Today I visited a small air museum, the Atlantic Maritime Aircraft Museum, outside of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was a small building near the airport, and this being a Sunday, there were no other visitors. Cynthia chose to wait in the car, airplanes not being her "thing," and she ate a cold lunch while I went inside.
There was a replica of the "Silver Dart," Canada's first heavier than air craft, build by Alexander Graham Bell some time shortly after the Wright Brothers build their flyer. There were several other models, there was a home built that was, well, never quite built, from the 1920s, then there was the star of the show, a beautifully restored, complete, F-104 Starfighter in Canadian Armed Services colors.
The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter was developed as a high-altitude, high speed (Mach 3+) interceptor for the US Air Force in the early 1960s, primarily designed to counter the threat of intercontinental bombers from Russia. The plane was for its time the fastest and highest flying craft in the world, and its lines, essentially a streamlined dart with two short, stubby wings built around a huge jet turbine with a cockpit on the nose, says nothing but all business. When the role of interceptor began to go to other, more modern planes, this plane was sold to our NATO allies, especially Germany and Canada, for their front-line interceptor fleets.
The Germans considered the plane a widow-maker. It killed more pilots than any other in training and flying accidents; the landing speed was atrocious (200+ kts) and it was easy to stall in the hands of a less-than-fully confident pilot.
The Canadians loved the plane. It seemed to perform even better in the super-cold, rarified conditions of the extreme north, and many pilots fell in love with the crate. The Canadian Air Force kept the plane in service longer than any other.
Which brings me to this one plane: there was no one there, just me and the F-104.
When I was young, and beginning to decide what kind of things I might want to do in my life, I set my sights on one thing and one thing only: to fly fighter jets, and the F-104 in particular. The lethal character of the plane drew me to it even as a lad of six or seven, and I read all I could about the plane, at that time our first-line fighter interceptor. I built models, I had drawings, I bought a book about it. This plane, to fly this beautiful deadly machine, was all I wanted to do with my life.
The summer before I entered the eighth grade, I had to start wearing glasses. That was, in effect, the end of all my dreams to fly an F-104. Late at night, when all is quiet, I can still feel what I felt that first night with my glasses - my dreams, my life, slipping away.
Until today, I had never actually touched a Starfighter. I had read that the leading edges of the wings were so sharp, that plastic protectors had to be fitted on them to protect the handling crew. I never really believed that, until I saw it today. The wings, those short, stubby wings, *were* sharp! The cockpit was crowded and all business, not a wasted inch. I could imagine a person "putting on" the plane, and flying it to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere, cozy and confined in that cockpit. She looked even more lethal in person than ever in one of my drawings or photographs, long ago put away.
I just sat with the plane for a bit, admiring, imagining. Then I said good-bye, good-bye to those dreams of long ago, finally, let go of the pain of change and of never achieving. Its good to face old dreams now and again, and realize that you are made of broken dreams, lost chances, paths not taken. It was good no one was there, I could say good-bye to my Starfighter, and my childhood.
-Crow
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Friday, July 1, 2011
Time to Call It Like It Is
I work with a really good person who was my supervisor, who, when faced with a difficult situation, would gather the facts, then face them with the statement: "It is what it is." Whatever the fallout or changes that would be necessitated by the facts, no matter how ugly, would have to be faced head on, no hiding or dressing the pig, as it were. It is what it is.
It is time, in our country, to call things as they are.
Our former president was a law-breaker and drug user before he was elected. How he got so many people to not only ignore, but to actively deny a fact is beyond comprehension. When I was in Washington, DC in the late 1980s, when Geo. H. W. Bush was president, it was common knowledge that George Jr., as he was called then, was "holding court" in town at any of many late night joints, and that cocaine was certainly involved. Secret Service was aware, as were the First Family. He had his driver's license revoked for driving under the influence, a conviction no other candidate has on record. How could this not have been germane?
Today, many, many politicians are yelling about this and that, but then demand that no one peak into their own records or make them accountable for their own personal actions, such as being the beneficiaries of Medicare payments, while at the same time proclaiming they have no use for the system and want it removed. Many politicians seek to send troops to fight in the Forever War, but a quick look into their own history shows no military service, or, if they are old enough, enlistment in their state National Guard, which at the time was a legal method of avoiding the draft (G.W. used it as well to avoid service in Viet Nam). Often there were long waiting lists to join up, so strings had to be pulled. As soon as the war was over and their term was up, most of these weekend warriors hung up their reluctant part-time spurs.
It is what it is.
There are good people that try to do what they think is best for the nation, and those people work tirelessly to that end. John McCain is one such person, never shying away from informed, reasoned discourse, but also refusing to engage in the uninformed senseless personal assassination of another honorable man's character that his political party attempted to engage in. Unlike G.W., John McCain sat in the cockpit of an A-4 on the forward catapult of the USS Forrestal when that ship caught on fire, one of the errant missiles from that conflagration striking the very plane he was in. The next week, he continued his missions from another carrier, and was shot down, to spend the rest of the war in a POW camp being tortured.
Men like him are hopelessly outnumbered, however, by hypocrites whose soul aim is to improve their own personal financial position in life, even at the cost of the nation as a whole. It seems the Entitlement Culture has reached its zenith, enclosing even the very pinnacle of government itself these days. Our elected officials seem to feel they have a right to wealth, power, benefits that the rest of us as normal citizens are denied. This entitlement phenomenon was one of the drivers behind the French Revolution, and all its horror and bloodshed. I would think, in a modern world and an enlightened democracy, we could retake our government from the elite without have to resort to that.
Crow
It is time, in our country, to call things as they are.
Our former president was a law-breaker and drug user before he was elected. How he got so many people to not only ignore, but to actively deny a fact is beyond comprehension. When I was in Washington, DC in the late 1980s, when Geo. H. W. Bush was president, it was common knowledge that George Jr., as he was called then, was "holding court" in town at any of many late night joints, and that cocaine was certainly involved. Secret Service was aware, as were the First Family. He had his driver's license revoked for driving under the influence, a conviction no other candidate has on record. How could this not have been germane?
Today, many, many politicians are yelling about this and that, but then demand that no one peak into their own records or make them accountable for their own personal actions, such as being the beneficiaries of Medicare payments, while at the same time proclaiming they have no use for the system and want it removed. Many politicians seek to send troops to fight in the Forever War, but a quick look into their own history shows no military service, or, if they are old enough, enlistment in their state National Guard, which at the time was a legal method of avoiding the draft (G.W. used it as well to avoid service in Viet Nam). Often there were long waiting lists to join up, so strings had to be pulled. As soon as the war was over and their term was up, most of these weekend warriors hung up their reluctant part-time spurs.
It is what it is.
There are good people that try to do what they think is best for the nation, and those people work tirelessly to that end. John McCain is one such person, never shying away from informed, reasoned discourse, but also refusing to engage in the uninformed senseless personal assassination of another honorable man's character that his political party attempted to engage in. Unlike G.W., John McCain sat in the cockpit of an A-4 on the forward catapult of the USS Forrestal when that ship caught on fire, one of the errant missiles from that conflagration striking the very plane he was in. The next week, he continued his missions from another carrier, and was shot down, to spend the rest of the war in a POW camp being tortured.
Men like him are hopelessly outnumbered, however, by hypocrites whose soul aim is to improve their own personal financial position in life, even at the cost of the nation as a whole. It seems the Entitlement Culture has reached its zenith, enclosing even the very pinnacle of government itself these days. Our elected officials seem to feel they have a right to wealth, power, benefits that the rest of us as normal citizens are denied. This entitlement phenomenon was one of the drivers behind the French Revolution, and all its horror and bloodshed. I would think, in a modern world and an enlightened democracy, we could retake our government from the elite without have to resort to that.
Crow
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