(Editor's note — our mystery scribe, Jake, strikes again. And his — or her — timing couldn't be better. For it's summer's start — and that means time off, vacations and travel. Here's one way it happened in the good ole days!)
They still soar somewhere through that silent summer sizzle, high above that humid haze. If only in a childhood memory, A squadron, a brace, of big and bright and shiny silver airplanes. That powered their way through the atmosphere with a powerful and complex sound gone forever. As extinct and ancient as steam locomotives, or Archaeopteryx — or the local airport that long long ago became a golf course. Irretrievable, like lost love.
These miraculous mechanical mirror-finished marvels flew me to vacation places. To faraway parts unknown. Nantucket's sedate seaside and heathered moors — decades before they were "discovered". The raucous thrill rides, salty popcorn and sugary spider-web candy of Lake Erie's Euclid Beach. The million sparks that studded velvet-black Rocky Mountain nights — and dwarfed man's mere midget July fourth fireworks.
I embarked on these aerial odysseys hand-in-hand with grown-ups. From squat brick terminals — holdovers from depression-era public works. For in the 1940's and early 50's, airline travel was an obscure, arcane means. It was looked upon as a backwater, a curiosity, by a world newly enamored of automobile tailfins, cheap gas and President Eisenhower's just-paved interstate highway system. The mass marketing of jumbo jets, frequent flyers, airfare wars were all a quarter-century off or more. And I was glad they didn't know our secret.
The first glimpse of the airliner always took my breath away. It towered over the modest terminal — to say nothing of my small figure — like a sleek, graceful art-deco dinosaur. It glistened magically in the sun. It seemed to say special words to me without speaking. These carefully crafted and constructed machines had about as much in common with air buses and jumbo jets as a bavarian brass grandfather clock has with a digital watch. Today's fleet deliver and disgorge their passengers with bland, banal efficiency; but these postwar airliners each had their own personality. The svelte, long-legged Super-G Constellation (Lockheed 1049G) looked distinctly nautical - a powerful dolphin with graceful fuselage arch and wide, triple-flute tail. The large, dual front cockpit windows of the Seven Seas (Douglas DC-7C) gave it the friendly visage of a limpid-eyed beagle hound. I always chuckled at the rotund double deck fuselage and bulbous nose of the Stratocruiser (Boeing 377); it looked like a fatman needing a cigar. And almost dowdy but most endearing, the wide winged Dakota (Douglas DC-3), stretched out over deplaning passengers like a mother's protective petticoat, like a hen shielding its chicks.
Climb the long stairs into these classic snips of the air and you crossed the threshold to a hushed, genteel, sedate world that belied the immense but buried power that would soon propel you skyward. It was perfumed with the scent of spotless mohair upholstery, freshly changed linen headrests and highly polished aluminum. It was comfortably air conditioned in contrast to the sweltering tarmac outside. Unlike today's cramped coach cabins, seating was commodious. And visits up front to view the amazing complexity of dials, levers and controls in the cockpit were common courtesy granted to those with young faces and eyes wide in amazement— instead of a Federal crime.
Soon it was time to start the engines. Nose pressed against the window, I watched in rapt fascination as the slumbering dragons out on each wing were in turn roused reluctantly to life. Today's turbines, computer designed and controlled, spool-up with smooth, swift impersonality. But these gasoline-guzzling monsters were born for wartime bombers. And they seemed to think it was still combat. Deep inside, their parts would soon reciprocate with incredible oily fury. And so they shook off their lethargy with clouds of dense smoke, sheets of exhaust flames and explosive backfires. This was immense horsepower at its most proud, raw and unvarnished. Ground personnel toting extinguishers scurried nervously below like squirrels until the fire-spitting beasts above settled down to a strong solid and loping idle, like the galloping hooves of a gargantuan legendary cavalry.
The tone of the engines now slowly rose like a symphonic tsunami. The monstrous craft we were in began to move, gathering speed. We gracefully and gently bounded down the taxiway to takeoff. It was a highly damped and cushioned ride; nary a bang or clang or rattle. And then how the engines thundered until full song— a cacophony as monstrous and massive as the clash of mythical armies. No annoying, antiseptic, synthetic jet whine. This gut-shaking, muscular throb satisfied. It seemed safely equal to the task of hauling this heavy metal bird beyond the bonds of earth
The rising freight train noise and gathering, dizzying acceleration intoxicated my young mind. We rumbled down the runway faster and faster and faster -- hurtling in a headlong rush to what seemed would be a horrible end.
But then all of a sudden the ground noise abruptly ceased -- we were floating, no we were rising and out the window the earth receded like time lapse cinema of snow in the spring. We vaulted off a shock-wave of air, levitated through thick overcast and burst into the perennial aethereal sunshine of the stratosphere. We were above weather. Then the entire ship throttled back from full blast to easy cruise.
I curiously inspected clouds from above instead of below. At altitude, the world seemed an idyll. Orchestrated by pleasant engine drone, earth-borne worries receded; ice cream tasted sweeter; colors glowed brighter; memories grew fonder. Like sweat, a thin line of oil streamed from the engine nacelles in the 350 m.p.h wind outside. Few other reminders of our cross-country speed intruded. It seemed as if time itself arrested.
And so I, and a few lucky fellow travelers, flew these magnificent birds in their prime to an uncertain future. The ascendancy and reign of the great piston-engined airliners sublimated almost before it began, for these machines were the last of their kind.
Soon jets filled the heavens, airports began to stink of the kerosene they burned and commercial flying declined into something to be endured instead of enjoyed. The now-old propeller-armed warriors sometimes soldiered patiently along in inferior roles, relegated to freight and cargo and even contraband. And once in a while, they appeared derelict, abandoned and forgotten in stasis at the far side of an airport. Too old to fly, but too big to scrap.
But in my mind their wings still shimmer like new. Their engines throb and roar in stentorian splendor. They aviate to a far off world where even now life remains somehow simpler, achievements nobler — and air travel still a thing of wonder.
-- Jake , 1993
No comments:
Post a Comment