Riding Rockets (3 page)

Every year or two my dad would be transferred to another base and like Bedouin tribesmen we would pull up stakes and head for a new horizon. Locales in Kansas, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Mississippi, and Hawaii would ultimately boast a Hugh J. Mullane mailbox. For me every move was eagerly anticipated. I couldn’t wait for the moving van to drive away and a new adventure to start. Curled in a blanket in the back of a car, like puppies in a basket, my brothers and I would fall asleep to the rhythmic
thump-thump-thump
of the pavement. It was the heartbeat of anticipation, of the unknown. Sometimes I would awake in the middle of the night and savor the smells of a new climate or watch lightning flash in the distance. During the day we’d stop at weathered signs advertising fresh fruit and buy buckets of ice-cold sweet cherries. We’d stop at gas stations with signs reading, “Last gas for 100 miles.” I would watch my dad fill a canvas bag with water and hang it over the Indian-head hood ornament of our Pontiac station wagon. I was giddy with the thought of a highway that would be empty for one hundred miles. Later I learned there was a gas station every twenty miles with the same sign. But at that age, twenty miles was as good as a hundred. I would lean forward in my seat and stare over my dad’s shoulder at horizons so crystalline they looked as if they were painted with a single-haired brush. I’d watch watery mirages sheen the blacktop in front of us and spinning dust devils, and blue-black thunderstorms pregnant with rain walking on stilts of lightning. And there was that unending song leading me into the emptiness,
thump-thump-thump
.

Another source of adventure was family camping trips into the wilds of the west. Why my New Yorker dad had such a love for the outdoors remains a mystery to me. Perhaps it was the very fact he had lived for so long in an asphalt jungle. My mom was even more afflicted. She was born a hundred years too late. I could easily see her striking out from Independence, Missouri, in a wagon train bound for Oregon. As a seventy-five-year-old widow she drove with another septuagenarian girlfriend from Albuquerque to Alaska. I was only surprised that she didn’t walk. She craved a tent and rock-ringed fireplace more than most women pined for a remodeled kitchen. Happiness for her was standing over a smoky campfire and cooking pancakes and bacon while dancing from foot to foot trying to shake off the morning chill.

In preparation for these trips we would pile the accouterments on the roof of our car: a couple of Coleman coolers, a white gas stove, lanterns, tents, fishing poles, aluminum lawn chairs, and bags of charcoal. There were axes, shovels, thermos jugs, cooking utensils, and sleeping bags all cinched into place and covered with a tarpaulin. We were carrying a canvas iceberg. The car interior, containing a brood of kids and two dogs, was no less cluttered. If they could have seen us, Okies right out of
The Grapes of Wrath
would have felt sorry for us.

We set sail on the roads of the American west. And when I say roads, I don’t mean interstate highways. My parents avoided those like watered-down gas. There was no adventure in traveling an interstate. Those were for wimps. Instead, they would search for the most obscure byways, take forgotten trails through sleepy towns and gravel-covered mountain passes. The sight of a sign reading, “Danger: Unimproved Road,” might as well have said, “Gates of Heaven Beyond.” My dad steered for those passages like an ancient Greek heeding the call of a Siren. I recall one occasion when a locked chain between two wooden posts held just such a warning sign. My dad took it as a challenge and dispatched his army of boys to rock one of the posts back and forth until it was loosed from the earth. We pulled it up, drove the car through, and replanted the post. Not only was it an unimproved road, now it was
our
road.

My parents navigated trails in a Pontiac station wagon that a modern army tracked vehicle would not attempt. A fallen tree or boulder in the way? Not a problem. Like Chinese coolies, the Mullane boys would saw, hack, lever, or sheer-muscle any obstacle out of the way.

Not that some of these excursions didn’t put us in peril, like the time we were deep into the mountains of southern New Mexico when the radiator boiled over. It was obvious from the virgin dust there had been no traffic for many days, possibly weeks, maybe never. This was long before the days of cell phones. There would be no call to a tow truck. We were facing Donner Party extinction.

My dad, an expert at repairing planes, always carried an extensive set of tools in the car. Unfortunately, it seemed every time we broke down we were missing that one tool we needed. Apparently, our station wagon didn’t have the engine of a C-124.

On this occasion, though, no tool was going to help us. We needed water and there was none around. But my dad was nothing if not resourceful. He directed us to tear apart the car looking for anything wet. A couple cans of Coke and beer went into the radiator. A jug of cherry cider that my older brother had purchased from a roadside fruit stand was quickly enlisted. Several oranges were squeezed into this Prestone.

Then, my dad noticed my younger brother wandering away. “Where are you going?”

“I have to pee.”

Soon we were all standing on the grillwork of the car peeing into the radiator. “Steady, boys. That’s a damn Jap Zero you’re aiming at. Don’t waste a round.”

It was enough. Smelling like an overripe Porta-Potty, our hissing wagon limped into a gas station. The gagging mechanic asked if something had died under the hood.

On another occasion, overheated brakes threatened our descent from a mountain pass. No doubt recalling his earlier success with the radiator, my dad had each of us boys pee on a wheel to cool the brakes. Nobody has ever used urine as skillfully as my father.

These were wonderful and formative times in my life. I became my parents. I had to know what was
beyond
…beyond the next mountain, beyond the next bend, beyond the next canyon. There wasn’t a national park, monument, snake farm, meteor crater, volcano, or rock shop we didn’t visit. The side-rear windows of our car were covered with the colorful decals of our journeys: gift-shop stickers of Yellowstone’s Old Faithful, the jagged spires of the Grand Tetons, the Grand Canyon, Glacier National Park, Canyon de Chelly, White Sands, Death Valley, Monument Valley, Glen Canyon, and innumerable other sights on the byways of the west. We had July snowball fights at mountain passes named Engineer, Independence, and Imogene. We tumbled in sand dunes and fished mountain streams and hiked cloud-scraping peaks just to see over them. We collected treasures of feldspar and fool’s gold and quartz and petrified wood. My mom’s scrapbooks are full of photographs of the family under state welcome signs—Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, California. In these states and more I would crawl into a sleeping bag wrapped in the smells of adventure—wood smoke and tent canvas—and watch the star shine outline our forest cradle. And my dreams would be of the greatest adventure of all…flight.

Chapter 3

Polio

The seminal moment in Mullane family history occurred on June 17, 1955, while we were stationed at Hickam Field in Hawaii. I was nine years old. Dad was now a flight engineer aboard C-97 and C-124 cargo aircraft of MATS, the Military Air Transport Service. He returned from a mission with a high fever and was admitted to Tripler Hospital. The diagnosis was polio. Dad, thirty-three years old, a vibrant 6-foot, 200-pound athletic man, would never walk again.

We remained in Hawaii for six months while he recovered. On New Year’s Day 1956, the family was flown by Air Force hospital plane to Shepard AFB near my mom’s parents in Wichita Falls, Texas. There, Dad’s convalescence continued.

During this time my parents tried to shield us from the trauma they were experiencing and, for the most part, they were successful. I recall only two occasions when my dad’s private hell was revealed to me. On one, he had taken my brothers and me on a car ride. A new Pontiac had been modified with hand controls so he could drive. He stopped at a store window, a man passed him a bottle, then he drove into the Texas prairie, parked, and drank. To this day whenever I smell bourbon I am taken back to this moment. He told us of Washing Machine Charlie and of paddling a native canoe to a submarine. But this time it was different. He was crying as he told the stories. I had never seen my dad cry and I couldn’t understand why these great stories were making him sad now.

Finally, he tossed the bottle from the window and steered the car toward home, turning the drive into a carnival ride. He would race the car and then jam on the brakes so my brothers and I would tumble over the seats and come up giggling. Again and again he would accelerate and then skid to a stop. By some miracle we made it to my grandmother’s house uninjured. Dad rose onto his braces and crutches and was singing an Irish ballad with a drunken slur as he slowly made his way up the sidewalk. He threw his crutches forward and dragged his useless legs behind. Yard by yard the rhythm took him toward the front door. Then my grandmother burst from the house and began to beat him with a broom, screaming that he was a drunk and should be damned for it. He tried to grab her weapon but missed and toppled onto the cement. I had never seen adults behave this way. My brothers and I began to cry. Neighbors rushed out to watch the spectacle. My mom was screaming. My grandmother, a teetotalist, strict German woman, was a demon from hell. In her mind there was no excuse for drunkenness, even if the drunk in question was struggling to come to grips with polio. Dad cursed and grabbed at her but his useless legs were an anchor. She easily kept out of his reach. The broom came down on his head and his glasses spun off. She circled to his back where he couldn’t defend himself and beat him some more. My mom herded my brothers and me inside so we wouldn’t witness any more of the mayhem. We left Dad facedown on the sidewalk bawling like a child while my grandmother continued to punish him with the broom.

Several months later I caught another glimpse of how polio was torturing my dad. My mom was grocery shopping and as I wandered the aisles of the store I encountered a man showing a friend his artificial legs. I overheard him speaking: “Lost both my legs in the war.” He punctuated the comment by rapping on each shin with a cane. I was fascinated at the freakishness of the injury and stared. The men separated, the veteran walking away with the aid of his cane and a hip-swinging gait. For a moment I was struck as still as Lot’s wife. The man had no real legs but he was walking. I broke from my shock and ran after him. “Mister!” I called. He stopped. “Mister, how can you walk? You don’t have any legs.” He smiled at my innocence. “Son, a German mortar blew off my legs. The doctors strapped on these pretend legs.” Again he slapped his cane against one of the limbs. It made a hollow sound.

I smiled. “Thanks, Mister.”

I sprinted past my mom. “Where are you going, Mike?”

“I’m going to see Dad.”

I ran to the parking lot and climbed into the front seat of the car and breathlessly explained to my father what I had seen. “Dad, there’s a man in the store who doesn’t have real legs. They got cut off in the war. The doctor gave him pretend legs. But he’s walking!” I blurted out the news while wearing a huge smile.

My dad stared at me, total confusion written on his face. He didn’t get it. He didn’t understand the significance of what I had just discovered. But I would be the hero and explain it to him. “Dad, all you have to do is ask the doctor to cut off your legs and then he can give you pretend legs and you can walk again, just like that man in the store!”

Immediately tears welled in his eyes. He tried to smile. “Mike, thank you for that idea, but it’s not my legs that are the problem. It’s my nerves. The polio germs ate them up. Cutting off my legs wouldn’t help me.”

My face fell in crushing disappointment. I was certain I had stumbled on the secret to putting my father back on his feet. Dad hugged me and cried into my neck. I was so confused. I didn’t understand germs or nerves. I only understood what my eyes had told me, that it was possible to walk without real legs.

“You go on and help your mom with the groceries.”

I climbed from the car and walked backward a couple steps, staring at my dad. His head was resting on the steering wheel and he was sobbing.

This was the last time he ever revealed to me or my siblings what must have been a titanic struggle to adapt to life without legs. But he did. Within a year he had returned to being the man I remembered before polio. His Washing Machine Charlie imitation got even better.

After several months of recovery in Texas my parents were faced with the decision of where to settle the family. Wichita Falls was not an option. It was an oil and cattle town with limited employment opportunities for the handicapped. And there was no thought given to returning to my dad’s hometown, New York City. The vertical landscape there would make a wheelchair life difficult. So they picked Albuquerque, New Mexico, as their post-polio home. During our travels we had driven through the city a couple times and Mom and Dad had always liked it. There was a VA hospital, work opportunities, and a climate that made wheelchair life a little more tolerable.

Albuquerque was my last childhood move and I thank God for it. We were permanently in the west. No longer did we have to drive for days to reach the deserts and mountains we had all come to love. Now we could satisfy our collective need to see over the next horizon on a weekly basis. The fact my dad could not walk was hardly an impediment to our adventures. He had five boys and we could carry him and his wheelchair anywhere. And we did. We hefted him over steep and rugged terrain to an isolated lake and put him in my brother’s canoe. We carried him across streams and along trails. We sat him in meadows to enjoy a sunset or the majesty of a distant thunderstorm.

In addition to the wheelchair-bearer duties, my dad’s polio also turned us into bartenders and urine-dumpers. My dad was a 7-and-7 man and at the end of the day we would mix him a highball of Seagram’s Seven whiskey and 7-Up. He trained each of us to pour two fingers of the liquor, add ice and then the soft drink. He also trained us to empty containers of his urine on road trips.