by Frank Felton
The misadventures of Troy and Dottie all came to a grinding halt just when they were really hitting their stride. As part of their new list of chores one afternoon in late fall, they raked up a large pile of leaves. Dottie exhausted herself jumping into the pile time and again. Troy was too old by this time to enjoy jumping into leaves. They raked the leaves away from the yard and over to the barn, where their dad had recently stocked 300 square bales of Coastal hay. They proceeded to light the leaves and burn them, just as they had seen dad many times before.
Troy poured a small can full of diesel, which caused the pile to erupt in flames and thick black smoke. Dottie stood in amazement, and wanted to see more. Troy continued to pour small cups of diesel on the fire, sending a flash of flame and plume of smoke. To Dottie, it looked like a magic trick. Troy soon lost interest in amusing his little sister and told her to keep an eye on the fire. As the fire burned down to embers, Troy returned the rakes to the shed and unraveled a water hose to spray the flames out. Dottie wasn’t finished with the fire just yet, and grabbed the cup that Troy had used to throw diesel.
The only problem was she didn’t know the difference between diesel and gasoline. Their dad had tanks of each sitting in the shed. She picked the can that was labeled GAS, unaware of the dangerous difference in flashpoints of the two liquids. She was unable to repeat Troy’s magic, as the gasoline merely fizzled when it was poured onto the smoldering embers. There was no flame present to ignite it. She continued to pour more, and more, until she too gave up and lost interest.
As she walked away, the latent heat warmed the dangerous petrol, and the fumes were ignited. A fireball erupted, and the fire spread embers into the freshly-packed hay shed.
Troy returned to spray out the pile of leaves, and did not notice smoke wafting from the barn. The tightly packed square bales, once ignited, would take much more than a watering hose to snuff out. A few minutes later, dad, who was now on day shift at ALCOA, saw the smoke from three miles away. As he came driving up the road, he quickly sped up as the horror dawned on him and prepared for the worst. Acting quickly, he sprayed himself with water and entered the barn to release the cattle from the corral. As the animals stampeded their way out of the gate, he went back in to get as much equipment out as possible.
When the first truss collapsed, he was still inside the barn. As he was climbing over the flaming wood, a second truss collapsed, trapping him inside. The Thorndale Volunteer Fire Department arrived mere seconds later and heroically dragged him from the inferno. The fire had already consumed most of his clothing, and he was unconscious from smoke inhalation by the time he was on the stretcher. He was rushed to the hospital.
~~~
The barn was a total loss, but the animals were spared thanks to his quick action. Mrs. Benson met with the doctors. The prognosis was not good. He sustained third degree burns to more than 70 percent of his body. Should he survive, he would be permanently disfigured.
Troy and Dottie were brought to the hospital, and their father asked to see them. Through the patches of white gauze, Troy could still see the outline of his father’s face, and could make out a smile. Holding his son’s hands may have been perhaps the last full measure of this man’s life. The last words his father spoke to him, he couldn’t remember. Years later, he wished he had paid closer attention, but he remembered the basic message:
You are special. Don’t ever give up on yourself, or let people tell you that you can’t do anything you want, because I haven’t. And I never will.
The doctor’s ushered the family out and moved him to the operating room. They tried in vain to save his life, but he died the next day.
His death unbound Troy from the chains of a father figure. It would become a double-edged sword which would forever shape his world. He was free, unfettered from any moral compass, to chart his own path to virtue.
They say a man does not truly grow up until his own father passes away. Perhaps unhealthily, Troy kept these feelings bottled up for many years. He didn’t cry at the funeral. He was old enough to understand that death was permanent, yet somehow he convinced himself that this had not really happened. His sister did not understand any of it. She held out hope that her dad would be back some day.
His mother sank into a deep depression. She became numb to the world. She was placed into counseling by relatives, given medication, and for a while things seemed to turn around. It wasn’t from abuse, nor lack of supervision that Child Protective Services showed up one day and took Troy and his sister away from her. Dottie, it seems, had been bruised up while trying to catch a baby calf, as she had seen Troy do many times before. She merely wanted to imitate him.
Their mother failed to notice, or perhaps care, as her kids at that point were nigh untenable. They acted out in ways that many kids do when faced with such a tragedy. The bruises caught the eye of a meddling teacher at school.
Losing the children brought the widow Mrs. Benson near the edge of sanity, pushing her into another bout with the depths of her demons. A downward spiral ensued and the strain became more than she could bear. After failing to show up to work for three days, her body was found where her husband’s ashes had been scattered. It was a little pecan grove near the San Gabriel River where they would often picnic as love-struck teenagers. She took her own life with a .410 shotgun.
Grandpa Hank stepped in and adopted Troy as his own. Dottie became a steward of her grandmother. The two grandparents had long been divorced, so the once inseparable siblings would rarely see each other. Their lives would take devoutly separate paths.
There would be few happy days for Troy for many years. He devoted life to the one thing that could actually make him smile – airplanes. He studied them with a passion almost unhealthy for a kid his age. While other kids were playing the latest Nintendo games, Troy was neck deep in the study of thermodynamics and high-bypass turbofan engine designs. It was the only thing that gave him levity.
He made friends with a kid that lived across the river from his grandpa’s farm. His name was Cy Carter, and they were about the same age. The kids at school called him Crash. Cy didn’t have a mom, and his dad spent most of his time in the Gulf of Mexico working as an underwater oil rig welder. Young Cy pretty much had his run of the farm, and managed to get to school about half the time.
Cy was the polar opposite of Troy. The two didn’t actively associate at school, but out on the farm, they were inseparable. They would tinker with Grandpa’s tractors and ATVs, when they weren’t off hunting dove or fishing. Troy often wished he was more like Cy. He had no rules, and no ambitions.
As Troy came of age, his grandfather treated him in a strictly authoritarian manner. They were both emotionally closed off, never talking about problems or tragedies of the past. Grandpa Hank knew the only way forward is one step at a time, so he cut the boy little slack. He encouraged Troy’s academic pursuits, himself knowing the value of the written word.
The emotional side of life was repressed ably by Hank’s stringent demeanor. He siphoned off Troy’s energy through hard farm labor, long hours in the hot Texas sun fixing barbed-wire fence, chopping wood, and at times, plowing the fields and planting Milo with a John Deere tractor. Such guidance, peppered with lessons of life, steered Troy to excel in school, not desiring to spend his life in the fields.
As they entered high school, Troy and Crash saw less and less of each other. Troy played football, and began to take his studies seriously. Crash couldn’t have cared less, aside from Ag Shop, where he could out-weld the instructor and fix just about any engine in the place. The two grew apart, and by the time graduation came around, they were but distant memories, each heading out into their own life’s direction.
Time would unravel quickly; it wouldn’t be long until they’d be reacquainted.
27. Learning to Fly
For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. - Matthew 26:53
Central Texas, 1989
The farm continued to grow and was by now
a sprawling ranch in the middle of Milam County. Troy and Hank had one thing in common; the airplane. Hank realized soon enough that it was the apple of the boy’s eye, and as such, his own renewed love affair with the old beauty took hold. Old Green, as he called her, was his baby since she came off the assembly line of the Cessna facility in Wichita, Kansas. Old Green’s home was out on the farm, just as a stabled show pony. She couldn’t run with the thoroughbreds, but she sure was pretty; and sexy in a way that only an aviator could understand.
A legitimate landing strip was not necessary. The 180 Skywagon’s abundant horsepower made getting off the ground in a hayfield an easy chore, but Hank normally just taxied right up to the county road for takeoff. Not many people out here would notice, nor care enough to complain. Besides, at the time, he drank beer with the county judge and was a member of the volunteer fire department. Those were basically Get Out of Jail Free cards for any infraction below felony.
Long before Troy took interest, I had the pleasure of many flights in Old Green. Hank acquired her midway through our 10-year companionship, in 1954. I might have been the first person foolish enough to climb aboard. The Skywagon had a high power-to-weight ratio for that day and age, with more than 230 horses in its Lycoming IO-540 horizontally opposed six-cylinder engine. Hank used every last one of them. So long as he wasn’t drinking, his flying skills weren’t too bad. No matter how many beers he’d had, he usually sobered up enough to land gracefully.
Hank had the flying bug and Troy inherited the same gene, without question. Troy had the benefit of an intricate understanding of the laws of flight, to which Hank had zero when he first took to the skies. “Book smart” as Hank would say, was all horseshit. Just saddle up and ride, you’ll figure it out or die trying. Hank had nothing but basic instinct and a desire to fly; and a ton of money to buy a plane, of course.
The two had their first flight together when Troy was five, before he became an orphan. Hank liked to showboat a bit, and made sure it would be an unforgettable experience. Hank’s theory held that the boy needed to realize flying, while safe as driving if done correctly, was inherently unsafe to those who lacked respect. One must be vigilant and prepared to act at a moment’s notice, without hesitation or fear, should things go awry.
As Troy entered high school, he set his sights on earning a private pilot’s license. By this time, his brain harbored enough knowledge of aerodynamics to pass for an undergraduate Aero major. He never stopped thinking about it; reading and learning until he was crammed full of density altitude and spin recovery techniques. His encyclopedic knowledge of the physical properties involved in man’s flight through life gave him a thirst which could only be quenched by putting knowledge into practice.
Nonetheless, youthful intrigue and theoretical knowledge are no match for wisdom and experience. By the time Troy was ready to take flight with Grandpa, the old man had it down to a science. Even cranking the engine was a work of art. Mixture rich, magnetos off, and spin the prop three times over to put just a touch of gasoline into the cylinders. With that, the engine would fire to life with just a touch of the starter.
Landings in Old Green were optimal with 30 degrees of flaps, touching the wheels just as the stall warning horn sounds. The tires settled so smoothly that a passenger wouldn’t know they had touched down, save for a barely audible squeak of the rubber. Hank was quite the artisan when it came to flying Old Green.
Troy’s practical experience was zero, and trying to learn from Hank was a futile effort, as he did it all by gut feeling; just as a master chef who can’t recite a single recipe. Troy completed the FAA Ground School before he learned to drive a car, but would have to be 16 to legally get a student permit to actually fly. He long ago set his sights on Old Green for lessons.
Hank then enrolled the boy in an Instrument Flight Rules class, and hoped the mathematics and associated intricacies would put the brakes on the boy’s zealousness and constant bugging. Perhaps it would stifle the young man’s fixation on the airplane, and keep his mind occupied on the ground, school, and learning. Yet, Hank was no Aristotle; Troy bit off the entirety of the advanced course and swallowed it whole. He stood ready for more.
Hank’s roadblock was an abject failure and he was left with no other choice. He’d have to let the boy start taking flying lessons. He told the instructor to “really let him have it”, a desperate last ditch Hail Mary attempt to stop the inevitable. Troy grinned from ear-to-ear when the instructor demonstrated the power-on stall. They progressed to near-aerobatic maneuvers at the limits of the Skywagon, and the boy refused to be knocked from his perch. His psyche was now hooked on the feeling of weightlessness and increased G-forces.
Troy was struck with an insatiable appetite to find his way back to the air.
~~~
With his aeronautical needs fulfilled, Troy was able to focus in school. Intellectual challenges were bracketed by the other major pull in small town Americana; football. Thorndale was the quintessential small town, with one stoplight and half a dozen beer joints. The whole town showed up on Friday night for the high school’s football games, and just about every kid played the game. During this era Thorndale went undefeated to win state championships in 1989, 1994, and 1995, under the legendary coach Don Cowan.
On the first summer “two-a-day” practice of his freshman year, Troy ran the 40-yard dash in 5.2 seconds, to which Coach Cowan proclaimed “get that boy some linemen gloves.” His glorious football career was over before it ever started. Most of the team held out hope a bit longer. On that first day, a healthy percentage of the team fully expected to receive a Division-1 football scholarship. Statistically, maybe one student every 10 years made it to a D-1 field. The reality settled in sooner for some than others.
Yet even a master tactician and motivator such as Coach Cowan could never hold Troy’s attention the way Albert Einstein could. Troy first became intrigued of physics while in junior high when he began to think about the paradox of time travel watching Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2. Aside from time travel, the movie’s rendition of a nuclear detonation fascinated him, furthering a desire to understand the mysteries of subatomic particles and the massive energy they contained.
Once he discovered Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, the natural world became much larger. He moved beyond the rudimentary physics of aerodynamics which sprouted from his innate desire to fly airplanes. He created his first scientific hypothesis during sophomore year, a juvenile attempt which might best be described as ecumenical, and worst, as heresy.
He blended the teachings of the skeptic Einstein with that of Martin Luther. The speed of light became his apotheosis. If God is Light, as his preacher postulated, then God must be everywhere; timeless, and ageless, as is light. All life requires light. The speed of light is the only way to gauge the vast distances of the Universe, and nothing can travel faster than the little C in MC-squared.
He couldn’t pull this haphazard theory together and eventually grew tired of abstract thinking for which he lacked the means to test firsthand. While inclined and gifted, a savant he was not. He had far too much practical leaning to become engrossed in things he could never prove. So he turned his attention back to Bernoulli. Without a doubt, Bernoulli provided a more provable exegesis, and could be verified every time Old Green managed to leap into the air.
Daniel Bernoulli was an interesting character. Despite being born in 1700, his many contributions to science led to the advent of two 20th Century technologies which would revolutionize the world. These include the carburetor for internal combustion engines, and the airplane wing. Both of the now 300-year-old engineering marvels were alive and well in Old Green.
Bernoulli’s study of fluid dynamics and decreased pressure in a moving stream were far more useful to Troy. Junior year he was expelled from school for trying to build a mini-jet engine in the science lab of Thorndale High School. It was more of a ramjet as it had no moving parts. He simply attached a Bunsen burner to a Venturi-shaped cyl
inder and lit it.
The experiment ignited a trail of exhaust and the unconstrained jet writhed about the science lab as a firehouse with no fireman. It quickly spread to a shelf of books but was mostly contained by the brick walls. The fire itself did little damage; the real damage came from all the water the volunteer firefighters used. They also tore through the back wall to get at the fire. The water destroyed the entire cupboard of elemental chemicals in storage, protected from fire suppression from above, but not when it’s blasted from the side at 200 Psi.
Mrs. Culp was the senior science teacher, and she found herself caught between a rock and a hard place. Here sat one of the brightest students she’d ever tutored, who showed real intellectual curiosity and aptitude. Yet, he had just incurred $13,000 in red ink to her department’s budget, and at the same time shown no regard for the rules of the scientific method. A real scientist not only asks if he can, he asks if he should.
She understood what was at stake. This type of genius is rare, and requires special care and feeding at the right moment. Unaddressed, such raw ability struggles to find its course, like a ship with no rudder. It is crucial that a course correction be made at this infantile state so the boy becomes as an asset of the good guys, and does not fall into league with shadows.
With the right touch he might stay the course and continue his journey.
~~~
“Stay away from the Marines. They don’t give a crap about their people.”
