Plane and Simple

I can barely remember my first flight in an airplane. It was a very short flight from the Connellsville Airport in a small plane, probably something like a piper cub. It couldn’t have been much bigger because I remember there was just enough room for the pilot, my dad and me. It was some kind of special occasion when the airport and pilot were selling rides.

The second flight was in a commercial jet, shortly after my induction into the Navy. The ride in the elevator at the Federal Building in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was much more stomach lurching to experience than the actual flight to Great Lakes Naval Training Center for boot camp. I was already nervous, but when the elevator shot upward or dropped downward, I almost lost my lunch.

After boot camp and corps school, I flew to Orlando, Florida. It was my first assignment at the Naval Hospital and was before Disneyland opened. The airport was an L-shaped building with metal gates at each end that pulled down and locked overnight, like the stores at the mall. Orlando didn’t have much draw for tourism at that time.

I made several flights home to Pennsylvania during my two year assignment in Orlando, but there was nothing really memorable about them. When in Florida, I was on the lookout for license plates from Pennsylvania. One trip home I do remember my parents driving me home from the airport and thinking to myself, “Wow, there’s another plate from Pennsylvania.” Then I thought, “You dummy. We’re in Pennsylvania.”

The next memorable flight for me was from Florida to Keflavik, Iceland with a layover in St. John’s, Newfoundland. In Iceland a group of corpsmen were fortunate enough to hook up with a physician who needed flight hours to get his commercial license. We’d pool our money to rent a plane and the doctor would fly us at no charge. After flying in jets, the first flight felt as though the smaller plane wasn’t travelling fast enough and would surely fall out of the sky. finally able to settle, we flew to several places on the island, even crossing over the Arctic Circle to get my “blue nose” certificate. I was able to fly to several destinations on military transports delivering supplies.

I flew to Philadelphia to be discharged. The heat and humidity in the barracks lacked air conditioning and in August was almost unbearable after the 60 degree weather in Iceland. I was so glad to catch the plane to Pittsburgh and home.