Up, Up and Away!

The love of flying runs in our family genes. Although the closest my father got to flying was when he was a motorcycle courier in World War I, his brother had 3 sons who became flyers, and my 2 brothers also became civilian flyers. My cousins Elwell and Bert flew planes for Norcross Co, one as a test pilot, and the other whose category I never really knew. I just remember hearing that the test pilot was killed in a crash out west. I will never forget cousin Bert. I think it was around 1932 (I was probably 9 yrs old). Cousin Bert flew his beautiful green monoplane from Portland, Maine up to our small country town, landing in a stubble field between our home and Mars Hill mountain. He hiked to town, showed up at our door at lunch time (as he often did). After a good meal, which put him in a really good mood, he remembered that he had promised to give us children a ride in the plane. So we all trecked out to the field by the mountain, and uncle Bert proved he was a gentleman. I actually got the first ride!!

Uncle Bert hoisted me up into the open seat (mine was on the right side), he fastened our seat belts, and we took off. I had no goggles, though Bert was wearing some. The motor was very loud, so we could not talk, but he pointed to the controls. The plane did not have a steering wheel, but a "joy stick" and you pulled it toward yourself to go up, away from yourself to descend, to left or right to bank left or right. He demonstrated how it worked, took his hands off the joy stick and yelled "Go ahead, fly it!" With my heart in my throat, I did! We flew up over the mountain and back again, with my own hands on the controls. I had been looking forward to seeing the scenery, but the feeling of power I had in actually being given that hands-on experience was so wonderful I actually forgot to look at the scenery. I guess what I felt was "this must be what it's like to be God."

From that experience, I fell in love with flying. But being a girl in those times, I was encouraged to play with dolls rather than such masculine things as planes. My brothers got model planes for birthdays or Christmas, so
I satisfied myself reading their comic books about World
War I planes, like Fokkers doing Immelman dives and
shooting down other pilots. That was really exciting reading.

My brothers went on to build and fly planes (when they were older) but I'll tell you those stories in other blogs.