The Boy Who Liked Airplanes

By Bill Blake

"The Boy Who Liked Airplanes" is a gripping, whimsical autobiography of a young boy, in the early days of flight, that loved looking at, dreaming about, drawing, flying, and everything else "Airplanes".

The story starts at small municipal airport in Iowa and follows "the boy" through his school years, his life in the military, flight training, and solo up until "the girl" came along.

The story includes dozens of illustrations by the author to help the reader visualize what "the boy" saw every time he was near an airplane.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 1, 1976
• ISBN: 9781543955835

Book preview

Chapter 1

1931 – The Boy, Age 5

Since seeing the thing in the air two years ago, I became obsessed with flying things. I spent hours watching the chicken hawks gliding on wide spread wings. I spent hours running around the yard after robins and sparrows with a salt shaker because a neighbor kiddingly told me if I sprinkled salt on a bird’s tail, it couldn’t fly. If I could capture one of the birds, I could figure what made them fly.

The birds weren’t cooperating with my investigation into the science of flight. They took off immediately when I got too close with my salt shaker. I tired of this after a few days, and finally asked Dad about the flying Grandpa and I had seen.

Dad tried as best he could to explain what an airplane was and drew a simple sketch to show me. He demonstrated where the wing attached, how the tail group fit in, the landing gear and last, but not least, the engine. I was satisfied. Now, I could build my first airplane.

Around the acreage where I lived, all kinds of good things were lying about. But what interested me most was the lumber pile. Grandpa never threw a piece of wood away if he thought it might be used to repair the old chicken coop, underground storm cellar, or the dugout garage. I had an ample supply of material from which to build my airplane.

I had been warned continually about using any of Dad’s or Grandpa’s tools, but the warning was cast aside. Once I had picked out the wood, I would have to have the tools to build my airplane.

I walked around to the woodpile that lay behind the chicken coop and kicked the pile several times as hard as I could. Black Widow spiders had been seen on the pile and I was not supposed to play around it. Satisfied that I had scared the spiders away, I selected a piece of two by four and a length of thin lath. I walked back to the front of the chicken coop and looked warily at the kitchen window to see if Mom might be watching me. I slipped around the corner of the garage, through the door, and up to the forbidden tool bench.

I placed the piece of two by four in the vise and, as I started to close it, the heavy handle slid through its retaining hole banging my finger. Once I managed to get the vise closed, I climbed onto a nearby nail keg and then on to the bench where I could get at the saws, each kept in an orderly fashion on the wall rack. Still on the bench, I turned and placed the saw on the wood clamped in the vise. Sweating and struggling I managed to hack a twelve inch piece from the two by four. Now I climbed back down to the dirt floor and removed the piece of wood from the vise. I had my fuselage.

Next, I placed the piece of thin lath in the vise and again, the heavy handle slipped catching the same finger, but this time the hurt brought tears to my eyes. Once again I climbed onto the nail keg and then to the work bench. Again, I swung the unwieldly saw into position and within a few minutes had sawed a long piece for the wing, a shorter piece for the elevator, and a still shorter length for the rudder. Hurriedly, I climbed down from the bench to the floor. In my rush to remove the wing from the vise I forgot about the handle and, again, it caught my finger, mashing it hard enough for blood to start running from beneath the fingernail. This time I cried.

As the pain turned to numbness and the tears subsided, I once more made the climb to the workbench to get a hammer. Down on the floor again, I reached into the nail keg for nails. Although the nails were of a size to nail two by fours together, it made no difference to me.

I placed the piece of lath for the wing on top, well forward and at right angles to the fuselage. I put a nail at the intersection of the two pieces of wood and swung the hammer. The hammer slipped off the nail, hit a finger and again tears came to my eyes. Blinking away the tears, I took aim and swung again. This time I got a good solid hit and in seconds the nail was in and the wing on. In short order, I had nailed the elevator on at the rear of the fuselage and then the rudder sticking straight up. It didn’t matter that the large nails had splintered the wood. Two more nails driven in underneath and at the forward end became the landing gear.

I had no more than put the hammer down and was admiring my handiwork when the garage door opened and there stood Dad. Dad was very mad when he first saw I had disobeyed and used the forbidden tools. As he looked again, he saw a small five year old with a tear stained face and two bloody fingers holding some odd pieces of wood nailed together out to him. I was shaken. I knew I had done wrong. I looked up at Dad, grinned and said, See Dad, it’s an airplane.

My First Model Airplane

Chapter 2

1931 - A Thing Called School

A Dream in the Ditch

Several times lately, I heard Mom and Dad talking about something called school. In the fall of 1931, Mom took me to the local grade school about a mile away and registered me for the kindergarten class. Having been raised so far out of town on the acreage, this was my first real contact with any large groups of children, other than some cousins who dropped in occasionally on a Sunday. My friends for the most part, were the family cats, the dog, and the nannie goat with her two kids.

The first day at school was pretty relaxed so the children could get to know each other. I wondered if any of the other boys had ever built their own airplanes. Maybe I could find another boy who liked to run around with arms spread wide and make engine noises with his mouth.

I discovered that by sticking my tongue out between my compressed lips and blowing I could simulate the sound of an airplane engine. Sometimes rather than run around the yard with the model plane I had built, I would start my engine," spread my arms wide and take a running leap off the two foot terrace just west of the house. By doing this, I momentarily experienced the thrill of being airborne. I also experienced my first crash.

I decided to take a flight one afternoon and started my take-off run for the terrace. Just as I was making the mighty leap to take off, my foot caught in a tangle of creeping jenny vines hugging the ground. I pitched over the terrace head first into the dirt. Due to the fact that my tongue was between my teeth at the moment of impact, making the engine noise, it received a healthy bite. It took Mom quite a while to get the bleeding stopped and my tongue hurt for days. Although I continued to run and make engine sounds whenever a bank or terrace was in my landing pattern, I always retracted my tongue.

One day an incident happened that was to cause me problems for the rest of my school days. I was on my way to school walking down the dusty road and had just crossed over a wooden bridge. The bridge was over a ditch that was used by farmers’ cattle to go back and forth from the pasture to the barn. I was just about to start my customary morning run down the steep one-hundred foot bank onto the schoolyard when suddenly I heard the, by now familiar, drone in the sky. Quickly, my head turned to the direction the sound was coming from and then I saw it. The airplane was crossing over the low lying hills to the South and headed straight for where I stood anxiously waiting. It was flying at a low altitude and I could see the pilot sitting in the rear cockpit. I stood transfixed as the airplane continued overhead and disappeared into the northern sector of the sky.

I looked at the school house, turned and looked in the direction the airplane had taken, and went back to the old bridge. Climbing between the strands of barbed wire that lined both sides of the ditch, I crept into the cool stillness of the bridge and rested my back against the dirt bank. I put myself into the cockpit of the airplane that had just flown over and daydreamed the day away. This was the first of many days spent under the old bridge playing hooky.

Chapter 3

1933 - Girls

First Kiss

By the time I was seven years old and in the second grade I heard some of the older boys talking and laughing about something called kissin’ girls. Up to this point in my life, I had paid very little attention to girls. I knew from my girl cousin that little girls don’t like to spread their arms out, make engine noises and jump off banks. In fact, I tolerated girls only because the teachers got mad when I pulled their hair and threw snowballs at them. Once I took aim with a nice juicy snowball and fired it at a little girl who had snitched on me for pulling her hair. The snowball missed her and smacked the first grade teacher right between the eyes. The roof fell in!

Maybe I could try this kissin when I couldn’t play with airplanes. By doing a little discreet checking, I found that kissin a girl meant touching her face or lips with your own. Heck, Mom usually gave me a goodnight kiss but I never associated this with little girls. I was resolved to give it a test flight.

The next day as the class ended, I was leaving the room and noticed a cute little blonde-haired girl standing just outside the door waiting for her girlfriend. Quickly, I walked up beside her, leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. The roof fell in again! The girl screamed and slapped me in the face just as the teacher, who was built like a heavyweight wrestler, grabbed me by the hair. She quickly rushed me back into the room and stood me in the nearest corner for the next hour.

I stood in the corner with my face smarting, head hurting, and my pride dented. Silently, I said to myself Nuts to this ‘kissin’, I’m going back to airplanes.

School did one thing for me and that was to further my natural ability to draw. My favorite subject, of course, was airplanes. They were crudely drawn at first but with the teachers help and encouragement I was soon turning out drawings of airplanes that were quite realistic. This caused me much trouble during my school years.

On library days at the school, I checked out every book dealing with airplanes that I could get my hands on. Many of them were far too technical for me to understand, but all had pictures or drawings of various airplanes in them. These were the books I, literally, committed to memory. Now and then Dad would take me to an airport and I could name virtually every airplane on the field.

Even though I still retained my disdain for girls, I did soften in one instance. The teacher had requested that the class turn in a drawing of an animal at the end of the day. I had my drawing of a bear finished and was about to turn it in when I received a sharp poke in the ribs. I turned around with my temper rising to see the poke had come from a ruler held in the hand of the little girl behind me. The girl had tears in her eyes as she softly whispered I can’t draw. Would you please draw something for me to hand in?

I was momentarily softened by the tears but still remembered the kissin’ episode and my vow to have nothing more to do with girls. I took the piece of paper she offered, however, and quickly drew the ugly form of a rat and handed it back to her. She smiled her thanks and for just an instant I almost grinned back, but caught myself and scowled instead. I wasn’t about to take any more chances with girls. To top it all off, the teacher congratulated the girl for her drawing.

Chapter 4

1934 - The Chicken Coop Airplane

During the heat of the hot Iowa summers, the old chicken-coop was one of my favorite places to play, day-dream about airplanes, and escape from the heat. A long, low wooden structure, it sat some twenty feet behind the house and up on a low dirt bank. The only door faced the house and, through the kitchen window, Mom could keep a watchful eye on me. She could also check and see if I was bothering the laying hens who always seemed to slow up on egg production when I was around the coop.

Gramps had made me a sling-shot from a fork of the willow tree in the front yard, and the propulsion unit for it came from rubber bands cut from a Model A inner tube. It did not take me long to become very proficient in the use of the weapon after an upstairs window and one of the family roosters bit the dust. I was forbidden to use the sling-shot for two weeks until I knew what to shoot at. These were depression years. Windows were expensive to replace and the only remaining rooster would have to go on overtime.

I was sitting in the coop with the dog enjoying a newly found method of harassing the hens which, in turn, slowed up the egg production. Taking a rock from the ammunition store in my pocket I would load it into the leather pouch, draw back on the rubbers and fire at a box nest with a hen dozing in it. The speeding missile would crack loudly against the box and the hen would fly squawking out the window while I doubled up in laughter.

After driving the last hen out of the coop, I sat with one arm