Coming in 2024!
Chapter 1 Mission #22
“Flying is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror.”–Gregory “Pappy,” Boyington, USMC
September 1990.
At seventy years old, John Matus felt age creep into his bones with each passing year. You’d wake up one morning and something hurt for no particular reason!
Today, he was fulfilling a lifelong dream to learn how to fly an airplane. John awoke early that morning, had his coffee and eggs. He dressed in casual pants and shirt and headed off in his car to the local airport. He had read an advertisement for flight lessons and wanted to see if he could get into the program.
Ah, here, he thought.
He pulled his car into the airfield parking lot, just in front of the hangar. John had decided to take flight lessons. Something he had wanted to do since the war ended in 1945.
John was to meet his flight instructor today. Climbing out of his car, he walked to the hangar in the middle of the airfield. Metal doors on the east side of the building housed a single-entry way door. He surveyed the airfield, which ran 170/340 degrees. He noted that the California wind, El Nino, was blowing in from the coast and the hot dry air blew the combed hair above his head in uneven tufts.
As he approached the hangar door, he read a sign that said; Please check in at the tower before entering the hangar.
John turned to surmise that the tower was at least a half mile away.
Aw hell, he thought, not walking all the way back!
Instead, he pushed open the small entry door. The wind caught the door, pulling it from his grasp, and slapped it against the inside wall of the hangar. The resounding boom of metal on metal echoed throughout the empty hangar.
“Shut that damn door,” a man’s voice said from inside.
“Sorry,” John apologized, “Got away from me” as he grabbed the door and closed it shut, windblown dust engulfing him.
John brushed himself off and adjusted his eyes to the dim glow of the overhead lights in the hangar, a stark contrast from the bright day. He focused on a man in his late seventies, sitting at an old gray Army steel desk, wearing an old ball cap cocked to the right.
“Can I help you?” the man asked.
“My name is John Matus, I am here to take a flight lesson.”
“Pleasure to meet ya, Robert Robertson, my friends call me Robbie. To be honest, flying is for younger guys, are you sure you’re up to this?”
“I guess we will find out,” John said.
“I’ll know when we get into the plane,” Robbie said.
“The sign on the door said check in with the tower first,” John said. “Do I need to do that?”
“Oh that,” Robbie said, “That’s just to keep the riff-raff out.”
“I see,” John said.
“You’re okay with me,” Robbie said. “Remind me of the guys I used to fly with back in the war.”
“So, when do we get started?” John asked.
“Have you ever flown?” Robbie asked.
“As a passenger, many years ago,” John said.
“That doesn’t count,” Robbie said. “Passenger in what?”
John’s thoughts drifted back to the war.