Flight by Raymond Trainor (reading well TXT) 📖

Flight

I sat on a step and watched the sixth and seventh grade boys play kickball on the lower playground at Norman School. Miss Smoot the school principal, stood with folded hands, focusing on the kickball players. Occasionally, she glanced around to make sure that no boys fought or tried to sneak off. The gigging girls, on the other side of the grounds, chatted, played hopscotch or grouped in front of the other playground monitor, Miss Joy.
I realized that on May 27, 1947, a few days from now, I would attend a special assembly and receive a letter from the Kansas City School District, congratulating me on meeting the requirements of becoming a freshman at Westport High School. That would be my last day in grade school.
I stared at the playground and thought about my days at Norman. The big stone one-story building had been school home for eight years, since Mom pulled me the four blocks down Jefferson St. and into Miss Wintrode’s kindergarten classroom.
I recalled Miss Joy’s fun classes and the fifth grade teacher, smiling Mrs. Brown, who loved poetry. She insisted that all students memorize poetry and then recite in front of the class. I hated the recitals, but still remembered, “The boy stood on the burning deck. . .” and “By the shores of Gitche Gumee, by the shinning big sea waters. . .” Frowning Miss Sullivan pushed arithmetic and I somehow learned to add, subtract and knew the multiplication tables through nines. She even touched on the mysterious X’s and Y’s that peopled something called algebra.
I was a natural left-hander, but turned right-hander by decree of the school district, which had a policy: “We will never graduate a left handed student”. So each Friday afternoon I took remedial writing, scribbling cursive letters on lined notebook paper. I still have trouble reading my own writing.
Frank Comi, my best friend, ran up and sat down.
“We gotta do something special. Celebrate goin’to Westport.” I said.
“Yeah! Good idea. Maybe we could get a bunch of people and go to Fairyland Park? We could ride the roller coaster as much as we wanted with out havin’ some adult say, ‘ We gotta go now. It’s getting late and if we don’t hurry, we won’t get home until dark’.”
I scratched my head and frowned. I wanted more. A trip to a far off place . . . and go on our own . . . and do it on an airplane.
When I told Frank, his mouth open and he gasped.
I stood quietly, letting my idea settle. Most kids in my neighborhood, Midtown, never went anywhere. A few visited grandpa’s farm, or went to grandma’s funeral, but seldom traveled just to see things, and never by flying. A kite was it in my town. I figured not only would we have an adventure, but we would also have the fun of bragging to our peers.
“When I ask Mom, she’ gonna go bananas, but I wanna do it,” Frank finally said. “Let’s keep it to just you and me.”
****
I had to line everything up before asking. I knew Mom would start by saying no, when I asked her, so I figured that if I could come up with a detailed plan, well— she just might let me go. I called the Trans Western Airlines ticket office listed in the yellow pages and the then the Trailways Bus terminal and got schedules and costs for traveling to Wichita, Omaha or St. Louis. I dreamed about going to the mud walled city of Timbuktu in Central Africa or watch the Buddhist monks blow long horns in Lhasa Tibet, but after counting the money in my dime jar, St Louis would have to do, and we would have to take the bus back. My budget would not stretch to handle a round-trip by air. The airport bus left Twelfth and Baltimore every hour from eight a.m. until six p.m. We could leave Kansas City at nine a.m. and have several hours in St. Louis before having to catch the bus back. The bus would arrive at ten thirty p.m. and give us time to catch the last Main Street trolley at midnight. Frank could stay at my place that night. I grinned. All the ducks lined up.
When I finally got the courage up to ask, her face turned red and she straighten. “What are a couple of twelve-year-olds going to do in a strange city? What about the crazy people out there just waiting to get their hands on a couple of kids? Remember that “Jack-The-Ripper.” Anyway, I’ve never even been to the airport, and flying around not God’s plan. If it was, He would have given us wings not legs. Not to mention the money.”
I stood quietly waiting for things to settle. I figured we weren’t going to do anything in St. Louis, but catch a bus. About the crazy people, we often played after dark. The only threats we experienced was a three foot Garter snake we named Pinky, who hung around Eddie Creswell’s backyard, a toothless, nameless black cat, which we figured jinxed us, and dog-do hiding in the long grass.
My arguments were simple. We had started going downtown to see first- run movies on our own. What’s the difference between a Kansas City bus and a St. Louis bus both named “Downtown.” I never saw anything in the newspaper about kids disappearing or about Jack-The-Ripper living in Kansas City or St Louis for that matter. I knew lots of lots of people in the neighborhood who flew. I didn’t mention fly the kite thing. I wanted a “yes”. We then bantered about money and kept arguing until I wore her down. That how you got around mom, just keep going, and going. I was shocked when she finally said “Okay”.
I was with Frank when he asked his mom. She got excited and started yelling. “You’ll be kidnapped. No, I won’t let you. Why you’ll get lost. No! How about the money. No! Those things crash. . . ”
I stood quietly until she ran out of air and gasped like some old red balloon that had been pinpricked. After things settled, I used the timeless technique used by kids since prehistoric times. I simply uttering, “My mom said it was okay. Thinks it’l help us learn things.” I never defined “things” since it would only complicate matters.
***
The following Tuesday, we caught the downtown streetcar at eight a.m. and transferred to the airport bus. At the check-in counter, we stood in line among portly suited business men who smelled of fancy cologne and dropped elegant leather suitcases on the scale. I looked at our coveralls and hope we didn’t have B.O.
The man at the counter frowned at my soiled canvas knapsack. I felt as though we were someplace we didn’t belong and wished I had listened to Mom. She had thought we were too young to be flying around like some dumb-asses and now, so do I.
“No need to check it in. You can just carry it aboard and put it under your seats,” the man said and grinned. “Do you mind if I go through it. Can’t carry things that might spill.”
He pulled out raincoats, a Mars candy bar wrapper, a used popcorn sack and a jar of dead worms, which I forgot to take out after fishing for blue gill at Penn Valley Park. Oh crap, I thought and blushed.
The man grinned. “TWA’s letting dead worms fly free this week only.” He carefully put the jar back into the knapsack. “Are you boys being met by somebody at Lindberg Field? We can’t be responsible for you after you deplane.”
“Oh yes sir.” and bit my tongue so I didn’t keep talking. I didn’t want to tell him the “person” was a dumb, fat city bus named Downtown.
He pointed toward the gate.
We climbed into the airplane. The adults had to hunker down as they walked up the aisle in the tube like fuselage. There were two rows of single seats bisected by an aisle. Frank sat across the aisle and grinned. I smiled back, fumbled with the seat belt and finally clicked it on.
Then a speaker crackled. “This is your pilot. Thanks for flying with Trans Western Airlines today. Our equipment is a DC 3, an all metal monoplane with two Wright Cyclone 1250 horsepower engines. Another plane reported some clear air turbulence between Kansas City and Jeff City so please keep your seat belts on. Enjoy the flight.”
The engines roared and we moved onto the runway. More roar and we moved faster and faster. Whew, wow, never been so fast. The tires bumped, everything rattled and then smoothed as we flew over the river and Downtown. I glanced down at the Power and Light Building and City Hall. I imagined myself as a big shot king looking down from my throne at my tiny subjects rushing about. We turned into the rising sun and soon flew over nothing but green country.
I twisted around in my seat and looked at Frank. “Wow, I’ve never traveled so fast. Must have been goin’ a hundred miles an—“
Suddenly, the plane shook and rolled like some old hound shaking water off its coat. Then the nose went up and down, up and down like a roller coaster.
Frank looked over, grinned and shouted, “Hey, like the Rocket at Fairyland Park.”
We rolled again then bumped through the air like a Model T hitting railroad tracks at 30 miles per hour. We settled and then dropped and dropped and dropped. We flattened out, something banged, and the wings wobbled. I shook and pushed my back into the seat, but my stomach just wanted to keep going. I clamped my mouth shut, straining to keep everything down. I was scared, so scared and besides, if I up-chucked where would it go? I knew the answer: allover my clean coveralls and the stained knapsack that had slid out between my feet and was surely in the line of fire. I closed my eyes.
The speaker crackled. “Folks, this is your pilot again.” He cleared his throat. “Little clear air turbulence.” Then he paused like he was catching his breath. “We should be through this