The Cannibal Queen (30 page)

Last week in West Virginia, on the morning I left, the computer fell out of the back of Mom and Dad’s Jeep as they were driving to the airport. Apparently I hadn’t closed the rear door properly. The impact of a fall from a moving vehicle onto a concrete street broke the screen. In Colorado my computer doctor, a wizard named Fred Kleinberg, replaced the screen and ran the computer through its diagnostics program, then gave it a clean bill of health.

But it apparently expired last night while I was sleeping! Imagine the scene—there I was at 6
A.M
., the world’s most patient man, drizzle falling from endless low clouds on the morning I was to fly, staring at a dead computer and listening to Fred’s wife’s cheerful voice on her answering machine. No fools they, the Kleinbergs rig up their answering machine when they go to bed so that they won’t be disturbed by the Steve Coontses of the world, people who are constitutionally incapable of waiting until normal business hours to inflict their woes upon others.

Fred arrived at 8:30. He would have to ship my laptop away for repairs, so I borrowed my daughter Rachael’s.

The computer crisis resolved, I went to the airport and hung out.

I called the folks at Flight Service every few hours. They weren’t hopeful. This upslope was going to be around awhile. By noon the rain stopped but the visibility improved only a little and the clouds were as low as ever. That night the rain began again.

Wednesday was more of the same. At 10
A.M
. I called a taxi and started out the door with my bags, only to pause in the driveway and grope wildly for the ignition key to the
Cannibal
Queen. A mad search ensued. It was lost. Luckily the guys at the hangar had another, but dang nab it!

I crawled into the taxi with Rachael’s computer and my soft bag filled with underwear. At the airport John Weisbart and I went to breakfast while the
Cannibal Queen
got a wash from the Hotsy machine and rain continued to mist down.

The weather problem was only here on the Front Range, the briefer told me yet again. Cheyenne, Wyoming, was 2,500 broken, 10 miles visibility; Billings, Montana, was clear and 50. Yet the Rockies and the Snowy Range west of Cheyenne were obscured by clouds. If I could just get east to the interstate and fly north to Cheyenne, I could continue north until the mountains peter out, then turn west. I could fly around the northern end of this entire weather system.

As the guys were wiping the
Queen
down the misty rain ceased, so we broke out the touch-up paint and John polished the prop and hub. These are a neat bunch of guys, sensing my frustration and helping me carry it by fussing over the plane with me.

By noon I guessed the visibility was four or five miles and the clouds looked to be a thousand feet up, so I loaded the plane and shook hands all around.

“Don’t fly into any granite clouds,” John says.

The big Lycoming catches immediately. Even the oil cloud from the exhaust stack is modest and ladylike.

On the roll the tail takes at least fifteen seconds to come off the ground. At 5,300 feet above sea level the engine only has 23 inches of manifold pressure to use, so the takeoff run is leisurely and the breaking of contact with the ground a graceful good-bye caress.

The
Queen
rises slowly into the gray sky, climbing at about 300 feet a minute at her best climb speed, 70 MPH indicated. At this altitude everything happens slowly, sedately, as befits the dignity of a lady of forty-nine years. And this regal lady has dignity, even if she is a
Cannibal
and wears only a smile.

I have no trouble flying under the overcast. As I fly northward the weather immediately improves. Cheyenne is 3,000 scattered, at least a dozen miles visibility, with a broken layer well above. As I fly through the airport traffic area the man in the tower is telling someone that the field will close in twenty minutes for an airshow. Frontier Days in Cheyenne, Wyoming— ten wonderful July days of rodeo and airshows and horses and cowgirls, an annual celebration of summer called “The Daddy of ’Em All.”

I can see the crowd on the ramp and several dozen different types of military planes, all Air Force and National Guard by the look of them. The Navy rarely sends planes to these things, and those they do send are forbidden to fly—the only Navy airplanes that can fly at civilian airshows are the Blue Angels. I think the admirals are missing the best chance they’ll ever get to sell naval aviation to the American public. The Air Force types figured this out long ago.

North of Cheyenne the clouds break up enough so that splotches of sunlight reach the prairie. To the west the hazy mountains still wreathed in clouds appear blue and mysterious. In contrast the prairie below is a wonderland of greens and browns as the sunlight and shadow play upon it in a surreal way. All this and a modest tailwind too!

My spirits soar even higher than the
Queen
as my frustrations are swept from me by the swirling cockpit breeze.

There are scattered showers around Casper but I skillfully avoid them and drop in for gas. As I fly northward again the rolling prairie appears empty. Only the four-lane highway below me snaking northward breaks the grassy perfection. I look carefully and see occasional ranch complexes; still, this is the emptiest land I’ve flown over yet.

To my left the Bighorn Mountains crowned in clouds rise boldly from the empty prairie. They too are blue, vague, with their summits cloaked in storms. Somewhere over there is Hole-in-the-Wall, where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hid from the law and outraged neighbors between robberies.

Armed robbery in this lonesome land couldn’t have been an easy life, not when you consider all the riding those guys had to do. They must have ridden for days, weeks, to get someplace where they could steal money, then ridden for days, weeks, to get back to Hole-in-the-Wall, where there was nothing to spend the money on. Still, maybe they got to town more often than their honest neighbors, who probably could afford to make the trip only once a year. If that.

I fly over Buffalo, Wyoming, a town that Butch and Sundance must have thought was the Big Apple, and continue following the interstate, now I-90. Soon Sheridan appears on the horizon. The visibility is at least 20 miles now. I land for another load of gas.

On the ramp sits a 1937 Fairchild monoplane, a cabin machine with four seats. Mounted on the nose is the original engine, a 1937 Wright that the proud owner tells me develops 440 horsepower. I stand back for a good look. The wings are unlike anything I’ve ever seen: they jut straight out from the fuselage for about four feet on each side, then sweep back at about a thirty-degree angle. The effect is striking. The plane looks like it’s doing a thousand knots sitting on the ground.

“Fairchild only made seventeen of these,” the owner tells me, “and there are only two left.” He looks at her, measuring her with his eye, wondering why fortune favored him so. I too have moments like that.

The owner and his friend are on their way to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, for the world’s biggest airshow, the annual EAA fly-in. I tell them I’m going the other way, west, for an airshow at the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. The commanding officer of the base invited me to bring the Queen, and the family wants to fly up commercial to wallow in nostalgia with me over the weekend, so that’s my destination. I’ll visit Oshkosh later in the summer after the crowds are gone.

The creeks flowing down the east side of the Bighorns made the valley that Sheridan sits in. Flying north I follow the highway and the meandering river, the Little Bighorn, down the valley full of cultivated fields. To the east the grassy plains stretch away until they merge with the sky. To the west the sea of grass runs to the mountains, which are petering out.

After I pass Lodge Grass, Montana, I begin to look off the right side for my first glimpse of the Custer battlefield. Finally I spot it on a grass-covered bluff above the valley. An asphalt road leads up from the highway to a cemetery with all the gravestones arranged with military precision. It looks odd in this ocean of rolling, grass-covered plains, somehow jarring.

On the crest of a higher knoll is the monument to George Armstrong Custer. The road leading to it is lined with cars and campers. I guess it’s on the itinerary of many Americans for after retirement, when they buy the camper and set forth for a life on the open road with occasional postcards to the kids. I always wondered what the attraction of that way of life was— now I know. While the lawnmowers and weed whackers rust they are staring at the monument to Custer and 263 troopers of the 7th Cavalry who died with him when they ran into several thousand angry Indian warriors in 1876.

History is a little hazy about the actual chain of events here: the Indians say Custer attacked an encampment of 10,000 Indians and the warriors counterattacked—Custer admirers say the colonel’s command was ambushed. Everyone agrees on the result. The soldiers were annihilated.

Americans have always had a soft spot in their hearts for spectacular losers, and Custer certainly qualified. If he actually led 263 troopers in a cavalry charge against an encampment of 10,000 armed, belligerent Indians, he was also the stupidest soldier who ever graduated from West Point.

There’s a big flap brewing in these parts over the name of this national monument. Indians point out that this is the only battlefield in the country named after the loser. What if Gettysburg were called Lee Battlefield? As you might suspect, this issue is about more than road signs. The Indians feel that the name of the monument is symbolic of America’s approach to their problems.

I think they have a point. Under the rules whereby most American battles were named, this Sioux-cavalry engagement should be known as the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and the battlefield should be known as the Little Bighorn Battlefield, the river being the prominent geographical feature hereabouts.
*
After all, the 264 soldiers and the approximately 2,000 Indian warriors who fought here were all Americans, all fighting for what they believed to be right. We should honor them all, not just Ol’ Yellowhair, who might have lived to die of natural causes if he had had a little more sense.

If we’re going to name this battlefield after one of the generals, we should call it Sitting Bull Battlefield. I’ve seen the chief’s photo taken after he was reduced to a bit part in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. He looked like the kind of guy you’d like to get to know, a no-nonsense practical fellow who would make a good friend and a bad enemy. I’ve often wondered what he really thought of Buffalo Bill Cody, who was stamped from the same mold they used for P. T. Barnum. Perhaps it’s better for Cody and Custer that Sitting Bull died before New York publishers started paying generals millions for their memoirs.

Ten miles north of the battlefield the road curves west, toward Billings, Montana. I follow the highway and the railroad.

It’s past 6:30
P.M
. and the sun is dropping toward the western horizon. Flying directly toward it, the sun illuminates the entire lower wing of the Queen. The brilliant yellow wing against the greens and yellows and browns of the earth must be seen to be believed—a play of color and form that would inspire a masterpiece if I were capable of painting one. That is not my talent. I fly on, enjoying this rare sight.

A young woman answers my call to Billings Approach Control. Traffic is light. She cheerfully grants me permission to fly through the ARSA. On the western side of town I ask if she has a readout of my ground speed. “You’ve been making one hundred ten since I acquired you.”

One hundred ten knots! I’m living at the foot of the cross.

Forty-five minutes later I am abeam the Yellowstone massif, which lies to the south, my left. Towering dark-blue and purple thunderstorms crown the hulking mass of mountains. Yet the sunlight is still playing on my little plane and the green and brown fields beneath me. In my years of flying I have never seen a more spectacular sight, never felt so much a part of the land and the sky.

There is a shower in Bozeman Pass when I fly through. I don’t get very wet and I am through in less than a minute. Once through and into the sunshine beyond, I glance back.

Behind me is a circular rainbow with every color of the spectrum clearly delineated. The rainbow forms a perfect circle, right, left, over and under the plane. It appears that the
Queen
has just flown through it. Never before in my life have I seen a rainbow below me.

At Bozeman the FBO is a man named Arlin Wass. He looks to be in his late sixties. Mr. Wass asks if I’m going to Oshkosh.

“Nope. Headed the other way.”

“Fellow in here this morning on his way to Oshkosh was flying an old Fairchild, the first I ever saw. Watching that thing take off was a treat.”

I tell him about seeing the Fairchild in Sheridan as we gas the plane and watch a BT-13, a Vultee “Vibrator,” taxi out with a load of joyriders.

“That fellow flying the Vibrator spent two years restoring it,” Mr. Wass said. “Told me on the First of July he was going to fly her on the Third, and somehow we got it done. Weighed her and everything. He’s done a hell of a job on that plane.”

Buried in one corner of his hangar is a Stearman that has been in restoration for fourteen years.

“Fourteen years?”

“Yep. I told them they’re going to die before they get it done.”

The Stearman is almost ready for the wings to be attached. Sitting on the nose in the place of honor is a baby Lycoming, looking better than brand-new. Mr. Wass tells me that it’s 225 horsepower.

In his office I admire the photos of old airplanes mounted on the wall and we talk. On his desk is a cylinder of an OX-5 engine, the 90-HP engine that powered the Curtiss-Jenny. “Got the crankcase and crank and everything except the cylinders for that engine. Someone stored it disassembled and some mice nested in the cylinders. The acid in their feces corroded the cylinders.”

I tell him about Cole Palen at the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome. Maybe he and Palen can strike a deal. Somewhere in Palen’s treasure houses in a dusty old box he probably has a set of cylinders for an OX-5 engine that he bought at an estate auction. Or maybe he’ll want the engine to keep the Jenny flying.