Note to my 12-year-old self
If someone had stopped me on the parking ramp at the airport and told me how everything would play out, I’d have said they were crazy. The thought crossed my mind as I gazed out the co-pilot’s window and watched clouds race past, just above the King-Air. I looked over to the left seat, and took a moment to try and figure it out. How long had I known Richard?
Well, he flew the jet that approached the airport, almost daily, right over our house. Mom said the jet belonged to Southwire, a company in nearby Carrollton. I don’t know how she came to know, but she did. So, I could say I’d been watching him fly over for years.
“Eight Delta Whiskey, climb and maintain five thousand.”
My finger triggers the microphone button on the control yoke. “Five thousand, Eight Delta Whiskey.”
Richard grumbles loud enough for the crew intercom to pick up his voice. “I’d sure hope they could have gotten us direct to Carrollton by now. Why don’t you see if they can work that out,” he said.
I pretended to be busy looking up a frequency – the stall was an obvious one, though. I knew all the ones that mattered from here. Final approach controller 119.8, UNICOM 122.7, AWOS 118.175, ILS 111.7, NDB 278… but I was on my first flight as a corporate pilot, of sorts, and I didn’t want to make the controller angry. As I reached up to set the radio, Atlanta read Richard’s mind.
“Eight Delta Whiskey, proceed direct Carrollton.” Relief.
So how long ago was it?
I might have been 12. Maybe less. I’d just started hanging around the airport, and each day my mom would drop me off on her way to work. It was like the most awesome childcare a kid could dream up.
I worked on airplanes with Cecil, I rode to lunch with Chuck, Hal and Hess, and Rob and Jonathan. Within a few months, a transformation began. The kid who had a tough time socializing with his classmates suddenly had a crop of new friends.
And each day, the jet, that jet I’d seen flying over my house almost daily, it landed. The suits climbed out and headed home. The pilots milled around before easing the Learjet 35A back into its hangar, and they laughed. Boy, did they ever laugh. They’d be telling a joke as I rode up on my green bike with the crooked rear tire, and I didn’t know if they were laughing at me or at the joke, but they tolerated my presence – a miracle for which I still thank God. They tolerated me, befriended me, and 14 years later they accepted me, with the ink still wet on my commercial multiengine pilot’s license, and I became one of them. Different airplane, yeah, and a different company, too. Same pilot, though, sitting over there watching every move, trying to ensure I didn’t mess anything important up.
I really wanted to tell Richard thanks for the help, but I figured he was too busy being his gruff self.
So I set the GPS direct for Carrollton instead.