May 2012
Contrails Continued from Page 18 propeller was gone, completely gone, along with the bolts that had held it to the engine. I flushed with shame as I understood what a fool I’d been for not listening to what the airplane had been trying to tell me. I realized too late that the aerobatics that we’d been doing had compressed the wood around the washers and bolts securing the prop to the crankshaft until it had become so loose that a harmonic wobble had occurred and sheared the bolts. If we had simply checked the bolt torque after the spinner incident this near disaster would have been avoided. As I was standing by the airplane berating myself, the noise of an approaching vehicle registered on me. I looked toward the north end of the pasture and a grayed head appeared, rising smoothly and majestically over the hill, as if born by magic. It was followed quickly by the shoulders and upper torso of an old woman. Next came the farmer, carried along by the same magic, and then the tractor itself appeared, with the farmer clinging to the steering wheel and his wife standing on the spreader bar behind him. “See there Pa,” I heard over the noise of the engine, “Ah toll you somethin was bothern’ them cows” After introductions were accomplished and I had given a brief description of what had brought me to their farm, we wrestled the airplane into an equipment shed located at the edge of the pasture. We then secured fencing across the front of the shed to keep the cows from munching on the airplane’s fabric as cows are wont to do. Now afoot, I welcomed the farmers offer to give me a ride somewhere. After orienting myself I realized that I was only a few miles from the home of my Uncle Harold Holmes in the hamlet of Nestorsville, so the farmer and his wife and I set off for there in his truck. We arrived at my uncle’s house just as darkness was falling and the night birds had started to call. I rang the bell and as the porch light came on I realized that my sudden appearance in my present state must look very strange indeed. I was covered with the cow poop that the wheels had sprayed on the side of the airplane while landing, and which I’d
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applied liberally to myself in wrestling the airplane into the shed. I was without a jacket and the evening had turned chilly. Strangest of all, I had no shoes on, but I was wearing socks. For a moment after he opened the door my uncle just stared at me in the reflection of the yellow bulb. After about
a three beat he said, “Why Stevie…what happened?” I was true to my promise and I never did fly the Cassutt again. My friend Willie and I did rescue it from the field where it came to earth, and we trucked it back to Morgantown one bright November Sunday morning when the traffic
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was light and the police were sleeping. Eventually it was sold and I lost track of it, but in the years since, I’ve often thought about that little piece of my past. I’ve wondered where it ended up and who owns it now. But most of all, I’ve wondered if there was ever a third dead-stick landing for the pilots who followed me.