Introduction
[My below logbook entry in the remarks column from my flight with John P. Crum in his 1946 Aeronca Champ, halfway through my journey reads:
"More fun & games before departing Brown County. Andy or Aaron putting gas into father, John's plane from a 50 gal. tank on a pick-up truck. Getting late due to my procrastination and media. We depart onward west into the haze & heat and get washed by light showers enroute. Following Des Moines River to Ottumwa, home of AAA. Saw a splash from 1 mile away made in a municipal pool off the high dive in Ottumwa, Iowa. John Crum, Psychologist..." ]
"Tell me. From the Beginning," he said.
“What kind of crazy person would attempt to do what you’re doing?” asked John P. Crum, my 82nd pilot during the 131st leg on my journey. We had just taken off in his Aeronca Champ from a grass strip called Brown County Airpark in Mt. Sterling, Illinois, and were turning west toward Ottumwa, Iowa. We'd be following the Des Moines River into the late afternoon and landing about twenty miles further at another grass strip, Antique Airfield, the home and museum of the Antique Airplane Association.
“Well, I don’t know," I replied, "it just seemed like the natural thing to do I guess, ever since I got the idea.”
After all, I knew I could do it. I had no doubt, whatsoever. I was well versed in airplanes and aeroplanes - and I knew the distinction between the two, the latter being old ones. Also, I love to travel, and had previous experience as an airplane hitchhiker a dozen years ago for one week, right after I graduated from high school.
“You know, John, you’re not the first person to question my sanity.”
He answered, “I make my living as a Psychologist and the only reason I agreed to take you on two legs of your journey was to have enough time to probe your mind. So, please. Tell me. From the beginning. I want to know all the details.
How long have you loved airplanes?...What got you started? ...What ever possessed you to fly with all these pilots? I saw your thirty second answer on the local TV news, but I want the long story.”
“How far is it to Blakesburg?” I asked.
“We’ve got about an hour.”
“Alright…I grew up in Fairview Park, Ohio, near Cleveland. Our house was about a quarter of a mile from Cleveland Hopkins Airport and I remember spending a great deal of time watching the planes fly over our backyard and wondering what it would be like to go up in one. I always wondered what other places looked like away from home.
One of my girlfriends in grade school had been to New York City, and another had been to the Grand Canyon. Another kid had been to the Bahamas, and a couple kids in my high school went to Florida every year during Christmas vacation. They always came back to school in January with suntans when the rest of us were pale. I knew that they’d flown on airliners to get to those places and I wanted to go, too, but my parents never went anywhere.
Also, those friends got to go to beautiful beaches and swim in that warm, clear blue water, and I only got to look at them in magazines and dream about being on a nice beach. The idea that I could get on an airplane and escape the cold, miserable Cleveland winter and be snorkeling in the Gulf of Mexico in just a few hours was somehow a fantasy to me, but I knew that it must’ve been possible, because Beth Snyder’s dark tan in January was proof. It made me want all the more to be one of the lucky kids who got to faraway places in airplanes.
For our family vacations, my parents seldom took us more than fifty miles. Sometimes we'd camp at Lake Milton or take a drive up to Marblehead Beach, near Sandusky, Ohio, but we never traveled far enough to require plane tickets. The farthest we ever went was a one day car trip to Niagara Falls and back when I was around thirteen, but that was it.
So, we never flew anywhere. That, and my dad didn't like to fly. He occasionally flew for business trips, but he was always more comfortable on the ground, at home.
My mom had been on a plane once. She told me it was a one-way flight to Detroit when she was pregnant with me. I asked her about it recently and she doesn't recall much about it, but said it was a very short flight and that she and Dad took it to buy a Buick there, then they drove it back home to Fairview Park, Ohio."
"Keep going. Tell me more," urged my flying Psychologist, John, "What about your first airplane ride?"