On the wing.
SEPTEMBER 28, 2007 (FRIDAY) – When I was nine years old, I enjoyed making paper airplanes and watching them sail around above our big yard. Occasionally the wind currents were just right to keep the plane aloft for extended minutes.
As I was gazing at my creation soaring above the ground, I heard the noise of an airplane engine. I continued to look upward and appearing high in the sky was an airplane, making its way toward its destination somewhere in the area. That was a sight seldom seen in those days. Air travel was not yet as popular as it would later become. The old Houston airport was located where Hobby is now.View image
We kids were always thrilled at the sound of a plane, and stopped whatever we were doing to view the craft moving under its own power from somewhere to somewhere else. We were fascinated. Usually we could tell what color the plane was, because they flew fairly low. Only 37 years had passed since the very first powered flight. View image
As time went by, the planes became larger and louder, and there were more of them. The jet age had not yet arrived, and passenger planes by and large were DC-3’s, two-engine jobs that flew fairly low, therefore giving a rather rough flight at times. To this day, the DC-3 reputation for dependability is second to none.
I was singing in a revival meeting in Central Texas in the summer of 1952, and the preacher was Howard Shoemake, a missionary to South America. He invited me to go with him to Love Field, Dallas, to meet some people from the mission field who were seeking medical help at Baylor Hospital in Dallas. The old Love Field terminal was a very small building with a central ticket and concessions area and a small corridor on either side where the passengers disembarked and arrived. By today’s standards for airport terminal buildings, it was a “play house.” View image
Ten or eleven years after our trip, the old terminal was abandoned in favor of a great big, colorful, beautiful terminal building with moving sidewalks for the growing number of patrons flying the Boeing 707 jet-powered aircraft. By that time my young family and I were living in Dallas and one of our favorite late afternoon activities was taking the short drive to Love Field and watching the big jets land and take off. The noise was incredibly loud as the four big engines on each plane pushed the plane into the sky. And the thrill of seeing the big craft touch down at a precise spot on the runway was always amazing.View image
We’ve come a long way from December 17, 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, when Wibur and Orville Wright, two brothers from Dayton, Ohio flew 120 feet in 12 seconds in the first powered flying machine they had invented. The Boeing 747 capacity averages 416 passengers, has an excellent safety record, and for forty years has ferried 3.5 billion people (half the world population) to their destinations. The new Airbus A380 will carry 525 passengers. Air travel has become the preferred public transportation, and the skies are always full. The airliner has become a symbol of life in the 21st Century. Aren’t you glad you made it to 2007? View image
One day about 35 years ago I was on a plane that lifted off the Dallas runway and touched down on the Corpus runway about a half hour later. It was the last flight of the day, and the flight was late in taking off, so it had clearance to fly as fast as it could. It did. Whaddaya mean you don’t believe me?