Zoom Zoom Zoom

The Old Man loves his airplanes. I think I can trace my love of flight back to two distinct events. There was a young chap who lived up the street from me named Tommy. He was a number of years older than me, and he built beautiful balsa and tissue model airplanes. I would traipse across a couple of back yards and stand in the shrubbery just to watch him fly them. They were all powered by rubber bands and flew silently but majestically. Tommy paid me little attention....I was just that snot-nose from down the street. After I got older, I took up the hobby with some degree of success. Much more about that period of my life in subsequent posts. The main point is that I came to love flight.

The other event happened shortly after the war ended. The quietness of a Bedford Sunday afternoon was explosively disrupted on that August day. From out of nowhere (seemingly) a Corsair fighter came over the town at tree-top level. The pilot climbed, rolled, and dove repeatedly. Had we not all known the war was over, we would have thought we most surely were under attack. For the uninitiated, the Corsair (pictured above) was the gull wing Navy fighter popularized by the exploits of Greg "Pappy" Boyington, both in real life and again in the TV show "Baa Baa Black Sheep". For what seemed like forever, all 2000 horses of the big Pratt & Whitney engine roared. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand at rigid attention. We later learned that the pilot was a fellow named Bill Catlin; a Bedford boy recently returned from combat. He buzzed his momma's house, his girlfriend's house, and the county courthouse. He looped, he whirled, he spun, he mocked a strafing run. Then....he was gone.

I don't know what sort of unmitigated hell his commanding officer made his life when he returned to base, and maybe the incident didn't get reported, but he sure made an impression on this 5 year old. If I live to be 100, I will never forget the raw power that airplane shared with us all. I can look at a picture of a Corsair and still hear it in my mind.

I have nothing but respect and admiration for those who defend our country in the sleek jet fighters of today. I salute and cheer them. I offer my heart-felt thanks to them. But it seems somehow different when I see a jet go over. There's a lot of noise and thunder and it's hard to describe, but it's just not the same. The engine on a Corsair just sang rather than boomed.

Oh, Tommy re-entered my life just a few years ago. When my mother had her auction to close up shop as she called it, Tommy was working for the auction company. He came up to me after all was done and handed me an item. "I'll bet you forgot about this", he said. With that he handed me a little brass plate with my father's name on it. It had been mounted on our front door and he was right, I had forgotten it. Thanks to him, it's now in it's new home. Full circle.