[video:https://vimeo.com/31907879]

I wanted to fly, as far back as I can remember. About age 4. I practiced flying in my grandmother's Ford Falcon as she drove, using the window-roll-up lever as a throttle, and any handy pen or toy for a stick. As I got older, I knew what I wanted to do, but not how to get there. I had no means. My mother sorted mail for the Post Office (pre-machines), at night. My father was gone to Alaska, where he belonged; where he was born. I wanted to fly bush planes, partly to find him. When I became a teenager, I did what teenagers did, and hung out at the airport...pumping gas, washing planes. I pumped borate into the old fire bombers, B-17s, B-24, a PBY, and watched them fly away to drop it on nearby fires, in southern California. Sometimes I got a ride. Sometimes I even got a lesson, from the guy who rented Piper Cubs there. 'Pinky' Pinkerton, WWII fighter pilot (Wildcats), purveyor of gas and sodas, maker of hundreds of model airplanes that hung from the ceiling of the FBO.

My new step-father asked me what I was going to do with my life. I answered the way all teenagers answer such questions. "Arr-unh-oooh". He asked again, "Have you ever considered going to the Air Force Academy?" "What's an Air Force Academy?", I replied. He was onto something, though. I always had good grades...great grades. I could be counted upon to do what I was told, most of the time. And there was no way, not even with the salary he brought to the family, to pay for any real flight training. The military would do that.

So, I set my mind on the Air Force, going through the applications, medical exams, tests. The results came back my senior year of High School. My best friend, Valedictorian, got accepted to West Point. I was farther down the list. Too far. I tried again for the next year. Rejected again, I settled into working at a restaurant, and got the idea out of my head. Two weeks before the class was to start, they said they had an opening, and would I still like to go? No, I said. YES!, my mother said. She cut my hair.

Fourteen hundred and seventy five consecutive mornings, I woke up (usually to yelling) and told myself, "this is stupid. Today is the day I am going to quit." And fourteen hundred and seventy five evenings, I told myself, "tomorrow." And then one day, George H.W. Bush handed me a piece of paper, and shook my hand, and I saluted, and exited stage left, to go to Pilot Training.

The Air Force didn't have bush planes (any more). The fast fighter planes didn't really interest me. The one plane that did had long, straight wings, flew slow, low to the ground, and was very maneuverable. That would have to do. I spent a year learning how to fly in jet trainers, and walked across another stage, and a picture of my new plane flashed on the screen above the stage. A KC-135...a flying gas station! I would be pumping gas again. I was a little disappointed. It definitely worked out for the best, though. Did I mention that they sent me to North Dakota?

The video above is my favorite flying scene on film. I see a lot of grace in it...sleek jets in a delicate dance, high in the Stratosphere. There is a lot more too it than that, of course. But I focused on the positive. The film is the opening scene of Dr. Strangelove. The rest of the movie is not as pleasant. I lived Dr. Strangelove for several years. I watched the movie every three weeks, on a Wednesday, to prepare for my job. My job was to be ready in a moments notice to launch my jet, sitting just outside the bunker I lived in, one week out of every three, full of gas so that it could refuel a B-52 loaded with nuclear weapons, enabling Major Kong to fly to Murmansk and drop them on Mr's Pavlova's Kindergarten class, ensuring that we would win WWIII. After I gave Major Kong all my gas, I was to land in Greenland, refuel, and take off again to refuel any other bombers that might come along and need gas. I wasn't one hundred percent in favor of this plan, so I always kept an alternate flight plan in the pocket of my flight suit, and a map to Tahiti. Just in case.

Instead, they sent me to Egypt. Our good friends, the sheiks who ran Kuwait, had figured out how to drill oil wells at an angle, and were drilling under the Iraqi border and taking Saddam's oil. He didn't like this, and since we had given him chemical weapons and other support in the recent past, so that he could use them against Iran, he decided to ask again for help. We had no Ambassador to talk to Saddam, but a woman named April Glaspie acted as an ambassador, and told him that we would not stop the Kuwaitis...but if he did, we would probably look the other way. I would have known none of this, unless I had happened to be living in a tent some thirty miles out into the desert from Cairo, listening to the BBC at night on a short wave radio I brought along for entertainment. They were interviewing April Glaspie, after things did not turn out quite as she had told Saddam they would. Instead, we had decided to make war on Saddam, and I was there to teach the Egyptian Air Force to do the gentle Stratospheric Dance so that they could play in the war, and drop bombs on Saddam, far away.

One day, I got to see them demonstrate their readiness for war. I am pretty sure it was in what later came to be called Tahrir Square. The Egyptian military was lined up for review, and their commander gave a rousing speech, and bit the head off a live chicken. It was very convincing. Later, I got to listen to G. H. W. Bush give a far less rousing speech, assuring the Egyptians that he would not station any American troops in their country. I was dressed in civilian clothes. I shook his hand again, but not Hosni Mubarek's. Apparently Mubarek didn't shake hands.

As it turned out, there was not a lot of call for chicken biting in that war, and I was sent to Saudi Arabia without my Egyptians. I did my duty to take bombers into Iraq so they could bomb the AT&T building in downtown Baghdad. I took more bombers to Tikrit, so that they could bomb Saddam himself, but they got one of his stunt doubles, instead. Poor guy. I am sure it wasn't his idea to be a stunt double, and seriously doubt that he deserved to die for it. One night, I got my orders, and it said, literally, "millions and millions of A-10s". Those were the depleted uranium shooters, and they were shooting everything that moved on a certain highway out of Kuwait. I was really very glad I didn't end up flying A-10s, like some of my friends.

Quickly, the war was over, and I ended up in Turkey, during an operation called Provide Comfort. We were Providing Comfort to the Iraqi Kurds by giving gas to more A-10s who were flying over them all the time, preventing Saddam from attacking them. This seemed like a better plan to me, until one day, I gave gas to some Turkish fighter/bombers (F-4s), still over Turkey. They had bombs on them, which I thought was weird, because you don't normally carry real bombs when you are just out practicing refueling over your own country. I went back to refueling our A-10s for the next few days, but one day we had some free time before anyone else needed gas, and my navigator had found a neat canyon back in Turkey that would be fun to fly through...so we did. It was a pretty valley, and there was a huge, snow covered mountain at the end of it that we flew up, turned round at the top, and flew back down, into the valley. Then we saw little orange flashes of light on the ridge above us, and wondered what that was and HEY, THEY'RE SHOOTING AT US!

I flew up out of the valley, and when I got back to our base, I asked my commander why they were shooting at me in Turkey. He explained that the shooters were Turkish Kurds, and they were mad at us because I was giving gas to Turkish fighter/bombers, who were dropping their bombs on the Kurds. The Turkish government was insisting that we do that, in order for them to let us use their base to Provide Comfort of the Iraqi Kurds. I told him I didn't want to do that any more. He told me that he could not promise to keep me from flying missions to refuel the Turks, but, in fact, I never happened to do it again. And eventually, I went home, and got out of the Air Force.

So, what is the purpose of war? Power, control, manipulation, and lots of profit. All those jets, bombs, tanks...they are very expensive, and always need to be improved, and replaced. You can share the fanciest and newest ones with your bestest friends, for a price, and curry favor with your less-favorite friends even with older, worn out ones. (F-4s, in my day, sold to Turkey and Egypt). And then attacking those that are definitely not your friends makes them mad, and threatening, and keep the people at home convinced that you need newer, more expensive toys, to keep them at bay. General Smedley Butler said it best, "War is a racket."