Blurred Vision(Michael D. Warner) BLURRED VISION By Michael D. Warner

Copyright 2005 by Michael D. Warner All rights reserved.

I stared dreamily through the clouded window at the airplane parked outside. She appeared as a blurred vision through the smoke-coated panes of the old administration building hallway. She was red. She was shiny, and she was mine ...well, almost mine.

The fabric-covered airplane, a sixty-five horsepower Taylorcraft L-2, sat tied down on the grass parking area, glistening in the early November sun as I went whistling about my chores, anxious for the end of the day to arrive. Its owners had instructed me to rent it out as much as possible, to keep it clean and shiny with the tires always aired up, and to fly it as much as I liked, showing off the hand-lettered FOR SALE sign posted in the rear window.

A month earlier, honorable discharge in hand, I had left the relative security of four-years active-duty with the U.S. Air Force to try my luck in the unknown free-enterprise system, taking a job managing the Bussell Field airport for forty-dollars per week. A room in the administration building had been thrown in with the deal so I could live there free. I went to sleep airplanes, dreamed airplanes, woke up airplanes, pushed and pulled and washed and gassed airplanes.

In my spare time I read about airplanes. I watched airplanes take off and land and I crawled over airplanes. The sound in my ears was airplanes. Other pilots hung around the airport. With them, I talked airplanes.

The year was 1959. Alaska had become the forty-ninth U.S. state in January followed by Hawaii seven months later. The “N.S. Savannah”, world’s first nuclear-powered merchant vessel, had just sailed from Groton, Connecticut. That summer, the blustery Russian premier, Nikita Khrushchev, paid an unprecedented visit to U.S. shores.

Under guidance of President Dwight D. Eisenhower the nation had been wallowing in the worst recession since the ‘crash of 1929’. Those of us having jobs felt lucky indeed. Liking the job you held made it even better. Being twenty-one years of age, I allowed the world to solve its own problems: I was busy learning all I could about airplanes.

My airport was a small one located in central Alabama. Its two runways, one paved and the other grass-covered, served the cotton mill community of Bussellville, providing shelter for the nine aircraft based there. Tall pines surrounded both runways, making the ends of the north-south paved runway invisible from the east-west grass strip, and vice-versa.

The large white airport administration building and the huge wooden hangar had been constructed as a depression-era public-works project in the 1930’s. The main building sat back about fifty yards from the runway intersection and the old hangar loomed a thousand feet to the east, both buildings generally occupying the northeast quadrant of the field.

October had delivered a full month of Indian Summer. November brought the first serious change-of-season weather. Cold fronts marched across the state in waves. As each front approached the sky darkened, the wind picked up, blowing steadily from the east. Rain would fall for a few hours then stop abruptly as the windsock shifted clockwise, filling gustily with colder air pushing in from the northwest. Remaining clouds moved rapidly southeastward, leaving clear cold blustery air behind. Two days later, the wind died down, the ground dried, and flying again became a pleasure.

It was on such an evening that I waved goodbye to my last customer, locked the office, then made for the waiting L-2.

Squatting beneath the engine cowl, I drained the fuel bowl and looked for signs of oil leaks. Finding none, I stood up and slung wet gas from my fingers. I opened the side compartment door and checked the engine oil level. Minutes later, preflight inspection complete, I checked to be sure the mag switch was in the “off” position, and made sure the throttle was closed.

In those days propping off an airplane was no more unusual than holding a door for a lady. Pilots exchanged this courtesy with no more thought than they would have in offering someone a match. However, working alone, a pilot did well to see that his ship was properly secured to the ground before he stood in front of it with intentions of swinging its prop.

Throttle position was critical during the starting phase. A throttle shoved open too far above idle could allow the engine to rev dangerously, perhaps causing the ship to jump her wheel chocks and speed across the airport subject only to the vagaries of wind and terrain. Complacency in this activity was the unholy partner of one’s safety record. Securing the tail with a tie-down rope had always been the safest method when propping a ship solo. The old pros knew this, but I was new at working-alone.

I pulled the two-bladed wooden prop through three half-revolutions and left it a few degrees short of a comression stroke. Walking sure-footed to the cockpit, I leaned in, cut on the magneto switch and bumped the throttle off the idle stop. I took a fast look around, then wedged the wheel chocks tighter under the front of the main tires. Stepping up to the nose, facing the airplane, I grasped the higher blade with both hands, leaned forward and pulled down with all my strength.

The engine caught on the first swing and immediately revved up, her RPM climbed faster and faster! I leapt out of the way. Throwing out my arm, I managed to catch the right wing strut just as the ship jumped her chocks, heading for parts unknown. I wrapped my arms together. My weight caused the plane to warp to the right as the angry buzz of her engine grew stronger each second. With my heels dragging the ground, I fought my way toward the cockpit, pulling myself down the strut, hand over hand. Meanwhile, the L-2, with a mind of her own, was dragging herself and me ‘round and around in a mad little circle, working her way dangerously close to a corrugated metal marker outlining one corner of the runway intersection.

An eternity seemed to pass. After twice almost losing my grip on the strut, I made it to the cockpit and reached inside just as my feet flew out from under me to pull the throttle lever back.

The episode was over as quickly as it had begun, leaving a battered and much wiser young pilot trembling in the cockpit. By the time I had taxied to the end of three-five and had completed the engine run-up and checked the controls, my knees had barely quit knocking.

Reaching the end of the runway, I slung the L-2 around in a tight circle, squinting upward to check the traffic pattern for inbound airplanes. I pushed the throttle all the way forward. We began rolling. Seconds later, the tail rose and we gathered speed against the gentle north-west breeze. I eased back on the stick, increased pressure on the right rudder, and watched the tops of the pine trees fall into the distance below.

I’m exhilarated and I climb to six-hundred feet, making a shallow-banked 180 degree left turn. I level off then begin my downwind leg, accelerating in level flight almost to cruising speed. Less than a minute passes. Opposite the touchdown zone, I pull my throttle back to the idle stop, add two turns of up-elevator trim, pull on full carb heat and hold the nose up, maintaining altitude and holding her steady until reaching glide speed. Then, I make a steep-banked 90 degree-plus turn to the left, looking anxiously beneath the wing as I roll level to spot the end of the runway. Ah, there she is at about my ten o’clock position. Now, it’s time to apply judgment.

I concentrate and watch the end of the strip rise in the side window, smelling the hot metal of the engine along with a whiff of eighty-octane from the not-quite-leaking single-stroke primer pump mounted vertically just behind the throttle. When the feel is right, I begin my turn to final, rolling out about three-hundred feet above the airfield.

Uh-oh! too high. I lower the left wing and add right rudder to produce a forward slip, now descending toward the runway at a steeper angle without increasing airspeed. I listen to the rushing sounds of air. Every tiny hole, every narrow crack and opening to the outside acts like a miniature pipe organ, each producing whatever note its resonation requires, from high-pitched whistles to low moans, and always the heady feel of commanding yourself and your airplane deliberately and skillfully toward your objective.

I am much closer to the ground now. I begin recovering from the forward slip while sensing the motion of ground objects as they grow larger and larger upon the windshield. Steady now. I watch markers alongside the runway as they begin bunching together like two strings of beads. I ease back on the stick, automatically bumping an aileron when one wing or the other dips. Suddenly, I am in never-never land, the point where she begins to settle as she breaks her glide, flaring just above the surface as I ease the stick back. The landing is a combination of timing, feel, perception.

The stick reaches full aft travel just as she touches down in a three-point landing, three wheels contacting the pavement at the same time. Alert on the rudder pedals! I guide her down the center-line. We roll a couple hundred feet, slowing down. Decision time: Stop now? Or, go for another?

Pause

I spent many happy hours flying the Taylorcraft as often as possible. As Winter progressed, twenty hours of L-2 time crept into my log-book. I became confident in my tail-wheel flying abilities. After all, one feels rather smug having one-hundred hours total flying time without mishap behind him.

The season changed. Spring announced herself with a sprig of green grass here, a beginning flower bud there. The ringing of the telephone disturbed my rainy-evening behind-the-counter nap.

“Bussell Field,” I yawned into the mouthpiece.

“Hey, Man!” the voice cried on the other end. “It’s me. I’m out. Come get me.”

It had been more than two years since I had heard that voice but I recognized it instantly. I locked the office, hopped into my old Buick and drove to Panama City, Florida, about two-hundred-fifty miles. There, I picked up my best friend and old war-buddy who just had been discharged from the U.S. Air Force.

Robert E. Parks managed to tell me all that he had done while in Okinawa for a year and a half in the space of about ten minutes. After all, I mused, how many different kinds of VD could one catch during a fourteen-month overseas tour?

(Side note: Bobby, one day I hope you are reading this.)

Standing just under my five-foot-eleven, Bobby was a well built muscular young man having the dark good looks of his Italian forebears. Propelled by high intelligence, his sense of humor was boundless. When I told him I had become a pilot, he laughed.

“You’re hallucinating,” he said. Looking at me with level, brown eyes, he took a Pall Mall from his pack, broke it in half then dropped the pieces into my hand. “Here,” he said, “take two of these and call me in the morning.”

“Yeah okay, Doctor,” I snarled. “I’ll show you in the morning.”

Pause

The sun had chased the morning mist away but the grass still glistened from the previous night’s rain as Bob and I rolled the L-2 out of the hangar. He watched me fuel the ship with 80 octane. After I had checked the oil and drained the fuel bowl, he walked up to me, oblivious to the bright red ship.

“Nice day for flying, eh?” he commented, looking all around the cobalt blue heavens and filling his lungs with the clean cold air. Then he said, “I thought we were going for a ride?"

I cut my eyes at him in narrow slits. “We are, Pal. Keep your socks on. I want to clean the windshield first.”

“We are?” he exclaimed. “Oh goodie! When? Where’s our airplane?”

I squirted a stream of plastic-sheen on the windshield and began polishing. “You’re looking at it,” I advised.

The young veteran turned his head, looking carefully through all four points of the compass. “Where?” he quipped. “I don’t see any airplane.”

I dragged the ladder to its place beside the gas pump and tossed the powdery rag at it. “In you go, Old Buddy,” I said, pointing to the rear seat. “Just climb in there and jam your heels against the brake pedals.”

Bob eyed the old reconnaissance plane suspiciously, then squinted at me. I knew what was in his mind: If four years of slinging wrenches in the Air Force had taught him anything, it was that enlisted men were too dumb to fly. He looked into the ship, paying particular attention to the basic instrument panel. The war birds he had worked on had been crammed full of instruments dials and switches, radios, trigger-buttons, knobs and levers, most of which none of us ‘grunts’ had understood. Whereas, the L-2’s panel was simplicity itself, having only an alcohol compass, an airspeed indicator, an altimeter, and a tachometer along with an oil pressure and oil temperature gauge.

Bob pulled his head out of the ship, turned to me and said matter-of-factly: “Okay, very clever. Now, where’s the rest of the stuff? Under the seat? Back inside the tail?” He pantomined by leaning over the back seat, peering into the shallow, bare baggage compartment. He looked at me and widened his eyes. “Do you think somebody stole it?” he asked.

I gave him a look. He devoutly crossed himself, then climbed into the rear seat, buckled the webbed military belt about his midsection and pulled back on the stick. “Very nice,” he said, tilting his head to stare first out one window then the other, moving the stick in coordination with his head. “Time to land,” he announced, holding his wrist watch one inch away from his left eye. He eased the stick forward, made a show of removing his imaginary flying helmet, then tossing it out to me. He began unbuckling the belt.

I made a show of shooting the invisible helmet into the trash barrel, basketball style. “C’mon now,” I chided. “It’s as safe as walking downtown.”

He said, “Don’t you get newspapers down here? Have you tried walking downtown lately?”

After swinging the prop, I climbed into the front seat. In just a few minutes we arrived at the end of runway three-five. The runway had a slight uphill slope and with two souls aboard took longer than usual to lift off.

Bob’s nervousness evaporated as we leveled off fifteen-hundred feet above Bussellville. I showed him how to make level turns and slouched to one side so that he could see the altimeter. His hand was heavy on the stick at first but in a surprisingly short time he was coordinating the ailerons and rudder nicely. Twisting around, I stole a fast look at his face to see it filled with the rapture of First-Flight.

Bobby stayed at Bussell Field for three or four days, helping out at the gas pit and in the office, cracking jokes with my customers and attracting young females who buzzed around him like proverbial bees around proverbial honey.

One morning he announced he was ready to depart for home, Washington, D.C. and that he was fully recovered from the long journey from Okinawa. A front had been forecast to pass through the state and high cirrus wisps, drifting several miles above, had given way to cirro-stratus, a thicker cloud which dimmed the sun considerably. I made arrangements with Jack B., a friend, to keep an eye on the field while I was gone.

Thursday mornng dawned bleak, rainy and cold. I stoked the pot-bellied stove in the corner of the pilot lounge while Bob packed and repacked his Air Force duffle bag. The small water tank atop the nearby cotton mill served as my visibility marker, and as I peered through the rain-streaked window panes, I watched it appear then disappear, as low billows of stratus drifted past. The name ‘Bussell Mills’ had been stenciled upon it and from my viewing angle, when I could make out the letters ‘..sell Mills’, I knew I had two miles visibility.

We passed the morning awaiting the ceiling to lift adequately. Noon came. We dashed across the curved drive to dine on juicy barbeque sandwiches served hot from the hickory-smoked grill of Zeke’s Airport Restaurant located a hundred yards or so behind the administration building.

Zeke was somewhat afraid of airplanes. When he learned of our intention to fly to Atlanta, he cast a dark look out the window at the rain and said simply: “You’all are crazy!”

I smiled at him. Bob considered Zeke’s opinion. “You’re right,” he shot back, eyeing the two girls in the next booth who had been eavesdropping so hard their ears were growing larger. “We’ll make it, all right,” he said in a devil-may-care voice. “Someone has to do it.”

The girls were almost leaning over the back of my seat after his last remark, but I put them out of our minds, draining my coffee with a flair and standing up to leave.

“Are you ready to go now, Partner?”

The rain slackened. We loaded Bob’s duffle bag. Soon, Jack B. stood poised, ready to swing the prop. I wedged my heels against the brake pedals and twisted the magneto switch to: ‘Both’.

“Contact!” I yelled out my side window.

Jack pulled down swiftly on the wooden blade and the sixty-five horsepower engine roared into life. As Jack stepped to the side, he grinned and waved. Behind me, Bob crossed himself.

Easing forward on the throttle, I revved the engine to pull us against the drag of the sodden grass. Water slung from the bare wheels and ran along the underside of the wing then dripped from the trailing edge. I found that it took a lot more power than usual to maintain taxi speed.

I used runway one-seven, slightly downhill and into the wind which had shifted South, indication of impending frontal passage. The ship used about two-thirds of the pavement, finally lumbering into the air, somewhat overloaded, hauling two persons and an eighty-pound duffle bag and being full of fuel. The clouds were generally low but a large hole had opened above the airport, drifting eastward. Flying in it at about 65 miles per hour, we managed to remain clear of the soup.

Only two airports lay along our route to Atlanta, both unusable when wet. Fortunately, our hole-in-the-clouds stayed with us, or we with it, and the L-2 lumbered through the air a mere eight-hundred feet above the pipeline running from Bussellville to just south of Atlanta. Behind me, Bob had busied himself timing our progress between landmarks, railroads and rivers and towns. He had become adept at computing our ground-speed using the hand-held round plastic disc CR-2 computer.

“Seventy-one-and-a-half miles-per-hour!” I heard him call. I digested the information, nodded my head and shrugged my shoulders.

Tobacco use by adults in 1960 was pretty much accepted by everyone. All the movie stars smoked. Our heroes were still the WW-II and Korean War pilots and air crews who had risked their lives daily, delivering bomb loads against a vicious enemy, be it the hated Nazi or the just as hated Jap. Heroes in foxholes lit cigarettes after a murderous firefight. Pilots lit up after dumping a bomb load. Submariners surfaced late at night and the crew swarmed topside to light up.

None of us knew the danger of filling our lungs with the poisonous gasses then. We carried packs of cigarettes and matches or lighters as part of our usual personal equipment.

Thirty minutes into the flight, we had lit up cigarettes, cracking the left window open a few inches to draft the smoke and through which to flick our ashes. An average time a cigarette burned was about six minutes. I took a final drag from mine, then flipped the still-burning butt through the opening toward the soggy underworld. Bob did likewise, except his still burning butt fell down into the window slot and from there out of sight into the bowels of the ship. We looked at each other in horror!

Another thing each of us had learned in four years of working on Air Force fighters and bombers: Fires are dangerous. I looked at the ground and then at the map. The closest paved strip was a good thrity miles off course, and the next closest was our destination, a small field just south of Atlanta. The clouds in the off-course direction seemed to merge into the shadowy, gray terrain. I leaned forward and concentrated on holding a constant heading.

Bob shouted from the back seat: “Four minutes!”

“What?”

“Four minutes,” he repeated. “That’s the longest the cigarette can last, worst case.”

Suddenly, I knew what he meant. For the next four minutes one of my eyes was glued to my wristwatch. At the end of the last minute we both began breathing easier. “Another lesson,” I thought to myself, beginning to become alert for other planes in the sky.

No other souls were braving the weather at South Expressway Airport as we approached and we had the sky to ourselves. The surface wind was generally southeast so we were able to land uphill on the steep strip as a light sprinkle of rain began pelting the windshield.

We tied our wet airplane to the Earth, unloaded his heavy duffle bag, then closed our flight plan and ‘phoned for a ride to the city. According to the Atlanta forecaster, the front had stalled. Low ceilings and more rain were predicted throughout the rest of the day and far into the night.

Looking forward to a night in the big city, I did not know my lessons in the L-2 were just beginning.


Pause

The next day, standing at the Eastern Air Lines passenger gate, we shook hands while gaping at the Lockheed Electra parked outside. The big ship was a four-engine turbo-prop just recently put into service by the carrier. As he handed his ticket to the gate agent, he turned. “I’ll be back to learn how to fly just as soon as I get up the money,” he told me.

I watched him walk away. He waved from the top step of the loading ramp, and as he entered I saw the pretty stewardess turn her head to watch him pass through the door.


Pause

A day later I hitched a ride to the small airport where the L-2 sat parked. The rain had stopped. The sky was overcast with a high ceiling. I paid for my gas, then walked up the hill to the red ship gleaming in the wet grass. Ten minutes later, I swung the prop for a successful engine start, untied the tail, pulled the chocks, then leapt inside.

Taking off down-hill into the wind, the ship flew off the runway almost before I was ready. I held her nose up, climbing out, bouncing in the moderate turbulence and making the standard 45-degree left turn after take-off. Suddenly uneasy, I looked around. Something was wrong. What could it be? My senses were alert as I bounced against the seat belt. I spotted the airspeed indicator. It showed only 40 mph! I quickly lowered the nose, watching the altimeter needle unwind and hearing the wind shriek louder. The airspeed needle remained on 40 mph. It appeared to be stuck.

I tapped the glass with my forefinger. Nothing. Then, I tapped harder. The needle shot ahead to eighty then gradually subsided. A few seconds later it settled on forty again. I tapped the glass a little harder.

I felt a sickening crunch as my finger pushed into the instrument’s face, freezing the airspeed needle among shards of broken glass. “Oh, no!” I shouted, suddenly weak in my stomach and knees. “Oh Lord! What am I gonna do now?” I had not received training for situations like this, and every pilot knows that flying, particularly landing, is all about controlling the airspeed. My gut tightened.

I forced myself to think. I rechecked the tachometer, making sure the engine was set at cruise-power while I held my altitude constant. Then, I gulped. “Well,” I told myself, “at least she’s flying okay, and no matter where I try to land I’m gonna have the same problem. It may as well be at my home strip.” Justifying that conclusion, I thought further, “At least I know the place.”

The strong northwest wind, almost ninety degrees to my right, slowed my homeward progress. It took a twenty-degree crab angle to hold course along the pipeline I was following.

The ground moved slowly beneath me. Time passed. Finally, Bussellville hove into view. “Whew!” The traffic pattern was empty. I saw the wind sock stiffly indicating the strong northwest surface wind, favoring equally runway two-seven or runway three-five. I opted for three-five. It was longer, it was paved and it ran slightly uphill.

Licking dry lips, I blotted wet palms on my pants legs. Concentrating on the airflow sounds, I crossed over the field and entered a downwind leg. Seconds later, I chopped power opposite the large white numerals, pulled on carb heat, retrimmed nose-up, waited as she slowed a little, then began my turn to base. Rolling level, I gave her a burst of power, clearing the engine an extra long time to make up for the stiff wind and tried to ignore the broken and useless airspeed indicator.

Turning final, I prayed the time-honored pilot’s prayer: “Oh Lord: Please, just get me out of this one and I’ll never bother You again.”

I guessed at my airspeed, listening to airflow noises and feeling pressure on the stick. The faster a plane moved through the air, the stiffer the stick would feel.

Now, much closer to the ground, descending in moderate turbulence, the ship lurched to the right in a sudden gust. I countered by shoving the stick hard to port and watched the runway rise on my windshield. I tensed as the ship sank in a downdraft. Quickly, I added a burst of power. The runway filled my windshield. It was time to break my glide and to flare out. As the runway side-markers strung together like a string of beads, I cut the engine and eased back on the stick. Suddenly I was on, touching down hard and bouncing, then settling again to the runway and rolling fast up the pavement. But, I was on!

It took me almost two hours to remove the airspeed indicator, cut out a piece of thick, clear plastic to replace the damaged glass, and to reinstall the instrument.

Oh yeah, why had the instrument failed in the first place? Well, not having had a pilot smart enough to install the pitot-tube cover before parking her outside in the rain, sitting tail down the L-2’s pitot-tube had filled with rain-water. Hence, no airspeed indicator. “Live and learn,” I thought to myself. (I emphasize ‘live’, as omissions much less serious than this have cost countless lives in the flying business.) I realized I had been lucky.


Pause

Spring arrived. The recession deepened and belts were tightened another notch. Warehoused cotton inventories increased and small-town employees were laid off as unemployment in the nation climbed to record levels.

My airport was operated at a small profit at best. I flew the L-2 as much as possible, eventually realizing that I now: “Knew it all”. At least, I thought I did, but the saucy ship had saved a few lessons for me, and one of them began the day a large black man waved furtively at me from the fence beside the old wooden hangar.

I saw him wave but did not think he meant it for me. I looked around. No one else was in sight. I pointed to myself. My lips formed the word, “Me?” He nodded vigorously, and I walked toward the rusty fence, wiping my hands on a cotton waste rag.

“Listen yere,” he began hurriedly. “You de one what fly airplanes out of yere?”

“I’m the one,” I admitted, only about half-curious about what he wanted. After all, I had a lot to do, one plane to wash and a hangar to sweep.

“Listen yere,” he said. “Kin you fly me down ter Dadeville?”

“Well...” I stammered, “I... uh ...”

‘Listen yere,” he said again, opening his hand to show me a twenty-dollar bill. “Kin you take me down and back fo’ dis?”

My salary for managing that airport was forty-dollars per week, minus taxes.

Twenty minutes later found us circling a brown pasture trying to decide the most favorable direction in which to land. I finally selected an angled path providing the longest run, and set the L-2 down in waist-high weeds. The ground beneath was lumpy and we bounced our way to a stop in about three-hundred feet.

I spun the ship around and began to taxi back in the swath cut by my ill-fated landing roll. Just then, the right main tire blew. The ship sagged and I cut the engine. As we were getting out, a car pulled up beside the far fence, its driver as black as my passenger. My man bustled away from the airplane, mumbling: “Now, we gotter use de car...” Then, he was gone.


Pause

I fingered the well worn twenty-dollar bill for a moment then tossed it to the cab driver. He drove me back up to Bussell Field. I grabbed some tools and a tire and one hour later I was in the midst of the pasture changing the tire on the L-2 when another black man came wandering up. He stood watching silently as I shoved the wheel over the axle stub. When I looked up, he nodded.

“Have yo’self a problem?” he asked.

“Blew a tire.”

“I ain’t seen no airplane in yere fer a long, long time,” he told me. “Not since Mist’ Landers used to come in yere.”

I wrestled with the lock nut.

“I used to mow him a strip over there,” he waved, “jes’ so he could take off an’ land.”

My ears pricked up. “You can mow a strip?”

Hooking his thumbs under his overall straps, he replied: “Sho’ can.”

I produced the change from the twenty, which he refused flat out. “Won’ cost you nuthin’,” he said.

I sweated over the wheel. Satisfied it would stay on, I packed up my tools, picked up the old tire and crunched through the tall weeds to the fence where I had left my old Buick.

Meanwhile, I saw my benefactor mowing with the machine he used when cutting grass on county property. By the time I returned to the ship, he had finished. He waved to me from the tall seat of the tractor. I returned his wave as I watched him disappear around a copse of hardwoods at the far end of the pasture.

I pushed through the weeds to inspect my strip, and was appalled at how short my new friend had made it. I wondered kind of airplane ‘Mist Landers’ had flown? “Must have been a STOL,” I muttered to the weeds, wiping my brow with my shirt sleeve.

I swung the prop, several times, but the L-2 refused to crank. I tried every possible combination, flooding the engine with fuel, then opening the throttle wide, turning the prop backward several revolutions to push air in through the exhause ports and out through the intake manifold. Nothing worked.

I was wondering what else to try when I spotted grass seed clogging the square intake screen. I drained some gas from the strainer through the filter screen, tapping it to rid the clog. By the time I had tightened the last screw, the sun had sunk low in the west.

When I swung the prop again, the engine roared into life and settled down to idle smoothly, as if nothing had ever been wrong with it. I jumped in, happy to be able to be on my way before dark. I figured I would bum a ride and return later for the old Buick.

Taxiing to the end of the strip, I spun the ship around to aim her down the gradually sloping field. I revved the engine. Each mag tested okay, so I held the brakes, applied full throttle and began accelerating down the bumpy pasture. Twice, the L-2 left the ground to become airborne, then settled back. The tall pines at the far end loomed in my windshield. Praying the pilot’s prayer again, I pulled back on the stick and the old ship staggered into the air, climbing slowly.

I began an immediate shallow bank to the left and held my breath as the tree tops slid past, mere feet below the belly of the ship. I was just breathing out when the engine quit cold.

My left hand shot to the single-stroke engine primer pump and as the L-2 sank toward the trees, I twisted the knurled knob, unlatched the primer and began pumping with all my might. The engine belched, then shuddered into life as the ship zoomed forward, gaining speed under power. When she faltered, I realized I had overprimed and held up for a moment until the next zoom occured, then tried to prime just enought to keep that engine running without over-priming nor under priming her.

After several minutes of priming, the old Continental sixty-five horse engine had pulled us up to three-thousand feet. An ugly blood blister had formed on my left thumb. I switched hands, the stick feeling awkward in my left, while continuing to prime her with my right.

Finally, I spotted the runway at Bussell Field. With a sigh of relief, I began the long descent.


Pause

The wizened old mechanic turned his head and spat a stream of tobacco juice across the ramp. He had just finished blowing out my fuel lines with compressed air.

A battered felt hat crowned his silvery head and threatened to fall off as he nodded and said: “When you hit that hard bump, all the garbage in the bottom of your tanks got knocked loose, and some of it drifted into the outlet pipe. If you’d of wiggled your fuel valve off and on a few times, you’d probably been back in business.”

I looked toward Heaven. “Live and learn,” I replied, wondering just how many volumes my ignorance would fill, once again thankful to be alive.

Weeks later, I sat behind my counter in the office, looking idly out the window when a spotless J-4 Piper landed on the grass strip and parked in front of the building. Its two occupants, both men, walked over to look at the L-2 with its FOR SALE sign looming in the rear window.

Two days later, I stood in the doorway and watched the man wearing blue jeans and a white shirt swing the prop. The L-2’s new owner sat inside holding the brakes. I walked to the edge of the runway to watch the take-off.

The red airplane hummed loudly in the distance as I watched her begin her take-off roll. The light of the summer afternoon sun shimmered off her spotless paint in slivers of fire. She gained speed and grew larger, passing from my left to my right. Her tail rose majestically and when she was opposite the building, her main wheels left the runway. I watched her climb away, and as she began to disappear into the distance, she became once again a blurred vison.


THE END

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