This weekend I decided to get off my butt and get out and do something. It’s pretty scary when you reach a point in your life where that is a decision you have to make and not just a given. So, I decided to drive down to Salinas for the California International Air Show. This was the first air show I have been to (That I can remember at least) since I was a teenager living on an Air Force Base, and I have fond memories of those days that I guess I wanted to recapture. The drive to Salinas is about 70 minutes, depending on traffic, and I generally like to spend my time driving in thought; partially to prove that I still can and partially because it’s one of the few opportunities left to do so with minimal distractions. What followed was somewhat of a free-thought riff that I will try to capture and share because it is my page and something that I found to be interesting.
What is it about air shows and airplanes in general that has always captivated me? I get goose-bumps when I see fighter jets, I collect videos about them, and I love seeing them in museums. They stir something very deep inside me which I don’t entirely understand. About a year ago, as a gift to my dad, I pulled together a bunch of old F-4 Phantom clips to make a video montage for him, and as I looked through the finished product, I found myself fighting back tears. But why? Watching this, I would almost subliminally flash back to evenings in the base movie theaters where before each movie, you would stand for the national anthem which was accompanied by soaring orchestration and soaring jets. Even as a teenager in the company of rowdy friends, that would always be a sacred moment. I don’t remember any particular introspection that would occur during those 2 minutes, but there was clearly something going on in my head that I could not explain.
There are two other things that, for me, elicit a similar reaction and as I pondered on it, I think I found my truth. These things are very disparate on the surface and will most likely provide an insight into my lack of cinematic or musical sophistication.
The first is the movie “Armageddon”. While I find the movie as a whole to be a fun distraction but little else, there is one scene that I both look forward to and dread at the same time since I am not sure I will be able to hold it together. Will Patton plays one of the unlikely astronaut candidates selected to “save the world” from a particularly nasty asteroid that is on a collision course with the Earth (Hence the movie’s title). No specific details are provided, but clearly Will’s character and his wife are estranged and she wants nothing to do with him. This is made clear when he stops by the day before the mission and he is rebuffed at the house. When his son appears on the porch, he is told that it is just a salesman; a “salesman” who in this case manages to leave a toy space shuttle for his son with a cryptic aside to something big that he is involved in. A bit later in the movie, as the public becomes aware of the danger that the world is facing, the scene cuts to the son watching TV and seeing the salesman from the day before. Here is where, the scene gets me every time (Even now as I watch it again to make sure that I get it right): The mother reveals to her son, “That man’s not a salesman, that’s your daddy.”
The second obscure thing that gets a strong response from me is the Billy Gilman song “Oklahoma”. I am not that much of a country fan so I am not sure how exactly I ended up hearing this song, but it tells the tale of an orphaned boy, the dad who didn’t know he was a dad, and the reunion of the two years later in Oklahoma.
Lost sons, absent dads, and at least in two of the three cases air craft are involved. Growing up, I felt very disconnected from my dad because of the many absences required by his position in the Air Force (One that I can understand a lot better now from his perspective having been on the “other side” in the Navy). Given that context, I guess it is not too surprising that these scenes or these lyrics would stir something familiar, but suppressed in my mind. I think this might also tie in to the air shows. Could it be that in my mind, an airplane has often surrogated for my dad? When he would be gone it was generally because of the airplanes. Flying F-4s or Harriers, he would be gone for months sometimes, but several times a day I would see those same planes flying in the skies above. Thinking about it, it doesn’t strike me as too weird that I would connect these things together and see my dad in the airplanes. This would explain the sense of awe that I still have which is tinged with a sense of sadness that hangs on the edges: The awe for the machines, the desire to connect with the machines, but the sadness that they took my dad away from me for much of my childhood.
Well, as with many “free-thought exercises”, there is a lot of dirt to dig through to find any diamonds, but I am satisfied that I may have found something that explains the strange attraction that keeps pulling me back.
