Biplane

6

THERE IS A SIGN by the telephone:

FOR FLIGHT SERVICE, CHECK THE LINE CLEAR, PRESS BLACK BUTTON TWO SHORT RINGS, SAY “FLIGHT SERVICE, AUGUSTA MUNICIPAL AIRPORT.”

There are thousands of these telephones in airports across the country, and each one has its own sign with precise directions for use. It used to be, in aviation, that a pilot could get along without any directions at all. Press black button for two short rings.

“Flight Service.”

“Hi, Flight Service. Going Augusta on out around Columbus, Auburn-Jackson-Vicksburg. What you got for weather?” I remember the advice an airline captain once gave me. Never listen to a weatherman’s forecast. The weather that’s there is the stuff you fly through, and you’ll never know what that’s like till you get there.

“Looks like a good day. Columbus is clear and twelve miles visibility, Jackson is clear and twenty, Vicksburg clear and twenty. Dallas is clear and fifty, if you want that. Forecast will be for scattered cumulus on into the afternoon, maybe some scattered showers or thundershowers.”

“Any winds, surface to five thousand feet?” I wait in interest, consuming a potato-chip breakfast and a bottle of Pepsi-Cola.

“Ah, let’s see. Surface winds light and variable through Columbus, going west at ten by the time you get into Jackson-Vicksburg. Five-thousand-foot winds are three three zero degrees fifteen knots, all the way. Looks like it will be a good day.”

“Good. Thanks for the weather.”

“Can I have your aircraft number?”

“Four nine nine Hotel.”

“OK. You want to file a flight plan?”

“Might be nice, but I’m a no-radio airplane.”

He laughs, as though I had made some sort of mildly funny joke: an airplane with no radio. “Well then, guess there’s not too much we can do for you. ”

“Guess not. Thanks for the weather.”

Ten minutes from the moment that the telephone touches the cradle near the black button and its list of directions, a biplane is airborne once again over Georgia, flying west. The chill in the air is now a comfortable chill, and not cold. Even without Flight Service doing anything for me, it is fun to be flying. Winds from the west at altitude; those will be headwinds, and those we can do without.

We stay as low as we can, still keeping within gliding range of fields fit for landing. At times this is not very low, for the fields are scattered, intruders in the kingdom of pines that mat the earth as far as I can see. Here a road cutting through to parallel my railroad track, here a small lake and pasture, then the pines again, all around. They are old green, dark green, and among them the fresh young lime green of the leaved trees turning early to the sun, looking at it still in wonder. So many trees, so very many trees.

Along the side of a dirt road, a weathered house, a tangled yard. The shadow of the biplane flicks over its chimney and the engine noise must be loud and unusual. No door opens, though, no sign of movement. Now it is gone, and lost behind.

Who lives in the house? What memories does it have tucked into its wood; what happiness has it seen, what joys and what defeats? A full world of life, there, and sorrow and pleasure and gain and loss and interest and bright things happening day on day as the sun rises over the same pines to the east and sets over the same pines to the west. A whole world of important things happening, to real people. Perhaps tomorrow night there is a dance in Marysville, and inside the house there are gingham dresses being ironed. Perhaps a decision made to leave the house and seek a better living in Augusta or Clairmont. Perhaps and perhaps and perhaps. Perhaps there is no one in the house, and it is the body of a house, only. Whatever it is, whatever its story, it took the shadow of the biplane something less than half a second to cross it, and leave it dwindling away behind.

Come, now. Let’s stay awake on our navigation. Where are we, by the way? How many miles out from Augusta and how many miles left to go into Auburn? How’s that groundspeed? What’s our estimate over the next checkpoint? What is the next checkpoint? Do I even know our next checkpoint?

Listen to all those old questions. They used to be such important questions, too. Now, in the biplane, they don’t matter at all. The question of finding a destination was solved before we took off; there is three hours flying to Auburn, I have five hours of fuel. I follow a railroad track. End navigation problem. At one time away off in the future it was a great game to compute estimates and groundspeeds and to tell to the second when the wheels would touch at destination. But that was with a different sort of airplane and in a world where answers were important things. Miss the estimate and a host of other airplanes would have to be advised. When fuel was critical, and gallons of it burned in a minute, one kept a close watch upon headwinds and groundspeeds. A headwind too strong meant that there wasn’t enough fuel to reach destination and one had to land short to refuel. Critical, critical, every bit of it.

Now, in 1929, what matter? With headwinds, I’ll arrive a half-hour later, or an hour later, with still an hour’s flying left in the tank. I am not in a hurry, for anyone who flies an old slow biplane cannot afford to be in a hurry. What matter if I do not make it to destination? I’ll land sooner, at a different destination, and in the next flight pass over my first goal, to another beyond. In 1929, without radio or navigation equipment or an anxious agency waiting my arrival, I am on my own. Seeing a smooth pasture, I can land and take time without worry, and perhaps even trade a ten-minute flight for a homecooked meal.

I know roughly where I am. The sun rises in the east and it sets in the west; I need only follow the setting sun, without ever glancing at a map, and in time I will reach the other coast of the United States. Any town of size has an airport and fuel. Climb, then, when the fuel is getting low, find the town, fill the tank and go on into the west.

The biplane rachets and thunders through the low sky, brightwinged, whirring, pulling a shadow ninety miles per hour across the sandy earth and through the needled treetops. Things moving, things to watch, air to drink and to slice into long ribbons with wingwires. But still the strange touch of the dream so long dreamed.

Perhaps in a few thousand years flight will become something we can accept and believe to be real. Do the gulls enjoy flying, and the hawks? Probably not. Probably they wish that they could stride along the ground, and know what it is to be held firmly down and not subject to every toss of an air current. I’d like to say, “I’ll trade you, hawk,” but I’d want to attach a few strings to the deal. The more I consider it, the more strings there would be to attach, until in the end I’d only want to be me, with an ability to fly. And this is what I am at this moment. I’ll still take my life and my clumsy clattery way of moving through the air. For in working and striving and sacrificing for this way of flying, I can enjoy it fully; give me flight without effort and I’ll turn shortly, bored, to something that challenges.

A challenge: let us invent a way that will allow us to fly. And poor earthbound man sought and dreamed and worked for a long time before he struck upon an answer. Try wings like the birds’ wings, try sails like a boat’s, try the flame of gunpowder rockets. Try and try and try. Kites and cloth and feathers and wood and steam engines, nets about birds and frames of bamboo. Then bamboo with cloth stretched and a cradle for the man pilot. If I build a mountain and stretch my bamboo wings at the top, and run down the side of the mountain into the wind. and there he had it. Man at last was flying. Months of flights from the mountaintop, but still, it should be able to last longer, I should be able to taste more fully this rare sweetness. Oars, then, and pedals and treadmills and handcranks and paddlewheels and flapping wings and a little homebuilt gasoline engine. If we take the engine, and attach a chain drive that can turn two propellers and fit it all to the wings and perhaps the pilot can lie down on the lower wing. Another step made, another beginning. A beginning laid down for all mankind to work from.

At first, flying is a blind sort of fun, the challenge again, something different to do. Enjoyable to feel in control of a big metallic bird and look down on all the little buildings and lakes and ants on the road. In time, for those who persevere through the archaic accumulation of tests that lead to a pilot’s license, the joy subtly switches from that of controlling the bird into that of being the bird, with eyes bright for looking down, with wings that on the ground are only wood and cloth and sheet aluminum, but in flight become so alive that one can feel feathers in the wind.

We notice first the change in the world outside us. It changes from familiar low perspective to the unfamiliar high one, and we wonder what it would feel like to fall all that way down. Fun it might be, but a timid kind of fun, for after all, we say, the air is not really our element. We don’t change our mind about that for a long time.

Then come the hours when we feel uneasily at home, with time to notice the world again, when the flying takes care of itself. From this the uneasiness goes out, as we learn that we can handle many problems successfully.

And then we begin to see the earth and the sky as symbols. The mountain is not so much a mass of peaked earth to be feared as an obstacle to be conquered in pursuit of a higher goal.

And an airplane, we discover, is a teacher. A calm, subtle, persuasive teacher, for it is infinitely patient. An airplane does not question its pilot’s motives, or misunderstand him, or have hurt feelings for him to soothe. Like the sky, an airplane simply is, offering its lessons. If we wish to learn the lessons, they are there in plenty, and can become very detailed and profound lessons.

Columbus ahead. A touch backward on the control stick to lift us from the treetops to a platform high above them. One is not allowed to cross cities at low altitude and one should not, even if there were no law. Cities do not offer many good places to land if an engine should stop, and those not interested in airplanes should not have their thought turned for an instant by the sound of cylinders firing to blur a propeller. Two thousand feet, then, over Columbus, and the flight goes for a moment less interesting. At low level there is a blurred fringe on the land speeding by. At two thousand feet, the fringe is gone and all is clear and sharp, slow-moving. There the highways leading into the city, and automobiles and trucks crowding along. There a refinery, going to a great amount of effort to the simple end that the smoke from its tall stacks should tell the pilot of a passing biplane from just what direction the wind is blowing. There, on the meadow by the river, is Columbus Municipal Airport, with many runways angled and set for many winds. A curved airplane-parking ramp, and oil spots from its passenger airplanes in front of the terminal. Columbus Municipal Airport is no place for an old radioless biplane.

From the concrete giant, for a second, there shines a green light. There. Again. From the control tower, a brilliant green pencil flashing. And behind the green, a tiny figure in the tower. He is clearing me to land. How kind of him, how very thoughtful! From two thousand feet above his airport, we have been invited to stop and have a cup of coffee and talk about the old days.

Thank you very much, friend, but I must really be on my way. Wouldn’t want to disturb those airplanes that do believe in radios. We rock our wings in thanks, and rock them with a gentle wish, for his is an unusual offer. There is an interesting fellow behind the green light at Columbus Municipal, and someday I shall come through here again and ask of him.

A crossing of a river, some tall radio towers sliding below, and the country closes back in as the city has gone. Cities are always losing the battle. No matter how big they are, there is always the country; patient, like a quiet green sea about it, waiting to close back in. The ground changes quickly from Modern back to Always, after one flies over a city. A strip of motels hangs on for a moment lining the highways into town, but at last they surrender and the country takes over, and with it the quiet life and the quiet people. Again the roar of the engine drifts down to treetop height and is absorbed into green needles.

Parallel to the deserted road that will bring me to the Auburn airport is a wide field cut, and level, fit for landing. My money in the bank, that allows me play and the enjoyment of flying low.

Two tall pines ahead, a wingspan apart, swifting closer, stretching high above us until one last second and hard back on the control stick and full left aileron and in a steep climbing turn we watch the needles brush by. That’s the consciousness of flying, when you can reach out and touch the ground moving by, and brush the branches of a tree as you pass. There is no place that is more fun to fly than a horizon-to-horizon meadow with trees sparsely planted. Fly down low with wheels flicking through the grass; flash by the first trees at cow-level so that they look normal and unscalable, rush toward the next that look just as haughty and then in a simple small movement of stick and rudder roar straight up and over and roll inverted and look down at its branches.

Yet how they worked, how those first to fly worked to get away from the ground! Years of their life and thought for a flight of a hundred feet, for an altitude of ten feet, for twenty seconds in the air. And today we can taste the sheer and untrammeled fun of flying the twenty seconds, then another twenty, and another. Roll the wheels in the meadow, swing them high and rolling over the top of the tallest trees. Slice the rush of air with a wingtip, with a glove, with eyes squinting. This is flying. The power to throw yourself happily through the sky, to see the familiar world from any angle at all, or not to see it, to turn one’s head and spend an hour in the otherworld of the hills and plains and cliffs and lakes and meadows all built of cloud.

But take a pilot in his very favorite airplane and immerse him in his very favorite conditions: meadow with trees planted, mountains to conquer, alone in the sunset clouds. Rarely, very rarely, and then only if you watch very closely, you may see him smile. I caught myself at this and asked how could it be.

It was low-level flying over the desert, at very high speed, leading a flight of four F-86 Sabrejets to a target. All the cards were there and face up: we needed the low-level training mission to fill a squadron requirement; we were heavy on fuel and had to go full throttle to burn it away; the ground was flat and the air was caught in the stillness of early morning. At the end of the low-level flight waited the gunnery targets. I flew a good airplane, and the bet was a nickel for every bullet hole in the target.

Result, then, was a needle on the airspeed indicator that settled on 540 miles per hour. Result was the need for tiny little movements of the control stick to follow the low rise and fall of the earth and for quick jumps over tall cactus. Result was three friends in loose formation to left and right, engaging all in the favorite mission of highspeed low-level, and a challenge waiting. Eight heavy machine guns, in that flight, loaded and ready to fire. Four smooth sweptwing arrows that were sheer beauty in their silver against the early desert, one rising here over a boulder, one dipping now into a hollow, banking sharply to avoid a single yucca plant. Like kids down the block playing at Jet Fighter Pilot, with great big pretty authentic official toys, splitting the air with sudden howitzer-sounds to the lizards in the sun, and not a single human ear to be disturbed or to voice complaint.

Speed and power and control; toys enjoyed to their fullest. But I wasn’t smiling. I wasted a precious second of that joy distilled in concern. Why wasn’t I smiling? I should be laughing, singing, were there room to dance I should be dancing.

The lesson then, handed from a different airplane, handed at a speed of 543 miles per hour, at an altitude of seven feet three inches. Inwardly, inwardly, pilot. The only important things happen within yourself. Something great and wild and different and unusual may happen outside of you, but the meaning and importance of it come from within. A smile is outward, a way of communicating. Here you can be lost in the joy and hold it all to yourself, knowing it, tasting it, feeling it, being happy. No communication required.

* * *

There, beyond the powerlines, Auburn airport. Back on the stick, roaring up over the wires, seeing clearly and at once the two hard-surface runways, the two grass landing strips, a scarlet windsock stirring softly above the gasoline pumps. Into the wind, circle the field, pick the landing strip and the part of the strip that we shall land upon. The parachute is hard; it will be good to get out and walk around. One lonely biplane in the landing pattern, but the biplane is not aware of her loneliness and turns easily toward the bright spring grass.

A good strip, this, not even the ruts of many landings worn into it. An inviting soft place to come again to ground and a place that the biplane can turn toward as she has so many times before. Throttle back and the propeller becomes a silent windmill. Down we glide, green ahead, wind going soft in the wires, whishing gently just enough to say that it is there. Forward on the stick, forward and the trees growing tall at each side of the strip, and taller and the grass is blocked out ahead and blurred to the sides, stick back now, as we slow, and back and back. and with a little crash we’re down and rolling on all three wheels, clattering and thudding through the unevenness from which the green grows. Left-rudder-right-rudder and here we are all of a sudden at that familiar speed at which I could hop over the side and walk. A touch of throttle and we taxi slowly toward the gasoline pumps and the few buildings clustered around. Neither old buildings nor new; one a hangar, another a flight school with windows looking out upon the runways, another hangar around back. A few people standing near the door, talking and watching the biplane as it taxies.

A burst of power and the pulsing wind beating back upon me for a moment, then left rudder to swing around near the low-octane pump and bring the red-knobbed mixture lever forward to Idle-Cutoff. The engine runs on for four seconds, then all at once it goes quiet and I can hear the pistons clanking softly and the propeller coasting to a stop.

Switch off.

Fuel off.

Seat belt unfastened, parachute straps unbuckled, gloves off, helmet off and feel the gentle soft wind that doesn’t come from a propeller. Still sunlight. Quiet. I can have only a nodding acquaintance with the quiet, for the engine roars on in my ears; the ghost engine, the spirit of a thing that one might be tempted to call dead.

The little crowd walks over as I begin to refill the tank. They are awed a bit and look silently at the old airplane. Flight students, and they do not see many old airplanes flying. Are they aware of the biplane as a heritage, or just as a strange relic that has come wandering through? It would be good to know, but one can’t ask a stranger group are you aware of this as a heritage. One can’t ask that sort of a thing until one gets to know them, until they are strangers no more.

“Hi. Any place around here to get a sandwich?”