In the early 1900’s, behind Main Street, in the lot between where the Brewery and the train car now stand, a temporary ramp was built. A local eccentric who wore a coonskin cap and loved to tinker with inventions, got caught up in the idea that if birds could fly, then so could people. He, this man called Coon Harris, knew that we would have to do more than flap our arms and so he constructed a pair of lightweight wings and announced to the town that he would make his first attempt from the ramp. He hoped to make it to the train tracks at the bottom of the hill but, so as not to underestimate his invention, said he might fly all the way to Rock Hill.
If he was seeking fame and fortune, he only got the fame. He took a great leap from the ramp and dropped straight down into some precautionary hay bales, flapping those wings all the way.
Things don’t always go in the direction we planned.
I understand the man. I too have been obsessed with flight.
As a boy, I had a lingering romantic love for airplanes. I must not have been alone in my obsession because there was even a flying cowboy on TV. Sky King was about a modern western hero who alternated between his trusty steed and his twin-engine Cessna. I will grant that Sky’s niece, Penny, kept many preteen boys tuned in to the Saturday morning show.
Airplanes were not uncommon when I was a boy but they still had a mystique about them. Most planes, military or civilian, were propellor driven and kids still watched the skies anytime we heard a plane pass over. We marveled when we saw the thin white trail of a jet flying far over our heads and military planes like flying boxcars and helicopters were a special treat.
Our first personal contact with flight was the paper airplane. There were guys in my seventh-grade class who could create notebook paper masterpieces that were capable of sustained flight across an entire classroom.
On the really great days when one of those budding Aeronautic Engineers had the nerve to sail one from an open window on the second floor of Central School, it might almost reach Tom Hall Street before making a perfect landing on the worn playground.
I was not one of those paragons of flight. My paper airplanes were the standard kind with three folds and a bent nose to give it weight. I always had to add a paperclip or two to get mine to fly and then they were more paper dart than paper airplane.
My personal favorite was the balsa wood airplane. They were purchased at the dime store for fifteen cents and came out of the plastic bag as two thin 4” by 10” sheets of balsa with the shapes roughly stamped out. Carefully detaching the fuselage and the wings and the tail were done with our Scout knives so that the wood didn’t split. We would insert the tail into its slot at the back of the fuselage and feed the wing through the middle cut-out beneath the printed cockpit.
The kit also included a weight like a wide staple which slid over the nose of the plane. The wing slot was longer than the wing was wide and from that we learned some of the early rules of flight. If the wing was pushed forward in the slot, the plane would glide in a straight line but if the wing was at the back, the balsa plane would make a giant loop and return to the flyer. I loved the days when a breeze would lift the plane to unexpected heights and I would have to chase after it until the wind chose to give it back.
There was a mechanized version of the balsa airplane. Someone created a model with a hook under the tail and a propellor in the front. A long rubber band stretched from tail to the oversized red plastic propellor. We would wind the propellor until the rubber band was tight and then release the plane and propellor at the same time. The plane would fly until the rubber band unwound. It was an inelegant clunky flight and relied on power to keep it aloft. I am a fan of the glider.
Rarely have I hated a flying toy but the boomerang represented all the sadness that comes with being left-handed. In the television boomerang commercials, boys and girls would send them sailing out in a wide perfect arc and stand and watch until the amazing delta wing would return and almost light in their hands like a gentle bird. I had friends who could launch them and actually have them make that arc and come back somewhere in their vicinity.
They don’t make left hand boomerangs. They don’t even mention left-handers on the package. Boomerangs have a leading edge and for a left-hander, it does not lead. For a lefty, the boomerang makes a wobbly flight straight to the nearest rooftop. I never even tried to get my boomerang back. As far as I know, the damned thing was still on the roof when my parents sold the house and moved without telling me where. I once brought a friend home from college to an empty house but that’s a story for a different time and requires a higher octane fuel than the iced tea I am currently drinking.
If they still sell boomerangs anywhere outside Australia, there should be warning labels stating “Only works for right handed people in the Southern Hemisphere.”
Somewhere along the line, during my childhood I developed Amblyopia. I like the term because it sounds like someone who rambles through life, something I have always had tendency toward. In common terms it is called Lazy Eye. Some say it was consistent with my motivational level. I had begun to rely too much on my left eye and it affected my binocular vision.
Lazy eye really didn’t interfere my daily life except for a brief period when a doctor suggested I wear an eye patch over the good eye to let the weak one develop. After a few collisions with doorframes and furniture, the patch went into a drawer and came out only on Halloween. Lazy eye did affect one dream. I could not become a pilot in the military. Lazy eye meant bad depth perception and bad depth perception meant really bad landing skills.
Along the way my romantic inclination did shift from airplanes to girls but I never lost the feeling that there was something mystical about flight. I dream of being a pilot flying solo on a long flight. I envy the solitude of being suspended above the hard reality of earth and beneath the soft black sky dotted with stars.
I often thought of taking private flying lessons but put off the dream because of the cost of such an impractical skill. I was certainly never going to buy an airplane and besides, the days of open cockpits and barnstorming heroes were long past.
I assuaged my disappointment by reading. I open a book and let the world fall below. Books like Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, Illusions by Richard Bach or West with the Wind by Beryl Markham have all shaped the way I look at life. I have flown with each of them and tried to learn what they had to teach.
There is an ancient Chinese story about Zhuangzi, a philosopher, who had a vivid dream that he was a butterfly and flew from flower to flower observing the world. The dream was so real that, from that day on, Zhuangzi was never certain whether he was a philosopher dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a philosopher.
When I finish writing a story or emerge from the pages of a good book, I have to blink a few times to remember who I am in this particular dream. My thoughts have been much on books and reading lately because like Coon Harris I took a foolhardy leap.
In July, at seventy-four years of age, I decided to write a novel. I hoped I could finish a rough draft in six or seven months. In late September I finished my rough draft, 70,000 words in three months. There will be re-writes galore and letters to agents and months of waiting so don’t expect to read it anytime soon. You can bet, however, that despite my age, I am building another ramp.
*Thanks to Bob Seger for the title.
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