The Takeoff
I
It was 1967 and summer just ended. I just got a new bike for my birthday and would ride the Schwinn flyer home from
school pedaling as fast as I could. I had to beat the dark. There were only so many hours of light after school and there
were so many things I wanted to do before night fell. It was always a race, me against time. There were kites and
rubber band planes to fly, water rockets to launch, paper and model planes to build all before the skies turned dark.
Before I headed home I would stop at the end of my street and pick up the mail from our box. On this particular day I
was checking the mail to see if my name was on any of the letters, that’s when I noticed an official looking letter from
the Salem school board addressed to my father. It had to be about me; it surely wasn’t about my sister Lou Anne, “Miss
goodie-two-shoes and her straight A’s.”
I kept going over things in my mind trying to remember if I had done anything wrong in school during the last few
months. There was that fight on the play ground with Randy Wormer. It was just after Easter and he asked me if I had
watched “The Wizard of Oz.”
“Of course, I watch it every year.”
For some reason he wanted to know which character would I like to be, the scarecrow, the tin man or the lion. I told him,
“I wouldn’t want to be any one of them, who would want to be a scarecrow without a brain, a tin man without a heart, or
a lion without courage?” I told Randy I wanted to be one of them flying monkeys. He said that was stupid. That’s when I
told him, he better keep his eyes up in the sky because one day I might just swoop down and tear the stuffing out of
him. Then he pushed me and I hit him. We rolled around on the ground for a few seconds until a teacher broke us up.
When my father came home that night and read the letter. It wasn’t about the fight. My teacher was worried about my
incessant climbing on roofs, trees, fences, and desks, then jumping off once I reached the top. She said something
about being concerned for my safety and being a bad example for the other children. I thought it was a bunch of
malarkey.
“What’s the big deal about me jumping off things, I’m not going to get hurt, and no one has to copy what I do.”
I knew my father well enough that he wasn’t going to get mad and upset at something as trivial as this. My father and I
had a cool relationship. It wasn’t your typical father and son relationship, more of a pilot and co-pilot relationship. He
would tell me something or ask me to do something and I would answer him with a, “Roger that’s a check or check that’
s a Roger.”
My father had always wanted to be an aviator. He looked like a cross between Chuck Yeager and Gregory Peck of
Twelve O’clock High. My dad should have been a pilot. He knew so much about planes and flying it was as though
some golden wings were imbedded on his shoulders. If it had not been my grandparent getting up in age and my father
feeling obligated to assist them he definitely would be flying or fixing airplanes somewhere.
While most fathers brought their sons fishing and to ballgames, my dad brought me to airports and air shows. I didn’t
collect comic books and baseball cards I collected model planes and photographs of famous aviators, from “Amelia
Earhart” to “Alan Shepard.” So I wasn’t really too concerned about the letter from the school board.
I was correct in my assumption. He just told me to be careful and be more discreet in my attempts to fly.
My father witnessed my many attempts to take flight with various devices, whether it was an umbrella, a large
homemade cape, ala Superman or some plywood wings strapped to my arms. I was going to fly one way or another. I’m
sure he hoped I would soon lose interest and put this all behind me.
“Dad, I’m just testing the theory of gravity.” “Well I can see that. How about giving yourself a better airfoil next time.” He’
d holler. My father realized I was just a kid experimenting. He certainly wasn’t going to chastise me for something
insignificant as jumping off a desk.
We went about our business conversing about aviation and space, especially of late with the space race going on
between us and the Russians. At times we spoke in orbital terms of astronauts and cosmonauts of Mercury, Gemini,
and Apollo. We were breaking the earthly sound barriers of communication, the only way we knew how.
He was the one who got me involve in my obsession with flight. He finished his tour in the Army and with the GI Bill went
on to school to become an airplane mechanic. He never did get a job working on airplanes.
I knew it must have broken his heart not to be working in the aviation field. Maybe by teaching me all he could about
flying I would carry that knowledge into the world and apply in the aviation field, something he was unable to do.
He chose to stay in his home town of Salem New Hampshire to be close to his parents. He took a job working for the
town water department never fulfilling his desire to work on airplanes. He still kept his interest in them. He subscribed to
“Flying,” and “Popular Mechanics,” which I read the best I could and looked at all the pictures. I guess they piqued my
interest in aviation.
II
The following year I developed a crush on one of the girls in my class. Her name was Lynn Vimana and I thought I was
in love with her, being that her father was an Air Force pilot stationed at Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth New
Hampshire.
I was beside myself when I found out our class was going on a field trip to his air base. Her father set up the trip. He
was part of the Strategic Air Command, the 509th Bombardment Wing which had transferred from Roswell Army Air
Field in New Mexico. They were the bomber squadron that dropped the big one on Japan. Then in 1947, while still at
Roswell New Mexico their squadron was part of the recovery of a crashed flying saucer. I knew all this information since
aviation was my life.
Our forth grade teacher, Mrs. Hawkins who we called “Mrs. Hawk-eye,” since she always saw you acting up no matter
how discreet you were, made us write down the questions we wanted to ask Major Vimana. I was going to ask him if he
was involved in the dropping of the bomb and if he was in Roswell New Mexico when that unidentified flying object
landed.
Mrs. Hawkins read mine and stared at me warning me that if I asked any types of those questions I wouldn’t be able to
get off the bus once we arrived at the Air Force base.
Once we arrived, a second lieutenant gave us the tour of the facilities and planes. He told us things that I already knew
so he was rather boring. We got to look at some of the planes and even get in some of them. I sat in the cockpit of one
of the tankers pointing out to the kids in my class what every control and switch was used for, the 2nd Lieutenant watch
in amazement as I was doing his job.
I belong here at this air base. The wings, propellers and rudders were directing me to my destiny. I belonged in the
cockpits of these planes. I wish that times arrow would have stopped in mid-flight. I wanted to forever enjoy the moment
I was in. I was euphoric for the first time I my life. I was floating, flying and falling all at the same time. I was in my
element; I didn’t want this day to end.
I wanted to take a closer look at the B-52 bomber, but because of some stupid security reasons we were only allowed
to view it from a distance. I wanted to get up close and get inside one of those famous planes. I kept asking the 2nd
lieutenant and my teacher, but each time they said no. While I was peering to take a closer look at a bomber, Randy
Wormer yelled,
“Hey Slim Pickens, why don’t you go sit on go one of its bombs then they could fly you up and drop ya on the Ruskies
and end this crazy cold war.”
I had no clue what he was talking about. Wormer was getting weirder by the minute.
It would have been the perfect day if not for that Randy Wormer. He made some more wise remarks calling me,
“flyboy,” and telling everyone that I thought I was “Sky King.” I would have bopped him in the head right then and there
had it not been for Mrs. Hawk-eye and that 2nd Lieutenant being close by.
What did he know anyway? All he could tell me was weird stuff like, “Judy Garland and Ray Bolger starred together in
The Wizard of Oz and The Harvey Girls, one in 1939 and the other in 1946,” like I really cared about things like that. He
was just jealous of me. None of the kids cared who starred in what movie. They wanted to know neat stuff like airplanes.
I brought my fathers faithful brownie camera and took as many pictures as they allowed. I had them developed and put
them in my scrap book with all my other aviation stuff. I sure wished that Miss Lynn Vimana became my girlfriend, and
then I could probably get a tour of the base at least once a week. She never did but I always did admire her from afar
or rather her father anyway.
III
Every autumn my family would make a trek to a local fair either in Deerfield New Hampshire or Topsfield Massachusetts
or some place with the word field in its name. They were all the same to me. People would walk around and looking at
all the livestock. We would check out all the latest and greatest in farming equipment from “John Deere.” This seemed
odd since we didn’t have a farm.
My sister and I would get our fill of popcorn and cotton candy and watch some guy get a blue ribbon because he fed
his pig the most slop. They had horse pulls and oxen pulls for what reason I couldn’t figure. “Didn’t they have all that
John Deere equipment to do their plowing and such?” We would watch these exhibits and listen to men in bib overalls
make comments strange comment about the anatomy of some of the farm animals.
My sister and I would give each other a puzzled look since we didn’t know what these men were talking about.
I only had one reason that I came to the fair. That reason was simple; we were going to get some helium balloons. I had
things I wanted to do with these balloons. I’d make a deal with my sister for hers. It was only going to cost me some of
my Halloween candy.
I would do all sorts of stuff with these floatable, flying balloons. I’d attach little baskets to the balloons with strings and fill
them up with plastic army men and send them on their way. I’d put a frog or a toad in the baskets and let them go
flying. Most of the time they would jump out before it got too high but once in a while they would stay put and float into
the clouds. I had to reassure my sister on these occasions that the balloons would slowly return to earth and the frog or
toad would be alright.
The balloons just seemed to have endless possibilities. Higher and higher they would float into the sky. They would call
to me to come and I would call to them to take me away.
IV
Every Halloween I got to put in a costume and go trick or treating. I only dressed in one costume, Superman. He was
my hero, simply because he could fly. I would slip into my Superman suit, although I changed in the bathroom rather
than a telephone booth and run around the house leaping off the couch and chairs reciting,
“Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, look up in the sky it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a plane, it’s a plane…”
In the years previous my family tried to get me to wear other costumes for Halloween but I would hear none of it. It was
either Superman or I wasn’t going trick or treating, although I did consider wearing a Mighty Mouse costume one year.
He ran a distant second to Superman.
In the autumn I got to wear my Superman suit. In the winter I got more model airplanes as Christmas presents, in the
spring I flew kites as high as they would go, and in the summer I would go to Salem’s glider-port and watch the gliders
and the planes pulling them fly over without a care in the world. My life seemed great.
V
Every spring I flew kites. It was one of my favorite past-times. On this one day in April the weather was great, cloudless
and blustery, perfect for flying a kite. On this day I reached a height so great that it made me a legend. The field which
we used was situated at a bottom of a hill between two streets Brookdale and Canobie Ave, and most kids in the
neighborhood came to try their luck at flying kites.
I had two good friends that I flew kites with, although I had to help them at times to get theirs off the ground. There was
“Rotund Ron,” he looked like a beach-ball with arms and legs and a fat head sticking out. He had to be at least two
hundred pounds which was huge for a six grader. He could never run fast enough to get his kite flying. I always had to
start it for him. I would run with his kite and get it high enough to where the wind would do its job. Then all Rotund Ron
would have to do was hold on to the string.
Then there was “Ichabod Bob,” he was thin as a rail and gangly looking. He barely tipped the scales at sixty -five
pounds. He could run a little faster than Ron, so I didn’t have to help him much to get his kite off the ground. But he
was so light, sometimes I worried if the wind was too strong it might just pick him up and fly him away. Whenever he
came to fly kites I made sure he put lead fishing weights in his pockets. I was the only one who was going to fly around
here.
We didn’t have a lot in common except for our dislike of Randy Wormer. To us he was just a weirdo. He was still calling
me flyboy and calling Bob and Ron, “Laurel and Hardy,” I guess he figured he was being funny. We had secret plan of
tying a bunch of helium balloons to him that would float him away.
‘Maybe he’d get his wish and he’d end up in Oz,’ I thought. He was just lucky we never could collect enough balloons at
one time.
The kite I flew wasn’t any bigger or better than any other kids in the neighborhood. Its airfoil was made out of plastic
vice paper. It probably cost me about twenty-nine cents at the local five and dime. I did have one secret I used on my
kite that I wouldn’t let the other kids know about. It was its tail. It wasn’t your typical kite tail made of ripped bed sheets.
No, this had a special tail. The tail was made of satin sheets. I found some in the dump while dropping off a load of
trash with my dad. I washed them and cut them into an eight-foot tail, which I attached to my kite. I think the satin was
lighter than regular clothe, so it gave me an advantage when I flew my kite.
On this day my kite was rising fast and high among the strong winds. I carried a burlap bag full of spools of string and
would attach another spool when the previous one reached its peak. The winds were really blowing and before long I
had tied together about eight spools of string to my kite. I ran out of string but got an idea.
‘Why not get more string from the other kids and see how high we could fly this kite?’ I called to Rotund Ron and to
Ichabod Bob to bring me their string. We started tying more string to my kite. I must have tied six additional spools of
string to it.
Unfortunately that weird Randy Wormer showed up wearing a beret carrying a chair that had “DIRECTOR,” writing on
the back. We now called him “Mr. Hollyweird.” He went and got his fathers eight millimeter camera and was filming the
whole thing. He was spewing something about, “Capturing this for posterity,” I told him,
“They’re gonna capture you and put ya in a loony bin.” It didn’t faze him; he just kept right on filming.
The kite kept on going higher and higher. It looked like a dot in the sky. All the other kids in the field were bringing me
their string so we just kept on adding more and more. They were crowding around me oohing and ahhing. They were
asking me if they could tug on the string. I let a few but I worried that someone might break the string and we’d lose the
kite.
The crowd around me was getting larger. I had to ask Rotund Ron to be the guarder of the string and not to let anyone
up close. He snapped to attention and saluted saying,
“Roger sir that’s a check”
So he stood his watch while the kite ascended toward the clouds. We attached more spools of string as kids from
adjacent neighborhood descended on the field to watch this spectacle.
I don’t know how high we could have gone that day if we only had more string. Could we scrape the edge of the
stratosphere? Could we reach the ionosphere? The excitement and possibilities were endless until we ran out of
string. We needed more string. Some more twine of flight was needed to reach my heaven.
The crowd had increased its numbers and noise. In a collective they were chanting,
“Higher, higher, higher, higher” Somewhere in the recesses of mind I was yelling,
“Some string, some string, my kingdom for some string”
Then something strange happened. I heard some sirens coming our way, and then saw the flashing lights of two police
cars, which represented about half the police force. The crowd was dispersing running every which way, not knowing
what was happening. They stopped their cars and two policemen started running our way.
I thought Ichabod Bob was going to feint dead away and Rotund Ron was going to crap his pants. They must have
thought the cops were going to shoot them. They didn’t have their guns drawn so I didn’t think it was anything serious.
They ran right up to me and explained that they received a call from the FAA in Nashua; some pilot radioed the FAA
complaining about my kite being up too high and on a flight path of some airliner jets. The kite had to come down now;
it was a flight hazard.
“Can you beat that, my kite is actually up too high,” I thought. I didn’t want to get in any trouble with the law or the
Federal Aviation Association so I had no choice but to bring the kite down.
I really didn’t want this to end; a sadness seemed to permeate the crowd. Having heard the words of the police officer
they let go a collective groan, not wanting this show to close.
Randy Wormer squeezed his way in with his camera. He had the nerve to ask the officers to turn toward him and flash
their badges and smile. He wanted them to repeat what they told me but to do it with an angry scowl on their faces.
They too believed he was nuts.
“It’s coming down now.” I slowly reeled in the kite holding back my tears. I thought I heard an angel singing, maybe in
my mind, maybe on someone’s radio. I didn’t recognize the song but the first few lines touched me.
“Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
you in mid-air.”
Was this my pinnacle, my zenith, my Everest? Would I ever reach heights as high as this? Was this my epoch? Would I
ever accomplish a greater feat than this? I didn’t know. I was happy but I was sad. I was elated that I flew this kite higher
than ever before and heartbroken that I had to bring it back to earth and with it a dream had sailed away.
They watch me slowly bring the kite back to mortal ground. Then Randy Wormer got up on his directors’ chair and
yelled.
“People step aside for here walks the king of kites. He is The Wright Brothers and Yuri Gagarin all rolled into one.
Watch as he walks out of this field of dreams, on to a higher plane.” I still didn’t understand what Wormer was talking
about; I was flying a higher kite not a higher plane. I slowly walked away carrying my kite while Mr. Hollyweird filmed the
whole thing for the annals of six grade history.
I
It was 1967 and summer just ended. I just got a new bike for my birthday and would ride the Schwinn flyer home from
school pedaling as fast as I could. I had to beat the dark. There were only so many hours of light after school and there
were so many things I wanted to do before night fell. It was always a race, me against time. There were kites and
rubber band planes to fly, water rockets to launch, paper and model planes to build all before the skies turned dark.
Before I headed home I would stop at the end of my street and pick up the mail from our box. On this particular day I
was checking the mail to see if my name was on any of the letters, that’s when I noticed an official looking letter from
the Salem school board addressed to my father. It had to be about me; it surely wasn’t about my sister Lou Anne, “Miss
goodie-two-shoes and her straight A’s.”
I kept going over things in my mind trying to remember if I had done anything wrong in school during the last few
months. There was that fight on the play ground with Randy Wormer. It was just after Easter and he asked me if I had
watched “The Wizard of Oz.”
“Of course, I watch it every year.”
For some reason he wanted to know which character would I like to be, the scarecrow, the tin man or the lion. I told him,
“I wouldn’t want to be any one of them, who would want to be a scarecrow without a brain, a tin man without a heart, or
a lion without courage?” I told Randy I wanted to be one of them flying monkeys. He said that was stupid. That’s when I
told him, he better keep his eyes up in the sky because one day I might just swoop down and tear the stuffing out of
him. Then he pushed me and I hit him. We rolled around on the ground for a few seconds until a teacher broke us up.
When my father came home that night and read the letter. It wasn’t about the fight. My teacher was worried about my
incessant climbing on roofs, trees, fences, and desks, then jumping off once I reached the top. She said something
about being concerned for my safety and being a bad example for the other children. I thought it was a bunch of
malarkey.
“What’s the big deal about me jumping off things, I’m not going to get hurt, and no one has to copy what I do.”
I knew my father well enough that he wasn’t going to get mad and upset at something as trivial as this. My father and I
had a cool relationship. It wasn’t your typical father and son relationship, more of a pilot and co-pilot relationship. He
would tell me something or ask me to do something and I would answer him with a, “Roger that’s a check or check that’
s a Roger.”
My father had always wanted to be an aviator. He looked like a cross between Chuck Yeager and Gregory Peck of
Twelve O’clock High. My dad should have been a pilot. He knew so much about planes and flying it was as though
some golden wings were imbedded on his shoulders. If it had not been my grandparent getting up in age and my father
feeling obligated to assist them he definitely would be flying or fixing airplanes somewhere.
While most fathers brought their sons fishing and to ballgames, my dad brought me to airports and air shows. I didn’t
collect comic books and baseball cards I collected model planes and photographs of famous aviators, from “Amelia
Earhart” to “Alan Shepard.” So I wasn’t really too concerned about the letter from the school board.
I was correct in my assumption. He just told me to be careful and be more discreet in my attempts to fly.
My father witnessed my many attempts to take flight with various devices, whether it was an umbrella, a large
homemade cape, ala Superman or some plywood wings strapped to my arms. I was going to fly one way or another. I’m
sure he hoped I would soon lose interest and put this all behind me.
“Dad, I’m just testing the theory of gravity.” “Well I can see that. How about giving yourself a better airfoil next time.” He’
d holler. My father realized I was just a kid experimenting. He certainly wasn’t going to chastise me for something
insignificant as jumping off a desk.
We went about our business conversing about aviation and space, especially of late with the space race going on
between us and the Russians. At times we spoke in orbital terms of astronauts and cosmonauts of Mercury, Gemini,
and Apollo. We were breaking the earthly sound barriers of communication, the only way we knew how.
He was the one who got me involve in my obsession with flight. He finished his tour in the Army and with the GI Bill went
on to school to become an airplane mechanic. He never did get a job working on airplanes.
I knew it must have broken his heart not to be working in the aviation field. Maybe by teaching me all he could about
flying I would carry that knowledge into the world and apply in the aviation field, something he was unable to do.
He chose to stay in his home town of Salem New Hampshire to be close to his parents. He took a job working for the
town water department never fulfilling his desire to work on airplanes. He still kept his interest in them. He subscribed to
“Flying,” and “Popular Mechanics,” which I read the best I could and looked at all the pictures. I guess they piqued my
interest in aviation.
II
The following year I developed a crush on one of the girls in my class. Her name was Lynn Vimana and I thought I was
in love with her, being that her father was an Air Force pilot stationed at Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth New
Hampshire.
I was beside myself when I found out our class was going on a field trip to his air base. Her father set up the trip. He
was part of the Strategic Air Command, the 509th Bombardment Wing which had transferred from Roswell Army Air
Field in New Mexico. They were the bomber squadron that dropped the big one on Japan. Then in 1947, while still at
Roswell New Mexico their squadron was part of the recovery of a crashed flying saucer. I knew all this information since
aviation was my life.
Our forth grade teacher, Mrs. Hawkins who we called “Mrs. Hawk-eye,” since she always saw you acting up no matter
how discreet you were, made us write down the questions we wanted to ask Major Vimana. I was going to ask him if he
was involved in the dropping of the bomb and if he was in Roswell New Mexico when that unidentified flying object
landed.
Mrs. Hawkins read mine and stared at me warning me that if I asked any types of those questions I wouldn’t be able to
get off the bus once we arrived at the Air Force base.
Once we arrived, a second lieutenant gave us the tour of the facilities and planes. He told us things that I already knew
so he was rather boring. We got to look at some of the planes and even get in some of them. I sat in the cockpit of one
of the tankers pointing out to the kids in my class what every control and switch was used for, the 2nd Lieutenant watch
in amazement as I was doing his job.
I belong here at this air base. The wings, propellers and rudders were directing me to my destiny. I belonged in the
cockpits of these planes. I wish that times arrow would have stopped in mid-flight. I wanted to forever enjoy the moment
I was in. I was euphoric for the first time I my life. I was floating, flying and falling all at the same time. I was in my
element; I didn’t want this day to end.
I wanted to take a closer look at the B-52 bomber, but because of some stupid security reasons we were only allowed
to view it from a distance. I wanted to get up close and get inside one of those famous planes. I kept asking the 2nd
lieutenant and my teacher, but each time they said no. While I was peering to take a closer look at a bomber, Randy
Wormer yelled,
“Hey Slim Pickens, why don’t you go sit on go one of its bombs then they could fly you up and drop ya on the Ruskies
and end this crazy cold war.”
I had no clue what he was talking about. Wormer was getting weirder by the minute.
It would have been the perfect day if not for that Randy Wormer. He made some more wise remarks calling me,
“flyboy,” and telling everyone that I thought I was “Sky King.” I would have bopped him in the head right then and there
had it not been for Mrs. Hawk-eye and that 2nd Lieutenant being close by.
What did he know anyway? All he could tell me was weird stuff like, “Judy Garland and Ray Bolger starred together in
The Wizard of Oz and The Harvey Girls, one in 1939 and the other in 1946,” like I really cared about things like that. He
was just jealous of me. None of the kids cared who starred in what movie. They wanted to know neat stuff like airplanes.
I brought my fathers faithful brownie camera and took as many pictures as they allowed. I had them developed and put
them in my scrap book with all my other aviation stuff. I sure wished that Miss Lynn Vimana became my girlfriend, and
then I could probably get a tour of the base at least once a week. She never did but I always did admire her from afar
or rather her father anyway.
III
Every autumn my family would make a trek to a local fair either in Deerfield New Hampshire or Topsfield Massachusetts
or some place with the word field in its name. They were all the same to me. People would walk around and looking at
all the livestock. We would check out all the latest and greatest in farming equipment from “John Deere.” This seemed
odd since we didn’t have a farm.
My sister and I would get our fill of popcorn and cotton candy and watch some guy get a blue ribbon because he fed
his pig the most slop. They had horse pulls and oxen pulls for what reason I couldn’t figure. “Didn’t they have all that
John Deere equipment to do their plowing and such?” We would watch these exhibits and listen to men in bib overalls
make comments strange comment about the anatomy of some of the farm animals.
My sister and I would give each other a puzzled look since we didn’t know what these men were talking about.
I only had one reason that I came to the fair. That reason was simple; we were going to get some helium balloons. I had
things I wanted to do with these balloons. I’d make a deal with my sister for hers. It was only going to cost me some of
my Halloween candy.
I would do all sorts of stuff with these floatable, flying balloons. I’d attach little baskets to the balloons with strings and fill
them up with plastic army men and send them on their way. I’d put a frog or a toad in the baskets and let them go
flying. Most of the time they would jump out before it got too high but once in a while they would stay put and float into
the clouds. I had to reassure my sister on these occasions that the balloons would slowly return to earth and the frog or
toad would be alright.
The balloons just seemed to have endless possibilities. Higher and higher they would float into the sky. They would call
to me to come and I would call to them to take me away.
IV
Every Halloween I got to put in a costume and go trick or treating. I only dressed in one costume, Superman. He was
my hero, simply because he could fly. I would slip into my Superman suit, although I changed in the bathroom rather
than a telephone booth and run around the house leaping off the couch and chairs reciting,
“Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, look up in the sky it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a plane, it’s a plane…”
In the years previous my family tried to get me to wear other costumes for Halloween but I would hear none of it. It was
either Superman or I wasn’t going trick or treating, although I did consider wearing a Mighty Mouse costume one year.
He ran a distant second to Superman.
In the autumn I got to wear my Superman suit. In the winter I got more model airplanes as Christmas presents, in the
spring I flew kites as high as they would go, and in the summer I would go to Salem’s glider-port and watch the gliders
and the planes pulling them fly over without a care in the world. My life seemed great.
V
Every spring I flew kites. It was one of my favorite past-times. On this one day in April the weather was great, cloudless
and blustery, perfect for flying a kite. On this day I reached a height so great that it made me a legend. The field which
we used was situated at a bottom of a hill between two streets Brookdale and Canobie Ave, and most kids in the
neighborhood came to try their luck at flying kites.
I had two good friends that I flew kites with, although I had to help them at times to get theirs off the ground. There was
“Rotund Ron,” he looked like a beach-ball with arms and legs and a fat head sticking out. He had to be at least two
hundred pounds which was huge for a six grader. He could never run fast enough to get his kite flying. I always had to
start it for him. I would run with his kite and get it high enough to where the wind would do its job. Then all Rotund Ron
would have to do was hold on to the string.
Then there was “Ichabod Bob,” he was thin as a rail and gangly looking. He barely tipped the scales at sixty -five
pounds. He could run a little faster than Ron, so I didn’t have to help him much to get his kite off the ground. But he
was so light, sometimes I worried if the wind was too strong it might just pick him up and fly him away. Whenever he
came to fly kites I made sure he put lead fishing weights in his pockets. I was the only one who was going to fly around
here.
We didn’t have a lot in common except for our dislike of Randy Wormer. To us he was just a weirdo. He was still calling
me flyboy and calling Bob and Ron, “Laurel and Hardy,” I guess he figured he was being funny. We had secret plan of
tying a bunch of helium balloons to him that would float him away.
‘Maybe he’d get his wish and he’d end up in Oz,’ I thought. He was just lucky we never could collect enough balloons at
one time.
The kite I flew wasn’t any bigger or better than any other kids in the neighborhood. Its airfoil was made out of plastic
vice paper. It probably cost me about twenty-nine cents at the local five and dime. I did have one secret I used on my
kite that I wouldn’t let the other kids know about. It was its tail. It wasn’t your typical kite tail made of ripped bed sheets.
No, this had a special tail. The tail was made of satin sheets. I found some in the dump while dropping off a load of
trash with my dad. I washed them and cut them into an eight-foot tail, which I attached to my kite. I think the satin was
lighter than regular clothe, so it gave me an advantage when I flew my kite.
On this day my kite was rising fast and high among the strong winds. I carried a burlap bag full of spools of string and
would attach another spool when the previous one reached its peak. The winds were really blowing and before long I
had tied together about eight spools of string to my kite. I ran out of string but got an idea.
‘Why not get more string from the other kids and see how high we could fly this kite?’ I called to Rotund Ron and to
Ichabod Bob to bring me their string. We started tying more string to my kite. I must have tied six additional spools of
string to it.
Unfortunately that weird Randy Wormer showed up wearing a beret carrying a chair that had “DIRECTOR,” writing on
the back. We now called him “Mr. Hollyweird.” He went and got his fathers eight millimeter camera and was filming the
whole thing. He was spewing something about, “Capturing this for posterity,” I told him,
“They’re gonna capture you and put ya in a loony bin.” It didn’t faze him; he just kept right on filming.
The kite kept on going higher and higher. It looked like a dot in the sky. All the other kids in the field were bringing me
their string so we just kept on adding more and more. They were crowding around me oohing and ahhing. They were
asking me if they could tug on the string. I let a few but I worried that someone might break the string and we’d lose the
kite.
The crowd around me was getting larger. I had to ask Rotund Ron to be the guarder of the string and not to let anyone
up close. He snapped to attention and saluted saying,
“Roger sir that’s a check”
So he stood his watch while the kite ascended toward the clouds. We attached more spools of string as kids from
adjacent neighborhood descended on the field to watch this spectacle.
I don’t know how high we could have gone that day if we only had more string. Could we scrape the edge of the
stratosphere? Could we reach the ionosphere? The excitement and possibilities were endless until we ran out of
string. We needed more string. Some more twine of flight was needed to reach my heaven.
The crowd had increased its numbers and noise. In a collective they were chanting,
“Higher, higher, higher, higher” Somewhere in the recesses of mind I was yelling,
“Some string, some string, my kingdom for some string”
Then something strange happened. I heard some sirens coming our way, and then saw the flashing lights of two police
cars, which represented about half the police force. The crowd was dispersing running every which way, not knowing
what was happening. They stopped their cars and two policemen started running our way.
I thought Ichabod Bob was going to feint dead away and Rotund Ron was going to crap his pants. They must have
thought the cops were going to shoot them. They didn’t have their guns drawn so I didn’t think it was anything serious.
They ran right up to me and explained that they received a call from the FAA in Nashua; some pilot radioed the FAA
complaining about my kite being up too high and on a flight path of some airliner jets. The kite had to come down now;
it was a flight hazard.
“Can you beat that, my kite is actually up too high,” I thought. I didn’t want to get in any trouble with the law or the
Federal Aviation Association so I had no choice but to bring the kite down.
I really didn’t want this to end; a sadness seemed to permeate the crowd. Having heard the words of the police officer
they let go a collective groan, not wanting this show to close.
Randy Wormer squeezed his way in with his camera. He had the nerve to ask the officers to turn toward him and flash
their badges and smile. He wanted them to repeat what they told me but to do it with an angry scowl on their faces.
They too believed he was nuts.
“It’s coming down now.” I slowly reeled in the kite holding back my tears. I thought I heard an angel singing, maybe in
my mind, maybe on someone’s radio. I didn’t recognize the song but the first few lines touched me.
“Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
you in mid-air.”
Was this my pinnacle, my zenith, my Everest? Would I ever reach heights as high as this? Was this my epoch? Would I
ever accomplish a greater feat than this? I didn’t know. I was happy but I was sad. I was elated that I flew this kite higher
than ever before and heartbroken that I had to bring it back to earth and with it a dream had sailed away.
They watch me slowly bring the kite back to mortal ground. Then Randy Wormer got up on his directors’ chair and
yelled.
“People step aside for here walks the king of kites. He is The Wright Brothers and Yuri Gagarin all rolled into one.
Watch as he walks out of this field of dreams, on to a higher plane.” I still didn’t understand what Wormer was talking
about; I was flying a higher kite not a higher plane. I slowly walked away carrying my kite while Mr. Hollyweird filmed the
whole thing for the annals of six grade history.
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| New Hampshire Writers |
| The Flight Plan by: Milton B. Cross |