"First Flight Deserved Last Rites" ©

“First Flight Deserved Last Rites” A C.A.P. cadet's intro to flight.
© 2004, Paul Berge


Dreamers by definition live on the edge of reality and learn that to deviate from the sublime can lead to unintended enlightenment. In the summer of 1967, my aviation fantasies reformed when I took my first airplane ride.

A Civil Air Patrol recruiter promised flight that I, a 13-year old dreamer, expanded into visions of being at the controls of a T-38 jet trainer, taxiing to the runway with the canopy up and an oxygen mask dangling from my helmet. I envisioned smooth climbs past marshmallow clouds where I’d impress the instructor with loops and rolls and perhaps a maneuver that the Air Force hadn’t yet imagined. So, it was with profound anticipation that I stood in formation at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey with several thousand other sweating C.A.P. cadets, our acned faces scarlet from the heat. A colonel resembling Ernest Borgnine wiped his forehead and gave the vital preflight mission briefing: “The first flight commences after lunch, so don’t eat too much.” That was it; not a lot of info for a first-time flyer, but being a teenager, I ignored what I didn’t understand and packed away macaroni salad, tater tots, and lime Jell-O, washed down with a half-gallon of chocolate milk.

Later, outside the mess hall we loaded onto blue school buses and rode to the flight line where instead of rows of sleek T-38s we found a lone—rather worn--C-130 Hercules, four-engine transport shimmering in the dull heat, its back end open like a panting eel awaiting prey. A crewman, barely older than us, stood on the ramp smirking with amused distain. Being a teenager I was used to that look from adults but didn’t expect it on my first flight.

“Find a seat and buckle in,” he called as we herded into the Herc’s belly. Intense heat sucked the air from my lungs and I dropped onto a canvas seat along the bulkhead beneath a window that was too high above me to use. “Let’s git a move on, gentlemen,” our host grumbled. Then, as the ramp door shut he gave his welcome-aboard speech: “Don’t touch nuthin’, don’t get out a’ yer seats ‘til I says so, and don’t puke on my airplane.” I vaguely wondered what he meant by that because I felt fine. “If’n you do feel dis-com-fort,” he continued, “then use the bags located above your seats.” Then he disappeared before I could ask him to repeat since I didn’t see any bags. Still, I wasn’t ill, so I handled the information the way I did all adult advice and ignored it.

As yet my first flight didn’t match my soaring imagination. Where I’d expected fighter-style cockpits, I now sat strapped on a bench inside a solar oven with no view of the sky. An engine whined to life and managed to route its kerosene exhaust into the airplane. Eventually, all four turbines churned against the heat, and we taxied for what seemed like miles, although without a window I could only mark progress as the wheels clicked across the expansion joints in the pavement. The heat intensified and soon burnt jet fuel was all we breathed, but being from New Jersey my lungs could handle it.

Finally, this aluminum warehouse with its wilted cargo rumbled down the runway until with an upward pitch of the deck followed moments later by the groan of gear retracting, I knew we were flying. Since entering the airplane however, I hadn’t seen a speck of sky but despite this, I knew I’d crossed over from being a dreamer of flight to flyer.

“You can stand up and look outside now,” the airman called. As one we unbuckled our seatbelts, stood, and lunged to peer through the few available windows. But as I stood and turned I felt all the squishy parts inside my head continue to spin even though my skull had stopped. Instantly, as though I’d been injected with a fast-acting emetic, my skin chilled, knees unhooked, and I slid like wet laundry onto the seat and stared at the floor, where there appeared two well-shined black shoes beneath an airman’s voice: “You ain’t gonna puke now are you?”

I tried to answer, but instead of words macaroni salad and tater tots in a slurry of warm chocolate milk and lime Jell-O shot from my mouth and onto those shiny shoes.

There was much yelling after that, but I didn’t care because I was dying. In all my earthbound fantasies of flight, I’d never once dreamt of airsickness, didn’t know it existed, and I’d guess that any of the dozen or so other cadets on that flight who soon followed my lead to coat an Air Force transport’s floor with barely-chewed mess hall chow, were equally surprised at this phenomenon.

After 20 minutes of shaking C.A.P. cadets into jellied wretches above the New Jersey pinelands in the summer heat, the C-130 returned to base. The landing gear moaned down and locked before its tires smacked the runway with the grace of a cement truck dropped from a Zeppelin. And as we taxied back I expected to see a row of ambulances waiting to haul us to emergency Red Cross tents. But, instead, the Hercules stopped, dropped its back ramp, and with military efficiency we were herded off—green-faced and broken—while the next batch of cadets marched up the other side of the ramp no-doubt wondering what fate awaited them aloft. I can still see their faces as the cargo door sealed them inside the fetid C-130’s belly before it taxied away.

Some firsts aren’t so hot. On that, my first flight, I didn’t even get to look out the window. There was no joyous swooping and soaring. I didn’t slip surly bonds or touch the face of anyone’s god but, instead, merely heaved on an unsung airman’s shoes. Still, whatever dream had led me to flight survived despite this gut-shot of reality, and although it took several more flights—none in a C-130—before anyone would invite me back a second time, my dream of wings never died. And today when a new student climbs into the cockpit with me I never mention the possibility of aerial dis-com-fort because I don’t want to plant a bad seed inside a dreamer’s imagination where fantasies of flight should grow. Enlightened as I now am, however, I won’t hesitate to cinch a garbage bag over their heads at the first hint of a dream reaching the edge.


The End



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First Flight Deserved Last Rites © was written by Paul Berge, all rights reserved. And the CAP and USAF reserved the right to never invite him back for a second ride.