The Cannibal Queen Read online

  Much to my surprise, I make it safely to the runway.

  While I am waiting for my joyriders at Westchester County, I call the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome at the phone number that is listed on the brochure that Tom Cawley gave me. A personable young woman answers. I ask if I may fly a Stearman into their aerodrome tomorrow morning to visit and she says yes, as if this request is quite common. The strip is only 2,000 feet long, she informs me; there is no Unicom but there is a wind sock, and I use the strip at my own risk.

  I have taken so many risks to get this far that the burden of one more won’t be noticeable. I assure her that she will see me on the morrow.

  My joyriders are Paul and Chicquita McCarthy, residents of Roosevelt Island in the East River in the heart of the naked city, and they don’t own a car. They are venturing into the wilds of Westchester County by bus, aerial tram, taxi, train, and taxi again. Sitting in the cafe of the tiny Westchester airport terminal sipping coffee served by a surly waitress, I decide to rent a car and drive them home. No doubt they will arrive exhausted by their public transport ordeal.

  That is the way it goes. Paul and Chicquita emerge from the taxi and stand blinking in awe at the wide-open spaces of Westchester County, the uncharted wilderness north of the Bronx. New Yorkers tend to forget how nice the sky looks without buildings poking holes in it.

  Their rides go okay except for the fact that I make two truly terrible landings. I flare too high, then await that sickening moment when forward motion stops and the plane starts to fall … straight down. This is a religious experience. If I have not sinned too wickedly the moment of truth is swiftly over as the tail wheel touches, then the main mounts. If I have committed serious transgressions since my last conversation with the Almighty the moment lasts and lasts, then ends with a terrific thump.

  Dear God, we must stop meeting like this!

  After dinner in an Italian restaurant on the outskirts of White Plains, we venture forth southbound on the freeway with me at the wheel. The trip is a revelation. These New Yorkers have absolutely no idea which highway leads where. Even Ed Koch would be appalled.

  “Queens, go to Queens,” Chicquita says, which would probably be sound advice if I knew how to get to Queens.

  “The George Washington Bridge,” Paul suggests when he sees a sign with an arrow.

  For some reason I have gathered the impression that day that the George Washington Bridge spans the Hudson River and would take us to New Jersey, and I voice that suspicion now.

  “The Triborough Bridge,” Paul says shamelessly, without a trace of embarrassment.

  “No,” his wife insists, “FDR Drive.”

  My guides to the Bad Apple are two country cousins just in from the Great Bend of the Yukon.

  They finally agree on the Triborough, which does indeed lead to Queens. Soon we are cruising slowly through the true heart of the city of New York, the neighborhoods with people lounging on stoops on a hot summer’s evening, kids playing on the sidewalk, teenagers committing romance at corners, every street lined with cars as far as the eye can see.

  Even I can see the character of the neighborhoods change, almost from block to block. Traffic is heavy, mostly young men cruising in loud old cars and spending more time looking out the windows at the girls on the corners than at other traffic. Manhattan is the New York of my experience—this is another world altogether.

  My passengers know to go south to 31st Avenue and to follow it west to the bridge to Roosevelt Island. There are actually empty parking places on the island and I whip the rental into one. In all the years I’ve been visiting New York, these are the first empty parking places I’ve ever seen. On the sidewalks are hordes of awestruck natives who have traveled for miles to gaze at these rarities. We fight our way through into the courtyard of the McCarthys’ building, where we stand looking at the lights of Manhattan across the East River as the sky turns black.

  “How are you ever going to get back to White Plains?” they ask.

  I strut, I posture, I play the role. I can retrace my path, I hope.

  I only make two wrong turns on my journey. Eventually I do arrive in White Plains, and even more amazing, I actually find a hotel. Hotels north of midtown Manhattan are devilishly difficult to find—apparently tourists never venture here.

  That night getting ready for bed, I fret about my landings with the McCarthys and the upcoming landing on the 2,000-foot grass strip at Rhinebeck.

  “It has a dip in it,” Tom Cawley told me. “You’ll come floating down with the ground dropping away at about the speed you’re descending. Hold everything. The ground will start coming the other way.”

  That would be a hell of a place to flare too high. I can see myself running out of airspeed and ideas and having a religious experience at the place where the ground starts to rise. Ouch!

  I decide that the problem is that I have been too concerned about nose movement and crosswind drift and relying too much on my peripheral vision to pick up my height above the ground. I resolve to consciously look down to the left, then the right, before I start my landing flare.

  I crawl into bed and lie there thinking about how it will be tomorrow on that little grass strip with a dip in it nestled amid the trees, how it will look, how I’ll handle it, how the Queen will feel. Come in slow and not too steeply, that is the key. I am still thinking about it when I drift off to sleep.

  13

  THERE IS A HIGH THIN OVERCAST THIS MORNING, WAY UP AT 25,000 feet, the Flight Service briefer said. The front that is stalled over New Jersey is supposed to start tracking northward. Visibility is excellent as I fly north from Westchester County headed for the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome.

  At last it comes into view. There are no other planes aloft— I look very carefully indeed. Since they don’t have a Unicom frequency here, I cross over the runway at a thousand feet and stare downward, trying to find the wind sock that the woman on the phone said would be there. Blast, I can’t find it. I make another circuit, still looking. Well, at Westchester County the winds were out of the north. This strip is oriented north and south, so I’ll come in from the south and if I feel the plane floating on me, I’ll wave off.

  When you’re landing with the wind behind you, the plane actually passes over the ground faster than it usually does, so it doesn’t appear to descend at its normal angle. I call this sensation floating. Two thousand feet is plenty of runway for a Stearman, but tailwinds cause the plane to cover ground quickly.

  I set up a circling descent at 15 inches of manifold pressure, airspeed at 75, five MPH slower than usual. Trim set, mixture up, prop forward to full increase, everything is set. I straighten her out and let her descend. Looking very nice, coming down between the trees, with no apparent tailwind or crosswind, I elect to continue the approach.

  In seconds I am there. Consciously looking down to judge my height, I flare. And float a tad, that must be the dip … now the Queen touches on all three wheels and stays planted. I apply the brakes and slow to taxi speed.

  This is better than sex!

  I park the Cannibal Queen as far off the runway as I can, right near the grandstand, then kill the engine.

  As the silence engulfs me I take off the goggles and headset and look around. Not a soul in sight. The empty grandstand, a gorgeous red high-wing monoplane tail-dragger parked down at the bottom of the gorge—yes, that dip in the runway is really a gorge. Calling it a dip is serious understatement. Looking at the runway now, it does indeed descend into the gorge, then there is a long gentle hill leading northward—I landed on this slope—and it crests way up there somewhere to the north amid the forest.

  I lucked out. This strip is safe only when coming in from the south. And all takeoffs should be to the south, down this long slope, regardless of the wind. The wind should be of little concern here amid these trees, which pretty much guarantee that there will never be a crosswind at ground level. Maybe at a hundred feet, treetop level, but not on final or touchdown, where it counts.

/>   Actually, I conclude, this is a perfect strip for antique biplanes. A little downhill run to help them accelerate, no cross-wind, a little uphill run on landing to help planes without brakes get stopped.

  Two men come wandering up the hill toward the Queen. The one in torn, oil-soaked jeans and faded pullover is Gene DeMarco. The other introduces himself as Jim. They invite me to look the place over. The girl at the gate won’t be in until 10 o’clock and I can pay her when I get around to it.

  “Be sure to go up the hill”—they gesture to the west—“to see the museums after you look around here. You won’t want to miss that.”

  And I am on my own. I cross the runway to the eastern side and climb a gentle grade into the trees. Here are some open-sided hangars that resemble a farmer’s tractor sheds—and there are a couple antique tractors in them—packed with airplanes. I try to photograph them but the light inside is terrible.

  Here I find a 1927 New Standard biplane. The span of the upper wing is much longer than the lower one. The landing gear is a system of trusses to support the craft’s weight. The shock absorber system consists of bungee cords. There are only a half dozen or so New Standards still extant, and here I stand looking at one. This one has a black fuselage and red wings and has lettering on the side that invites you to “See the Hudson River Valley by air.”

  This is the same type of airplane that Noel Wein took to Alaska in the ’20s when he became the first bush pilot in that state. He flew it in the summer on wheels and for several Alaskan winters on skis. The New Standard only cruised at 75 miles per hour, but it held four passengers in the front cockpit, so a man could haul enough people or freight to make it pay, even in Alaska.

  I try to imagine myself hunkered in the rear cockpit of this plane, flying four sourdoughs and all their equipment in the forty-below-zero still air over a frozen white Alaskan wilderness, with nothing but a wet compass for a nav aid, one that often reads forty degrees off that close to the pole. Of course there are mountains all over that you can’t top, but if you can see and recognize them, you can’t get too lost. Wein drained the engine oil after every flight while it was still warm, then the following morning used a blowtorch to warm the cylinders before pouring in the oil that he had just cooked on a potbellied stove. And I think a summer jaunt around the lower forty-eight in a Stearman is an adventure! Ha!

  An hour later in one of the three large Quonset huts that house Cole Palen’s collection, I find another New Standard, a twin of the first one. There are only six or seven left in the world and Palen owns two.

  Crossing the runway to the western side I stop to look at the gorgeous red fabric monoplane parked there. Gene DeMarco sees me examining it and comes over. It’s his plane, a 1940 Howard wearing a 450-HP Pratt & Whitney engine. The interior is exquisite, reminding me of a 1950 DeSoto that I once saw displayed at a car show. Gene restored this aircraft himself and won the 1979 Grand Champion Award at Oshkosh. Looking at it, I can see that the award was richly deserved.

  Later I find Gene working on the original rotary engine of the Sopwith Camel replica, preparing it for flight. He takes the time to explain the workings of the engine to me. As I listen that doggerel from World War I keeps running through my head: “A Fokker, a Snipe, and a Bentley Camel, met for a scrap over Beaumont Hamel …”

  Gene’s hands are the hands of a workingman—short nails, thick fingers, with ground-in dirt. It is obvious that working on airplanes is a passion with him. We should all be this lucky, to have a trade that fulfills us so completely.

  I wander on in awe, trying to take everything in. There are treasures everywhere. Near the runway on the western side are a half dozen hangars that house the airplanes currently starring in the Old Rhinebeck airshow that is performed every Saturday and Sunday, two shows a day, from June 15 to October 15, weather permitting. The place is open for tours Monday through Friday from 10 A.M. until 5 P.M. from May 15 through October. The aircraft used in the show are original World War I fighter planes or replica aircraft with original engines.

  Here you can watch the replica Sopwith Camel with an original rotary engine take to the skies. You can see a 1914 Avro 504-K, a 1918 Spade XIII, a 1915 Nieuport 10, a Fokker DR-1 Triplane, a 1911 Bleriot XI, a 1917 Morane-Saulnier A-1, a 1918 Curtiss Jenny—and they all fly on weekends.

  The place resembles nothing so much as the ultimate farmer’s fantasy storage shed out behind the barn. Treasures from yesteryear sit in the shadows gathering dust, dripping oil into delicate little puddles in the dirt while cats wander about on their eternal quest for mice. Antique planes, cars, motorcycles and aircraft engines are crammed in everywhere.

  Up in the museum—the three Quonset huts—you will find not only the second New Standard, but a 1929 Pitcairn Mail-wing wearing a 220-HP Continental radial engine, a 1931 Bird Model K with a 125-HP Kinner B-5 radial, a 1929 American Eagle with a 100-HP Kinner, a Waco Model 9 dating from around 1925 to 1927, and a Waco Model 10 from 1927 to 1930. These are just a few of the treasures.

  None of these planes are in museum display condition, and that somehow seems appropriate. They are working aircraft flying every weekend, or retired working aircraft awaiting rebuild or refurbishment so that they may fly again. To the best of my knowledge, this is the only place in the world where you can see aircraft of this vintage fly every weekend, all summer long.

  You lean over and blow a layer of dust off a fabric-covered wing, study the oily engine, and a little voice whispers that you could climb into the cockpit and fly this thing if only someone would swing the prop for you. You couldn’t, of course. I couldn’t.

  These planes need the hand of a highly skilled pilot thoroughly schooled in their quirks. These machines with rotary engines built their reputations in World War I killing the fledglings who tried to fly them. As many as thirty percent of the British pilots on their first solo in the Sopwith Camel crashed, and most of those crashes were fatal. Those were the statistics bandied about in Parliament at the time, although the Royal Flying Corps denied that the casualty rate was that high.

  These airplanes became obsolete because better, safer aircraft with larger performance envelopes and more reliable engines came along. The pilots who flew them switched willingly and thankfully to machines that were better in every way imaginable. Only now, when the world of aviation includes spaceships that can go to the moon, do we look back so nostalgically at the early days.

  Cole Palen started looking back as a very young man. The Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome and collection is his. He bought the airplanes one by one wherever he could find them, sometimes literally in farmer’s barns. He restored the originals to flying condition, gave people rides, finally started airshows at the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome.

  Palen wasn’t there the day I visited. I would like to meet him. Here was a man trying to make a living who attended auctions, hunted through barns, attics, tee-hangars and the pages of Trade-A-Plane. He paid hard-earned money for trashed-out old planes and engines that no one else wanted, convinced that somehow, some way, he could make them pay. He has. He’s even built replicas of planes that no longer exist from original drawings.

  I doubt if Palen is getting rich on the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, but he’s making it. And the world is a richer place.

  I ended my visit to Rhinebeck watching Mike Lockhart and his three children wash the original 1918 Curtiss Jenny. They pulled her from her shed into the weak sunlight and went after the winter’s accumulation of dust and dirt with rags, buckets and a hose. Mike is a professional aircraft restoration expert who works for Buehler Aviation Research in Florida. On his vacations he returns to Rhinebeck, where he grew up, and washes aircraft and helps with the mechanical chores.

  As I watched the Lockhart children, all under ten years, scrub the Jenny and get filthy, I couldn’t help wondering how many kids in America today have even touched a Jenny, let alone scrubbed and poked and prodded and examined every nook and cranny. To the best of my knowledge, there are only four or five Jennys sti
ll flying in the world. The bath, Mike explained, is preparatory to the Jenny’s annual mechanical inspection so she can be used this summer in the airshow. Maybe this coming winter she will be overhauled.

  The Cannibal Queen accelerated readily on the hilltop—she was off before she got to the downslope. I climbed above the treetops feeling like Eddie Rickenbacker and headed east looking for Huns.

  The FBO in Meriden, Connecticut, Robert Carlson, had the naked fuselage of a Stearman parked beside his office building. Carlson and his partner are going to restore her. She was a sprayer—the spray tank that filled the place that the front cockpit occupies in mine sat beside the fuselage on the ground. The 450-HP Pratt & Whitney was off for overhaul. The wings were in the hangar being inspected.

  I carefully examined the bare fuselage structure. This is the way the Cannibal Queen looked after Skid Henley finished welding on a new tail section. For the first time I began to appreciate the true magnitude of the job Henley, and these fellows, faced.

  Carlson took photos of my Stearman to send to his partner, who is away for the summer. He told me the caption will read, “Finished the Stearman and she’s flying great. Wish you were here.”

  Carlson drove me to a Taco Bell and bought me a burrito. Three years ago he and his partner quit well-paying corporate jobs, he said, sold their toys—among them a North American AT-6 Texan—and got the city lease on this FBO business. So far they’re loving the work and making a living, although at times it’s a tight squeak.

  I admire the courage of these optimists who believe in aviation in spite of everything. Like me, they love flying and all that goes with it. And like Gene DeMarco and Cole Palen, they are working like hell to create the niche that they want to be in.

  Somewhere over New Hampshire I fly out from under the clouds. All that remains between me and the sun is an extremely thin cirrus layer up high where the angels sing. The sun feels good.