Read Online Flight of Passage: A True Story by Rinker Buck - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Rinker Buck
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For the next six months, you own my ass.”
“No Rink, no. We’re going to do this together, and share everything. I want you to bone up on navigation, study the books, learn the maps. It’s something you’re good at and we’ll need it on the flight. We’re a team, Rink. We’re going to do this as a team.”
Shitbag. A team. I cringed inside when my brother got optimistic and saintly like that, as if we really could reform and become a “team,” mostly because I was afraid that we couldn’t. But I had to try.
“Okay Kern,” I said. “A team. The team approach.”
The wind picked up and the snow started falling harder, slanting down in front of our faces and eddying into swirls around our feet. Kern threw on the last bales of fabric and the flames rose again, throwing shadows of the trees against the barn. When the snow started caking on our hair, we went back inside and worked some more on the plane.
We finished sanding the fuselage on Sunday afternoon. Dusting off our old Sears Roebuck paint compressor, we sprayed on the first coat of military-green zinc paint. As Kern swept over the airframe with the spray-gun, I followed behind with a rag to wipe off any drips.
Kern and Louie had wired the barn for sound. When my father updated the radios in his Texan, they rescued the old low-frequency receiver from the corner of the hangar floor and installed it in the tack room adjoining our shop. The Texan radio was a big heavy tube job dating back to World War II, with these immense, clunky dials that made it look like it belonged in a Soviet spacecraft. They cannibalized a set of speakers out of my grandfather’s old bullet-nosed Studebaker, which sat abandoned out behind the barn. The result was another Buck family shitrig, with a nice assist for Louie, but it worked all right for the shop. The speakers were scratchy and throbbed like bassoons on the low notes, and we could only receive a couple of stations. But one high-powered AM signal came in loud and clear.
WABC in New York, 77 on the dial. It was the nation’s most antic Top-40 station, and all of the disc jockeys were lunatics; Cousin Brucie, “Big Dan” Ingram, Scott Muny, Ron Lundy, Harry Harrison and, in the morning, the unbeatable Herb Oscar Anderson. Super-dumb, supercool, ABC was the Golden Age of Pop, and nobody we knew listened to anything else.
So, to the acrid smell of zinc paint and the hiss of the spray nozzle, listening to ABC, we worked until late Sunday night. Kern was very meticulous about the quality of work he would accept and whenever we finished a section, he would go over everything with an inspection light, peering into every corner and weld from a wheeled dolley on the floor. If he found a paint drip or spot of rust that he didn’t like, we’d re-sand and paint again. He was whistling all the time, immensely pleased to have his coast-to-coast ship in the barn. Every once and a while he exploded with one of those chirpy thoughts that would occur to him.
“Hey Rink, you know what?”
“No, what?”
“When we’re done, this is going to be the cleanest Piper Cub in America. Bar none.”
Bar none.
But I was getting a nice high off the paint thinner now, and I liked the pungent, brittle sensation of the zinc chromate congealing to my fingers. The old fighter-plane radio blared, and Kern and I sang along to “Wooly Bully,” “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” “Hang on Sloopy,” and, the best, Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction.” The long Christmas vacation from school was coming up soon, and it would be fun working out here without anybody else around. Kern and I were monsters for work together, and I was secretly proud of that.
We were on our way. From the sanding, my fingers were blistered and bloody and my back ached. But I liked singing along to the music and shining the airframe gun-metal clean, and once and a while I would silently erupt with some chirpy thought of my own. Jesus, Kern is really happy out here, working
“No Rink, no. We’re going to do this together, and share everything. I want you to bone up on navigation, study the books, learn the maps. It’s something you’re good at and we’ll need it on the flight. We’re a team, Rink. We’re going to do this as a team.”
Shitbag. A team. I cringed inside when my brother got optimistic and saintly like that, as if we really could reform and become a “team,” mostly because I was afraid that we couldn’t. But I had to try.
“Okay Kern,” I said. “A team. The team approach.”
The wind picked up and the snow started falling harder, slanting down in front of our faces and eddying into swirls around our feet. Kern threw on the last bales of fabric and the flames rose again, throwing shadows of the trees against the barn. When the snow started caking on our hair, we went back inside and worked some more on the plane.
We finished sanding the fuselage on Sunday afternoon. Dusting off our old Sears Roebuck paint compressor, we sprayed on the first coat of military-green zinc paint. As Kern swept over the airframe with the spray-gun, I followed behind with a rag to wipe off any drips.
Kern and Louie had wired the barn for sound. When my father updated the radios in his Texan, they rescued the old low-frequency receiver from the corner of the hangar floor and installed it in the tack room adjoining our shop. The Texan radio was a big heavy tube job dating back to World War II, with these immense, clunky dials that made it look like it belonged in a Soviet spacecraft. They cannibalized a set of speakers out of my grandfather’s old bullet-nosed Studebaker, which sat abandoned out behind the barn. The result was another Buck family shitrig, with a nice assist for Louie, but it worked all right for the shop. The speakers were scratchy and throbbed like bassoons on the low notes, and we could only receive a couple of stations. But one high-powered AM signal came in loud and clear.
WABC in New York, 77 on the dial. It was the nation’s most antic Top-40 station, and all of the disc jockeys were lunatics; Cousin Brucie, “Big Dan” Ingram, Scott Muny, Ron Lundy, Harry Harrison and, in the morning, the unbeatable Herb Oscar Anderson. Super-dumb, supercool, ABC was the Golden Age of Pop, and nobody we knew listened to anything else.
So, to the acrid smell of zinc paint and the hiss of the spray nozzle, listening to ABC, we worked until late Sunday night. Kern was very meticulous about the quality of work he would accept and whenever we finished a section, he would go over everything with an inspection light, peering into every corner and weld from a wheeled dolley on the floor. If he found a paint drip or spot of rust that he didn’t like, we’d re-sand and paint again. He was whistling all the time, immensely pleased to have his coast-to-coast ship in the barn. Every once and a while he exploded with one of those chirpy thoughts that would occur to him.
“Hey Rink, you know what?”
“No, what?”
“When we’re done, this is going to be the cleanest Piper Cub in America. Bar none.”
Bar none.
But I was getting a nice high off the paint thinner now, and I liked the pungent, brittle sensation of the zinc chromate congealing to my fingers. The old fighter-plane radio blared, and Kern and I sang along to “Wooly Bully,” “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” “Hang on Sloopy,” and, the best, Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction.” The long Christmas vacation from school was coming up soon, and it would be fun working out here without anybody else around. Kern and I were monsters for work together, and I was secretly proud of that.
We were on our way. From the sanding, my fingers were blistered and bloody and my back ached. But I liked singing along to the music and shining the airframe gun-metal clean, and once and a while I would silently erupt with some chirpy thought of my own. Jesus, Kern is really happy out here, working
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