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Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
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Airfield. There was at least one picture of Daddy and me in the Fairchild PT-19 with its cockpit open and both of us, in helmet and goggles, smiling and waving at the camera, presumably held by my motherâbut this precious snapshot (for which I continue to search) seems to be permanently lost. It is embarrassing to recall that within a year or two of the first Piper Cub flight I had become so habituated to flying with my father,and so utterly trusting of him, that I dared to bring a tablet with me into which I scribbled âstoriesâ while airborne . . .
(What was I always scribbling in those days? My mother would keep a selection of my school tablets that were filled with drawings of chickens and upright cats like human figures; I have seen these, but through a haze of embarrassment I lost a clear memory of them. There seemed to have been in my life as a writer a seamless transition from pre-literate activities of vigorous drawing in tablets with Crayolas to my first childish âstoriesâ when Iâd learned to write as adults write; from there, a seamless transition to my first typed stories when I was fourteen, and beyond.)
Though my father could never afford to own his own plane he remained an avid flier for decades; eventually he would log over two hundred hours of flying time. Indeed, âFred Oatesâ was famous in Millersport and environs for his love of flying. Only reluctantly, when his eyesight began to weaken in his late sixties, did he give up flying.
(In the mid-1970s when a West German film crew preparing a documentary on my writing career for public television came to Millersport to interview my parents, the director arranged for my father to fly him and his cameraman over the terrain of my childhood, in a Cessna 182 horsepower single-prop plane. How courageous these Germans were! Or did they not quite comprehend how courageous they were being to entrust their lives to a stranger, Fred Oates, who could claim only a pilotâs license from a rural upstate New York airfield? And how truly bizarre it was for me to see the film footage of my father in the cockpit of the plane flying again over that familiar landscape!)
Many times Daddy has said that for the pilot there is nothing in life on land to quite compare with life in the cockpit, at his instruments, aloft.
IN LATER LIFE, MY father and mother often visited my husband Raymond Smith and me in Princeton. On these trips they always flew, and sometimes they flew in a small plane to the small Princeton airfield about ten miles from our house.
Though being flown is nothing like flying â(as my father insisted)âthese flights were exhilarating to him. Daddy never failed to comment on the pilotâs performance and, if he had the opportunity, he congratulated the pilot on a âgood landing.â
Sometimes, when I am alone, and aloft, in my window seat staring out at a sea of clouds, or at land or glittering water far below, I feel a sudden pang of lossâfor what, I donât know.
For Leeâs Airfield, perhaps. For the shining little Piper Cubs and the boys whoâd helped to start their propellers. For my beloved father, a young father, with tufted dark hair and a widowâs peak, laughing as he adjusted helmet strap beneath my chin, for I must have looked very silly in my flying gear, as a child. And for my beloved mother, scarcely daring to breathe until the shining little yellow plane returned to the airstrip, and made a âsuccessfulâ landing.
The long-ago romance of small planes. Daddy as pilot.
But I have only to shut my eyes to see the airfield bumping and jolting outside the windows of the Piper Cub and to feel again how we are being lifted into the air, wind-buffeted but bravely continuing to rise . . .
AFTER BLACK ROCK
DO ALL FAMILIES HARBOR secrets? Do all families conspire in secrets, if not cultivate secrets? The family is the social unit that seems to depend crucially
(What was I always scribbling in those days? My mother would keep a selection of my school tablets that were filled with drawings of chickens and upright cats like human figures; I have seen these, but through a haze of embarrassment I lost a clear memory of them. There seemed to have been in my life as a writer a seamless transition from pre-literate activities of vigorous drawing in tablets with Crayolas to my first childish âstoriesâ when Iâd learned to write as adults write; from there, a seamless transition to my first typed stories when I was fourteen, and beyond.)
Though my father could never afford to own his own plane he remained an avid flier for decades; eventually he would log over two hundred hours of flying time. Indeed, âFred Oatesâ was famous in Millersport and environs for his love of flying. Only reluctantly, when his eyesight began to weaken in his late sixties, did he give up flying.
(In the mid-1970s when a West German film crew preparing a documentary on my writing career for public television came to Millersport to interview my parents, the director arranged for my father to fly him and his cameraman over the terrain of my childhood, in a Cessna 182 horsepower single-prop plane. How courageous these Germans were! Or did they not quite comprehend how courageous they were being to entrust their lives to a stranger, Fred Oates, who could claim only a pilotâs license from a rural upstate New York airfield? And how truly bizarre it was for me to see the film footage of my father in the cockpit of the plane flying again over that familiar landscape!)
Many times Daddy has said that for the pilot there is nothing in life on land to quite compare with life in the cockpit, at his instruments, aloft.
IN LATER LIFE, MY father and mother often visited my husband Raymond Smith and me in Princeton. On these trips they always flew, and sometimes they flew in a small plane to the small Princeton airfield about ten miles from our house.
Though being flown is nothing like flying â(as my father insisted)âthese flights were exhilarating to him. Daddy never failed to comment on the pilotâs performance and, if he had the opportunity, he congratulated the pilot on a âgood landing.â
Sometimes, when I am alone, and aloft, in my window seat staring out at a sea of clouds, or at land or glittering water far below, I feel a sudden pang of lossâfor what, I donât know.
For Leeâs Airfield, perhaps. For the shining little Piper Cubs and the boys whoâd helped to start their propellers. For my beloved father, a young father, with tufted dark hair and a widowâs peak, laughing as he adjusted helmet strap beneath my chin, for I must have looked very silly in my flying gear, as a child. And for my beloved mother, scarcely daring to breathe until the shining little yellow plane returned to the airstrip, and made a âsuccessfulâ landing.
The long-ago romance of small planes. Daddy as pilot.
But I have only to shut my eyes to see the airfield bumping and jolting outside the windows of the Piper Cub and to feel again how we are being lifted into the air, wind-buffeted but bravely continuing to rise . . .
AFTER BLACK ROCK
DO ALL FAMILIES HARBOR secrets? Do all families conspire in secrets, if not cultivate secrets? The family is the social unit that seems to depend crucially
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