#25 From Crab Pots to Cockpits

A bumbling story of odd jobs, aviation icons, and how I ended up in the bomb bay of the Enola Gay.

That swing down the Space Coast – me chasing after Don Diehl’s ghost-plane, poking through small airfields and rocket museums – roused memories so old and dusty they came up coughing and sneezing. Stuff I didn’t even know I still carried, rising like swamp gas in the heat. One minute I was looking out at Valkaria’s sleepy airstrip, the next I was seventeen again, getting my first whiff of Seattle’s creosote soaked piers.

In 1978 Seattle was experiencing a heat wave. I’d come from a place where summers are hot, so I didn’t really notice it then. Now, whenever a get a whiff of creosote in the sun, I remember my first impressions of Seattle. The waterfront, the oil-coated piers emerging from Lake Union, ship’s wakes causing them to sway. Seattle was more like San Francisco then. San Francisco of the Pacific Northwest. A jumping off point to Alaska. I eventually jumped, a couple of times. (To Alaska. Not off the pier.)

After arriving in Seattle from Michigan in 1978, I began taking flying lessons. It was a place run by Lana Kurtzer on Lake Union. At Kurtzer Flying Service I worked toward obtaining my private pilot’s license. Lessons began in a 1947 Taylorcraft. This fabric wonder carried no radio, barely any navigation equipment and perched sportingly on a pair of pontoons. It was red and cute cute cute.

I remember when the cost per hour of flight instruction went above $20. I financed my airborne adventure via various jobs ; janitor, telemarketer, dishwasher, headshop clerk. I whisked myself north to catch some of that fishing gold. [The flight from Anchorage out to the Aleutians was in a DC-3. The same type of airship that was at San Salvador Island when my uncle disappeared. His rendition was called a C-47. The DC-3 I flew in had seen better days. I remember it had tape on the windows. ] The winter of 1978 was spent at a crab processing plant at Sand Point, Alaska. The winter after that was spent on a boat in the Aleutians at Dutch Harbor. I returned to Seattle with enough cash to finish my flying lessons. Those times have always just been a part of my history. Then one recent afternoon, I looked up and realized I’d taken lessons – and received my pilot’s license – from a Seattle LEGEND. Lana Kurtzer… huh.

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Let me rewind a moment.

Growing up in Michigan I’d been pretty sheltered. Sheltered might not be the word, as it sort of congers up visions of a coddled upbringing … or maybe even money. No. None of that. It was more like, we never really did anything. My mom would go off to the Fisher theater in Detroit, where she periodically worked the concession stand in exchange for watching Broadway shows. We kids came along once in a great while. Wait … no we didn’t. I remember seeing Jesus Christ Superstar there. Do I actually remember seeing anything else? Maybe A Midsummer Night’s Dream? I don’t remember my sister going. I’m certain my brother never went.

The town I grew up in is considered a village. Near the outskirts of Detroit, it’s not a suburb. It’s not necessarily the country. There are other villages around. They use the governance of a “township”. I grew up in a village in a township – a kind of jurisdictional shrug. My mom taught art. I’m trying to think of what we actually DID.

We (my mom and us kids) experienced infrequent visits to the Flint Institute of Arts. I visited the Flint Institute of Arts years later and … maybe it was that infamous lead? It was lackluster.

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Let’s circle back to the menial jobs I performed while getting my pilot’s license. This is pretty funny. It’s now that I realize I was terrible at these jobs simply because I’d not been exposed to … stuff. Take the dishwasher job. I was asked to fill in for a waitress shift. I remember this to this day – and it happened in 1978. I was the world’s worst waitress. I always saw it as my fault. I now realize … I hadn’t gone out to eat much growing up. I’d had laughably few exposures to dining out in my formative years. I didn’t know what being a good waitress entailed. But I could wash dishes like nobody’s business.

Anyway, it was stuff like that. I always thought it was my fault I didn’t know how to act. No… I didn’t know I wasn’t acting right. I still wish I didn’t know. Maybe I don’t? I probably don’t.

Going to college was never brought up, though both of my parents had gotten degrees. Wait. I take that back. One time, it was summer and my mom was in the kitchen. Jazz was playing on the radio. I made fun of the music and she blew it off, “You’ll listen to jazz when you’re in college.” THAT right there was the only time college was ever mentioned. Wait. No. I take that back. I’ve always been into photography. At one point I wanted to get a degree in photojournalism at a college in South Carolina. Financially that wasn’t about to happen. My prospects of a scholarship … if only smoking weed and hanging out downtown at night counted as academic achievement? Yeah. Not happening.

I graduated high school early though and left for Seattle. Where I got a pilot’s license while [as I said earlier] working at a string of jobs that built my character.

So I was interested in aviation. Had I known my uncle had this interest as well, I might have asked about him. Asked about him while the folks to ask were still there to answer.

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Not necessarily willing to take the next step into a career as a pilot, I pursued the next best thing. I got a grant and attended college (I honestly started listening to jazz before this point – education be damned). There’s a thing called an Airframe and Powerplant certificate that aircraft mechanics go to school to get. I went to night school. Here’s how that went: I dated my instructor – who was about 16 years older than me. By this time I was 19. A complete adult. Bill had grown up on Seattle’s east side. An only child. He had nice cars, short hair, decent money, and a fancy home on a cul-de-sac in Woodinville. He wasn’t exactly available, which was part of the draw.

There were reasons he took his time introducing me to his friends. Sometimes I opened my mouth and out came my upbringing’s vernacular, I felt I had belched up my hometown. I am about 5′ 11″. He was a stout 5′ 4″, maybe? [And that’s being generous.] Time gives perspective and I hadn’t had enough time to think anything other than how ridiculous he must have seemed, being with the likes of me. Now I realize, our differences made us both ridiculous.

At some point in that doomed relationship, we took a trip to Washington DC and the National Air and Space Museum. That grand conservatorial expanse of aircraft, below, above and on equal ground. It was overwhelming. We not only perused the exhibits but were also given a tour of the warehouses.

Bill had contacted the museum beforehand and, for some reason, the staff were under the mistaken impression that he was a professor of aviation at something more that a state college. You know what was back there in that warehouse? The Enola Gay. What did I do? “Hey! Take my picture in the bomb bay!” [BELCH!] Somewhere there’s a photograph of me in the bomb bay of that notorious B-29 Superfortress that almost obliterated Hiroshima. The curator was wincingly gracious. He asked Bill, “Where is it you teach?”

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Side note: At the hotel; I paged through the welcome book. My eyes widened and my mouth watered as I eyed the menu of a local restaurant. I used the hotel phone to make reservations. We arrived at the Perkin’s restaurant, ready for a gourmet meal. The person on the phone had been, like, “You want to make a reservation? Really?” In my defense, I’d never heard of the Perkins chain. I remember our arrival at the empty restaurant. The maître d’, surprised at my announcement that I had a reservation.

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Let’s go back to Seattle and college. I got my mechanic’s certificate. (By the way, that certificate was signed off by another Pacific Northwest legend, Orville Wilbur Tosch.) Next time you take a flight, you will be completely safe. You can thank me for that. I realized right away that “aircraft mechanic” is one of those professions that you need to be good at? I only briefly plied that trade. Instead, I joined the military. Ronald Reagan’s military. It was post-Grenada. I was in an Army Reserve unit that flew and maintained Ch47, “Chinook”, helicopters. I guess I’m a veteran of the Cold War. My obligation ended around the time that wall came down.

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How come I didn’t realize I was doing fucking epic things?

I was naive. I was gullible. I was fearless. I had wanderlust.

I am naive. I am gullible. I am fearless. I have wanderlust.

I still look up when something flies overhead.

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Start at the beginning (installment #1).

Post note:

I now know I learned to fly from a legendary pilot in a legendary aircraft. Hey! Let’s look that baby up! [Because I know I can and I love to do that type of thing.]

I just found the plane I learned to fly in … in a museum. I don’t even feel the least bit old.