Dad said, “The Cowboys say they have gathered all the cattle from Fog Basin. We better check. A stray calf would never make it through the winter.”
Dad never wasted much time with words. Sometimes he didn’t even talk. Just pointed. If he flicked his finger, that meant, “Get with it!” And he had big fingers!
His words sounded like work to me. I had been around him all my life. I could read his words, and his finger.
Strangely, he added more words. “I’m gonna fly the Basin.”
My ten year old ears perked up. I had never seen dad “Fly” anything. He didn’t even drive fast, (except on gravel roads, according to Mom, and slower on pavement, she said.) Fog Basin was, and still is, the ruggedest ten square miles in the Badlands. I wondered how he was going to do that.
Cutting to the quick, I asked, “Dad, how you gonna do that?”
Dad explained. “I hired a plane and pilot from Hot Springs to fly me over the Basin. Cows have a harder time hiding from a plane. I will tell the pilot to fly low and slow.”
A plane?! An honest to goodness airplane? Out here? Where will it land? The road is too narrow! Our fields all have terraces! The main field has a creek (a “crick” back then) carved through its middle. The pasture will be too bumpy! How will he land??
I asked, “Dad! How will he land?”
“Well, I suppose we have to wait and see,” said Dad.
I was excited! A plane! A plane I could touch! Wow! 1960 is going to be a good year!
I was scared. The airplane I was going to touch might be a pile of iron smashed into a terrace or crick bank. This is a terrible year for a plane wreck!
I wanted to ride in that airplane! Should I ask? What if Dad says No? What if the plane can’t lift us if I sit in the back? What if the plane wrecks before I can take a ride? Oh, wait, what if the plane wrecks in the badlands? Who will find us? Who will even know we wrecked? Oh, shucks, it won’t wreck. Not this time! I am sure! Uh, pretty sure.
My heart was pounding. My hands were sweating. I was afraid to ask. I took my chance. “Dad, uh, can I go along?”
My sister’s ears perked up, too. The eldest of my three sisters, all younger than me, chimed in with her demand for equal rights. My baby brother was too young to talk, and, even then, likely too smart to risk his life like this, anyway. “Dad,” she said, “If Glen can go, can I go too?”
Mom’s maternal ears had already perked up. She was now frowning. Two children down in flames? At the same time? Who will find them? Who will rescue them? “Dale,” she said. “Is it safe for our kids to ride in the airplane over the Badlands?”
Dad, seldom to express emotion and certainly never anxiety or fear, said, “Well, we better wait and see.”
What?? Wait and see what? (Patience was not my strong suit.) I blurted out, “What?? Wait and see what?”
Mom, wanting much more reassurance than she was hearing, verged on vetoing the whole idea. Babies were designed to walk on solid earth! They were not made to float around over knife-edged ridges and sun-baked gullies. Her babies did not need to risk such silly things. They fall off enough cliffs as it is. No need to fall further. She steadied her voice and raised a rational, logical question. (Dad liked logical questions.) “How many seats does the airplane have?”
Dad said, “Well, I don’t know. The last airplane had only two seats. One for me and one for the pilot. But sometimes they fly with four seats. I guess we will just have to see when the plane gets here.”
Mom looked like she had been betrayed by the judge. Whose side was he on, anyway? Think about the kids! Then an idea came to her mind. A genius Idea. A Winner! “What if the kids get air sick?”
“Hmm,” Dad said. “That could be a problem.”
Mom’s snarl slowly turned into a victorious smile. But then . . .Jacque, her only eldest daughter, said, “Mom, we kids get car sick. You give us a pill that stops us from throwing up. Why don’t you give us a pill for flying?”
Mom seemed to collapse in defeat. Dad was no help to her. Her daughter was too fast with a solution to the problem. Mom found the pill bottle. She gave each of us the maximum pills allowed for kids our age, one. (She might of, well, I can’t swear, because I did not really see, but she might have kept a couple of pills for personal use, you know, considering her long, anxious wait in case we actually took off.)
We all went outside to wait for the airplane. Dad said, “Keep watch over the hill this side of the Flying Hawks’ house.” The sun was shining. The air seemed still. Comfortably warm. We waited. And waited. And we got sleepy. We didn’t hear anything. Only a fly buzzing around looking for dog scraps or a mouse tail the cats might have caught.
Suddenly, Dad said, “Come on, Everyone! Jump into the car.” Dad always had the best ears. He could hear a mosquito a mile away. He must have heard the airplane coming!
Dad drove us across the field to the county road. A tiny airplane came around the edge of the Flying Hawk hill. The little plane and its wings made a capital T as it grew larger and larger. It seemed to grow downward. Its three wheels could almost touch the ground. And then the wheels did touch! They touched the county road! The plane rolled on the gravel road and came to a stop right in our driveway! Its engine made a loud roar and dust flew up and around and the tail of the plane swung around and down in our driveway so that it looked like a rocket ready to shoot off for the moon!
Dad got out of the car and talked with the pilot. It seemed they were looking at a map and maybe marking corners and places to search for cows. Finally, it seems dad was getting down to the important stuff. He looked over his shoulder at us, and the pilot looked up at us. He nodded! Whoopee!!!
The pilot lifted a five gallon can out of the back seat of the plane and set it among some tall weeds in the bar pit. He mentioned something about spare gas for the ride home.
He waved and Jacque and I raced to his side. He tucked us into the tiny back seat and snapped seat belts around us. We each had a window to see outside. But the sills seemed so high! We waved at mom as she stood by the car. She held her other babies close. She turned aside dabbing her eyes. Maybe a bug flew into her eyelashes. Dad and the pilot clambered into the front seats.
Pretty soon, the engine came to life. Dust flew and it became too loud to talk. The pilot pointed the plane down the road right where he came from and soon the noise of the road stopped rumbling and the wings above lifted us up and over the highline wires. Our pink stucco house looked very clear to see, but tiny! Like a toy house. And the car. It was miniature sized! Amazing!
In only a few minutes we had flown past the Spring Field and the North Field and across White River and past Cedar Butte. We flew along the edge of Cuny Table! And Fog Basin was below us!
A trip in a car would have taken at least a half hour, maybe an hour, to make the same trip. Especially if the bridges were washed out. (One of my old bosses, years later, had a favorite saying. “We will be at the meeting, the Good Lord willing. And the creeks don’t rise.” We all had the same problem, with bridges.)
The ground below was rugged, jagged, broken like giant, smashed egg shells or like mountains after an earthquake. The cricks and deep gullies and sharp banks made a thousand hiding spots. I had ridden that Basin with the other cowboys and knew how cows could hide. However, from our windows high up in the air, the ground looked almost smooth! Amazing!
The plane was so noisy, we kids could not really talk. We could point, and smile and nod, but no real conversation was possible. After a while, every creek and every gully liked like all the others. We started to nod, to doze off. Dang those little white pills! Sleep was not allowed! Not in this momentous aviation milestone! We fought against sleep. Our eyelids fought us! It was a wrestling match of the highest order. We were rescued from certain defeat by the pilot’s announcement we were turning toward home. Dad was pleased. He spotted no strays left behind!
Contrary to Mom’s concerns, the flight had been smooth and perfectly safe. No problems. “There was no reason to worry, Mom.” But the landing showed me the fright, er, flight was not yet over!
Of course, our pilot chose the county road again for his landing strip. He had made it look easy before. But now I could see the tall poles that held up high the electric lines. The poles stood very near the plane’s wing tips! That problem left my consciousness as soon as the wheels touched solid earth.
In the next instant, Sudden Death appeared! We landed, coasting at full speed. A car turned onto our road ahead! A head-on collision was seconds away! Mom was right! Flying is not safe!
But as soon as Harry Flying Hawk realized the danger, he slid his car to a stop and wheeled it into the bar pit. Harry had not expected a plane to swoop down right before his eyes! Our pilot breathed a sigh of relief and made his stop and turn-around very quickly this time. “Might be another car coming around the corner!”
The flight was super great! The excitement at the end made it even more memorable. The little white pills helped us stay relaxed for several more hours. As I recall, the whole family slept most of that afternoon. We all enjoyed “A moment of revery after a very exciting morning!”
