flying box, a box that flies

By s.r.g. | Published: 4 February 2010

We were nowhere near Area 51. I only mention it because somebody inevitably will if I don’t. But there was that abandoned airfield that bumped up against the road along the fence where I’d been living in the caravan for almost a year.
The land was mine as far as the deed goes. Uncle Sal left it to me in his will. Didn’t know I had an Uncle Sal. Still, when a couple of lawyers in Armani suits sit across the kitchen table from you at your mother’s house where you’ve been living since your wife kicked you out a few weeks earlier, you don’t take much convincing. Of course that’s not what happened. No lawyers in Armani suits. Just got the deed in the mail with a couple of forms. All I had to do was sign them in front a notary and send them back. Twelve point six five acres halfway between Uvalde, Texas and the Mexican border belonged to me. Didn’t have a clue or anything about the neighborhood, the population, things indigenous or what.

As a child growing up in a neighborhood of crispy green St. Augustine lawns, I remember airplanes flying over our house on approach to some landing field or airport or both. Those were days when propeller driven aircraft outnumbered jet planes. We were all impressed and thrilled by the novelty and sleekness of any jet’s wings slanting back, a distinguishing characteristic the looks of which alone seemed to make it look like it was flying at higher speed. Those were the days when sonic booms were still allowed over cities. We would hear at least one a day, sometimes three. It got to the point we didn’t pay attention anymore. So many planes flew over our neighborhood I thought that’s just how things were, everywhere, anywhere in the world.

I remember a sleek, dart-looking plane towing another, sleeker, more dart-like plane behind it, so low and so fast and so colorful, only those of us who saw it would believe it. Our descriptions to the grownups, together and separately, all agreed. Our parents didn’t buy it. No harm, as far as they were concerned. Way to put a story together and stick to it, guys. Just don’t come up with one that’ll get anyone in trouble or hurt anybody. That was the consensus of the adult vibe. After that, nobody cared. We saw strange ships over our streets and houses, took note, but never mentioned it except to each other.

A beautiful Prop Jet Electra, so huge it seemed to float, was whistling its way toward the Gulf of Mexico. The sun had just gone below the horizon and darkness would not follow that dusk for another ten minutes or so. I don’t know why, but I happened to have a flashlight, a torch. Over a foot long and stainless steel, ribbed to prevent loss-of-grip, this was the prized flashlight of my father’s household. I had no business playing with it, knowing as well as I knew it was not a toy.

I pointed that flashlight toward the cockpit of that Prop Jet. I clicked the flash button on its side randomly, carefully aiming so that the pilot might see it. Immediately the plane changed course, quite sharply, slowed even more until almost stalling above me. A bright spotlight on its belly began blinking in what seemed to be a deliberate pattern. If it was Morse code, I didn’t know, couldn’t have known. The flashing stopped. The engines throttled up and the ship flew away more quickly than it arrived. Only few experiences have allowed me a glimpse into absolute fear. That was one of them. I went home and placed the flashlight back in it’s cradle near the utility drawer and sneaked into my room where I changed my urine-soaked clothes.

My favorite planes, the ones I found most amazing, were what people called “flying boxcars.” As far as I could tell, these planes had two fuselages with huge engines at the front of each as they attached the wings on either side of the central cabin, the boxcar section, the front of which was the loading area with the cockpit overhead. What was so amazing about this design was that the nose section opened like a door, hinges on one side, more like a shell than a door, control cockpit and all. This, I learned, from the books at the library. This I remember. Where the library was located, I do not. No clue.