Biplane

He talks on, as we work, of a world that I am just beginning to know. A world in which a pilot always has to be ready to repair his airplane, or it will never fly again. He speaks without nostalgia or longing for the days past, as though they weren’t really past at all, as though as soon as he has the wheel back on the biplane we’ll start the engine and fly to a crossroad or a pasture close to town, to begin flying the folk who have never seen an airplane up close before, let alone got in one.

“Looks like that ought to do the job.” The pounded aileron fitting is straight and flat as a concrete hangar floor. “Stronger, than it was before. Cold-worked, you know.”

Perhaps I haven’t been born too late, after all. Perhaps it isn’t too late to learn. I have been brought up in a world of airplanes with the white stars of the military upon their wings, and U.S. AIR FORCE stenciled beneath gunports. Of airplanes repaired by specialists, in accordance with T.O.1–F84F–2, of flying procedures prescribed by Air Force Regulation 60–16, of conduct controlled by the Universal Code of Military Justice. There is, in all of this, no regulation that allows a pilot to repair his own airplane, for that requires a special army of technicians with a special army of serial numbers and job classifications. Airplanes and parts of airplanes in the military service are rarely repaired at all—they are replaced. Radio fading and going dim in flight? Corrective action: remove and replace. Engine operated overtemperature? Remove and replace. Landing gear strut collapse after touchdown? Class 26: aircraft removed from service.

And here is George Carr, barnstormer, mechanic, with a rawhide mallet in his hand, saying it would all be stronger than ever. I learn that the repairing or rebuilding of an airplane, or of a man, doesn’t depend upon the condition of the original. It depends upon the attitude with which the job is taken. The magic phrase, “Is THAT all that’s wrong!” and an attitude to match, and the real job of rebuilding is finished.

“Gordon Sherman’s loaning you a wheel from his Eaglerock to get home on; ’Vander Britt put it out in the trunk of the car.” He is straining now over a heavy bolt on the landing gear leg. “You might run . . . the wheel . . . down to the gas station . . . and see if they can put the tire on for us.”

As simple as that. Gordon Sherman is loaning you a wheel. A rare old 30-by-5 spun-aluminum wheel, the kind that aren’t built now and haven’t been built for thirty years and that never will be built again. On loan from a friend I never met. Perhaps Gordon Sherman had wondered how he’d feel a continent away from home, in need of a rare old wheel for his Eaglerock. Perhaps he has wheels to spare. Perhaps his basement is filled with 30-by-5 spun aluminum wheels. But Gordon Sherman is this moment silently thanked by a friend he has never met, and will be thanked, silently, for a long time after.

Colonel George Carr works on into the night, under the green fluorescent lights of the hangar at Crescent Beach, South Carolina. He works and he directs and I learn from him until 1:30 A.M. At 1:30 A.M. the biplane is patched, and ready to fly.

“You might fly her over toward North Carolina tomorrow,” he says, grinning, not knowing that at 1:30 in the morning people are supposed to be dead tired and ready to drop instantly asleep, “and we’ll put the finishing touches on her there. There’s some fabric around the shop, and some dope. We’ll put you to work doping.”

And it is done. He lifts his clanking, boulder-heavy tool kit into the car, sets the torn wheel carefully beside it, and with a wave disappears into the darkness, driving back to Lumberton. Exit, for the moment, a teacher of confidence. Exit a window into what, until one knows better, one calls the past. By the time he is home, I am asleep on the hangar floor, having spent half an hour listening to the rain, thinking that there are only twenty-six hundred miles to go.

In the morning, one patched biplane, yellow fabric held together here and there with bright red tape, lifts away from Crescent Beach, following from above a river, a highway, a railroad track, and arrives again at Lumberton, North Carolina.

Turn into the wind, touch the grass, taxi to the hangar where the colonel waits, readying fabric and dope.

Evander Britt is inspecting the taped wing before the propeller has stopped turning, running his hand lightly over the tape, feeling for broken ribs.

“You got a broken rib out here, Dick.”

“I know.”

“And I see you welded a plate onto the main landing gear fitting. Cracked out down there, was it?”

“Little crack, where it started to give before the bolt sheared. Welded the plate on, and it shouldn’t want to crack any more.” As long as we are talking, the guilt on my shoulders doesn’t hurt. It hurts when Evander Britt is silent, and looks at the biplane.

“If you want to trade back for your Fairchild . . .”

“Evander, I want this airplane and I know I don’t deserve it. I’m going to fly it home if it takes me all year, if I have to pick it up in a box and carry it to California.” That is probably the wrong thing to say. After this start, the chances of my having to pick up the pieces and carry them west are much greater than the chances of the biplane flying there under her own power. There is little doubt that the lawyer would like to have his airplane safely again in his hangar instead of chasing around the country with a novice pilot in its cockpit. There is less than little doubt. There is no doubt at all.

“Well, if you ever want to . . .” he says, looking again at the taped wing. “Boy, you sounded miserable as a wet rooster on that telephone. Like a little old soaking-wet banty rooster. Like the whole world had just come down on your head.”

“Sure wasn’t very happy. That was a stupid thing, trying to land in that wind. It was really stupid.”

“Well, don’t feel bad about it, boy. These things happen. Come on now. Roll up your sleeves and we’ll help George get her fixed better than new.”

I learn about repairing wood-and-cloth airplanes. The colonel shows me how to cut a patch of Grade A cotton fabric and fray the edges, and smooth it to the wing with clear dope, let it dry and sand it smooth. Another coat of clear dope, another sanding. Then colored dope and sanding, over and over, until I can’t tell the patch from the rest of the fabric around. After many patches, at last finished and better than new, it is afternoon and time to turn the nose westward, and fly.

“What do I owe you, George?” This is a hard time, when the business has to come to the front and the learning and the friendship of working together on an airplane take a back seat.

“Oh, I don’t know. Didn’t really do much. You did most of the work.” He rummages in a tool bin, looking for his pipe tobacco.

“The devil I did. Wasn’t for you, this airplane would be sitting in that hangar at Crescent Beach till the junkman came to haul her away. What do I owe you?”

A week ago, in Wichita, the tailwheel on the Fairchild had been replaced. A four-hour job, by businesslike modern-day mechanics. Cost: $90.75, parts and labor and tax included. What should it cost, then, to replace aileron fittings that had been smashed flat and immovable, install new shock cord on a main gear leg, install a new wheel, repair a wingtip and ribs and spar and cover the whole with fabric; parts, labor and tax included?

George Carr is awkward and uncomfortable and for a full twenty minutes I point out that my thanks aren’t going to buy him dinner tonight or replace the dope and fabric I have used, or buy back the sleep that he missed or even the gasoline that he used driving to Crescent Beach.

“Name a figure, then,” he says. “Whatever you say will be fine with me.”

“Five hundred dollars is what it would cost me, assuming I could have found somebody that even knew where a spar is in a biplane.”

“Don’t be silly.”