Sometimes life gangs up on you. Coincidence works to merge a passing thought with something you happen to see, and then you see something else that further reinforces it. These things can be good, bad or just amusing. In that case, I guess I had an amusing case of the "olds" during the last few weeks.
It started innocently enough way back in mid April when I was watching a yellow moon set in the western sky ahead. I was over Wilkes- Barre at the time, listening to a local oldies station, when the song "Pretty Little Angel Eyes" was played. The song was popular the summer I started the ninth grade of high school. I was 13 then, and that was... almost 40 years ago. I thought for a moment about Annamarie, even though in the years we were classmates, I never told her that I always connected the song with her.
As the moon inexorably sunk deeper into the horizon, I thought about being 13 and never dreaming that I would be 40, but now it is 40 years since those youthful days that I couldn't comprehend such a span of time. There were other thoughts, thoughts of things that should have been but weren't, and things that were, but shouldn't have been. Fortunately, the idle part of my flight only went on for another few minutes.
Like most of our passing thoughts, this one got tucked away to expire gracefully, but later that day in town I happened to watch as a father showed his young daughter how to cross the street. I remembered doing that 20 years ago in that same spot, and I remembered carrying my kids in a baby basket like the one I saw a couple carrying at the Mall a few hours later. All these thoughts didn't fit well into the month when I have to have to take an FAA physical in order to renew my medical certificate .
April was also the month that my little red airplane was due its annual certification. It is just a little older than I am, and neither it nor me can expect an automatic "thumbs up" each year. Planes like mine end up needing an airframe overhaul about every 20 years, a bare- bones teardown, repair and re-skinning that will probably take $3000 and a year for me to do. My plane was last overhauled in 1983... about 20 years ago... after being rescued from a lawn shed. I was in no humor to have the doctor discover a problem with me, or for the inspector to discover a problem with the airplane.
All that is passed now, and it seems foolish to have become growly about all of it. The cold and wet of mid and late April delayed the inspection of my airplane, but last week's beautiful weather let me get things ready for the inspector's visit on Saturday. As a mechanic, I did all the routine maintenance tasks, leaving the inspector with a fairly short checkout.
There were no surprises on the inspection, and I spent a busy Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning putting the airplane back together. It was hectic and a bit aggravating, because there were a lot of things that needed to be done at home. Later on Sunday morning though, it all passed into a vague memory as I looked down at the neatly mowed meadow that is the runway at Middlesex Airport.
I floated in, noting that a few dandelions had already poked their bright yellow heads out of the freshly cut grass. Soon the tailwheel whispered through it and the main wheels touched down with a satisfying thunk that said the flight was over. Still busy keeping the plane straight during the crosswind landing roll, I took the time to appreciate the sudden familiarity with something I hadn't done since the weather was warm last autumn.
The Middlesex runway slopes downward north to south and a little bit west to east, cross-wise. It received its share of bulldozer work in previous years, but there is only a cattle fence that marks it separate from the field alongside it. More than the contour of the runway, the bluebird houses that are attached to many of the fence posts are the airport's defining feature. I watched the birdhouses pass by my side window as I taxied towards the café and the other planes parked in front of it.
With great satisfaction I thought: This is just what the doctor ordered!