “Squirt some gas from the gasoline can into this opening, turn the screw to the choke position…” “The choke position...” I repeated. I’ve been it that position many times with my brother, but only as the chokee. “Yes the choke position, which you will soon be in if you don’t shut up and listen.” “Chokee or choker?” “Chokee?” “I’d like to be the choker. I’ve been the chokee before, and I can’t really recommend it.” He stared at me with the look of one who has just discovered that he’s stuck in the middle of a primeval wood with a faulty rifle. With a wary eye he continued. “You rotate the propeller once around slowly to suck the gas into the cylinder head, then flick the propeller around quickly, and when it starts, turn the mix screw to the run position.” “Boy, that was a mouthful of stuff that I sure can’t do.” My comment didn’t register at all. “You’ve got to make sure you flip over the propeller quickly, and get your fingers out of the way, because these motors have a nasty habit of kicking back and the propeller hitting your fingers. Hurts like hell.” “Well now, that was a mouthful of stuff I surely won’t do.” Tony continued unimpeded by anything I had to say. “That’s why I have tape wrapped around these two fingers.” “So they remain attached to your hand, or just attached to each other as they fly off across the field? “Let’s start it up.” “I’ll get an ambulance…and hopefully some Red Cross cigarettes.” The small horde of my Red Cross cigarettes that I had pilfered during my hospital stay when I had mono had dwindled to one final six-pack blazoned with their red cross emblem. I desperately needed to catch mono again and return to the hospital. And, while we’re at it, do you believe that the Red Cross actually gave out cigarettes to the patients in the Army hospitals? Ah, what a great country it was, doctors were making cigarette commercials… “Take two Salems every hour.” And the Red Cross gave away smokes, albeit in packs that only held six cigarettes. It now feels like it was a dreamland. There were also cigarettes included in army C-rations, the World War II field rations that came in a package about the size of a shoebox and supplied to the troops. They held even less, four smokes. Four? What was that all about? These old leftover crusty ration packages were much coveted by all of us, and were still around in storehouses since they had made about forty billon of them. Most of the time, our parents culled out the cigarettes before we ever got to them, but every so often some slipped through. They were still prized, even if they were, by this time, over fifteen years old, and as stale as George Washington’s wooden teeth. I could never figure out why the packs only held four cigarettes. If you were a smoker, you would surely need more than that. To get a full pack you would have needed five C-rations and nobody could possibly eat that much canned corn beef hash. I don’t even think you could survive it. At the hospital the Red Cross smokes were fresh, and they were my favorite brand, filtered Freebees. But I digress. “Why is it that every time I look over at you, you’ve gone off somewhere?” asked Tony. “Perhaps I’m just trying to save your fingers.” “Hmmmm.” Tony resolutely returned to starting his plane, and immediately proceeded to do everything he had just told me, including the kicking back of the propeller. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” “Heh, Tony! Almost! But I think you missed that part about getting your fingers out of the way.” “Damn that smarts!” “You’re crazy if you
think I’m sticking my fingers in there! I’ve gotta know, why do you
wanta to do this?” “That was fun? Boy, you and I sure have a different idea of fun.” “We haven’t got to the fun yet.” “No shit.” “Oh, I forgot to mention…” Just one more thing that you never want to hear, it’s never good. “Once the engine is going, make sure you stay back behind the propeller when you turn the fuel mix screw. Tape won’t help if your fingers get hit by that.” “Are you going to do that too? There’s not a shot in hell that I’m going to still be here when you finally get the engine going.” “Where are you gonna be?” “You’ll find me behind the backstop over there, catching your flying fingers.” “It’s a lot of fun” “Oh, I don’t think catching flying fingers would be any fun.” “Can you a least still hold the tail for me?” “I’m regretting ever agreeing to it…and now that you mention it, did I ever actually agree? I can’t recall.” “That makes two of us on the regretting.” “Then let’s get out of here and go get some Red Cross cigarettes,” I said hopefully. “I’m not leaving. I’m going to fly today.” “Christ, from the way you sound you’d think you were going to sit in it and fly around the neighborhood.” “Are you going to hold the tail or not.” “Yeah, if only to see what can happen next.” Tony flipped the propeller and the engine sputtered to life. He avoided the spinning propeller, much to my disappointment, as he adjusted the mixture screw, and removed the battery clips. I held the tail. The engine seemed to have only one speed, full speed ahead to severed fingers. The plane was trying to pull free, but I did an admiral job of holding on. Tony ran to the end of the control lines, picked up the handle and yelled. “Okay, let go!” And so I accomplished my only responsibility, and let go. The plane immediately bounded across the field in a tight circle with Tony holding the control wires. It quickly rose into the sky, and circled around him. For a time he just let it circle before he started to make it rise and descend, and then he startled me with a loop d’loop. He was spinning around in a circle holding onto the lines. Why he didn’t dizzily fall over I’ll never know, because it made me dizzy just watching him. It’s one of life’s mysteries, just like those ice skaters spinning around tighter and faster until they’re just a blur, and then coming to a sudden stop. The logical finish would be to projectile vomit into the crowd, but they never do. But it would sure be how I finished. Tony flew on. It went on like this for a few minutes until the gas ran out. Tony quickly brought it back to the ground in a bumpy landing that ended with a broken propeller and a small tear in the wing. “That’s all right, it happens all the time.” He broke out his toolbox, popped off the broken propeller, tightened on a new one, and then with some glue and a patch, the wing was repaired. “Maybe you want to stick a marble in there.” “What are you talking about?” “I’ve been waiting all day to see what the hell you’re going to do with those marbles.” “I’m not going to do anything with them, my little bother stuck them in there.” I slunk my head in disappointment. “Too bad, because that was the most interesting thing about this whole thing.” “Do you want to try it?” he asked. “Do you want a pile of plane ruble?” “I would prefer a plane.” “Then, if I were you, I would just continue to spin around like a whirling dervish, and keep me out of it.” I refer to this my aviation period. It lasted maybe three weeks and culminated with my actually buying a plane kit at the PX that Tony picked out for me. The box was huge, Thunderbird it proclaimed in bold letters. There was some suspicion that Tony wasn’t really interested in helping me pick the right airplane as much as getting even. Right below the name was 54” Wingspan, an impressive box if there ever was one, none-the-less. I took it back home, and up to the maid’s rooms that lined the hall on the top floor of the apartment building. These rooms were used for lots of things, some of which ended up on a police blotter, but they were never used as a maid’s room since no one ever had a maid. I opened the box to a stunning array of balsa wood. None of it, by the way, looked like it had anything to do with an airplane. There was a prodigious stack of some type of paper included, and an instruction book thicker than anyone had any right to expect a kid to read. This was beginning to look like a major blunder. “Oh, Tony, you’re such a bastard.” I could just hear him laughing in the distance now. I occasionally visited my box, and periodically I would wistfully gaze into it’s interior. That turned out to be as far as it ever got, and why I’m not a pilot today. |
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