Flying

copied from Wikipedia

I had my first flight in an airplane at Miami, Oklahoma.  I was 16 years old at the time.  One of the men who attended the Methodist Church in Commerce OK possessed license as a private pilot.  Through my Father, I suppose, he learned I was intensely interested in airplanes and promised to take me up.  Now, every time I rode with my parents to Miami I would pester them to let me off at the airport and pick me up on the way home, which they usually would do.  I saw many wonderful things.  I watched as the radial engine on an old PT-19 Stearman biplane was started by hand cranking using the propeller.  After warm up it rolled a few feet and took off nearly straight up.  One day I saw a floatplane in the hangar, which had no wheels.  I watched as the pilot started the engine ran it at high RPM and screeched slowly on steel runners over to the damp grass and took off.  I saw my first jet-an F80 Fighter fly aerobatics (it couldn't land there because the runway was too short) over the airport.  When the great day of my flight finally arrived, my Father's friend and I drove over to the airport in his pickup truck.  He parked and we casually walked up to the office where he rented a Piper Cub.  Now I was hoping for a Taylorcraft airplane where you sit side by side rather than a cub where you sat in front of the pilot, but, I thought, beggars can't be choosers.  We walked over to the airplane parked there in the hangar and I started to get in when he told me, "No.  Let me take it around a few times.  Then I'll come back and get you".  I watched, very disappointed, as he started the engine, taxied out, and took off.  Around the pattern he flew and approached to land.  Through lack of practice he over controlled and bounced up and down on the runway.  Bang!  I could hear the airplane hit the ground.  The engine would roar as he opened the throttle.  Bang and roar again!  I was astonished.  What have I let myself in for, I wondered?  The first time around he never did get it on the ground.  The man who had rented the airplane to us heard the noise and came out to watch.  The same thing happened on the second landing.  "I can stop that", he said, and ran to get in his car and drive out to the runway, but by then my 'pilot' was gone again.  Was I glad he didn't take me right with him?  You bet your boots I was.  On the third approach the landing was smooth.  My pilot taxied in, picked me up, and off we went for my first flight.  He taxied out and took off to the north and we flew over my home in Commerce OK and returned.  It's funny, but I remember little of the flight, other than thinking there's only a piece of canvas painted with dope holding me up in the air.  I do remember the sinking feeling when he pulled the throttle back for the landing and the ground rushing up; but I had no fear the landing would be rough.  What a wonderful thing to do for a boy-to take him on his first flight.  I later in my life traveled many thousands of miles in the air, but no flight was ever as fabulous as that first flight in a yellow J3 Piper Cub.