Aeropuerto Internactional La Aurora was one of my favorite destinations, unlike many of our other common ports-of-call it was just so real and so diverse. Young caramel-colored military conscripts that appeared to be fourteen or fifteen were everywhere in the terminal and on the ramp. Each one had a different facial expression. In our flight uniforms and obviously being Norte Americanos we were never perceived to be a threat. Some were happy, many were bored and a very few were either boisterous or bossy in their berets, yellow neckerchiefs, polished boots and jungle cammies lugging their huge Spanish CETME rifles.
Something in them activated my 'mom' gene. Maybe the fact that they looked for all the world like a group of little Hispanic boys back home in Texas. All dressed up in their daddy's duck hunting clothes and lugging his huge-to-them Remington semi-automatic shotgun with its long twenty-eight-inch barrel. It made me feel an affinity for them. Or maybe it was the fact that they were to my thirty-year-old brain merely weeks older than the oldest orphans at Eva's mission that made me want to hug them and give them some of my delicious cake.
Guatemala City was a very interesting place to me, filled with open-air plazas occupied by many small-scale shopkeepers hawking their wares. Craftsmen, potters, weavers, often creating their goods in front of you. Farmers growing peas and beans in the mountains. Coffee plantations... Tourists visiting Antigua with its 500-year-old colonial history; street kids begging or selling blankets. There were also big fruit plantations down on the coast, but I had never been there. The coffee and the pastry in the city were absolutely wonderful. Perversely one of the best Italian restaurants that I ever enjoyed was located near the Hilton across Avanida La Reforma from the American Embassy in Zona Nueve.
As a big silver A-300 landed on runway Two-zero in front of us my beloved Punch, sitting in the middle Flight Engineer's seat, for this flight ran up the four engines one at a time as we sat at the threshold. It was his father's little Stinson that I earned my private license. Switching the magneto switch while intently watching the green sine wave on his oscilloscope for abnormalities. Finding none and satisfied that all engine gauges, manifold pressure, temperature, cylinder head temperature and the like were 'in the green' he tapped me and gave me a thumbs up. I called the tower.
"Aerolinea Icarus lista en Dos-Cero," I said into the mike. ICAO says that we are all supposed to speak English, but in Centro Americano and the Spanish Islands they appreciate those Norte Americanos who bother to habla.
"Icarus Seven-India-Charley you are cleared for takeoff," came the accented voice from the tower.
"Gracias, La Aurora, hasta manana," I said as I turn forty-five degrees and proceed to the southern end of the runway.
"Vuela con Dios, mi amigo," answered La Aurora.
As we started our takeoff roll, I could barely hear the tower's response. As I said, the roar of four gigantic radial engines producing eight-thousand horsepower with water-injection at METO, Maximum Engine TakeOff power can be loud.
"Gear up," I called to Mitchell in the left seat as soon as we are airborne, "flaps."
"Gear up... And locked... Three green... Flaps up," Mitch responded as soon as the appropriate instruments indicated their changed status.
I pulled the four throttles back past their lock-out gates from 'METO' to 'FULL' and used the yoke to push the nose of the airplane down just a bit. I counted off the seconds. Two, three, four, it takes a while for the elevators located ninety feet behind me to disrupt the airflow and move the airplane. Then I reached down to flip the trim wheels a tiny bit to compensate for the decreased torque. We will orbit the beautiful green bowl that Guatemala City resides in a few times to gain altitude. A voice from the tower came in and we were cleared to climb to "Angels-Fifteen," ten thousand feet above the city, and given the frequency to contact the control center for the flight back home.
Eventually we reach an altitude of 15,000 feet and I level the airplane out and retrim the flight controls. I fine tune all four engine's power, mixture and propeller pitch re-synchronizing them. Punch stands up and steps away from the flight engineers folding seat. Lillian sits down and taps me on the shoulder to get my attention in order to give me her estimates of time and fuel to Miami. As we finish, she notes that Mitch is asleep in the left seat and starts playing with my nipples, gently one at a time through the fabric of my white uniform shirt. Oh, that feels so nice, it is a shame I have to work.
We don't need a fourth crew member on this trip. But usually someone wants to come along when we take whatever we have that will fit onboard after our payload and fuel down to the orphanage at the mission near the lake south of the city. On this trip we had bicycles, tricycles, some toys and lots of clothing together with a big box of new sports equipment. Growing up we didn't have tons of material possessions, but the kids at the orphanage have almost nothing.
I thought of my own relationship with my children, three and five at home in Kendale Lakes with Jamie, their other mother. I wonder if we aren't spoiling them with unimportant material goods, serving them more than teaching them. It's such a hard line to walk. Jamie, my love, she dotes on them. It's really the only argument, the only friendly disagreement that we ever have. I totally understand why she does it. We both wanted more growing up. But while my parents were struggling financially and were away from home working. Hers were around, mostly passed out drunk and disinterested. Jamie just needs for our children to feel wanted and loved.
Flying this ancient twisted- and I mean that literally not figuratively, measurements were regularly taken of the exact amount of twist- aluminum refugee from Douglas' Santa Monica Factory over nearly eight hundred nautical miles of open water was the safe part of the journey there. The ride in the minimally maintained and completely overloaded Toyota pickup trucks with their Kamikaze School Washout drivers from La Aurora to Lago de Amatitlan was the harrowing part of the trip. But it was so worth it when we saw the children there wearing our clothes and playing with our toys. Knowing that they won't have to beg for coins on street corners or sleep in alcoves.
We need Mitch and his wife Mimi, they hold the FAA required type ratings for the DC-6, as does our other four striper, Captain Dale. The ten of us own Icarus, so the seven without type ratings try to fill out the two stripe and three stripe crew positions on each trip and grab as much legal backhaul as we can to maximize our bottom line. Today our backhaul was a full load those wonderful sweet sugar-snap-peas grown in the rich volcanic soil at high elevations above the city. By now George or Kristin is already on the telephone back at either our condo, or his condo in Kendale Lakes lining up buyers for our harvest.
We were and we are what the kids today call polyamorous. Texas granted marriage licenses to George and Kristin and to Punch and Lillian. It will be another ten years before Jamie and I had an official government document officially recognizing our union. It is in Dutch having been granted to us in Willemstad, Curacao. Our children were legal adults before we had a similar document from our home state of Texas, but I am not complaining. Complaining does not help and my girl Eva will be discussing the finer points of scripture with Jesus himself before officialdom recognizes her relationship with Punch and Lillian or the beautiful relationship that the seven of us share.
I wish we could bring commercial quantities of that delicious high-altitude coffee back. That would be very profitable, but the big players in that game have bribed both governments to prevent others from carrying any more than "that for personal use." Said term being gloriously undefined and subject to the daily arbitrary confiscatory whim of the inspectors at MIA. I imagine that between our trips they sit around, and they drink every bit that they steal from us. In the old days you bought a government appointment and lived off the graft; nowadays you get a salary and pension on top of what you confiscate.
Mitch is still asleep in the left seat as the sun sets behind us as we fly predominantly to the east and just a tad north. Punch, Lillian and I shared the coffee and cake in my chart case, before they went back to renew their monthly membership in the mile-high club. Well technically the two-and-a-half-mile high club. I thought about waking Mitch to share some cake but did not want to be cruel. Mitch is kinda like a father figure to us all. Then together we lacked the will power to just save some of the cake for him. Oh well, you snooze you lose.
