The Write Stuff
Like I said in the description of the Rod Serling toon, as soon as I saw hastingsgraham's photo of Rod and Robbie at www.flickr.com/photos/31472241@N03/4505755150/ I knew what my next one was going to be. And, as I said in my comment at her pic, it was pretty coincidental that the very day she posted it, some three or four hours before I got home and saw it, I was sitting there at work and (seemingly) out of nowhere I got the urge to pull out brother Robert's "The Left Seat" and re-read it--something I've done once every two or three years since that thunderstorm-y spring afternoon in high school forty-plus years ago when I bought the Popular Library paperback edition at Dougherty's Drug Store in Lancaster, started it while waiting for Mom at the doctor's office. and finished it at two or three in the morning because, as the saying goes, I just couldn't put it down. The love story between Mac McKay and Barbara Deering, and those of Paddy O'Brian and Pat Donovan, and Les Culver and "Mitch" Mitchell, are schmaltzy enough to bring a blush to the cheeks of the purple prose-iest writer of heaving bosom romances, the cockpit procedures and crash investigation details are all anyone who loves "Airport" the "High and the Mighty" and "Fate is the Hunter" could ever want and more, and the story of the U.S. airlines from the end of WW II to the transition era, as illustrated by the growth of the fictional Midwest Airlines, is the history of the Golden Age the way it ought to be told. All in all, it's one of the greatest books I've ever read again and again and again. Which is why, even as I started on the Rod Serling toon, I knew the next one was going to be for Robert.
While the story is set in the heyday of the pistons, and Mac McKay faces his moment of truth in a DC-7, the Lockheed Electra is in the background for three reasons. For one thing, "The Electra turned away. So did Captain MacDonald McKay". For another, I just always thought the Electra was one of the best looking airplanes ever, which led a friend to point out, rather harshly, that that's like saying the most attractive employee at the house of ill-repute was suffering from an STD (although, to be sure, Captain Hilbaak used somewhat more colorful language), which brings us to the third reason.
The Electra was bedeviled by a series of fatal crashes a few months after it entered service, caused by something called "whirl mode", with the prop wobbling instead staying in its correct plane of rotation. This set up a flutter in the wing which, which caused the prop to wobble even more, which caused greater flutter in the wing, the two feeding each other in a cycle of ever-increasing viciousness until eventually, like a paperclip being bent back and forth until it breaks, the wing snapped off in flight.
The first of these crashes involved a Braniff flight out of Houston heading for Dallas, over Buffalo, Texas, in September of 1959. In his non-fiction book on crash investigation and airline safety, "Loud and Clear" (which I bought because I'd read "The Left Seat" and wanted more), Serling described the initial clue that would eventually lead the investigators to the cause: almost all the witness agreed that when it happened, every dog for miles around started howling. Of course, they were just reacting naturally to sound of the prop tips going supersonic, but somehow the way Robert Serling conveyed the idea of all those dogs baying out their unheeded warning in that Texas autumn night just sent chills down my spine in a way nothing Rod Serling put on "The Twilight Zone" ever did.
When hastingsgraham posted her picture and I got the idea for this, I went surfing the web to see what I could find on Serling, and was happy to see he was still with us. I thought it would be pleasant for a change to do a tribute to one of my childhood influences that wasn't "in memory of". I even toyed with the idea of sending him a copy, as a small token of appreciation of all the pleasure his books had given me over the years (there were a dozen more, novels and non-fiction, besides "The Left Seat" and "Loud and Clear"). But, as you can see by the dates, I didn't make it. Even as I working on the tribute to his brother and thinking ahead to this one, the domino had fallen off the mantle for good this time.
It will take a little of the joy out of re-reading and remembering it, knowing he's gone, but I'm sure I'll keep doing both until I'm gone myself. Aside from the fact that it's a good read, re-reading it brings evokes the nostalgia of being a kid again, of reading it the first time, and the dreams it inspired. Somehow, I knew even then I didn't have the command charisma to be a MacDonald McKay, the devout religiosity and decency to be a Paddy O'Brian, the romantic charm to be a Les Culver, the lovable Dutch Uncle crustiness to be a Johnny Shea, or the dignified competence to be a Barney Barnwell; but...while it's probably a little late in life to still be clinging to childhood fantasies, I still cherish some secret hope of growing up to be Snorkel Snodgrass.
Comments and faves
Sir Basil Birchbottom (23 months ago | reply)
Thanks, GORDO-8--as always, your kind words of praise are much appreciated. I think the problem with the Electra was just one of those things that wasn't going to show up until it got into service. Since the turbine engine wouldn't vibrate like a reciprocal engine would, they didn't think they needed as stiff or as many engine braces. She was tested as much as any aircraft ever was before being put into service, but it wasn't the flying that was doing it, it was the landings, and it took the constant jolting landing after landing in months of regular service to weaken those supports and let the prop get out of plane. I'll have to think about Tesla. I hear his name frequently, but what you've just said is about all I actually know about him--never have done any research on him.
Dane Youssef (22 months ago | reply)
ROBERT SERLING, THE MAN FROM THE SKY... ABOVE THE CLOUDS by Dane Youssef
No. No, this man is not nearly as renown as his universally-celebrated brother who took us into "The Twilight Zone" and "The Night Gallery..." or a strange, mysterious planet ruled by apes.
But a great, established and respectable writer in his own right. Where Rod made his mark on the world with ground-breaking scripts for the medium of television, Robert seems to focus more on novels. Robert never got nearly the fame and his little brother did.
Whereas Rod wrote scripts for television--Emmy caliber scripts that were part of the Golden Age of Television and got to shape and define what it is today. And back when science-fiction and fantasy was the absolute genre for the youngest generation. And Rod himself spent almost as much time in front of the camera as he did in the writer's room, which only helped to give him the notoriety he always wanted.
Robert is still around today due to the fact that he didn't chain-smoke cigarettes by the truckload every waking hour. Roddy's major was drama involving fantasy and the supernatural, whereas brother Robby seemed to favor non-fiction. Such as docudramas and biographical literature.
Occasionally, he would actually mesh the two and write a gripping, taut and compelling fiction story based on a real-life event. Such as the famed luxury line "The ''Unsinkable Titanic" and the real-life private presidential plane "Air Force One." Long before the big Hollywood star vehicle summer blockbusters of these real-life phenomenons, Robert Serling himself was making the sinking ship and the president's private toy plane all his own. "Something's Alive On The Titanic" and "The President's Plane Is Missing."
Like his significantly more distinguished brother, he has a gift for the hybrid--meshing fantasy and fiction. But true aviation--planes, shuttles and piloting always seemed to be his first love. Many of his books might be found in "Non-Fiction."
Like the immoral Howard Hughes whom Serling himself wrote a biography about--as well as his airlines, Rob considered himself an aviator first and foremost.
The man loved himself airplanes. He lived for them. He wrote for them. The man did more for airplanes than the Wright Brothers, Howard Hughes, TWA, Alaskan Airlines--and God help us all, even NASA. Although many books exist all around about the whole craft of planes, most are merely instruction manuals filled with endless boring data. Whereas Serling always tried to write his with the powerful passion and imagery of Hemingway.
Though the machines that flew seemed to be his first love he often dabbled in the practice of good-old fashioned murder mystery. He penned the "whodunit" books, such as "The Probable Cause." He also wrote several fiction thriller novels with the backdrop aboard an airplane: "Wings," "The Left Seat," "Air Force One is Haunted."
There was a time when the very idea that there was a device that could give man the power of flight all seemed like a fairy tale. But when flight and space travel was first made an actual physical reality, this was the man making sure it got the back-story it deserved.
And when the practice was no longer radical and new... good old Robert was still giving it the limelight it deserved...
--With Respect For A True Aviator, one true-blue, red-blooded 48-karat writer for another, Dane Youssef
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Sir Basil Birchbottom (21 months ago | reply)
Thanks, Dane, for a great comment. Maybe between us and a handful of others promoting him, he won't be forgotten. "The Left Seat" has been put out in hardcover again, complete with cover blurb by John Nance, so we know there are still some out there somewhere who care.
KW kid added this photo to his favorites. (10 months ago)