Part One
Many people ask me, “Jim, why do you fly? Why don’t you do something normal for a hobby?” Good questions indeed; the answer to these interrogatories probably speaks much about my personality and some of the childhood dreams and fantasies that I had when I was much younger. Fasten your seatbelts and turn off your cell phones- we are ready for departure.
When I was about five years old, I often watched movies on TV with my father. The TV was one of those Philco jobs with a about a twelve-inch screen; everything was black and white in those days so a degree of imagination was required to translate shades of gray into color. My Dad was a worrier, and often stayed up late to either read or watch TV to take his mind off of the cares of his day. One channel in Los Angeles played movies about World War II after nine o’clock, and my Dad would often watch various and sundry movies about this important chapter in his life. Once in a while- if I was really careful in sneaking down the hall past my parent’s room where my mom was sleeping- Dad would let me sit with him while he watched one of the documentaries or a contemporaneous Hollywood production. Sometimes I would fall asleep in the chair next to him; other times, I would watch the movie all the way through.
One movie that I watched all the way through was entitled “Mary Ann” and was about flying. The story dealt with a bomber crew in the early days of the Pacific Campaign that flew their B-17 from the US out to Hawaii, then across the Pacific Ocean to the island war in the South West Pacific Area. As a result, I was probably the only kid in my kindergarten class who knew where New Guinea was- let alone have some insight into what went on there about 20 years before.
As a result of watching this movie- and others like “Twelve O’Clock High”- I spent many hours up in the top of a tall ash tree that was in the front yard of the house in La Canada that we lived in at the time. When I was in that tree, I could see across the valley to the hills in Glendale, and could see the airplanes climbing out of the LA Basin heading east. All these things were conflated in my imagination into a great flight in a B-17 on my way to adventure and danger at the controls of my plane. Playmates- like Tommy Beebee, who lived on the next street- became crewmembers in my flying ash tree/B-17, but I always had the left seat- I was always the pilot. Sometimes when playing/flying alone, I was in a P-51 roaming the skies looking for the bad guys. But always I was the pilot, and I was flying somewhere. I loved being high in that tree, because I could see things far away and felt closer to the sky than while on the ground.
Sometimes, when I would be sitting in an enforced silence during a church meeting, I would imagine myself flying. I would sit in the La Canada Ward chapel- with its arch truss beamed ceiling- and imagine that I was in a very small plane weaving in and out of the chandeliers that hung from the ceiling; or threading between imaginary clouds represented by the trusses above me while flying to a distant place. There are times when I still do this while someone at the podium is struggling to speak what is in the heart- I am cleared off to flight block three zero zero to three four zero to roam the skies looking for adventure. Marnie can usually tell by the look on my face that I am off in the clouds somewhere in my mind; generally a gentle poke in the ribs gets me back into the hangar in short order. But it doesn't take much for me to slip out, pull the wheel chocks and taxi off in my mind on another adventure.
