Pilots often call their airplanes time machines for the ability to transport people and passengers quickly and efficiently. They are truly remarkable with their capacity to help reconnect with the people and places of the past. The 21st-century society is a mobile one, and many of us live far away from the place we grew up. With every passing year, I long for the relationships and places of my past and want to reconnect with them before it is too late.
When we first moved to Louisiana thirty years ago, a car-trip back to South Texas was a straightforward seven- or eight-hours (or 15 if you hit Houston traffic) and we made that drive several times a year. Such a journey was easy and uncomplicated for a multi-day holiday, but much harder for a weekend, a friend’s birthday, or just a quick trip to visit family. Owning one of these time machines changed all of that. A weekend trip several hundred miles away was no longer a chore.
Early in my pilot training, my first flight instructor asked, “Why do you want to fly?” My response was an immediate “to cover the most ground in the shortest time possible.” Some aspiring pilots want the same thing. Others want to work for the airlines or fly agricultural crop-dusters. A third group wants to stay low and slow, never really branching out more than a hundred miles or so. Finally, others morph from one category to the next as income rises and abilities mature. There is no wrong mission, but the end goal was always clear in my head. I wanted to get places quickly and efficiently.
One of the greatest joys about flying is the ability to visit so many places efficiently.
I moved rapidly in my training, and, like most new pilots, flew a rented Cessna 172 for several years. I moved up into complex airplanes with a rented Piper Arrow. With the wheels tucked up nicely under the wings, I ventured out a little farther and traveled a little faster. I bought a Mooney M20J as my first airplane and entered the ownership world. My wife and kids started to fly with me more often and became comfortable with me as a pilot. I sold the M20J and moved up to a Piper Malibu Mirage – introducing me to the flight levels, larger airports, more controlled airspace, and much longer distances. I’m now in a TBM 700, and there is practically nothing in the continental United States that is too far.
One of the greatest joys about flying is the ability to visit so many places efficiently. Whether the trip is for work or pleasure, the Time Machine carries you there with remarkable ease. One of those places we enjoy is far west Texas near Big Bend National Park. I returned from a solo trip out there on a recent Sunday, and my wife immediately told me the air conditioner in the back of the house was broken. For some reason, hearing that news brought a song into my head, and I started humming the tune out loud. The song was The Beatles’ 1964 hit “In My Life.”
How did The Beatles’ “In My Life” come to live in my head that afternoon, in conjunction with the news of the broken air conditioner? I guess that something my wife said about the heat in the house conjured up a long-lost memory from my younger self.
Since it was a weekend, we knew there would be no help until Monday. We high-tailed it to Lowe’s and bought a few fans to pull cool air from the front of the house to the bedroom. While the fans helped cool the bedrooms, the bathroom remained uncomfortably hot.
The sound of the fans, along with the stillness of the air in the bathroom, reminded me of my grandmother’s hilltop beach house in Port Aransas, Texas. Window units cooled the bedrooms, while the main part of the house relied on the Gulf breeze passing through wide open windows. The bathrooms, on the other hand, had no air except for old Hunter ceiling fans clanking away, trying to move hot summer air. The sound of our newly purchased fans in our bedroom brought back a flood of memories from that old beach house high on the hill. Walking through our house, I realized I was still singing the words,
There are places I’ll remember
All my Life, though some have changed,
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All the places have their moments
With lovers and friends, I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life, I’ve loved them all.
It is not unusual for a random song to suddenly pop into my head. I don’t know if it’s caused by dreaming about a topic the night before, or maybe it was a melody playing in the background or on a TV commercial. ChatGPT says it’s a common occurrence for the mind to fill quiet space.
Apparently, minimal external inputs in the morning or throughout the day leave spaces that need to be filled, and music is one of the ways that the brain fills the void of fragmented memory.
A couple of years ago, I created a family text chain called the “Song of the Day” or “SOD” for short. The SOD was my way of sharing these random songs that appeared in my head with my immediate family. At first, I began by sending it to my wife and children and expanded it to include some other close friends and family. Each SOD would include a brief explanation of why I liked the song and maybe a relevant fact or two about the artist involved. The SOD moved from a daily post to a more periodic post when I would hear a nostalgic song that would spark a particular memory. For me, these long-forgotten lyrics of “In My Life” set off a memory chain sufficient enough that I just had to share the song with the SOD recipients and listen to it all the way through myself.
As I listened, I couldn’t help but make the association with our trips in the Time Machine and all of the places we have been as a family. A song, or an entry in a logbook (or diary), can instantly bring back forgotten memories. The same is true about great summer car trips. The songs in the plane, in the car, or at the destination match past experiences and will forever remain stored in the far reaches of the brain until, at some later date, they are brought forward. These memories resurface like déjà vu prompted by a song, a smell, a taste, or even a sound. It only takes a small spark to light that fire.
The plane has allowed our family to revisit the places of my and my wife’s childhood and to find new adventures and exotic locations of our own. I’m not sure Port Aransas, South Texas, or the Big Bend region would be considered exotic by the general public, but for our family, it still holds a certain allure.
For our first anniversary, my wife bought us a weekend package at the Gage Hotel in Marathon, Texas. The trip would have been a nine-hour drive for a weekend getaway. I had just completed my first year in law school, and she was working full-time in Houston. As much as we wanted to go, we didn’t have the time or money for the vacation. Twenty years later, we had a little more time and some savings, so we finally made the trip in the Mooney. The Time Machine cut seven hours from the trip.
The dichotomy of age is that as you get older, work demands hopefully ease, and maybe there is a little more cushion in the bank account for vacations. At the same time, you are burning daylight, and there is only so much time left to revisit those favorite places or find new ones. I’m happy that on that certain day, so many years ago, I stopped by the Pineville Municipal airport, read the sign that said “Cessna – Learn to Fly Here,” and walked in and said to the man inside, “I want to fly.” My first long cross-country was to Refugio, Texas, for a hunting trip. Even in a C-172, the trip was cut in half. From this moment on, I was sold on flying.
Renting and later buying a Time Machine remains one of the best decisions of my life. Flying and owning a plane have not always been easy, and budgetary constraints have cut into our use of the plane several times. But in the end, the old saying is true – “Time is Money.” So as my days go by, we will continue to board the Time Machine, tune in the XM Radio, and discover the next SOD. That random XM song may just determine the Time Machine’s next destination. Or maybe some other external prompt will populate the space in my brain and resurrect another forgotten memory.
Google says that John Lennon wrote “In My Life” about his childhood bus route through Liverpool, “before pivoting to a broader, heartfelt meditation on his past.” His words stoked my own meditation on past experiences and thoughts of future destinations. But for now, I reminisce and raise a glass to the SOD, The Beatles, and the “places I’ll remember” because “I have loved them all.”
