Learning to Fly

Flight has always been a fascination for me. My father was an aeronautical engineer who learned the trade on the cusp of World War 2 and pursued it through the heyday of the United States space program greatness, instrumental in the development of the Atlas booster that first thrust America in to space. He worked with the giants of the industry, among them Werner Von Braun, J.S. McDonnell and others.

So, from an early age, flight fascinated me. Summertimes, I hung out in the library and read accounts of the early aviators, Langley, Lilienthal, Orville and Wilber Wright. It wasn't powered flight that captivated me, but rather gliding on the wind. Later I would sail the oceans on the wind in what I realize now was the same fascination. I would dream then of flying silently above the world, buoyed along by another fluid medium.

There was this gully behind where we lived filled with old fallow fields on the other side that ended up against the property of my best friend, Steve Warren. Growing along a stretch of the gully was a rather dense section of some sort of bamboo. It was a fairly diminutive species with the longest pieces maybe 10-12 feet in length. 

After reading and sketching my own concepts of an early glider, with elements borrowed from the early masters as well as those of a ten year old kid I set about to construct my own aircraft. Concepts like dihedral, camber and airfoil were subordinate to the actual construction of the flying wings and I would appropriate moms old bed sheets and laundry starch to skin my fragile creations.Taking each prototype to the gently sloping hill adjacent to the gully and running with them down the hill until they would inevitably pitch and stall, always in a pile of unrecognizable fabric and splintered bamboo. 

Center of gravity was another concept that I just hadn't quite transcended yet.

Later models would fly for a short way before  cratering into the ground in the same unceremonious pile of starched fabric and bamboo. Despite the limited success at the small unmanned wings, I kept building wings of various sizes until deciding that it was time to experience the lift of flight for myself. I set out to construct a glider big enough to carry my adolescent frame down the slope and across the gully. It was an endless and growing dream.

I was a reclusive kid, an only child among all of the neighbor kids who were from multiple children families, which was the norm then. I dreamed of flying like a bird and they played war. We weren't that long past the Second World War and Korea . Vietnam was just getting kicked off and it seemed like everybody was still involved in some way with Americas military machine. In school we would be jolted from our concentration and studies to dive under our desks and shield our heads in our arms in the event of a nuclear bomb attack. 

Don't get me wrong, I'd take part in the children's war games and more often than not I was on the US side, not a Jap. Funny thing was, our neighbors across the back yard, the Iwashitas, were formerly interred in one of the camps on US soil for US citizens of Japanese descent during WW2. Emily Iwashita and myself became friends and it was because of her that I found  a love of music. 

On one occasion the war games eroded suddenly and I found myself pinned to the ground between the big Eucalyptus trees growing between our yard and our neighbors by a gang of the neighbor kids for reasons that I couldn't understand. Mockingly they called "Peter Pan, fly away" as they slapped my stomach over and over giving me the infamous 60's condition, the pink belly. They had obviously seen me as I crashed wing after wing attempting, flight. It wasn't in their play book. They didn't understand it, it didn't fit in with the Saturday morning cartoons and Marlboro man commercials we were all spoon fed by our TV's. There was no History Channel or other educational programming available, just Mickey Mouse Club and endless monster movies. Mans innate yearning to fly was far outside the neighborhood kids understanding, I was the product of their rage at that, their fear of something or someone different. Old story, as old as humans themselves. They didn't understand the reclusive kid and I sure as hell didn't understand them nor was I interested in doing so. 

I was already beginning to understand cruelty on a very personal level

Returning home in silent tears, it was a lesson learned in conformity, something I have never been good at before or since. But I also persevered in building my best and largest creation. Wing dihedral maintained by a king post, crude attempt of camber and a small rudder to (hopefully) stabilize the beast, it was my finest creation. 

I waited until the street was deserted and lugged the thing across and down to the hill by the gully with the help of Steve. It was a typical Southern California kind of day. Warm and lightly breezy. There was a headwind blowing gently uphill, perfect conditions for launch. Underneath the big wing were two hand bars that I would use to balance once I was airborne. I had modeled it after the early flight pioneers who controlled their aircraft the same way. As I stood at the crest of the tiny hill I could feel lift under the wing like the pull on a big kite. 

I was going to fly at last. 

With Steve watching from some distance away I began the runup downhill to launch. Almost immediately, and quite by surprise the wing began to rise at a steep angle of attack. I was jerked off of my feet and into the air in uncontrollable flight. There was no chance to adjust my weight to try and bring the wings leading edge back down and as quickly as it began to fly the thing stalled and pitched wing over, slamming me back down into the soft dirt, rolling both of my ankles inward in a powerfully painful sprain.

Screaming in agony I sobbed for Steve to let my parents know that I was on the ground under a pile of unrecognizable fabric and bamboo, unable to walk. He bounded off and I lay there writhing in agony, waiting....and waiting.

Steve and I had gotten into so much trouble during our short friendship that he had simply disappeared home, leaving me on the hillside. I didn't blame him, we had collectively burned down the fallow fields when we were cooking baked beans in a can in our underground fort, been busted by the cops popping illegal fireworks and I had broken his leg accidentally when we were playing medieval joust on the rickety bridge spanning the gully when I knocked him off and his foot caught between the slat and the edge. So it was totally understandable,  I didn't blame him. 

After an indeterminable time, I was able to get to my feet and hobble back home. I left the wreckage there on the hillside to be consumed by weather and time. I went back to school and never said another word about flying. I didn't build another wing or otherwise. In fact I did my best to fly under the radar of notice of everyone in the neighborhood. I found fishing and from then on, it consumed me.

Inside I had accomplished what I wanted. For that brief moment that the wind caught my flying machine, as it rushed downhill out of control and wildly climbing, hauling me along with it I had flown on the wind. Not a bad feat for a ten year old kid.