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Steinbeck on Flying |
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Dan Nickens - May 03,2014
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On assignment to do a series for Newsday magazine, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner John Steinbeck, author of Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and East of Eden was in Vietnam from 1966 to 1967 (a year before his death). The reports were in the form of letters to his friend Alicia Patterson, Newsday’s first editor and publisher. The letters are the subject of a publication by Thomas E. Bard, and English professor at The University of Toledo.<br /><br /><br />On January 7, 1967, Steinbeck was in Pleiku flying with the D Troop, 10th Air Calvary “Shamrocks”. A copy of one of his first reports appeared in April 2014 edition of HeliMagazine:<br /><br />“’Alicia.<br /><br />I wish I could tell you about these pilots. They make me sick with envy. They ride their vehicles the way a man controls a fine, well-trained quarter horse. They weave along streambeds, rise like swallows to clear trees, they turn and twist and dip like swifts in the evening. I watch their hands and feet on the controls; the delicacy of the coordination reminds me of the sure and seeming slow hands of (Pablo) Casals on the cello. They are truly musician’s hands and they play their controls like music and they dance them like ballerinas and they make me jealous because I want so much to do it.<br /><br />Remember your child night dream of perfect flight – free and wonderful? It’s like that, and sadly I know I never can. My hands are too old and forgetful to take orders from the command center, which speaks of updrafts and side winds, of drift and shift, or ground fire indicated by a tiny puff or flash, or a hit and all these commands must be obeyed by the musician’s hands instantly and automatically. I must take my longing out in admiration and the joy of seeing it. Sorry about that leak of ecstasy, Alicia, but I had to get it out or burst.’<br /><br />Finally, one last observation from noted aviation author Richard Bach who, on August 31st 2012, suffered a near-fatal crash when the small amphibious plane he was flying struck wires: ‘Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t.’<br /><br />Lyn Burks, Editor In Chief”<br />
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Philip Mendelson - May 03,2014
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one of my close friends flew copters in Nam, he tells me of a little game of flying low and 'skimming the skids in the water'!!! apparently these guys were so skilled they flew inches over the water routinely, water skiing! The joys of youth!
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Buck Bray - May 03,2014
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Very inspirational. I didn't realize Steinbeck also wrote about flying. I went to one of his <br />birthday parties on Cannery Row while living in Monterey. He of course was not in <br />attendance but a very eclectic gathering would take turns reading short Steinbech <br />passages above a store of one of his friends.
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Chris Vernon-Jarvis - May 04,2014
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Eldest son (SAR pilot,) did a mountain flying course, (helicopters) last month in Penticton, BC. Flying down a canyon about three blades width's wide, even turning and landing on a ledge half way down was the normal thing.<br /><br />We were talking over lunch and he was saying that he was hoping to get his PIC Cert. for utility flying, ie. general moving helicopters around and transporting, cross country etc in the next few weeks.<br /><br />'So you have regulations covering each kind of flying you do and certificates to be allowed to do it?' I asked.<br /><br />'Yes, and for the limits on things you can do, for instance, utility PIC you can land with three rotors width of space, then the next one is two rotors width, that's the length of one blade clearance.'<br /><br />That seems pretty close,' I said.<br /><br />'Oh, well when you're fully qualified it's closer.'<br /><br />'How close?'<br /><br />'Twelve inches.'<br /><br />I hoped his mother wasn't listening too closely.
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