noun Date: 1942 slang lightplane
I remember the days I flew to and from Chicago, a round trip flight from a tiny airport in rural Ohio to Meigs Field in the downtown area of the Illinois metropolis.
The plane was small. I don’t remember nor would I have recognized the style or genre of the plane, but it fit 4 people including the pilot.
The flight to Chicago took far longer than expected on account of the muscular headwinds blowing like constant thunder at the nose of the plane. The pilot indicated that we were slowed to about half our expected speed by the sharp winds. His anxiety was palpable even as his concentration seemed never to waver. Anxiety might have consumed me but for the apparent confidence and shared assurance of the pilot. He was a general Renaissance man who piloted planes, conducted orchestras, built bombs, and had been married (and divorced) 7 times.
At about the halfway point of the flight (which should have been the end of the journey by the standards of the time that had elapsed) the pilot grew restless. He indulged in a well-deserved fit of laughter that consoled his nerves, or at least plundered his gut of its available weakness.
He turned to look at me, sitting at the back of the plane. I was calmly reading a book. This amused the pilot. No, it more than amused him. It made him laugh uncontrollably, until tears oozed like bitter sap from his eyes. He laughed. He chortled and guffawed and wheezed. He raised his cackling face to the nearer-than-usual heavens, barking out spittle-filled comments of what could be interpreted as admiration but which I recognized as an expulsion of tension.
“Look at this guy! He’s reading a book, relaxing, like he does this every day. Like he flies to Chicago in a tin can with 60mph headwinds every day of his life! Bahahahaha!”
