When I was 15 years old , my father worked for a government organization. My family would spend the summer in northern Idaho .. Way back then it was a town smaller than Alexandria. The only thing going for it was a huge beautiful lake. In the summer the water was so clear that you could see ten- twenty feet to the bottom..Great swimming, boating and skiing. You could go out in the country and look down from a bridge crossing a stream and see trout swimming in the water. People would have elk horns with a spread of almost six feet tacked to their garage walls. I would spend a half hour climbing a place called Tub’s hill and when I got to the top, I could see the entire town on one side and the lake and mountains on the other. You could see log rafts being pulled to a saw mill on the bank of the lake. I would rent a canoe for .50 cents an hour and paddle along the shore. We talk about paradise in Louisiana. Up there in Idaho to a 15 year old kid it was heaven.
I found out something about life that summer in Idaho. There are events that take place in your life that if you pay attention to them will shape the rest of your years and the way you act and think.
I worked that summer for a friend of my Dad’s that had a small seaplane base on the lake. He owned two float planes. A plane called a Seabee and one called a Taylorcraft. He would do charter work and on the weekends take the tourist up for 15 minute rides over the lake and city for $5.00 a head. I would help dock the seabee and gas it up and check the oil. He would fly people around all day Saturday and Sunday.
I took flying lessons from him, usually two or three times a week he would take me up in the Taylorcraft with floats on it. I made friends with and became the mascot of a lot of bush pilot’s from the WW-2 era. I still to this day remember the stories they told.
I never took the flying seriously while I was being taught. After all I was just a 15 year old teenager..
But one day about 3/4 of the way through the summer,the day that would help shape my life happened.
I came to work at the seaplane base that morning and there was a larger than normal group of men there.
Bill as my boss was called was a cigar chewing ex transport pilot who had flown the hump into Berlin after the war and flew over the Himalayan Mountains. Even he did not know how many hours he had flown in the air.
The group of men said, It was my time to solo. Here I had treated this learning experience with the typical teenagers lightheartedness. I had paid attention with one part of my brain and I think went somewhere else with the other.
I climbed into the Taylorcraft. Fastened my harness, turned on the magneto and said “Clear” ..
With that one word my entire life changed. I took the plane out from the dock, lined it up with the clear water and pushed in the throttle. AS the plane skimmed along the water gaining speed and I gently rocked it onto one float and took it into the air, I was no longer that 15 year old kid. I learned one thing in an instant.I understood what the word responsibility was. I was flying and on my own. I quickly learned the meaning of two other word’s. “concentration” and “focus”
I had to land that plane and It took both to do so.
When I taxied back to the dock, I was pulled from the plane and thrown by about six men into the water. It was a passage of life…..
My life had changed in the course of about a half hour.
My mother had taken a photograph of my landing that plane for the first time. I have it today.
Every once in a while I will take it out and think back to that time.
It keeps me grounded, so to speak.
Alex
