Authors: Dale Black
Tags: #Afterlife, #Biography & Autobiography, #Nonfiction, #Personal Memoir, #Retail
Flight to Heaven (8 page)
Since the age of twelve, I had been working at my grandfather’s business, “the plant,” as we called it, and at my father’s Long Beach Redwood Corporation, the landscaping products and trucking company next door. I loved working in the family business. I felt like royalty, part of a rich bloodline with the secure destiny of being one of the heirs to the throne, possibly running it all someday along with my brothers.
I had started with the most menial tasks, working my way up through the ranks. There were no special privileges, no fast track to success, despite my pedigree as one of the boss’s sons. I swept, I cleaned, I sacked sawdust, I baled shavings. Then I began doing truck maintenance on my dad’s 18-wheelers. Small repairs at first and routine maintenance, but gradually I took on more and more responsibility. Later, I logged a million miles driving the big rigs throughout the state delivering the products the business produced.
I also worked hard in order to learn Spanish and could talk with some of the workers, which they appreciated. It bonded us in a special way. It felt like one big hardworking family. And I was a part of it.
There was no job too small for me to do and no job too big that I couldn’t someday do it. I felt confident working there. There was a lot of hope in the business. My dad had a can-do attitude. “If you can dream it, you can achieve it,” he was fond of saying. Earl Nightingale, the motivational speaker, had been a big influence in his life. Dad had listened to all his tapes. His if-you-think-you-can-you-can philosophy permeated the company. Dad wouldn’t allow the word
can’t
in our vocabulary. He had always encouraged his workers to bring him their problems, but they had to first write out the problem and have two possible solutions written out with it. “Think it out, then write it out” was another thing you would hear him say. Dad was an outstanding businessman with impeccable integrity.
can’t
in our vocabulary. He had always encouraged his workers to bring him their problems, but they had to first write out the problem and have two possible solutions written out with it. “Think it out, then write it out” was another thing you would hear him say. Dad was an outstanding businessman with impeccable integrity.
It’s hard to think of a fourteen-year-old as having a philosophy of life, but all those things worked themselves into my thinking and set my course from that time forward.
That same year, something happened that changed who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. My grandfather received an unexpected financial bonus and decided to take the family on a trip around the world. We were in no way a wealthy family, but that summer it felt like we were. We traveled to Berlin and saw the Berlin Wall. We toured the Middle East. We went to Paris. France was so old and so beautiful in contrast to the United States. Paris at night was magical, quite possibly the most beautiful city in the world. And the girls. You can’t imagine the effect the French girls had on the pubescent boy I was then. I felt I was becoming a man. And that felt really good. Because of the magnificent lights, the lure of Paris at night was almost addictive. Being there planted seeds within me to want to travel and see the world.
We flew everywhere and saw as much of that world as we could see in a three-week period. Switzerland was my favorite. But there was Austria. Italy. Lebanon. Syria. Egypt. We traipsed through the ruins of an empire in Rome and traveled through the pages of the Bible in Jerusalem. We saw the
Mona Lisa
in the Louvre and the most beautiful women in the world in Italy and Scandinavia.
Mona Lisa
in the Louvre and the most beautiful women in the world in Italy and Scandinavia.
Everywhere we went, we were treated royally. We were looked up to because we were Americans, and the rest of the world still treasured the memories of our involvement in World War II. England, France, Denmark, Italy, they were all so appreciative, mainly because there were so many people still alive who had fought in that war, who had lost fathers and sons in that war, who had cheered American soldiers as they liberated Europe, city by war-torn city.
Pretty amazing experiences for a kid on the cusp of growing up. The most amazing experience, though, was not any one place we traveled to or any particular sight we saw when we got there. The most amazing things to me were the TWA Boeing 707s we traveled on and the pilots that flew them.
The size of the jet, the sheer power of its engines, the thrill of liftoff, the sound of the landing gear being retracted, the ease at which the massive machine cut through the air, these were all mesmerizing. And then, before you knew it, you were at thirty thousand feet, looking down on fleecy expanses of clouds, and through breaks in the clouds to cities, farmlands, oceans that spread as far as the eye could see, sunlight glinting off their scalloped surfaces.
The pilot behind all this power stood so tall and nonchalant in his crisply pressed uniform as you boarded his plane, smiling, greeting us as if we were someone special. His demeanor was a picture of confidence and control, someone who was trained and could be trusted. Then there was the thrill of hearing his voice over the loudspeaker telling us what we could see out the left window. Or letting us know when we were about to encounter turbulence and not feeling the least bit worried because his voice was so calm and reassuring.
When our travels were over, I was a different person, with new dreams that captivated me, new sights on my horizon, new adventures that stretched ahead of me.
I wanted to be one of those pilots, flying one of those jets to exotic parts of the world. But it seemed out of reach for a teenager who sacked his granddad’s wood sawdust and repaired his father’s trucks in what now seemed a small and shop-worn part of the world.
Then at that pivotal age of fourteen, something else happened. Someone I had always known, who was an engineer and vice-president of our company, helped me look at my life differently. His name was Ron Davis, one of my dad’s best friends, who that year became
my
best friend. My dad was a responsible, hardworking man, intent on building a business to provide for his family and to pass it on to his sons. He was not a pal-around kind of guy, not one who would play catch with you in the backyard. Usually at the end of the day he was spent, with the best of himself left behind at the office. And even at his best at the office, he was fairly aloof to me anyway.
my
best friend. My dad was a responsible, hardworking man, intent on building a business to provide for his family and to pass it on to his sons. He was not a pal-around kind of guy, not one who would play catch with you in the backyard. Usually at the end of the day he was spent, with the best of himself left behind at the office. And even at his best at the office, he was fairly aloof to me anyway.
Ron was just the opposite. He may have sensed in me a need to connect with an older man. That year Ron took me backpacking up to the top of Mt. Whitney. On that trip we saw a lot of amazing sights on our way to what seemed to be the top of the world. We talked a lot about science, laughed a lot, and in the process he became a little like a father to me, filling a void that my father was either unable or unwilling—or simply too busy—to fill.
And then the question: “Have you ever thought about flying?”
He had listened to me talk about our trip around the world, listened to my farfetched fantasies of flying jets, my admiration for the pilots who flew them, my desire to use my mind in a profession, my apprehensions about the boredom of sacking sawdust or being stuck in an office doing the same things day in and day out for the rest of my life.
“Have you ever thought about flying?”
The question followed me like a stray, not only for the next few days but for the next few years. His brother Paul, whom I also knew well, had been taking flying lessons and loved it. “Try it,” he said. “I think you would be good at it.”
It seemed a wish-upon-a-star type aspiration. Something right out of a fairy tale. After all, I was just a kid. And flying was a man’s job. Where would I get the training? Where would I get the money for the training?
Ron was thirteen years older than I was, a genius with a near-photographic memory. He was quiet and humble yet had a prodigious grasp of scientific things, which made him fascinating to listen to. Talking with Ron stimulated my inquisitive young mind. I was full of questions, and he was full of answers. Yet he never made me feel stupid for asking or for not knowing something. I respected him. And I took everything he said seriously. But nothing more seriously than the words “Try it. I think you would be good at it.”
Ron’s brother Paul began to fan the flames of the burning desire to fly that was smoldering under the surface. I feared talking about it with my parents. Mom would be fearful. Dad would be practical. I also feared talking about it with my granddad, whom I adored. He had started the business that I was now a part of. Nothing would please him more than to see me follow in his footsteps. Nothing would disappoint him more than for me to follow another set of footsteps.
It would be another four years, the summer of 1968, before I got up the courage to take my first lesson.
My instructor was a man named Terry, an airline pilot who had given up a safe and secure job as a banker for the adventure of flying. One day I met Terry at Brackett Airfield, bought a pilot’s logbook, gave him thirty dollars, and we took off.
I had always been good with machines. I was driving tractors at age ten, then forklifts, then giant Caterpillar front-end loaders, then 18-wheelers. I loved the feel of machines. They felt like an extension of who I was. But no machine prepared me for the Cessna 150 we flew that day.
I sat beside Terry in the cockpit as we flew around the Southern California city of Ontario. It was an oh-my-gosh moment. A moment I never forgot. And a moment that kept me coming back, plunking down another thirty dollars, and another and another, to recapture that thrill.
I felt free when I was flying. Above the fray of traffic. Above the worries of the workaday world. Above the boundaries of stop signs and double lines, signs that signaled No U-turns or Speed Limit 35. Here I was untrammeled by the rules and regulations of everyday life. Here I was free to be me. Here was where I belonged. And I knew it on the first flight.
I learned everything I could as fast as I could. I took as many lessons as I could afford, learning how to taxi, steer the rudders with my feet, take off, guide the aircraft with fingertip pressure on the controls, everything.
Nothing felt as good as being in the cockpit, lifting off from earth, and taking flight. Nothing. And now nothing could stop me from becoming a professional pilot.
I would drive a truck at night, earning a decent income. I took aviation ground school between my afternoon classes and work—went to school during the day—and flew every chance I got in between. After I had taken twenty hours of flight instruction from Terry, I met Chuck and took the rest from him.
Finally, in June 1969, after logging sixty hours in the air, I was ready for my test with the FAA, the regulatory board that issues licenses for pilots. Chuck and I were taking one of our routine flights with a stop in Visalia. It was there we parted ways and I hopped into the Cessna 150 that I had rented for the short fifteen-minute flight to Tulare, where I was scheduled to meet the flight examiner for my private pilot flight test. Chuck had signed me off for a solo flight so I could make the hop to my flight check destination. His last-minute instruction replayed in my mind as I taxied over to the hangar. “Relax, you’re more than ready,” he had said. “And remember, when he asks a question, just give him the exact answer. No more and no less. And treat him with respect.” That’s all the advice Chuck gave me. But it proved to be enough.
After I landed the airplane, I taxied to the large former WWII hangar where I was to meet the man who had the power to approve my pilot’s license. The examiner was a relaxed fiftyish WWII veteran. We quickly exchanged preliminary information, strapped ourselves into the aircraft, and proceeded with my flight exam. My attention was so focused that it seemed like only moments before we were again landing and taxiing to the hangar. The check ride was over. The examiner shook my hand in congratulations and signed my log book. I was now a licensed pilot.
That was the biggest day of my life. I could fly alone. I was a pilot on my way to living my dream.
“Have you ever thought about flying?” Ron had asked four years before.
And I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
8
SECRET PLACE OF THE MOST HIGH
A shooting pain in my shoulder
brought me back to earth.
brought me back to earth.
It was no longer June of ’69. It was July. What a difference a month makes.
In the days that followed, friends were still coming by to visit. Now it was more friends from our church and less from school. Howard and Ginny Dunn were two of them. They were friends of our family for a long time and it lifted my spirits to see them.
“How are you doing, Dale?” Howard asked.
“Thankful to be alive and happy to be home.”
“I think God gave me a Scripture He wants me to share with you.”
What does God have for me?
I wondered.
I wondered.
He paused, waiting for my permission.
“Please. Go ahead.”
He picked up his Bible and thumbed through its well-worn pages. “Psalm 91,” he said, and started reading:
“He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress;
My God; in Him I will trust.
Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler,
And from the perilous pestilence.
He shall cover you with His feathers,
And under His wings you shall take refuge:
His truth shall be your shield and buckler.
You shall not be afraid of the terror by night;
Nor for the arrow that flies by day,
Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,
Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.
A thousand may fall at your side,
And ten thousand at your right hand;
But it shall not come near you.Psalm 91:1-7”
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