“Good day to fly,” Holland said.
“Is there any other kind?” I said.
“I like your style, Logan.”
He took out a tow bar from the Cherokee’s aft luggage compartment and hooked it to the nose wheel strut. I offered to pull the airplane from the hangar and he let me. The last thing either of us needed was Dutch Holland having The Big One.
His preflight inspection was textbook meticulous. It was also glacial. Rockets have reached high orbit in less time than it took Holland to walk around his airplane, checking control surfaces, draining gas to make sure the fuel tanks had no water in them, fiddling with this and that.
“Any chance we can get going sometime before the end of the year, Dutch?”
“I’m surprised you’ve lived as long as you have with that kind of get-there-itis,” Holland said, peering at the oil dipstick through the lenses of his aviator frames. “You know what they say. There are old pilots, and bold pilots…”
“But no old, bold pilots.”
It was a truism in aviation, and I deserved the reprimand. Nothing will kill a pilot faster than impatience. I’d drilled the very same lesson into every one of my students — but not before convincing them that flying a small plane, if done correctly, is inherently safe. The last thing you want is to terrify somebody before they’ve paid you.
I sat down with my back against the wall of his hangar, and waited for Holland to finish his walk-around inspection. What, I wondered, had I gotten myself into? Trusting a moth-eaten, half-blind pilot to fly me into the meteorologically unpredictable Sierra Nevada Mountains, hoping to find a remote dirt strip and another moth-eaten airman who might or might not shed light on who sabotaged my Cessna? Finding a roulette wheel in Vegas and betting my entire life savings, all three figures of it, would’ve made about as much sense.
“OK, all set,” Holland hollered over to me.
Too late to back out now.
The old man grabbed the handhold bolted to the upper fuselage behind the Cherokee’s right rear window and, with no small effort, willed himself up onto the back of the wing. He unlatched the airplane’s only door, got down on all fours and crawled inside. The contortions it took for him just to reach a sitting position, then to slide over from the right seat into the left, were monumental. But any fear I may have had as to his piloting skills evaporated the moment I glimpsed the joy in his eyes. Holland was in his element.
I climbed in after him and latched the door. Even though he knew it by heart, Holland asked me to help him run through the engine start checklist. After we’d gone through the procedures, he asked if anyone was standing near the airplane. I double-checked and told him no. He reached down, toggled the electrical master switch to “on,” rotated the ignition key to the left-magneto setting, planted his soft-sole old guy shoes on the toe brakes atop the rudder pedals, then cracked open a small hinged window on the pilot’s side, and yelled, “Clear!”
A push of the starter button, a few pumps of the throttle, and the forty-five-year-old engine fired up as if it were factory new. Holland turned the ignition key to both magnetos, pulled the mixture control out an inch to avoid fouling the spark plugs, and retarded the throttle to idle. We donned headsets.
“Need to get the ATIS,” he said, his gnarled, palsied fingers fumbling with a communications stack that was even older than mine.
“How about I work the radios for you, Dutch?”
“Good deal.”
I dialed in the correct frequency for Montgomery’s Automated Terminal Information Service, the regularly updated recording that provides pilots with the current weather, altimeter setting and other pertinent information on airport conditions. I listened, then switched over to ground control, glancing as I did at the two inch-long placards affixed to the instrument panel in front of Holland that showed the airplane’s tail number, and pushed the mic button on the copilot’s yoke.
“Montgomery ground, Cherokee 5-4-8-7 Whiskey. Ready to taxi, east end hangars with ATIS Foxtrot. We’re a PA-28 slant Uniform. Requesting a right downwind departure.”
“Piper 5-4-8-7 Whiskey, taxi runway 28 right via taxiways Hotel, Alpha. Advise run-up complete.”
Holland repeated the directions back to the controller before I could, barely able to contain his enthusiasm.
“Your airplane,” I said.
“A-OK,” Holland said, smiling.
He couldn’t see for squat, but he didn’t need to. When you’ve wracked up more than 40,000 hours doing anything, as Dutch Holland had done piloting airplanes, skills become ingrained like they’re part of your DNA. He steered the Cherokee perfectly along the centerline of the taxiway. When we reached the engine run-up area, he stood on the left rudder pedal, turned the plane deftly into the wind, and set the parking brake. He tested the ailerons and elevator controls to make sure the inputs were working properly, moving the yoke in and out, left and right, then pushed the throttle up to 2,000 RPMs, checking the carburetor heat control, the two magnetos, leaning over to peer closely at the oil temperature, fuel pressure, and a half-dozen other engine gauges. All were in the green. Holland pulled the throttle back to 1,000 RPMs.
“Montgomery ground,” I radioed, “Cherokee 8–7 Whiskey, run-up complete.”
“Cherokee 8–7 Whiskey, taxi to 2–8 right and contact the tower.”
Holland released the parking brake and steered the plane toward the runway with his feet. “I love flying,” he said. “I’d have no complaints if that’s how I headed west.”
In aviation circles, to say somebody “headed west” is to say they died. Where the euphemism came from I have no idea. But, personally, I could think of any number of other, more desirable ways to head west than in some hurtling piece of machinery. Having The Big One, for example, while celebrating your 100th birthday with three showgirls in the presidential suite of the Ritz. Or maybe just gazing into Savannah’s eyes.
“Nobody’s heading west today,” I said. “We’re heading north.”
Holland laughed and seemed not to notice the approaching hold-short line for runway 28 right. I thought he would stop the plane but he didn’t. I stood on the brakes to prevent the Cherokee from rolling without authorization onto the runway, just as a six-seater Piper Dakota touched down in front of us.
“Sorry,” Holland said.
He felt bad enough without me saying anything, so I didn’t. I switched the number one radio to tower frequency and announced that we were ready to go.
“Cherokee 8–7 Whiskey, runway 28 right, cleared for takeoff, right downwind departure approved, wind 2-5-0 at 9.”
“Cleared for takeoff, 2–8 right, with a right downwind departure.” I turned to Holland. “Bit of a crosswind from the left. You do remember how to do this, right?”
A smile was his only response.
He steered the plane onto the runway centerline and advanced the throttle. We were rolling. In seconds, we were climbing. Dutch Holland may not have been able to make out anything much past the nose of his airplane, but he still knew how to fly like the old pro he was.
I looked left as we lifted off, hoping to glimpse the Ruptured Duck. But the hangar housing my airplane until the FAA completed its accident investigation was closed. I wasn’t sure which made me feel worse: seeing the Duck all banged up again or not seeing him at all.
A pocket of turbulence rocked me back to reality.