Flight of Passage: A True Story

by Buck, Rinker

  We were new boys out there, different boys. It wasn’t simply Jimmy’s creed of fun, or the absence of rules. He and Aunt Joan unconditionally loved us and couldn’t have cared less about all the great ambitions my father had for us. Aunt Joan took Kern shopping in the malls, bought him new clothes, and told him how wonderful he looked in this outfit or that. Uncle Jimmy was excited when I came in from the beach one night and told him that I finally managed to “get up” on a surfboard. In California, you could just live day by day and nobody seemed to worry about tomorrow. Everything was fine, real fine as Jimmy said, and everybody liked Kern and I just the way we were.

  A few days after we arrived in California, Uncle Jimmy returned from his job at Allstate Insurance one evening and told us that he had received an intriguing phone call during the day. A dignified-sounding gentleman by the name of Harold Buck had read about us in The Los Angeles Times and tracked Jimmy down to inquire whether or not we were related. We weren’t, but Harold Buck was apparently a big wheel in southern California. He was a former close associate of the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes and had retired many years ago as a director of Hughes’s machine-tool company. He insisted on meeting his newly famous namesakes.

  Jimmy felt sheepish about it. He didn’t want to impose another visitor upon us, but he was too polite to give Harold Buck the bum’s rush.

  “Boys,” Jimmy said, “Mr. Buck sounds very old. And lonely. Could you just meet the guy, for me?”

  “Real fine,” Kern said.

  The next night Harold Buck appeared in the driveway and tooted the horn of his Cadillac. He wasn’t feeling particularly ambulatory that night and preferred to meet with us in his car. He was a sallow, white-haired man with a hearing aid and impeccable, old-fashioned manners. We sat with him in his car for an hour and listened to Harold’s long, lonely monologue.

  He was so, so pleased to meet us. We reminded him of his own youth, striking out from the east for California. In the 1920s, he had risen quickly in the machine tool business, and then met Mr. Howard Hughes. Mr. Hughes was quite an aviator himself, did we know that? Mr. Buck wanted to show us the Hughes tool works. He could even get us in, he said in hushed tones, to the hangar in Long Beach where the biggest plane in the world, Howard Hughes’s famed amphibious boondoggle, the Spruce Goose, was stored. Kern stalled for time, making up an excuse that we had to do some work on our plane. I was exhausted from surfing all day and fell asleep in the rear seat.

  It was our most bizarre California experience. Harold Buck returned a few more times, usually unannounced. When he was feeling especially nonambulatory, a chauffeur drove him. We sat out there in the driveway in an air-conditioned Cadillac, drinking Cokes that Harold provided, listening to this rich old geezer chat away. He was always trying to interest us in the various properties he owned. For example, he ran an avocado farm up in the hills somewhere, and he wanted us to see it. Politely, Kern kept turning him down.

  “Oh, Kernahan, please, don’t apologize,” Harold said. “Of course, you must be very busy now. But can’t I at least bring you some avocados, as a gift? You can keep them in the plane and eat them on your return flight.”

  “Oh fine, Harold,” Kern said. “Real fine. We’d like that a lot.”

  It was decided. For our return flight, Harold Buck would make us a present of avocados.

  CHAPTER 20

  At the end of our first, blissful week in California, my father impulsively decided to join us by hopping on an overnight airline flight to Los Angeles. This was another personality test for Kern and me. I was instantly depressed and furious about it and considered my father’s decision thoughtlessly selfish, proof that he just couldn’t let go of us and stay away. Kern was a lot more mature about it.

  “Rink, guess what?” he said, bursting into our room at Uncle Jim’s on Friday night, just after we had returned from Newport Beach. “Daddy’s coming out! He’s already on the plane. Uncle Jimmy just told me.”

  We both agreed that he had been furtive about it. This had never been part of the plan, and my father had simply called from the airport before he boarded a plane in New York. There was a “big mess” in his Los Angeles sales office, he told Uncle Jim, and his presence was suddenly needed to sort things out. It was the oldest ruse in the magazine business. My father had reached a nice point in his career. He was now associate publisher at Look, a classic holding pattern where talented executives waited for several years until the publisher finally stepped down. Because his politics had turned so radical, my father was beginning to sense that he would never be named publisher, but he wasn’t worried about it. His sales record was strong and he was particularly gifted at solving the myriad crises that strike publishing every week, and the magazine didn’t want to lose him. So he had a big corner office in New York, lots of secretaries, and an unlimited expense budget. There was always a “big mess” out in the L.A. office—my father had joked about it for years. Whenever he got bored with office routine, or just felt the need for racing along a balmy freeway in a rented Lincoln Continental, he had his secretaries book him a flight to “The Coast.” As soon as he stepped off the plane he did everything he could to assure that the “big mess” remained a big mess. That way, he could return next month to see his brother Jim and goof off with his pals from the Hollywood film studios.

  “What a coincidence!” he told Jimmy. “I can see the boys.”

  His plane would be landing first thing in the morning, and we were to take an early bus up to the Los Angeles airport and meet his flight.

  I got over my annoyance as soon as I saw my father bound down the escalator at the terminal. He was a picture of fitness and sophistication. Tanned, with his Ray-Bans on, he was wearing a pink alligator shirt and one of those beautiful summer tweed jackets made for him by the best tailor in Dublin. Kern was elated to see him and ran over to the bottom of the escalator, and I always felt elated myself, seeing those two together. Kern and my father loved each other so much.

  My father skipped off the bottom of the escalator in that funny gait of his and hugged us both.

  “God boys, it’s great to see you. You did this thing! Coast to coast in a Piper Cub. Everybody’s going nuts for this deal back in New York. I’m just so damn proud of you I could scream.”

  “Yeah,” Kern said, beaming. “But Dad, one thing bothers me about all this.”

  “What?”

  “Well, Dad, it wasn’t that hard. You know, we just got in the Cub every morning, flew all day, and now we’re here. What’s the big deal?”

  My father looked like he was coming down with an awful case of indigestion.

  “Jesus Kern, don’t say that! If a reporter asks you, you tell him it was rough.”

  My father’s briefcase overflowed with articles about us clipped from the New York papers, and Kern had a pile for him from L.A. We all stood around at the bottom of the escalator and looked them over, laughing about the way the newspapers in one town borrowed quotes from the papers in another, and all the Kennedy bull, which made it sound like Kern and I flown over the Rockies reciting John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s inaugural address.

  After we landed in California, the Associated Press had checked with the Airmen’s Bureau of the FAA and concluded that we were “the youngest aviators on record ever to fly America coast to coast.” It seemed a meaningless distinction to us. Somebody younger than us just might have flown coast to coast before, and in any case this wasn’t a record we were even aware of trying to break before we took off. But the press seemed to need this, and embraced the concept of us breaking a record. It was a peg, an angle, a way to break the story down for readers and identify what the clamor was all about. (In fact, the “record” was bull. Years later, while studying for my instrument rating, I came across a book written by Robert N. Buck, no relation, a well-known TWA captain and writer on aviation subjects. In the 1930s, Robert Buck flew coast to coast at age sixteen, and even set a speed record doing it. What the hell, at least it was a Buck who rea
lly did it.) Kern and I were perplexed about it.

  “Hey Dad,” Kern said. “'Youngest aviators ever to fly America coast to coast?’ Don’t you think maybe this is bull?”

  “Ah c’mon Kern,” my father said. “Learn to relax. When you get right down to it, everything’s bull! Who cares? This is what the papers are saying so this is what’s true. Milk it! Get used to it. Christ son, you’re famous!”

  Everything was going smoothly until we got out to the freeway, and my father turned his rented Lincoln north for L.A., instead of south for Uncle Jim’s. All of the good men’s shops, he explained to us, were in Beverly Hills, just off Wilshire Boulevard. He was going to deck us out—new slacks and summer jackets, loafers, shirts, and ties. It was a ritual for him, something he enjoyed, buying us new riding chaps or leather bomber jackets for each new stage of our “careers” as boys. All of his clients and buddies in Los Angeles were insisting on meeting us, and he wanted us to look smart while he squired us around town.

  Kern and I both rebelled, and my father was surprised by the intensity of our reaction. Something had come over us between New York and L.A. No, no, no, I said, I didn’t want to waste a beautiful Saturday morning buying clothes. Kern backed me up. Aunt Joan had just bought him a new pair of white slacks. They were good enough. Besides, what were we going to do with all this loot? There wasn’t any room in the baggage compartment to fly it back home in the Cub.

  My father was angry about it, but he tried to make the best of a disappointing situation.

  “All right then. Good. You don’t need new clothes,” my father said. “How about lunch? I’ll take you to lunch at the Beverly Wilshire. Wait’ll you see the Beverly Wilshire!”

  “Dad,” I said, “it’s ten o’clock in the morning.”

  As it happened, I had a surfing appointment back in Orange County at noon. Kern was going to a beach party with Carol Brantley.

  “Well fine boys, just fine,” my father said. “Rinker’s going surfing. Kern’s got a beach party. I came all the way out here to see you two, and now I get to sit around the garden and twiddle my thumbs with Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Joan.”

  The rest of his visit was like that. It was a misunderstanding that lasted a week.

  When we got back to the house in Tustin my father noticed a number of phone messages for my brother on the kitchen bulletin board. “Kern, call Hildegard Richter.” Hildegard Richter, which truly was her name, was our biggest pain in the ass that week. She was the society columnist for the weekly newspaper back home and, what a coincidence, she was visiting friends in San Diego County when we landed after our coast to coast flight. She pestered us all week for an interview, even calling my father back in New Jersey, appealing for his help. With help from Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Joan, Kern invented a dozen excuses to put her off. Finally, when Hildegard just wouldn’t give up, Kern agreed to drive down for an interview on Saturday, today. But then Carol Brantley called about the beach party and I accepted an invitation to go surfing. Then my father showed up on twelve hours notice. Clearly, Hildegard had to be eliminated from the program, but neither of us wanted to call that godawful woman and blow her off.

  “Hey Kern,” I said that morning, as we boarded the bus for L.A. “Fuck Hildegard. Let’s just stand her up.”

  “Yeah. Okay Rink. It’s definitely not the right thing to do, but let’s just do it.”

  My father was furious about it. At Uncle Jim’s he immediately picked up the phone and called Hildegard, apologized, and explained that we would be late. Then he stuffed us back into the Lincoln for the long drive to San Diego.

  It was a hot, smoggy day, very dreary conditions for freeway driving, and the trip was a killer. The house where Hildegard was staying was way up in the hills somewhere and we got lost. At one point we were actually yelling to some neighbors from a lawn across the canyon, soliciting further directions. Hildegard was middle-aged and lumpy, and when we finally found her she greeted us at the door in this bright orange jumpsuit, “very California,” she thought. To me, she looked like Winston Churchill in drag.

  Hildegard led us out to chaise longues in the patio-garden and served us soda and some kind of apricot-flavored pastry that no human being would ever want to eat. My father sat there with us, throwing in his two cents every few minutes and palavering on to Hildegard about the waterbag. The garden was very California too, stuffed to the fences with flowers, fragrant and soporific. In the middle of answering one of Hildegard’s totally dipshit questions I fell fast asleep.

  My father was merciless on the ride home.

  “Goddamit Rinker! Why can’t you grow up and get with the program? I know Hildegard’s a pain in the ass. But you gotta put up with people like this to get ahead. It’s so typical of you, so obstinate, to nod off in the middle of a newspaper interview like that.”

  And I guess it was typical of me, too, to be miserable over the next three days while my father escorted us around L.A. We did the Look office, the movie studios, and had dinner up in the Hollywood hills in the palatial homes of his friends. Everywhere we went we were photographed and toasted, and we were also totally bored. I didn’t fly to California for this. I just wanted to be back in 71-Hotel now, wandering the deserts with Kern. By the end of the third day my father could see that even Kern had had enough. Glumly, we all said goodbye as he put us onto a bus for Uncle Jim’s. We would see him Saturday, at San Juan Capistrano, when we took back off for the east.

  Saturday arrived, and it was time to fly back east. There was a small crowd waiting for us at San Juan Capistrano, a few pilots from the strip, some curious people from town, and Aunt Joan and Uncle Jim. Hildegard Richter showed up, blowing over to us in a cloud of perfume and another one of those hideous California jumpsuits. The Lincoln cruised in and my father bounded out, all smiles and colorful talk, as if nothing had happened between us in L.A.

  “Hey boys,” he said. “C’mon! Let’s get going. Go down and preflight the plane. And where’s the waterbag? Everybody wants to see it. Get the plane, and bring up the waterbag.”

  It was a long walk down the flight line to the Cub, and Kern was disconsolate. Two weeks ago, he was profuse in his praise for my handling of the waterbag situation. Now he couldn’t see a way out and blamed me for lying too well. He sat on the wheel of the Cub with his chin in his hands.

  “Shit,” Kern said. “What are we going to do? Daddy is going to explode.”

  It pained me to see Kern like that, and I was angry. Partly, I was angry at myself for lying so well, but mostly I was angry at my father. He never told us he was coming out to L.A. and would want to see the waterbag. If we’d known that, we either would have found one or told the truth. The whole farce was my fault, for taking such perverse pleasure in hoodwinking him as we crossed the country. So I would have to take responsibility and deal with my father.

  “Kern, relax,” I said. “I’ll handle the waterbag with Dad.”

  Meanwhile, up on the ramp, my father saw no evidence of us readying the plane and the waterbag. Angered by the delay, he kangarooed down across the dusty strip toward the Cub. I stalked off to meet him halfway.

  I can still recall that confrontation with photographic accuracy. My father was wearing a crisp white alligator shirt, blue twill pants, and a new pair of English-cut oxfords that he’d bought at a shoe store in Beverly Hills. We squared off midway down the flight line, near the tail of a brown Stinson.

  Everything that was within me welled up. Instinctively I sensed that I would have to hit my father very hard and fast. I couldn’t pull my punches and act contrite. I took a deep breath and opened up with both barrels.

  “Dad, there is no waterbag. We never even looked for the stupid thing. There’s no waterbag.”

  “Ah shit Rinky.”

  “Yeah, shit. You’ve been an absolute pain in the ass on this thing, and there’s no waterbag.”

  “Shit.”

  “Shit is right.”

  “No waterbag?”

  He didn’t kn
ow whether to scream or laugh, and there was this falsetto amazement to his voice when he said, “No waterbag?”

  “No waterbag.”

  “Jesus Rinker. Everybody up there is expecting to see this thing. They want to see the waterbag. You really mean it? No waterbag?”

  “Dad, there is no waterbag. Do you copy that? No waterbag. It was a dumb idea when you brought it up. It was a dumb idea when you pestered us all across the country about it. It’s a dumb idea now. We never even looked for that waterbag. You don’t need a waterbag to cross America in a Piper Cub. We’ve proven that to you.”

  My father looked up from the dust, his face twisted in anger, but he did have these marvelous qualities, always. He could transition quickly to the next emotion and when he was wrong he wasn’t afraid to say so.

  “Ah shit Rinker. I’m feeling awful now. I blew it. I blew this thing.”

  He fished his pipe out of his pocket and took several long draws to calm himself down. He was really working at getting himself over the hill and into the next mood. Then his shoulders started to shake and he laughed so hard that he had to lean against the tail of the plane behind him.

  “Well, I oughta be angry with you Rinker, but I’m not. I’m sorry. This whole thing is my fault. I can see that you’re upset, and you have a right to be. You obviously didn’t need a waterbag.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have lied about it.”

  “Nah, nah, nah. You didn’t lie. You let me believe what I wanted to believe. And I was a horse’s ass to want to believe it. But look, how’s Kern on this? How’s he taking it? Is he mad at me too?”