We ambled down final approach in the tiny Cessna 152 and made another bouncy but acceptable touchdown. As we rolled he moved the wing flap lever to the UP position and started to push in the throttle for another takeoff, but I put my hand over the throttle and closed it. The little engine idled back down and he shot a puzzled glance at me. I told him to turn off at the midfield intersection. I could sense his relaxation. He felt the ride was over. He could get back down to the office and wrap up a few loose ends before calling it a day. But as we cleared the runway I applied the brakes, stopped the Cessna and unlatched the door handle.
Before soloing a student the instructor always has the lingering feeling that maybe his student is not ready. Maybe I'm being premature about this. The man's life is in my judgmental hands. Perhaps another few landings or even an additional flight lesson would relieve some of the subtle doubts. I knew this feeling was natural because I had soloed other students before, but Bob was an old friend, almost family. It was a little different this time. I know this feeling is normal, but I had to take care that he saw nothing but absolute confidence in my face.
As I opened the door, I had to raise my voice to overcome the engine and prop wash.
"Taxi slow. Give me a chance to get up to the tower. I'll wa"
"WHERE'RE YOU GOIN'?" he interrupted, shouting, demanding.
"Make two touch-'n-go's and a full stop. If you have a question I'll be in the control tower."
Before leaving I Cautioned him that the Cessna would perform differently without my additional weight. The comment caused his expression to change from astonished disbelief to one of deep soulsearching. He looked at me but his eyes were focused about a thousand yards beyond me. I slapped him on the shoulder and slammed the door. The Schnee was alone with the Cessna. His birth was at hand.
I guess my reaction when I first soloed was about the same as anyone's: a fast pulse; a giddy feeling; wanting to laugh, hold my breath, and grit my teeth all at once until it was done. That magnificent feeling of achievementit's something that never left me because I always reached still higher: the instrument rating, the commercial license, the multiengine, the airline transport certificate, flight engineer, flight instructor, aircraft commander, bigger and faster airplane checkouts. There was always a challenge, always a test. And after each, there was that same feeling, although some tests were not without adversity.
I sat on the bench outside the flight school and watched as he taxied the puddle jumper in and shut it down. I knew better than to go out and help him tie it down. I let him savor the few minutes alone with the plane. He finished and walked toward me, glancing back at it. He was wearing that characteristic grin of histhe one that suggests he knows something about you that you don't know he knows. But that time there was a gleam in his eye that exceeded the one from his best oil discovery.
He stopped and just gazed at me for a moment. Bob and I went back a long way. We had been classmates together at the Capstone. Sometimes words were not necessary between us. From that day onward he called me "Dad," and those who overheard him thought it a private joke of some sort, since he's a couple years my senior. Schnee paid them no mind. They would never understand.
Ten.
Maiden Flight
We are several weeks into the Desert Shield operation now and some measure of routine has settled in. For example, we can expect to be deployed for two to three weeks, with several days recuperation at home afterward. And we can anticipate about three trips downrange from the European staging bases before rotating back Stateside. On the other hand, one thing has become less certain: our company in the cockpit. My original crew has been broken up and scattered asunder. Each new cruise, now, presents new faces, some of them people with whom I've flown in earlier times. But loadmaster Mike Hall will fly on and off with me until the end.
Mike is an exuberant, energetic young man with an overflowing personality. Sometimes he verges on cocky and brash, and occasionally he causes ill feeling among his peers as a result, but he is a great traveling companion. Life is never dull around Mike. And like most enlisted people in our unit, he has a casual relationship with the officers, which is unofficially acceptable in the Guard. But Mike is disciplined enough to respond well to good leadership.
Our officers regularly roomed and socialized with enlisted men. All were on a first nameeven a nicknamebasis. Such an admission would send an active career officer reeling in horror, but that kind of relationship worked for us. Together with our active duty counterparts, we were chalking up an unprecedented track record of safety and reliability. Our success was proof enough. Still, every fresh face in the cockpit presented a new twist to life. And sometimes a new challenge.
More black airmen, including several pilots, had followed Brady's trail. They established a record of reliability, competency, and leadership. But even more profound personnel changes were taking place, changes that required severe adaptations. Some of the entries in my logbook are marked with a star to indicate that something unusual or worth remembering happened. A double star entry had initiated an abrupt change in my attitude the year before.
It was an eastbound Atlantic oceanic crossing. The autopilot was doing an admirable job, allowing us to relax and settle in for the high seas cruise segment. I was studying a navigation chart when I heard it. The half whisper, half cry of the flight engineer's astonished voice electrified the interphone.
"Dear. . GOD!"
I looked up from the chart and over at Milo, not sure who had uttered the sobering remark. He was peeling away his Ray Bans and peering behind him, disbelief written across his face. I careened about, as well, and looked back. Four sets of eyes were agog, fixed upon the object in the middle of the flight deck floor.
A crumpled flight suit was lying there, the olive green Nomex material piled on itself; patches and zippers showing here and there. Then all our heads lifted up to the top bunk on the aft bulkhead, whence the zoom bag had been tossed. The drawn blackout curtains were bulging and pulsating with movement from within, as if a solitary struggle were in progress.
Then our eyebrows arched higher as a brassiere was flung from beneath the curtains and fell onto the flight suit. We stared incredulously at the growing heap and flinched again as more female undergarments plopped onto the pile. Various imprecations and utterings of disbelief issued from our lips into the plane's interphone system. The loadmasters inevitably arrived to check out the strange exclamations from the flight deck. For the next hour we wondered and laughed, speculated and bet, eyes periodically cutting back toward the bunk. Would she ask for the garments to be handed back up when the nap was over? Would we comply? A loadmaster paced the flight deck, threatening to fling the curtains back and teach this teaser a lesson.
But we forbade him; much was at stake here. We didn't know this person very well. And we were puzzled and confused by this striking sign of change in our preserved world of engines, wings, and throttles.
Bob Moore smiled and slowly shook his head. Once a farmer, he had grown milo, among other crops; I had coined his nickname. His face and thinning hair were as red as his Mississippi Delta dirt. His warm smile was genuine and contagious. He didn't talk much, and his humor was subtle. I liked him because he and I were so much alike and because he reminded me greatly of my brother, Steve. Over the years, while we flew together in the Guard, Milo was a banker and, early on, a lending officer to farmers, while I was a geologist with an oil company. Later, discontented with the corporate world, he turned to farming, much as I turned to consulting. Then both his business and mine had crumbled. Together we felt the pain and frustration as our once-needed, noble, and respected professions were trampled underfoot by political ineptitude, wild swings in markets, and the ruthless struggles of power and greed. Together, Milo and I blew off the old persuasions and threw caution to the wind; what did we have to lose? In abrupt, upheaving, heart-ripping midlife changeovers, we became airline pilots. Milo went to the silver birds, I to the Friendly Skies. But brothers we remained.