Although I don’t think I have any salmon blood in me, I seem to have spent most of my life swimming against the flow. Three of my lifelong passions are decidedly not in the mainstream … but they date back to my earliest years.
Country Music
My car radio is permanently tuned to Willie’s Roadhouse. That may be perfectly normal in Northwest Arkansas, but hardly so in Park Ridge, Illinois, an upscale suburb of Chicago. And I’ve loved country music as long as I can remember. Oh, sure, I joined my friends in raving about Pat Boone and Elvis in high school. But Eddy Arnold singing “Cattle Call” was my late-night choice.
In the ’40s, Park Ridge was still a small town. Not 5 miles away, WJJD broadcast a zillion watts of country music all day, every day. It was said that if you wet your finger and stuck it in your ear, you’d hear Hank Williams — not Junior, his old man — singing “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”
In country lyrics, I find stories and songs that touch my heart and make me laugh out loud. It was the first music I knew. And if my wishes are respected, it will be the last — at my funeral.
Science Fiction
While visiting with a friend, Marie described me as either a visionary or a lunatic. Later in the conversation, I revealed that I’d like to visit the moon. Kate immediately turned to Marie and said, “I’m ready to vote now.”
Robert A. Heinlein is by far my favorite author. Although he’s regarded as the “dean of science fiction,” most people I know have never heard of him. Or at least haven’t until I enlighten them.
He deserved the honor. When Charles Hall tried to patent the modern waterbed in the late 1960s, he was initially denied because of Heinlein’s detailed descriptions in Stranger in a Strange Land. In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Heinlein described a computer that could run the lunar colony, even mimic the governor and fool an entire population. AI anyone?
But as a junior high student, I never knew all that. Our class had regular visits to the library, and although I didn’t remember the author’s name, I always returned to the same shelf to find the stories I loved. The first, Red Planet, told of young boys at a corrupt boarding school on Mars and how they escaped with their pet Martian “puppy.”
More than wenty-five years later I rediscovered Heinlein. I’ve since read or reread all of his work — both that written for boys and for adults.
And I’ve become a dyed-in-the-wool sci-fi fan. In it I can travel to the moon and the stars. I can read about human cultures and societies based on pure imagination, unencumbered by thousands of years of human folly.
Aviation
Q: How do you identify a pilot in a room full of people?
A: Wait a few minutes … he’ll tell you.
At least in my case, I have to admit there’s truth in that. The only thing I enjoy more than talking about flying is flying itself. From my first flight until I hung up my wings 55 years later, I lived and breathed it. For 25 of those years, I never used airlines for domestic travel.
I owned more than a half dozen planes — one of them twice. Never satisfied with the status quo, I continued learning until I earned what I describe as a PhD in aviation: Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) and Multi-Engine Instructor (MEI).
This passion could have developed anywhere, but as a child I lived right next to O’Hare Field. Not O’Hare International Airport — the U.S. Air Force Reserve base from which 1940s Air Force jets flew right over our house. Jets so fast they’d disappear before their deafening roar hit us. And I’m still convinced one pilot waved as he went by.
Once our Cub Scout pack toured the O’Hare control tower. Instead of a routine tour, our eyes and ears were treated to the controllers helping an Air Force crew with smoke in the cockpit. I could hardly wait to get home where my brother Larry and I made a tower out of an upside-down picnic table and began rescuing pilots in distress.
I think the die was cast. A decade later, while searching the college course catalog (a book as fat as a phone directory — remember those?!) for an elective, the words Aviation 101 leaped off the page. Pass the course and earn a pilot license. Done.
Flying was as close as I could come to visiting the stars. But I’ve seen most of America from a perspective few others have enjoyed.
Visionary or lunatic?
The votes aren’t in yet. But I don’t care. Whatever mystical force from my childhood shaped my choices, I wouldn’t change a single one of them.
P.S. Next I’ll try to describe why I spent my professional life in handicrafts and computers.