The Wind Beneath My Wing

I can remember when I got my first flying job many years ago.  It was flying a DC-3.  There are some things that you always remember.   Where you were when Kennedy was shot, when your first child was born.  For me it was this day, flying an old DC-3. 

I will always remember taking off out of Huntsville, Texas.  The giant old Pratt and Whitney engines roaring to life as the airplane slipped out of the earth’s gravity and lumbered into the sky.  I still remember the old, gray-haired pilot I was sitting next to when he said something was wrong with the left engine.   We were four thousand feet at the time.  A very low altitude compared to the altitudes I fly today. 

We were between Huntsville and Dallas flying along at a mere one hundred and sixty knots.  At first I was not really concerned until I asked the old captain if we were going to be “ok.”   He turned and said, ” I hope so” as he pointed out the ever-increasing temperature on the left engine.  The captain reiterated there was something wrong with the left engine, but beyond the increased temperature on the cylinder head temperature gauge I could not tell.  He then said, “Can you hear that noise?”  I could not.  I listened ever so intently and yet could not hear what he was hearing.  He would say, “Don’t you hear that?” and I could not hear anything except the roar of some twenty-seven hundred horses thundering outside my window. 

I sat with my adrenaline running, watching and listening for what the old man was hearing.  Suddenly he slid open the large left side window.  The wind noise was deafening and dust was a swirl in the cockpit.  He said, “Can’t you hear that?”  Then suddenly, even with all the noise of the rushing wind and that giant engine outside the open window along with the three silver propellers cutting the wind, I could hear it.  It was just a soft whisper, but unbelievably I could hear it.  It was a “chew, chew, chew” sound.  The sound of a hole in the top of the cylinder on the left engine, usually known as the number one engine.  There was raw fire coming out of the hole licking the cowling that surrounds and protects the engine. We had an emergency and we had to shut the engine down.  We continued on to Dallas where fortunately we landed safely.

(C) 2008

There is nothing like the thrill I receive and the adrenaline rush I get when I advance three throttles up to their stops and feel eleven thousand pounds of raw thrust propel my craft down the runway that leads me into the sky.   The earth falls away, like cut from a string, and the once setting sun rises again as if to give me a second chance to see a beautiful sunset.  From under my breath I murmur “Elvis has left the building!”

As I raced heavenward on this crystal clear evening  I gazed out my window  into the heavens and watched the sky,  looking for meteors or shooting stars.  Upon reaching my cruise altitude of thirty-nine thousand feet, I looked up and saw a brilliant heavenly object racing across the heavens.  My first inclination was to think, “Boy that guy is way up there”.    Suddenly it dawned on me that I was already “way up there.”  Obviously too high to be another aircraft and much too large to be a simple satellite, I realized this object was something  new.  It didn’t take but  a moment to conclude this new heavenly body had to be the new orbiting space station making its way around the earth.  So brilliant was its reflection in the night, I realized I was not alone at the edge of space.

Watching the space station race across the night sky and disappear, I became aware that when life has its troubling moments I look up to see God’s creation and peace settles upon my life.  I was reminded of an earlier chapter in my life when I had lost a loved one and prayed repeatedly for some sign from God that all was well.  At that time I was flying an old Douglas DC-3.   After praying that prayer, I looked up and there in the northern night sky was a bright display of light I had never witnessed before.  The Northern Lights were making a rare appearance in the skies over East Texas.   God’s peace flooded my soul.

Today there are signs and wonders in the heavens a thinking Christian cannot ignore.  God’s Word tells us that in the last days there will be signs and wonders in the heavens.  Joel 2:30 says, “And I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth.”
Isaiah 34: vs 4a  says,  Say to those with anxious heart, “Take courage, fear not.”

When I am discouraged……I remember …………… to look up.
  
 

Steven A. Johnson (C) 2000