The Cannibal Queen (26 page)

That afternoon in Buckhannon I got back to the serious business of giving Stearman rides. The next day I gave three more, one to a real aviation enthusiast (read “nut”) named Leon “Buck” Harpold, whom I had never met before today. He saw the airplane at the airport, asked around, then called and asked for a ride. I never say no unless the airplane’s broken and I didn’t this time. Buck owns six planes, one of them a pristine 1947 J-3 Cub.

I made the takeoff and let Buck fly us to Elkins for gas. I made that landing. Then I let him make the takeoff as I followed him through on the controls, fly back to Buckhannon and make the landing, again with me backing him up. I told him to use J-3 techniques and not to fight the controls if he felt me making an input. The only time I had to do that was on landing, when he needed just a little help.

Buck’s prowess proved, to me at least, that the Stearman is very similar in handling characteristics to a J-3. I assured Buck he would have no trouble transitioning if he got a Stearman, as he swore he would.

The
Cannibal Queen
has that effect on people. Even people who detest small airplanes walk away wearing a wide smile. I described her to one rider as sort of a convertible with wings, and he agreed. There’s really little thrill, not in the roller coaster or motorcycle sense. The Stearman is just pure
fun
. The strange sensation of the wind playing at you, the snoring of the engine, the feeling of freedom and also security as you take in those bright yellow, art-deco wings arranged around you as she banks and wheels at a stately pace and the earth slides slowly past—that first ride is a sensation to be savored and recalled. I tell riders to stick their arms out, to let the prop blast tear at their hands and clothes, to make them feel the power of the air that holds us aloft.

On Saturday before the big anniversary party that afternoon I gave seven rides. Sunday I pulled out all the stops. My brother, John, strapped the riders in and arranged goggles over their eyes, then I took them up for ten-minute excursions over town. After John and his family left to go back to Washington, Terry Reed took over as the official strapper. That afternoon I gave seventeen rides and made two trips to Clarksburg for gas.

When I started flying Sunday the winds were out of the north at about eight knots. It was hard to tell for sure because the metal hoop that holds the wind sock open was frozen—rusted— pointing toward the usual prevailing wind, northwest. But the tail of the sock was streaming and I could feel the wind as I worked to get the
Queen
onto that narrow east-west runway.

And I did work. On Thursday with my second rider a gust of wind had caught the plane as I was flaring and I made my second-worst Stearman landing ever, almost dragging the right wingtip before I saved it with right rudder and left aileron. The
Cannibal Queen
hadn’t lost her taste for flesh.

Still, this Sunday afternoon in West Virginia I felt my confidence growing as I slipped off excess altitude and airspeed, eased her over the center of the narrow asphalt with a lowered wing, then leveled her with rudder and aileron just as the left main touched.

When it was time for John and his family to leave for Washington, his wife, Nancy, came over to the plane to say goodbye as John strapped in his last passenger. She stood on tiptoe and kissed me. Now I have been kissed in the cockpit by both the Nancys in my life. Then they drove away waving.

For some reason the wind immediately died and the clouds dissipated. Kisses are powerful stuff, even kisses from sisters-in-law. Dead calm conditions under a sunny blue sky—oooh boy!

Back when I flew A-6s I had a trick of setting the power off the 180-degree position and not touching it again until the wheels kissed the asphalt. It took a sure eye to judge the height, distance and wind just right and a bit of skill to set the power just so. But I could really fly that plane.

Now, with no apparent wind, I gave it a try. About twelve inches of manifold pressure seemed right, and about a third of the time it worked out. My eye isn’t good enough yet. I hope it comes. I do like that sense of satisfaction that I get when it works out just right and I think about it afterward.

If you try this, keep the airspeed needle exactly where it’s supposed to be, and no slipping—that’s cheating. Just set the power at the 180 and fly a constant angle-of-bank turn at your proper approach speed and reduce power to idle just as you flare. If you’ve judged everything perfectly the airplane will land exactly where you wanted it to when you eyed the landing area from the 180-degree position.

That night after the folks were in bed I took a walk. The streets were empty. The streetlights cast circles on the lawns and trees; the empty swings on the porches awaited the morrow. Even the dogs seemed to be asleep.

Tomorrow these sleeping people would swarm out of the well-kept little houses and charge off on the business of making a living. And tomorrow evening the swings would once again be busy, the lawnmowers buzzing, the neighbors talking back and forth. Tomorrow.

This visit to my hometown was a perfect one. My parents spent two hours shaking hands and receiving friends and relatives, some of whom I hadn’t seen in over twenty years. Cousins with grown kids, aunts and uncles, long-time friends of my parents, they all helped make this a delightful, memorable occasion.

I doubt that I’ll make it to a golden wedding anniversary. If I get married sometime this next year, I’ll have to live to the age of ninety-five.

The way I feel tonight, I just might make it.

18

T
HE FIRST
60
OR SO MILES WEST OF THE TOWN OF
P
ARKERSBURG
on the Ohio River the country looks like a continuation of West Virginia with heavily wooded hills that run in random directions. Then 60 nautical miles west of the river the hills end abruptly. So do the trees. From this point westward as far as the eye can see in this haze every square yard of the land below is devoted to growing crops. Strangely, the land is not set off in the neat north-south, east-west sections of the Midwest and plains. Here the boundary fences seem to run northeast-southwest, northwest-southeast. Odd.

Today the
Cannibal Queen
carries me westward toward Colorado. There she will receive a careful look from Steve Hall, the royal mechanic, before she and I go on to the West Coast. That’s the plan, anyway.

And today the sky is clear, the wind out of the southeast, a nice quartering tailwind. Visibility is about twenty miles and I am flying at 4,500 feet to enjoy it. I wish I knew what I did to deserve flying conditions like this so I could do it more often.

I am still glowing over the thirty-one rides I gave this past week in West Virginia. Cousins, friends, people I never saw before, I took everyone who wanted to go in the time I had available. Several of the strangers wanted to pay for their rides but I refused. The look of wonder on their faces when they got out of the plane and thanked me was payment enough.

Symbols of flight abound in contemporary society. They are everywhere, ubiquitous.

Yet humans used symbols of flight long before powered flight became a reality. Throughout history people dreamed of flight, drew pictures of it and speculated about it. They left us myths of Icarus and Daedalus, drawings by Da Vinci, paintings of the blessed ones—the angels—with wings upon their backs. The Greek gods flitted around Mount Olympus. Jesus ascended into heaven in a white cloud. Mohammed rode up mounted upon a white stallion. Notice where heaven always was—up. Up there where man could not go, up where only birds and gods, prophets and angels are allowed.

When I was a boy I had recurring dreams of flight in which I could raise myself off the ground and soar because I willed it. People whose only experience with aviation is riding in a window seat on an airliner tell me they have had similar dreams. I suspect many people have.

Flight has a subconscious, almost instinctive attraction for members of our species. To break the bonds of gravity that tie us to the earth and soar freely is an image that stirs us in unexpected, profound ways.

I have yet to carry a passenger in the
Cannibal Queen
who is unmoved by the experience. To see the ground dropping gently away as the yellow wings carry you sedately upward and the wind swirls against your face, to fly above the countryside at an altitude that allows everything below to be distinguished plainly, to see the clouds up close, to watch a hawk circling at your altitude, to truly be a part of the sky, and then to return to earth in a gentle, controlled glide—this experience moves even people who thought they would hate it. People with an active fear of heights enjoy this without a twinge. Nobody complains of feeling queasy.

The Stearman’s wings allow one to feel contained and safe, yet the openness of the cockpit allows one to feel the sensations of flight in a unique way that appeals to that subconscious instinctive urge to fly that is fundamental in all of us.

I like to give people rides. It’s a gift they’ll carry with them all of their days.

Passing just south of Circleville, Ohio, I keep the Queen’s nose pointed straight west toward Washington Court House. When Dayton is visible off to my right the power comes back and the
Queen
drops into Dayton General, a general aviation airport in the southern suburb of Miamisburg. Airborne again, it’s pretty much straight westward across Connersville, Indiana, over Rushville, Shelbyville, Franklin, and Martinsville to Terre Haute.

The southeasterly wind holds all the way across the intensively farmed state of Illinois as the sun marches westward and I fly over Mattoon, Assumption, Taylorville and Auburn to Jacksonville. This is Stearman county, where good airplanes dusted for the fathers and sprayed for the sons until even the most cunning mechanics had to admit that their working days were over.

At Jacksonville I get out and take a good stretch. I’ve been flying for six hours today, all in the bright sun, and I’m tired. To quit or go on?

Tomorrow will be a long day flying the Great Plains, especially if this tailwind doesn’t last. Really, how much luck can one guy have? I resolve to fly another leg.

Just west of Jacksonville I see the village of New Salem depicted on the chart. I am already cruising at 4,500 feet, but I can’t resist. New Salem is the village where Abraham Lincoln came when he was twenty-one, when he left his father’s house. He clerked in a store in New Salem, studied surveying, did odd jobs, even got himself elected to the state legislature. I pull the power and head down. New Salem I have to see.

It is just a tiny village. From a thousand feet I estimate that New Salem contains no more than 150 people. The houses are not concentrated, but spread out, only three or four to a block. The streets run precisely true north-south, east-west. I wonder if Abe Lincoln helped survey the town. I can see one church and a cemetery. No obvious tourist attractions, yet from my experience with American entrepreneurs, I have no doubt that there’s at least one log cabin Abe Lincoln museum.
*

Stephen Coonts, the flying fool, in the rear cockpit—the captain’s seat—of the
Cannibal Queen
.

With his son, David, in the front cockpit, the author practices wheel landings for the photographer at Billard Field, Topeka, Kansas. This method of touching down on the main wheels and holding the tail off as the aircraft slows is fun to practice, but it is not the recommended method for getting a tail dragger safely down on strange airports in gusty winds.