(Secretary of State Kerry explains to the Senate how a pencil works yesterday. Photo AP)

It is not that I don’t have enough weighing on my mind- I mean, did you see how Secretary Kerry looked yesterday? This has not been a great week for anyone.

I could not dwell overlong on the prospect of general war in the Middle East, though. I was filling out legal paperwork with the LTJG yesterday morning.

That is a normal part of pre-deployment planning, and in addition to the Last Will and Testament, I recommended a Power of Attorney, in case there was something that needed to be done in his extended absence. He is not planning on being back for a couple years.

It is routine but sobering, considering the disposition of one’s effects, pending the departure to the Great Mystery, and I ensured that he knew that the POA was effective only on the event of his incapacitation or specific written instruction.

Since we were doing it anyway, I took the opportunity to do the same- mine obviously more complex due to my manifold follies, and I told him I would have an addendum with the various bank and brokerage accounts, locations of firearms and other small items of transactional value.

And I designated him the Health Custodian, with the stipulation that should the event occur, chose Do Not Resuscitate. I thought about death, in passing, resolving that if there was a choice at the end of things, I did not want a long slow decline on a bad glide slope like my Dad.

Which got me to thinking about the Bucket List, and how much I would like to just take off on a road trip. Actually, I thought about a road trip in the sky.

I got an interesting account of some historical artifacts scattered across the west. When the freedom of the air was new, the concept of rapid delivery of written communications was revolutionary. You know: legal documents, like the ones I filed with my son- and letters containing sensitive or emotional information could not be trusted to telegram.

The Postal Air Service was commissioned to fly our contracts, wills and missives of passion on the wings of eagles over the wagon-tracks of the way west.

(Colorado Air Lines Mail bird- A surplus Curtis Jenny. One of those props is hung over the door to Refuge Farm).

To guide the dauntless birdmen, a series of beacons and concrete arrows were established right across the vast nation:

Every ten miles there was an arrow, painted bright yellow with a little generator shack and a derrick with a bright rotating beacon. The shacks are (mostly) gone, and the derricks were harvested for scrap during Great Hate II, but the arrows remain, now cryptic and forlorn as the relics of an alien civilization.

(A montage of relics of the past- cryptic now, they guided the Bird Men of yesteryear.)

I was thinking about a trip by car, but obviously, the arrows are not tied to the modern road network. Then I thought about hiring a plane and a pilot and going to see them myself.

That brought back memories of a marvelous book years ago, written by ex-Navy pilot Steven Coontz, author of the Flight of the Intruder and some other thrillers. The one that stuck with me was a much more honest and personal account of his love-hate relationship with a 1943 Stearman open-cockpit biplane.

That was enough to hook me right there. In my Fleet days, I had flown a few hops in the venerable workhorse A-6, and I thoroughly enjoyed the launch and recovery process on USS Forrestal.

Zero to flying in a couple of seconds, the kick in the gut as powerful as a punch from Mike Tyson.

On one sortie, I even had a chance to personally take the first battle-group image of the Soviet Kirov cruiser on her maiden deployment to the Med, her proud wake shouting out: Warship!

(Kirov the way we say her that fall day in 1989 from T-Bone’s A-6. Close aboard pass, anyone? “Welcome to the Med!”)

But enough of that- suffice it to say that there was compelling interest in the memories of Coontz’s Navy days, and the freedom that came with his best-sellers to indulge in something truly quixotic: the refurbishment of the ancient Boeing Stearman biplane, and a three-month adventure, flying across America’s heartland.

Of course, we know aviation today as a sort of low-grade torture conducted in large aluminum tubes, with harassment by uniformed thugs and accompanied by inconvenience and discomfort.

General Aviation is a horse of a different color. Operating from small and sometimes uncontrolled fields, there is a wild freedom of movement in the small aircraft, and a boundless mobility. The account of his roaming around the country is contained in “Cannibal Queen,” the name he bestowed on the Stearman for its quirky handling.

(Stearman painted in Navy colors, like the one Steven Coontz owns and flies).

Between the A-6 Intruder and the Stearman, this was personal. Dad qualified in the Stearman in 1944 or early ’45- I would have to dig out his logbook down at the farm to confirm the date.

His interest in aviation did not wane after the war ended, and he kept flying in the Reserves, though Big Mama made him quit flying in the Reserves in the mid-1950s, admonishing him that he had three little ones for whom to provide, and enough was enough. I remember sitting at the dinner table for that discussion.

Dad would still take us to fly-ins when they occurred in the fields north of Detroit, and my brother and I were astonished when Raven walked up to a barnstormer who was flogging a Stearman around the country, handed him $25, and bundled the three of us into the front cockpit for a couple quick and astonishing circuits of the grass field.

Our barnstormer was intimately connected with his machine, and I remember only the exhilaration, not the concern that Coontz described as he mastered the tail-dragger’s antics on landing. I can understand how alien it is, landing with the nose canted up, obscuring the polit’s view of the runway. Big Mama was horrified as we gushed about the adventure on our return in the Rambler station Wagon.

With the exception of a distant memory of a flight on a TWA DC-3 to Cleveland one time, all my aviation experience except for that biplane ride has been on tricycle gear, where the pilot gets to see everything that is coming.

Anyway, renting a Stearman (and pilot) to go look at concrete arrows would be an expensive taxi- but it would also open up a window to see something of the old days. Barnstorming.

Damn, that would be fun.

I was turning that over in my mind when I remembered what I had seen in the local paper down at Refuge Farm last weekend.

The big Culpeper air show is coming on October 10th. The theme this year is to honor the 70th anniversary of the debut of the AT-6 Texan, or SNJ in Navy parlance. The SNJ was another trainer that Dad flew- a modern looking mono-winged, closed-canopy, radial-engine airplane.

There are still a fair number of them around, since they are not nearly as complex (or difficult to manage) as the real combat aircraft of the day. Which is not to say that the Texans were not pressed into combat service.

They were a front line airplane for the Syrian Air Force, of all things, in the 1948 war the established the sate of Israel, and served as Forward Air Control birds in Vietnam.

(A brace of AT-6 Texans in this most excellent Kodak color shot from 1943).

I am betting there might be a dauntless airman offering rides at the Air Show. It won’t be for $25 bucks, though. These days that would not pay to turn over the radial engine.

I don’t think I can afford to hire a warbird for a flight across the country- but I might be able to spring for a couple circuits over T. I. Martin airfield, conveniently located on the Brandy Station battlefield.

For a couple extra bucks, I might convince the pilot to make a bombing run on Refuge Farm.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303