Chapter Fifteen
Leaving Home and Flying Free
Bullied at school and bullied by my mother at home, I was miserable. Then fate intervened and provided me with an escape. At the age of thirteen, I crossed North America unaccompanied by an adult. It was also my first airplane ride.
After my folks had gotten divorced, I had done everything in my power to convince my mother to let me live with my father. Essentially, I was an insufferable brat for eight months. Much to my astonishment, I succeeded.
Joyce gave me two weeks' notice to say goodbye to friends and pack three suitcases with whatever I wished to take with me to my new home with dad. She told me, “I’ll throw anything you leave behind in the trash.”
Just before entering Logan Airport, I asked for a favor from my stepfather. Could he please stop for a minute or two and let me stand on the shore of Boston Harbor?
We found a small beach near a boat landing. Public parking was not available unless you had a beach sticker. Richard, my stepfather, kept the car idling while I pulled off my shoes and socks and raced to the water's edge.
Pausing for a moment, I rolled my pants legs up, stepped into the water, and wiggled my toes in the sandy bottom. For about a minute my toes played with the sand under the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Just before returning to the car, I wet my fingers in the ocean and licked them. The water of Boston Harbor was salty with an aftertaste of fuel oil.
Back in the family vehicle, my stepfather gave me a puzzled look and asked, "What was that all about?"
Shrugging my shoulders, I answered, "It's nothing. It's just something I’ve always wanted to do."
Richard asked me to explain myself, and I told him that I planned to get my feet wet in the Pacific Ocean when I arrived in Los Angeles in about 12 hours.
"I think it'll be cool to walk in two oceans and taste the water of two seas all on the same day," I said.
Richard smiled and said he thought that would be a nifty thing to do. My mother said it was, "stupid and no big deal. Sailors do it all the time when they use the Panama Canal."
About an hour later, I waved goodbye to my family, took a deep breath and boarded my flight to Los Angeles.
I was a bit of a novelty onboard the aircraft. Kids my age traveling across the country solo were rare. Flight attendants kept a special watch over me.
The jetliner was so new that the windows were still flawless and clear. The entire aircraft had a touch of the new car smell about it.
Flying was pure joy, and something about flying over the changing landscape of America compelled me to write.
Joyce had nothing except disdain for my prose and poetry. She called my efforts childish and immature as she pointed out every misspelled word.
Despite misgivings about my ability to write, an overwhelming need to write compelled me to write. Somewhere over Ohio, I started to jot down my thoughts and impressions of the land six miles below our wing tips. I finished writing somewhere over Omaha.
I felt like a bystander at my creation as words filled my paper almost without my intervention.
I don't remember what exactly I wrote, but whatever it was; it made one hell of an impression on the aircrew.
When I showed the flight attendant my essay, she read it and asked me if I was the author.
When I answered "yes," she asked if I would give her permission to show my essay to the Captain. I nodded yes and before I could ask why she was striding up the aisle toward the pilot's cabin.
I was happy but also a little bit uneasy about the attention my scribbling was receiving. Had I broken some rule?
After several minutes, the flight attendant returned to my seat accompanied by the Captain. He also wanted to know if the words on the sheet belonged to me.
Again, I assured him that I had indeed written the composition. I wondered, why all the fuss?
The essay was only a few hundred words in length. I had compared the farms and towns passing beneath our wings to the squares on a beautiful quilt, all woven together by our ancestors on a loom of destiny. From the altitude where angels trod none could see religion nor politics, creed or color. Laid beneath us were all the parts of America and our individual lives were the threads that stitched together the quilt.
The Captain invited me to join him in the pilot's cabin. As the Captain escorted me toward the cockpit, I was aware of puzzled looks of interest from my fellow passengers. My perplexed expression was probably a perfect mirror.
The Captain opened the door when we arrived at the cockpit and motioned me forward. When I entered the cockpit, I was in a strange new world of switches, gadgets, and dials.
Space was about as long as our family car. The front half held a large control panel covered in gauges and dials followed by the pilot and co-pilot's seats divided by a wide control console.
The windshield and side windows afforded a perfect 180° view of the sky, and it was that view which dominated. Far below, I could see the Rocky Mountains rising through a blanket of clouds. Individual peaks stood like islands in a sea of cotton. On the horizon line, the sky was a misty blue, which steadily darkened in color to a deep royal blue, and finally, to a blue so dark, it bordered on black. I stood transfixed until I felt a gentle nudge from the Captain urging me to take a seat in the 'observer's chair just behind the pilot's position
When the Captain closed the door, all the sounds of the jet engines ceased, and the cockpit was silent save the gentle whisper of ventilation fans.
The Captain's voice broke the silence as he said, "Gentlemen this is Dennis Randall, and he is the author of the essay we’ve read earlier."
Extended handshakes and broad smiles greeted me. The co-pilot turned in his seat and said, as he shook my hand, "I loved your work. It put into words what I feel every time I fly over America."
The navigator sitting at a tiny desk behind the co-pilot also shook my hand. He held it for a moment as he said, "That was a remarkable piece, and it was a joy to read. You captured the feelings we all have when flying across this nation."
The Captain turned to me and asked, "Do I’ve your permission to read this to our passengers?"
I was in a state of happy shock when I said, "Yes sir."
The Captain climbed into his seat, buckled up and reached overhead and pulled down a microphone and a moment later his voice filled the aircraft,
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I would like to share with you a short essay one of our young passengers just wrote. Sometimes younger eyes see things we may forget to notice when we grow older. Here are his words..."
As he finished reading, a flight attendant opened the cabin door and entered with a glass of ginger ale for me. I could hear clapping coming from the passenger section. The applause continued for fifteen or twenty seconds.
By the time, the applause died down I was in tears and at a complete loss for words. I managed to mumble a "thank you" as I wiped my eyes and tried to pull myself together.
For the next 30 minutes, I tried to look at everything at once. Switches and controls seemed to cover every square inch of the cabin except the floor and windows.
At 38,000 feet, we were flying well above the weather. Off to the north, I could see a line of towering thunderheads with their anvil tops moving slowly eastward. Now and then, the clouds glowed with flashes of lightning.
The aircraft was flying at about 600 miles per hour, but at our altitude, we seemed to hang motionless in the sky above a sea of clouds, I could see several towering thunderheads well away from our flight path. I tried to look at everything at the same time.
The next 30 minutes passed too quickly. As the flight attendant was leading me out of the cockpit, she told me that the Captain assigned me a new seat for the duration of the flight. I flew the rest of the way to Los Angeles in First Class luxury.
I got everything, which went with the privilege except for the complimentary glass of Campaign.
I had been sitting in splendid comfort for the 20 minutes or so when a flight attendant asked if I would be willing to write out a few copies of my essay for the aircrew.
I nodded yes, and for the next hour, I played scribe.
While I copied my essay, I kept pinching myself to see if I were dreaming. The pinches hurt, and I did not wake up. Either I had a double-strange dream, or this was all real.
High above the earth and thousands of miles from home, I had just received praise for something I had done. I had acknowledged by strangers who did not know my mother, my family or me.
I didn’t believe I deserved the praise, and I didn't think my writing was very good. I had a difficult time reconciling the praise of strangers with my mother's disdain for my writing.
As we were preparing to land at Los Angeles International Air Port, I gave copies of my essay to the cockpit crew and several flight attendants.
It was only after landing did I realize I had given away all of my copies. I had not even kept a copy for myself.
I’ve tried several times to recreate what I wrote without success. It was like trying to write down the details of a half-remembered dream.
Anglers have their stories about the one that got away. I know that feeling all too well.