The Last Flying Lesson

The best part of high school wasn’t school. It’s what I did outside of school. My passions were trout fishing in the spring, pheasant hunting in the autumn, and flying anytime of the year. Waseca had a Civil Air Patrol squadron, a Congressionally chartered auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force that performed air search and rescue.

The Waseca Squadron had a cadet contingent for youths from fourteen to twenty-one. I joined at fourteen. We met weekly and it gave me an excuse to leave the Ag School for an evening. Instead of investing energy in schoolwork, I focused on learning as much as I could about aircraft, the physics of flight, and the geometry of navigation. We wore Air Force uniforms with distinctive insignia and observed military courtesies.

Orientation flights were part of the training—the best part. The squadron’s plane was military version of an Aeronca Champion, a high wing, tandem two-seater with dual controls used in the Korean War. It was painted silver with a red nose, tail, and wingtips. I made friends with Harold, a WW II veteran pilot, who generously turned my orientation flights became off-the-books flying lessons. We flew off a grass airstrip along the railroad line. He coached me in taking off, landing, spins, wing-overs and slide-slips. Like any novice, I made my share of rough landings. However, I learned to feel the plane and soon did the flying while he rode along.

Most of my flights were on weekends or in the evening after work. We flew around the county navigating by familiar roads. Sometimes I cut the power and glided silently toward our house before giving it full throttle and pulling up with a roar. Everyone ran out of the house and waved.

At seventeen, I had just graduated from high school. For my last flight, I planned something different. Harold agreed to fly with me while I navigated a triangular afternoon flight of 280 miles. I arrived at the hangar feeling like a veteran in the leather flight jacket my uncle wore in Korea. We pre-flighted the plane and took off in a gusty May wind.

The wind that buffeted us on the flight north toward Minneapolis. Harold flew and I focused on our course, ground speed, check points, and estimated time to the fuel stop. The plane’s plexiglass panel above my seat turned the cabin into a greenhouse. I started to roast in my leather jacket. Meanwhile, as the plane bounced around, my hot lunch of beef stew looked for a place to bail out.

I focused harder on navigating to quell the queasiness. It didn’t work. I told Harold I wanted to fly and navigate. He looked at me over his shoulders and raised his hands. If I stayed busy, I’d forget my stomach. Flying and navigating didn’t work, either.

The Dinty Moore beef stew crawled up my gullet in search of an exit. Finally, no longer able to hold it down, I tapped him on the shoulder and put a hand over my mouth. He opened the door ajar. I stuck my head into the slipstream and vomited. Physical relief. Emotional disgrace.

I had never been airsick before. Not even when doing aerial stunts. Why this on my last flight? When we landed to refuel, Harold taxied to the pump and parked the plane where the vomit smear wasn’t visible to anyone. “Everybody gets airsick at least once,” he said quietly. “Get some water and wash it off.”

“Let’s find some quieter air higher up,” he suggested and took the plane to 10,000 feet. I set a course southeast toward Winona with the Mississippi River on our left. The wooded ridges and valleys below held the promising new green of early May and the land appeared as soft as rumpled velvet.

We completed the triangular circuit and approached the airstrip in the evening. As we touched down, I felt a little older and wiser than I did when we took off four hours before; more like the veteran I had imagined I was. This was the last flight with Harold and as cadet. He had taught how to fly, and helped me practice navigation but he also taught me something more important in a simple, honest phrase: Everybody gets airsick at least once.