The Christmas Flight

The last time I visited Pennsylvania was for my Pop's funeral back in 2003. There was a 21 gun salute.  Even when I’m  expecting it, guns firing at a funeral startle me and put a lump in my throat. I began thinking about other funerals, old buddies, and their own pop’s military service.  Oddly, in my mind, I rode around my old neighborhood like I was doing my paper route as a kid. Funny. I’d done a similar thing the last time I was visiting here.

Back in the summer of 1983, I rode an old Harley I’d built all the way from Tybee Island near Savannah to Pennsylvania to be best man in my buddy Phil’s wedding. 

For the week I was there, I thumped around the the side streets on that red Shovelhead chopper stopping for a bowl of Capaletti soup, a Porketta sandwich and a Stegmaier Gold Medal beer. Perfection. Bruce’s house sat across the street from a neighborhood Italian bar and grill and at the end of those three rounds of seven gunshots, I found myself wondering what became of him. 

When I was a kid Bruce just disappeared. It was rumored that he got sent to Farview, an institution that looked just like the one in One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest.  Bruce was upset by something on television and shot it point blank with his father’s Army issue Colt 45. After that, he set the drapes on fire for good measure. He claimed the whole drapes and fire part was just an accident because of the Christmas candle already burning on top of the TV. 

His mom put the fire out with a broom, then put Bruce out with the same and called the Borough police.  Bruce heard the siren and took off running. He wandered around homeless for a few days, sooty broom stripes still marking the back of his genuine Army jacket. We found him sleeping in our tarp covered Hutto next to the Four Hills, where we rode our dirt bikes. We brought him blankets, stogies and cans of soup and sardines. The cops finally found him and picked him up. He got a psych eval and suddenly he was gone.

This rocked my world more than the other guys since Bruce and I had a common bond. The Christmas Flight.

It was Christmas break, 1972. Winter bore down on the blackened heart of coal mine country. Strip mining had long since turned our rolling green hills into huge, black mounds littered with white birch. This unusable waste is known as Culm by coal miners. Most of our parent mispronounced it as 'Column'.  One enormous heap near my house covered several square miles. We nicknamed it 'The Dump'. This year it was transformed into a winter playground by a three-foot snow. Ma said it was pretty when it was covered in snow. She said it reminded her of the Alps though she'd never left the state. Even the scrappy white birch trees looked better.

Although I was nearly thirteen, the Dump was still was forbidden territory. Clearly, sledding down an icy public street dodging out of control cars was the safer option, but Uncle Tony had a metal pipe for a femur from sledding on the Dump, so there was that.

This particular winter day it was cold. Very cold. Exactly zero birds were chirping. Yet, we were all out in force. Wally, Turk, Burb, Benji, Chico, Grouse, Zip, Vit, the Dembrowski brothers. Even Leonard the Terrible. Keystone Avenue was hill of solid ice. 

The Slowtoe brothers were up to their usual lunacy. This time Ronald was trying to ride their Rex 50cc scooter up the icy hill with an accessory ski now mounted on the front wheel.  Gerald rode on the back. Naturally, he was.facing backwards carrying a bow and arrow. What the.. We didn't dare ask why. Clearly, damaged goods. 

We did not then realize that these guys were actually a National Treasure.

Today was our day for sledding. Snow had been packed on the hill for weeks and tire after spinning tire had polished it to glassy perfection. Even the Borough's rock salt was useless in this weather. Cars opted for the long way around, up Crystal Street though it was not much better. Everyone knew it was futile to attempt trying to climb that hill, let alone risk flattening somebody’s kid on a Flexible Flyer. 

As we stood our ground atop the hill, we watched a lone figure approaching. He was pulling a old fashioned wooden toboggan. No one said a word. It was Burb's friend, Bruce. That fact alone made us wary. 

"Where you gonna ride that, peckerwood?" the elder Dembrowski taunted. Somebody snickered. Everyone knew the fastest way down the hill was on cold, steel runners. 

"Down the hill." Bruce said casually, not even looking at him.

"You can't ride that down this hill you moron. How do you even steer it?"

 "Not this hill, you moron!" Bruce countered, 'That hill. He pointed up the Dump. 

 Silence.

The Dump rose vertically 300 feet at nearly 40 degrees. It was covered in a thick crust of snow. Wind swirled at the summit. We looked at him in disbelief. He was a kamikaze on a suicide mission. If successful, a new King Gutsy would have to be crowned. Grouse still held it for riding his little Honda XR75 across the hockey pond ice in April. The ice was bending and breaking just inches from his rear tire.  He made it across without going through.

“Who's coming with me? I only got room for one.” asked Bruce, eyeing the circle.  Even the Slowtoes’ halted their recon mission to watch. No takers. A wave of courage swept over me as it might just before one storms the beaches of Normandy or perhaps leaps off the Golden Gate Bridge.

 "I'll go" I said, stunned at the words I heard leaving my mouth. With those words I was elevated from dweeb to peer.

 "You're both crazy" they all said. You won't do it when you get up there and look down.  The older ones were taunting, now hoping we would, just to witness the carnage. Salivating.

Bruce never looked back. He just started climbing. I followed in his footsteps as he stomped each boot, again and again, through the thick crust right up the side of the Dump. It was a long, long climb. We got to the top and saw the steam rising from the masked and hooded red faces below. Bruce took off a mitten and held his thumb and index finger in front of him, about quarter of an inch apart,  to size up Dembrowski who was standing in the middle of the road wayyyyy below. Front row seat. He made sure Dembrowski was watching. He whispered "Little boy" to himself. One by one, he squished every last little boy standing down below. 

To me, they all looked hungry to witness a public execution. I was too scared to get on, but too scared to back out. Bruce was already on board, eager to meet his maker. "You ready, big man?" he asked. Reluctantly, I boarded and grabbed his pockets. I closed my eyes and buried my face in the back of his jacket. With both hands he shoved us off confidently and without hesitation. 

With the last words of  'Bombs away' we launched. 

Turns out, a toboggan was the perfect choice for this windblown, steep frozen culm dump, if in fact maximum velocity was one's objective and measure of success. The wide flat bottom of the toboggan sat right there on top of the crust. Like Grouse on the hockey pond, we moved too fast to break through.

“This guy is really a lunatic", I thought to myself and only then, realized the implication.  

The sensation was as though in a falling dream, where you can't catch your stomach. I heard the swell of the voices below growing louder in anticipation of the inevitable. The deafening rush of wind was followed by a brief silence halfway down.  We went airborne and hit zero g's. A drop in incline caused us to soar and then slowly nosedive. The glide ratio of a brick. My eyes were still closed. I braced for impact. I heard a stadium cheer begin to erupt.

Upon re-entry, the front of the toboggan broke through the crust.  The deep snow beneath tore my feet from the side of the sled. My legs folded out and both boots filled with snow and were immediately pulled from my feet, taking both socks with them. Then, we hit the street.

The nose was huge. The toboggan was smashed to smithereens from the sheer angle of meeting between Dump and road, times velocity squared. Bruce went off headfirst, flipped once and hit the snow bank on the other side. His bleeding nose left a trail, validating the danger of the mission. Th
e contrast of blood on snow always sends a powerful message. I landed on my back spinning like a top behind him, feet in the air. Shoe-less, Sock-less, Breathless; the wind knocked clean out of me.

Pain.  As I caught my breath, the stunned crowd cheered, diving for splinters of the toboggan as a souvenir of this historic flight. The pain disappeared. I stood up, barefoot on the icy street and cleaned my goofy black horn-rimmed glasses. 

Davey went scrambling up the hill for my boots at my command.  “Socks too!” I barked.
  
So this was power. This was heroism. To outperform one's equipment, just like Chuck Yeager.  I walked barefoot on the frozen street, right past the awestruck Slowtoe brothers, to retrieve my boots. I did not afford them even a glance. 

Manhood had knocked and I had opened the door.