WING-WALKERS
Of The World
Residents of the sleepy town of Waukesha in 1966 - those who were looking up - witnessed the daring solo flight of the future editor of the Sewer Raccoon News, piloting a Cessna 150 from Crites Field. Dix recently said it was the most adventurous event of his long life. Flying instructor Sam James told him that day to taxi over to the terminal and said "OK, this is it," and got out of the little airplane leaving Dix at the controls, alone.
They had done a series of sufficiently-executed touch-downs and take-offs, and the future editor suspected this could happen anytime now. The instructors never told you when. They determine the when of it and they do not give any overture, presumable to keep students cool.
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On another later day, Dix flew down to Chicago and landed at Meigs Field. It was windy in the Windy City, and the prevailing westeries blew strongly and accelerated through the skyscrapers at the immediate right of the field, situated on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Dix flew in from the north, from Waukesha, past the planetarium, at a requisite "crab angle" into the wind, straightening out at the last second before touch-down. It had to be done that way.
He had flown down to Chicago on a buying trip for his business, a home furnishings venture called The Decoratory. It was also a lark, involving Old-Town where the Time Machine he'd commissioned from an antiques store operator was late in coming. A mantle-piece-sized object, it involved rolling balls and a kind of near-perpetual motion, making eyes watch in wonder, as engendered by the finished display machine.
The Time Machine had a mystical hold on your editor's mind. The store was known as Fly-By-Night. The genius operator designed his business card as a black fly on the dark gray stock. The maker of the time machines was a friend, who became terminally ill. Though having been given a substantial down-payment, the stalled fellow soon thereafter died, and Dix never received anything for his investment except the schematic sketch of the future machine. (Now framed in reverence, and on display at the sewer raccoon headquarters.)
Remembering more of that episode, Dix recalled that when he was told that the chap was dying in a veterans hospital, he flew down again, and, dressed as a priest in a collar, made a verifying visit to the failing patient who was allowed no visitors except for family and clergy.
On one of his rented-plane flights, Dix left his treasured "Amelia Earhart" leather flying jacket on the back seat, and never recovered it. Things were not going well. He ran out of money for rented airplanes, and through mis-managed funds, lost his business and more. (See cartoon lifted from yesterday's The New Yorker.)
Years later, as a Realtor, Dix was having a discussion with a potential real estate client, an eldery widow who was studying his confguration curiously as they spoke. She said he was just the size of her late husband, and she had something she wanted to give him.
She brought out a cordovan leather jacket with a buckled belt. It was the exact image of the lost flying coat! Dix accepted it gladly. It was a little snug, but some more years later he underwent open heart surgery and a 100 pound weight loss, so that now he wears it a trifle baggedly but delightedly. Shown above right, the SR editor wears it at Christmas 2007 when he flew to Maryland with wife and son. He awaited his flight in the Mitchell Field terminal when his son Leland snapped the shutter.
On commercial flights Dix always feels at the semi-mercy of the seemingly unruffled pilots, and carries a hand-held compass that he refers to throughout any flights.
And now you know why the Van Loon aeroplane illustration is tilted upside down. And why the Bon-Ton wrist watch with the 360 degree second hand is reminiscent of a wing-walking dream as yet unrealized.
All things are connected for your editor, currently focused on the below-ground movements of raccoons.
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