My First Love...

[birdguy 3,943]

I think I posted a shorter version of this here before.  But I expanded it a bit and did a rewrite so I could add it to my collection of stories.

My First Love

I was in about the 7th grade.  It was after school and I was walking to a friend’s house along Van Ness Avenue, the street that all the automobile dealerships were on.  

I was almost to the corner of Sacramento street when I saw her.  I think it was in the Studebaker dealership.  There she was standing to one side of the floor.

I went inside and walked right up to her and put my hand on her side.

A dealer walked up to me and said, “How do you like her kid?  Do you want to sit in her?’

I didn’t say a word, I just nodded and stepped into the cockpit of a Luscombe 8A.  It was beautiful.  I had no idea then what the instruments on panel were for or any idea how one might fly in her.  But I gently put my hand on the stick and curled my fingers around it.  I moved it back and forth sideways and fore and aft.  I luxuriated in the smell of her. 

I noticed the rudder pedals and scrunched down a bit and moved then forward and back with the toes of my shoes.

After a while I got out of her and just walked around her touching her here and there.  I had never seen a real airplane before but I was suddenly in love.

As I started towards the door of the dealership one of the salesman yelled, “Come back anytime kid.”   

The next afternoon I went to the library and picked up some books on airplanes and how they worked.  

I went to the dealership every day after school.  I would sit in the airplane and walk around her for a while and then go home and read my airplane books.  I learned how an airplane flies.  How the controls worked.  

One day after school when I was loving my beloved Luscombe a man in an elegant suit and tie came over and said, “What’s your name kid?”  I told him, “Noel.”

“Well, Noel, climb in and I’ll show you how it works.”  He told me he had flown a P-47 in the war.  Then he proceeded to demonstrate the controls for me.  We climbed out of the cockpit and he walked around the aircraft while I followed.  He moved the ailerons and rudder and elevator and explained what the aircraft did when those controls moved.  I just got my first flying lesson.

The next afternoon I went to the dealership and my beloved Luscombe was gone!  I went inside and one of the salesmen told me the boss had taken the wings off after they closed and moved it to an airport on the Peninsula so he could start flying.

I was heart broken.  But I still had my books.  I started buying flying magazines with my allowance and eventually found a picture of a Luscombe I cut out and taped to the wall beside my bed.

As time went on I graduated from the 8th grade and went to high school.  Then after a summer working high up in the Rocky Mountains in Glacier National Park I came back home and joined the Marine Corps.

Four years later, after I got out, I got a job as a file clerk for the Southern Pacific Rail Road in their claims department.  I was still living at home with my parents in Mill Valley.  I took the bus to San Francisco every morning and when it went through the underpass of Highway 101 on the way to the Sausalito bus stop I could see Commodore Center across the road.  And beside the pier on floats was a beloved Luscombe.  Not the yellow one I had seen when I was in the 7th grade but a blue one.  Along with the Luscombe was a Republic SeaBee.

One Saturday I borrowed my Dad’s car and went over there.  I found out I could learn to fly that Luscombe on the GI Bill.  I signed up and they helped with the GI Bill paperwork and in two weeks they called me to schedule my first lesson.

My introduction to flying was in a Luscombe 8E on floats.  The side by side seatng and the stick instead of a yoke was familiar since I alread had several hours just sitting one of them a decade earlier.

I soon soloed and did my solo cross countries to San Luis Reservoir and Clear Lake.  San Luis Reservoir was fun because I flew by the San Francisco and Oakland airports and would sometimes see a DC-3 or DC-6 landing or taking of.

I still have a picture of a Luscombe hanging on the wall.  The hours I have flown Cessna 152s and 172s and Piper Cherokees and even a Piper Aztec have not diminished my love for my beloved Luscombe.  I think out first loves remain in our hearts forever.

Noel

[W2DR 1,860]

It's often been said...you never forget your first. 🙂

Edited May 27, 2021 by W2DR

[BillW 210]

Great story, Noel. Your writing style forms a great picture in our minds. You should consider putting your memoirs in book form. For us older guys it's a trip down memory lane.

 

Bill W

Edited May 27, 2021 by BillW
capitalization.

[Tim_Capps 474]

Wow, what a great story! From what I know of my own family WWII vets (all of them--including my mom) there was a lot of GI Bill benefits spent on flying lessons! My Uncle Arthur crashed a Piper Cub flying too low over a "gob pile" -- basically a Dantes-esque feature of Southern Illinois coal mining of a big pile of burning--bad coal or something. The updraft surprised him and down he went. And lived to tell the tale. Actually, he never told me. I heard it from my mother, who was still mad thirty years later that her husband and her brother didn't get a "useful" education. That is some good writin' there buddy. Really made me feel it.