Back in the day when I thought I needed to experience one of everything, I bought a little Cessna 150 from an old crop duster friend of mine. He took me up in that thing in the middle of summer and let me fly it around some dusty pastures out here in Real Texas, told me to always look for a dirt road to land on if I had trouble. He gave me a few other tips and after another trip or two it was up, up, and away for me.
I entered the world of General Aviation.
I flew around for a while and decided to go ahead and get legal and found an instructor who put in enough hours with me to get me certified. He even ‘cut my shirtail off’ even though that should have been done much earlier.
There were several of us who fit the same category as me at my little county airport. Just country boys who liked to fly. Some were a lot better pilots than others and some had gotten their same start through that crop duster friend of ours.
There were Cessna 150′s, Cessna 182′s, a Cessna P210RG, A Piper or two including a couple of guys who shared a little Piper Cub. I flew nearly all those types of planes, but preferred the Cessna. It just seemed to float better.
A good friend wanted to learn to fly and I handed him the keys to my plane and he got an instructor and soon he was a certified pilot. He came to me soon after he got his license and informed me that “We” needed to get a bigger airplane. I said OK, and he found a Cessna 182. That thing felt like a rocket ship to us compared to the 150. And it was! It had long range tanks and you could cover a lot of ground with it. I loved that plane.
There were several times we would be at the airport trading stories and one day several of us ‘nearly’ decided to get a helicopter. Thanks goodness we didn’t. The only helicopters I had been in was a Huey and an old grasshopper looking chopper idiot Airborne guys would jump out of. As they say, why would anyone jump out of a perfectly good aircraft?
The waning interest in getting a helicopter probably saved most of our lives at the time.
There were a few other stages I passed through including motorcycles, boats, and RV’s. The next one will probably be a fast little Corvette or something older men get. But I’ll always remember my flying days out in Real Texas where you could circle around for a few hours like a buzzard without much danger of running into anyone else.
Now on the other hand, If I could do a fly-by like some of these young guys in the jets they are flying, I don’t think I could have asked for anything more……
As they say in my part of Texas……hold my beer and watch this:
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If you don’t have a smile on your face and a proud feelin’ in your chest after watchin’ that, you are definitely not American and certainly not a Real Texan!!
P.S. I always new you were an old buzzard, but I didn’t know you’d admit it.