The Cannibal Queen Read online

  I have the Cannibal Queen flying high in the crisp, clean air at 5,500 feet. Visibility is 40 miles or so. I saw the tall buildings of downtown Boston off my right wing 30 miles away all the way across Massachusetts. In fact I saw them on the horizon as I climbed away from the Providence, Rhode Island, airport, a visible reminder that New England is small, like its namesake across the Atlantic.

  Passing over Concord, New Hampshire, I swing the Queen to 060 degrees, aiming to overfly Lewiston, Maine. My destination is Knox County Airport at Rockland, on the coast by Penobscot Bay. I called ahead from Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and the hotel has a room waiting. Normally I take potluck, but that seemed unwise with the Fourth of July just two days away. I like showers and clean sheets too much to relish the prospect of trying to sleep under a wing while swatting mosquitoes all night.

  Below me is a forested, hilly land dotted with lakes. I have never before been to Maine, so this will be fun. In fact, the only states that I had never visited before I started this trip were Maine, Vermont, and Alaska. Alaska won’t be graced with my presence this year, but Maine and Vermont soon will. Somehow I doubt that the governors of those states will be waiting at the airports to shake my hand.

  The big Lycoming drones steadily as the Queen flies through still, cool air. My leather flight jacket and jeans feel good today. From this height, with this visibility, navigation ceases to require much attention and I can relax and look at the sights.

  “Don’t you ever get bored up there?” someone once asked. No, I don’t. As the miles slowly pass I think of many things, of things I have done, of things I wish to do, of my children and my parents and people I have known. Over a mile above gorgeous country on a gorgeous day, my mind wanders freely.

  Up here life takes on its proper perspective. You are a mere gnat afloat in this endless sea of air, above this huge, sprawling land. You and your earthly concerns shrink to their true significance. Ambition, love, lust, acquisitiveness, pride, envy— all of these components of the human condition lose their attraction and their sting up here in the vastness of the sky.

  Today is my day to fly and get a glimpse of eternity. This is my day in the sun. Yet like all living things, I will grow old and my eyes will dim and someday soon I will again be a part of that earth below. Then it will be someone else’s turn to fly up here, breathe this pure air, feel the sun’s warmth on his arms and hands, look with mortal eyes toward that horizon that stretches into forever. Perhaps, just perhaps, he will do it in the Cannibal Queen or one of her sisters. With proper care this mechanical contrivance of Lloyd Stearman’s brain and the hands of Boeing craftsmen will still be flying long after I have joined Stearman in the grave. Stearman, the Wrights, my grandparents, my parents—all of those who went before.

  But that still lies ahead for me in this great adventure we call life. Today I am here, aloft. Today is my day. Today is my day to fly.

  14

  ROCKLAND, MAINE, JULY 4. THE RAIN PREDICTED FOR TODAY hasn’t arrived. Maybe tomorrow, when I’ll be trying to fly west. The morning dawned dead calm, the flags hanging lifeless from their poles.

  I studied the limp flags with mixed emotions. Flying the Cannibal Queen this past year I’ve become a fervid petitioner of Mother Nature and the Almighty—I’m unsure of just which is in charge of wind, theology being the arcane art that it is—to keep the air still, quiet. But this afternoon I am scheduled to go sailing on a small schooner in Penobscot Bay, and we won’t sail very far without wind. So today, Mom or Dad, as the case might be, please send a nice stiff ocean breeze. I don’t ask often for wind and I won’t make a habit of it, but today please favor your petitioner with a canvas-bellying breeze laden with salt and the smell of the sea.

  Sailing seems to me to be to boating what flying the Queen is to aviation. Biplanes and sailboats are craft from a time now past, short on the modern conveniences and technical advances that are supposed to improve our lives and somehow us. Both make light of the value of time, assuming in some Zen-like way that those who choose these forms of transport have plenty of it. More fundamental, in biplanes and sailing vessels the journey is more important than the destination. Modern forms of transportation reverse this priority—you board an airliner to go somewhere: the journey is merely an experience to be endured.

  By noon it was obvious that my petition had been received favorably in whatever headquarters it was routed to. The wind was a good ten knots out of the southeast.

  As 12:45 P.M. I was standing on the public pier in Rockland with my camera, a sweatshirt and a couple cans of grape soda pop in a bag. At five minutes before the hour a bewhiskered gent in a dark-blue cap came rowing through the anchorage in a double-ended wooden boat. He maneuvered expertly to the pier and slipped a rope over a thingy that had been provided. As he walked toward me I could see he was barefoot and had a modest tummy under the disheveled long-sleeved shirt and faded khaki trousers that hadn’t had a crease in years. No designer duds for this salt.

  “Mr. Coonts?”

  “Yes. You’re Captain Yossarian?”

  He smiled and led me back toward his boat. I studied this barefooted sailor as he rowed us through the anchorage. I confess, looking him over and feeling the motion of the little boat and the sea breeze on my face, I felt like Jim being rowed out to the ship that was to take him to Treasure Island. If only this barefoot sailor had had one peg leg and called me “Matey” …

  Captain Yossarian’s trim little schooner lay at the outer edge of the anchorage, which was why I hadn’t spotted her from the pier. With a green hull and black trim Annie McGee looked like the object of a man’s passion. She was a wooden ship— “boat” is a word that somehow implies one of those fiberglass things—and her deck was about half resanded. Yossarian later told me that he did all the sanding by hand. He didn’t trust a belt sander on those soft cedar planks.

  Captain Yossarian had one other passenger, a woman he introduced as Patty. She stepped very lively when Yossarian started issuing orders, which he did about sixty seconds after we were aboard. She obviously knew which rope was which and a lot of other nautical stuff. I watched as he and Patty untied this rope, pulled on that one, hooked up this and unhooked that.

  The triangular sail on the bowsprit went up first, then the funny rectangular one on the forward mast, then the mooring rope was let go. As the main sail on the aft mast went up, without fanfare or noise the sails filled out and Annie McGee began to move through the water with Patty at the tiller.

  “I never cease to be fascinated,” Yossarian remarked, “with the subtle way that sailing vessels just go in motion.”

  In moments we were clipping along to the northeast, out of the harbor into the huge open bay. Yossarian and Patty arranged themselves in the cockpit, so I did too. Yossarian adjusted a couple of ropes that trimmed the sails, then sat there looking all around.

  I like this aspect of sailing—apparently when you aren’t changing course, there is a lot of sitting around contemplating things.

  We got acquainted and they answered a good many simple questions from their passenger. Pretty soon we were discussing the breeze and the sea and other boats and having a fine time. Captain Yossarian and Patty were an excellent pair to go sailing with.

  You can hear a sailing vessel go through the water. Without engine noise or vibration, you can hear the water lapping at the hull. It’s a nervous sound, but very pleasant.

  The boat moves in response to the wind’s pressure on the sails and the action of the swells against the hull. The water was relatively calm and I didn’t feel even a touch of queasiness, which I feared I would. The wind blowing, the sails taut against the sky, the sun on the water, the motion of the boat—it was fascinating. I can see how a man could fall in love with it.

  “How fast are we going?” I asked.

  Yossarian studied the water flowing by, the angle of the sails and our heel, the strength of the wind, then said, “Oh, maybe three and a half or four knots.”

  He owned
a house in Rockland, he said, and did some graphic art. But his love was taking passengers sailing on Annie McGee. He had been sailing since he was “this high,” and made a gesture indicating a small boy. He had only flown once, he remarked, and the pilot let him fly the plane for twenty minutes, so if he ever decided to take lessons he had twenty minutes to put in the logbook. He had owned Annie McGee for four years. Her keel was laid in 1950 in Brunswick, Maine, by a builder who had a real day job. So working nights and weekends he took seven years to finish her. When Yossarian acquired her she had been neglected. He was fixing her up board by board as time and finances allowed.

  Patty had been a cook last summer on a cruise schooner and now was pushing paper ashore. She was learning to sail and tried to go out with somebody every time she had a day off. After we had been sailing for about an hour, she went forward and stretched out on the cedar deck for a nap. The boards were warm in the diffused sunlight and the motion of the schooner quite pleasant. If I had been an older hand at this, I would have enjoyed a nap too.

  All in all, it was the most delightful Fourth of July I have spent in many a year. Watching other boats pass by, waving, steering with the tiller and feeling the sea’s pressure on the rudder as I listened to Yossarian tell me about his ship, I felt completely relaxed. Normally I get this feeling only when flying way up high on a beautiful day. I decided that if I ever get tired of flying—fat chance!—or lose my medical certificate, I’m going to learn to sail. I know there are schools here and there that teach lawyers, lottery winners and heiresses how to do it, so I’ll find one and sign up.

  That evening I dropped into bed while the fireworks were booming over Rockland and promptly went to sleep. Sailing apparently has that effect.

  The day before the Fourth, I drove around Rockland and Rockport and Owls Head, the peninsula where the airport is located. I was impressed. The weather was warm, almost eighty degrees, the breeze just a zephyr, the white houses hard to look at in the sun. The lawns were neatly trimmed and the streets free of potholes. All in all, a person looking for a place in the United States to drop anchor could do a whole lot worse. They even had a McDonald’s.

  The next day I asked Captain Yossarian about the winters, and he told me they are usually long, cold and snowy. But this past winter, he said, it didn’t snow after January so the rain just made mud. He didn’t like mud.

  On the fifth of July I drove slowly through town at 7 A.M. on my way to the airport and looked again. I could live in a town like this on the coast of Maine. I can personally attest that the summers are fantastic, although Yossarian said fog often rolls in off the sea. One can see why this coast inspired artists like Winslow Homer and the Wyeths and politicians like James G. Blaine and George Bush.

  What the Maine coast doesn’t have are beaches with golden sand and warm water. Yossarian referred to the water as liquid ice. I dipped a hand in and quickly withdrew it. This ocean is the North Atlantic, folks, and it’s cold and gray all year long. The surf breaks on limestone and granite rocks. Still, if you can do without sand in your swimming trunks and the occasional frolic in the surf, I highly recommend the Maine coast. I’m coming back someday soon.

  I’m flying under the leading edge of a warm front, only this time I’m approaching from the cold side. This is the same front I flew under coming north through western Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It stalled there for three or four days, then gradually resumed its track to the northeast.

  The clouds are well above me—I’m flying at 2,000 feet—and thickening. I can no longer see shadows. The weather briefer at Flight Service predicted showers and low ceilings today over northern New Hampshire and Vermont, and isolated thunderstorms this afternoon. I hope to be through here before the thunderbumpers start cooking.

  Showers I can handle. Low ceilings I can handle. What I can’t handle are mountains obscured by clouds and mist. These old, eroded mountains are pale imitations of the Rockies, but a little mountain will kill you just as dead as a big one if you fly into it.

  From Rockland I flew north up the coast of Penobscot Bay. I hadn’t yet had enough of picturesque little villages huddled around harbors filled with boats. At Belfast I turned inland. Over Waterville I saw the low clouds over the mountains to the west. The mountains looked blue and indistinct in this moist air.

  Now west of Waterville, I let the Queen drift up to 2,300 feet and alter course twenty degrees or so to the left to hit Livermore Falls. I am paying close attention to the compass and meticulously time-ticking my chart, noting my position at least every five minutes. I have absolutely no intention of wandering through mountain valleys with no idea which valley I am in.

  Livermore Falls comes up right on the nose. Off to the right a big pulp mill in Wilton is belching smoke, which the wind is trailing off to the north, maybe slightly northwest. That’s about the same wind I have here at my altitude. I’ve got a ten degree left correction set and I’m making a good ground speed, so the wind is probably right from the south or slightly southeast.

  I cross Livermore Falls 55 minutes after I took off from Rockland. Another heading change, this time fifteen degrees left. In three minutes I cross over Canton Point and pick up the valley headed west. The valley has a river—the Androscoggin—and a road in it, and they are easy to follow. Off to my right are mountains higher than I am covered with trees. I can see a cloud coming up off the slope of one of them. That’s the goo that you can’t go under.

  Visibility is down to six or seven miles as I pass Mexico and Rumford and continue west up the valley. The Queen’s engine has been balky to start of late, almost as if the mixture is too rich. She catches only as I pull the mixture knob back from full rich. Maybe it’s the low altitude, but funny I didn’t notice that in Louisiana and Florida. Flying now up this New England mountain valley, this thought nags at me and I listen carefully to the engine while I check the oil pressure and temperature and cylinder head temp, then scan the earth below for likely looking emergency fields.

  You get in the habit of looking for places to land if the engine should quit. I have never lost an engine in 2,700 hours of flying, but there is always a first time. I imagine the engine will start running rough and coughing before it stops completely, if the problem is a thrown rod or plugged-up carburetor or busted valve. If something catastrophic happens, like the crankshaft breaking or seizing, then it will just quit dead without warning.

  That would be a once-in-a-lifetime thrill, I imagine. There’s a terrific scene in the movie Spirit of St. Louis in which Jimmy Stewart’s engine dies abruptly—he runs a fuel tank dry. Only a great actor could make that look of stupefied amazement so real that you know that is exactly how you would feel if it happened to you.

  In the Navy we referred to a moment like that as a lummer, a shot of cold urine to the heart. Actually the drug is adrenaline and the quantity is about a quart.

  Thank heavens the Cannibal Queen’s big Lycoming is humming like a champ. There are few places below that I would want to try to set her down and the clouds above prevent me from climbing higher to increase my options. I am in a valley now with mountains on both sides that are higher than I am.

  Passing Bethel I fly through my first spattering of rain. In a moment we are out of it. Visibility improves somewhat, up to ten miles or a little more. I can see the bulk of Mt. Washington rising ahead to my left, and I can make out the peak. So here, anyway, the clouds are above 6,288 feet, which is how high that monster is. From 2,300 feet it looks like an Alp. If the weather were better I would climb up and fly around the peak, just to say I did it.

  Abeam of it I catch my first glimpse of the runway at Mt. Washington Regional Airport. I’m ten or eleven miles from there but I give them a call. In less than thirty seconds I get an answer on Unicom: “Winds nil, landing runway 28, right-hand pattern, altimeter 30.07.”

  I announce that I will land straight in. The airport sits in a large, relatively flat, forested valley, three or four miles east of the town of Whitefield, New Ha
mpshire. The runway is wet.

  I make a fairly decent landing. This conscious look right, then left just before the flare is proving itself very well. Every landing I have made since I began using this technique has been satisfactory or better. Maybe I’m getting the hang of this tail-wheel stuff!

  Rain is misting down as I park. I take a squint back toward Mt. Washington but I can’t see it. First one, then three men come out to watch me fuel. They don’t have any Aeroshell 50-weight ashless dispersant oil, but after rejecting two quarts of mineral oil, I find some multiweight ashless dispersant in the FBO office. I buy it and pour it into the Queen.

  By now Her Royal Highness has a half-dozen admirers. I’m not jealous. The gorgeous old gal deserves every flirtatious glance sent her way. I’m well aware of the fact that all this attention is a tribute to Skid Henley and his craftsmanship, not to me.

  I use the phone to call Flight Service. The weather has not improved. Nor has it gotten worse. Yet for the first time the briefer talks about mountain obscuration. “Patchy,” he says.

  The rain is falling gently and steadily. The Queen’s admirers have retreated to cover. I walk around her, looking her over as I meditate on the situation for a minute or two. Then I plunk my bottom in the wet seat and strap in.

  The seal on the engine primer is apparently going. Since Florida it has been leaking fuel onto my fingers when I pump it. Now it squirts some. Great!

  I leave the mixture knob half open and crank the engine. She doesn’t fire. I prime another couple of squirts, open the mixture full rich, then retard it as I crank. The Lye fires and belches a cloud of white smoke and settles into a steady idle. I think at this altitude you must just retard the mixture knob quickly— that’s the hot engine start technique.

  With the wind sock hanging limp, I elect not to taxi the length of the runway to take off to the west. I add power and lift the tail and take off eastward and make a climbing turn. I will follow the highways through the valleys to Burlington, Vermont, on Lake Champlain, then call it a day. This would be the most scenic terrain in the East if I could just climb high enough to see it properly. Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day. It’s not like I’m really going somewhere.