My father's logbook recently emerged from a long and dusty storage in the back of the attic. I don't believe that I had ever seen it before, and reading it was interesting. Logbooks, like any other sort of daybook or ledger often stand as little slices of time awaiting our curiosity.

This particular slice is the summer of 1940. Clouds of the depression lingered, and clouds of war loomed on the horizon. For an 18 year old just done with high school though, it was a pretty good year. I may never find out why he started the summer in Niles, Michigan, but I am told he went there to help build a hangar roof, and he would be paid in flying lessons.

He was there a month, flew nine hours, eight with an instructor, and one hour of solo. He then went to Pontiac, Michigan where he received a fifteen minute checkout and made two more solo flights. Returning home to Long Island, he received a five minute checkout from a local instructor and flew the next five hours by himself.

A month later, he was checked out to make solo flights to distant airports with an hours' flight to an airport thirty miles away. He made several such flights solo, including a flight that took him directly over New York City. During this same time, he did "verticals and loops", first with his instructor and then by himself.

I read this, and believed it, but I couldn't understand it. Dundee is no different now than these places were then, and I would never dream of such a casual fligh training syllabus. If the laws of nature have not changed, and the nature of air and weather haven't changed, it must be that people's fundamental attitudes have changed.

I called a flight instructor friend who is about a generation older than I am, and who has always seemed to have a clear vision back to the times before him. I told him of what I had read, and he laughed and replied "That's the way it was done, and pretty much it worked out OK". He went on to explain some of the biggest differences between then and now.

First of all, there were no runways. Airports were usually called "airfields" because they were nothing more than big open fields. You always landed into the wind, whichever way it was from. This lessened the demands on student pilots, and all other pilots too. The Piper Cubs used as trainers also landed at quite a slow speed, so the typical "crash landing" had considerably less energy to dissipate. Injuries and damage were less likely. The Cubs were built of inexpensive pieces of raw materials and a mechanic could quickly patch up the usual sorts of damage. Most crashes, when they happened, weren't a big deal.

His explanation of the physical reasons for such a casual level of flight instruction was helpful, but I think the key is at the end. "Crashes weren't a big deal" is the key phrase. There was a greater risk of accidents, but a lower rate of injury per accident. Flight instruction, he said, was usually casual, unorganized, and often inadequate by today's standards.

I spent a nice evening reading through the old logbook and pondering the old ways. I saw it as a valuable lesson in perspective to see how things once were and to see all the ways in which they have changed.

I had to fold some empty columns into each other to make this picture fit, but it shows that Dad soloed after 8:15 of instruction, then went to Pontiac MI and rented a plane after a fifteen minute checkout. Shortly after, he went to Gulf Field in New York and was rented a plane after a five- minute checkout!

This would be unheard-of today, but was quite normal for the time.

As an aside, Gulf Field was several miles due west of Zahn's Airport, which was quite a hub of activity in the mid- 1900s. As I understand it, Gulf Field sold Gulf gasoline for quite a bit less than what was available at Zahn's... It wasn't much more than a fly- in gas station.