I grew up with an active imagination and some of that would be my dad’s fault. My dad was a farmer, but he always thought up more adventurous things to do. That can happen when you spend hours in a field on a tractor. I just assumed it was life as usual. I recall being sent to talk to the guidance counselor when I was in Second grade. I guess my stories sounded too far-fetched. I couldn’t understand why they questioned me.
It started out with a Cat D-2. My dad owned a bulldozer. It was the early 60’s. A six-year old boy talks about such things at school. But it got much worse. My dad also owned a Cessna 172. That is an airplane. A four-seater airplane. My dad, mom and two of us kids would fly in it. He kept it on the farm and had a landing strip across the road in a hayfield that ran east and west. I recall a friend of his stopped by one cold winter day when I was five. Actually, the friend landed his plane on Highway 57 and taxied right up to the house. After talking for hours after lunch the friend went to leave and the plane was too cold to start. I recall my dad with the Knipco heater on the tractor loader warming up the engine of the plane so it would start.
The poor school counselor couldn’t tell if I was making up tales or not. I think they liked kids to stay in that little lane they had planned out for them, just another brick in the wall. My sister told of the same problem. It seems her teacher started to describe the White House in Washington D.C. during a class and my sister told her she has been there. The teacher didn’t believe it and told my mom she was making up tales. My mom said we had been there. My dad took us on a vacation each winter and we had seen every site in DC.
My dad belonged to the Flying Farmers. It was a group of farmers with planes and airstrips on their farms. One family lived next to my aunt and uncle’s farm. We could fly down there for the day and fly back home. I recall one summer evening we took off to return to our farm and ran into a thunderstorm on the way home. It was very turbulent and dark with intermittent lightning all around us. Sitting in the back seat I realized my picnic dinner was not staying put. My mom turned around in her seat and held the air sickness bag while I threw up. I believe I was too young to be scared. I figured my dad was invincible and the plane would never crash. I never remember any apprehension at getting a chance to go in the air with him. I can still recall the smell of the cockpit and the sound of the air from the propeller through the aluminum skin of the plane.
Not content with a fixed wing aircraft, my dad took lessons to get his helicopter pilot’s license. He flew for a construction company and my greatest thrill as a kid was to take the day off school and spend it with him flying from job site locations to check on the dirt work. This all happened by the time I was seven years old. I believe his helicopter was a Bell 300A, a two-seater with a Plexiglas bubble for a cockpit. Similar to the ones you see spraying crops.
