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Flights of conflict
Here are two books about flying antique airplanes coast to coast: Both are written by sensitive and intelligent individuals. One I couldn’t put down. The other I can’t bring myself to pick up again, having read the first two chapters.
What’s the difference? Conflict – and the resolution of conflict. The physical challenge of flying an antique aircraft coast-to-coast without radio or modern flight instruments isn’t enough. They both do it. And though I am an airplane buff from way back, I really don’t want to read about another airplane.
The book I can’t finish – or really get into – is Richard Bach’s “Biplane.” The subject sounds fascinating to someone who is a fan of flight and has a special interest in the Golden Age of flight. Bach’s biplane is from that era. But it is just canvas and wood and wires and engine and while Bach describes his experience well, I know about the wind in your face and the wires singing meaningful tunes. The plane talks to you. That's good for a chapter. But beyond that Bach is trying to live in another era, and that’s simply impossible and in the final analysis the two characters in this book – he and the biplane – are not enough to sustain my interest.
Buck’s book goes way beyond this. What I really want to know is not whether or not Rinker Buck and his brother can get their ancient, rebuilt Piper Cub from the East Coast to the West Coast. I’m sure they can. What I want to know is can they resolve their feelings about one another and their domineering, one-legged, bull-shit spewing father? There’s a wonderful relationship triangle at work throughout the book and the tension is delightful, as is the resolution. That’s what had me picking up “Flight of Passage” any time I had a spare minute during the past week.
The title states one theme – the passage into adulthood of two teenage boys in America in the mid-1960s. But if that was the real theme of the book I don’t think it would have held my attention so well. For one thing, there are points in the book where I don’t even like these guys – where I think they are irresponsible, idiotic teenagers – sort of like me at that age ;-) No, I found this book fascinating on several levels:
1. I love the old J-3 Piper Cub. This is artifact envy. To me the Cub is the quintessential small private plane. If I think of airplane, a Cub is likely to be the first image in my head. I hasten to add I have never flown in one. For that matter, I have never flown a cub or any other plane. I’m an armchair pilot whose flying is limited to radio controlled models, Microsoft Flight Simulator (one of the few things that company has done really right), and books. For me it’s all a flight of fancy.
2. Rinker Buck started his career as a reporter for the Berkshire Eagle, the sort of small, daily paper with a reputation for solid journalism that I found at the New Bedford Standard-Times when I arrived there in 1965. He is 15 when he makes this flight, but he puts off writing about the experience for 30 years and I think that is what makes the book. The result is he says things about his relationship to his brother, the 17-year-old pilot in this venture, and his father, that I don’t think he would have said – or even understood – at an earlier age.
3. His experiences with family are similar enough – and different enough – to my own to really hold my attention. He doesn’t sugar coat stuff. He cuts through the myth of the Kennedyesque image his family had in the 1960s and reveals a family that while loving and functional, does not really function in the way we expect it to.
Oh, I think there are folks out there who might enjoy reading about Bach and his biplane. Maybe on some other day I would too. But Rinker Buck’s “Flight of Passage” is the right stuff – not for macho heroics, but for getting a close look at teenage arrogance, stupidity, love, frustration, jealousy and satisfaction from the thoughtful, polished perspective of an accomplished, middle-aged writer.
In the end I suspect there are two “passages” here – one was for Buck, the teenager, crossing America with his brother. The other was for Buck, the middle-aged writer, coming at last to grips with the strained and strange relationships in his family as he wrote this book.