The Airing of My Ways

     Since the beginning of my marriage, my life has revolved around the spin of propellers, the pumping of pistons and the whoosh of jet engines.  I helped put my husband through tech school the first two years of our marriage and have lived off that investment for nearly 33 years as he has made his living as an aircraft mechanic and director of maintenance.  However, aircraft have been part of my life since childhood. Our family budget required low cost, better yet, free entertainment and one of those expense neutral activities was driving to the airport to watch airplanes take off and land.  In those days no one feared terrorism because we were all going to be annihilated by nuclear bombs anyway.  Anyone who wanted to was free to visit the airport.  There were no gift shops and bistros, just vending machines with cigarettes, little candy bars and flight insurance.
    The next big bang in the flight plan of my life was the arrival of sonic booms, which we accepted as a by-product of progress.  One vivid childhood memory is of my little brother standing in the back yard, pointing at a contrail and saying "Airplane! Airplane!"  He was young, handicapped and hard of hearing so it came out more like "A-pay!", but was still more understandable than Herve Villechaize on "Fantasy Island".  On the day the first jet aircraft came to Missoula, I was there in the crowd, immersed in a sea of adult shoulders, which turned out to be a good thing, since it protected all but my legs from the blast of air and gravel when the engines started.
     The airport was the extent of my aircraft aspirations.  Flying was a privilege of the rich.  Those of us grounded in the solidity of the middle class expected to remain on the ground.  Though the aircraft were primitive by today's standards, the service was first class.  Back when flight attendants were called stewardesses, stewardesses actually attended upon those on the flight.  An airline pilot could reasonably anticipate affluence as a destination.
     Today the sky is not the limit. If flying is no longer a privilege of the rich, it is also no longer a privilege.  We show up 90 minutes early for the opportunity to be lined up, stripped, scanned, searched and separated from our possessions.  Modern flying has all the glamor of incarceration.  And yet, even from the steerage section of the sky ship I have a god's eye view of the sky above and the corrugated clouds below as we speed across the vastness of continents and oceans and I feel privileged to live in a such a time, to know that somewhere a child is looking skyward and seeing--me.