Flying the Coop
I used to hoist myself onto the slanted roof of the chicken coop, settle my back onto the tar paper, and watch small planes take off and land in the field next to our farm. I imagined what it would feel like bumping along rough pasture ground, lifting like a winged bird, and disappearing into a cloudy hole.
At age sixteen, I got to fly. The experience was better than anything I had concocted in my childhood imagination when we lived at the edge of Coldwater, Michigan. By then, Dad’s second farming project, a chicken hatchery, had failed, and he got an old union buddy to trash it before we left town. We migrated to Monroe where he happily returned to prewar construction work. I got a job at Dorsch Memorial Library.
The idea of flying continued to hang heavy on my mind, despite the fact that I did not know one single person who had even flown on a plane. I knew it would cost money and that Dad would never pay for such a frivolous thing. Then it hit me: save money and hire someone at the local airport to take me up. I decided I would do it to celebrate my sixteenth birthday.
When I told Dad about my plans, he exploded, “The hell you are! You aren’t doing any damned such thing! Planes kill people all the time.”
I was feeling mighty sad when church rolled around on Sunday morning and I told Reverend Zorn.
“My son is a pilot at the airport. Now, I wouldn’t let him fly, if it wasn’t safe, would I?” he replied
“Do you suppose he’d give me a ride? I’ve saved up some money.”
“I’ll ask him and let you know next Sunday.”
The week was long. The following Sunday, I watched Reverend Zorn greeting members on the front steps of the church, and before I could ask, he said, “My son says it’s a go. I’ll call him at the airport to set up the flight.”
Reverend Zorn’s son was as nice as he could be. He asked me how much money I had; when I told him, he said it was just the right amount. I no longer remember how much was in my pocket, probably $8 or $10. It likely didn’t cover the cost.
Scrambling up into the plane took me back to my days of struggling to get onto the chicken coop roof. The takeoff was so fast, I didn’t have time to be scared. We floated through whipped cream clouds, passing over houses along the shore of Lake Erie. I searched for the run-down club house at Woodland Beach to help me zero in on our home. When I spotted it, I felt my eyes had betrayed reality. All the houses on the road had shrunk to tiny squares with pointed roofs.
“Ready to go out over the lake?” the pilot shouted.
My gut wrenched for a minute. I took a deep breath and yelled back, “Sure.”
I disappeared into the sound of wind and engine, the blue of sky and water. Was this what it’s like to be up in heaven, on the right hand of God? I came back into my body when the wheels kissed the runway; my heart remained in the clouds.
I couldn’t keep my mouth shut when I got home. “You just wouldn’t believe it,” I blabbered over and over. I couldn’t find words to describe that gossamer day.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Dad said in a low voice. I waited for more to come, then slinked into my bedroom to ponder the mysteries of flying—and Dad’s silence.
Dad, swift of tongue, fist, and foot, often responded to life with violence. Especially when he felt challenged, and I had certainly challenged him. My survival skills (though I wouldn’t have been able to identify them as such) were to do my chores, stay out of sight, and keep my mouth shut.
The lure of flying must have overcome worries about punishment. I wasn’t intentionally defiant, nor was I searching for attention, though I certainly could have used some. The middle of seven kids, I was lost in the daily swirl of living. If I weren’t a natural loner, I became one, to escape the chaos.
Eventually, Dad got over his fear of flying and did some travelling, too. He carried silverware he had filched on one of his flights. He would flip it out of his shirt pocket, slam it down on the table of a crummy hole-in-the wall restaurant, and crow in a loud voice, “Can’t beat Swiss Airlines. Best in the world.”
I have wondered about the conundrum of Dad for seventy years and am no closer to an answer than I was in 1953. Was Dad shocked to see his willful streak and venturesome spirit pop out in me? Relieved I didn’t die? Embarrassed I had wandered into a secret world he didn’t have the courage to enter? Maybe Dad was dumbfounded by the realization that I had grown wings and flown the coop.
© Fay L. Loomis
Fay L. Loomis was a nemophilist (haunter of the woods) until her hikes in upstate New York were abruptly ended by a stroke; she now lives a particularly quiet life. A member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers and Rats Ass Review Workshop, her poetry and prose are published in It Ought To Be Magazine, Kaleidoscope, Synchronized Chaos Magazine, The Blue Mountain Review, Spillwords, Fevers of the Mind, and more.
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