Naed Ground School

The three gals were 18, and Paul was 20 in the summer of 1979 when the events described took place, the same characters appear 41 years later in

Dragondrivers

. This story was an entry in a 1000 word short story contest.

All pseudonyms have been changed to protect the deviant.

***

Growing up, Paul's father owned an airplane. Five of us learned to fly in that little yellow Piper Cub. Paul went first, he was taught by Mr. Sanchez, who had flown big B-17 bombers over Germany in the Eighth Air Force. George got his license the next summer and then it was our turn. The weather never really gets cold in central Texas, the field was grass, and it needed constant mowing. In time we got jobs working for Pepe Sanchez.

Mr. Sanchez had bought a Cessna Bobcat after the war and had tried to start up an air taxi service. But in those days slots were regulated, bought and sold. He didn't know any of the influential people who held onto the limited number of approvals granted, so he was limited to charter operations. A pilot, he found holding down an office not to his liking and once he found us to be responsible workers, he delegated most of the office duties.

In deference to the temperatures the guys usually wore shorts and tank tops and we usually wore shorts and tops that were little more than swimsuit separates. We had the run of the place, and the guys rigged up a gong like they had at gasoline stations so that we could fool around with each other in the office without being surprised by a customer. Pepe delegated to Paul, whom he had trained two years earlier, the task of completing the required ground school on weather for me, Lillian and Jamie.

The one really good science class we had in high school was Earth Science. Most people who lived in the county were farmers or ranchers, and they needed to know what the weather was likely to bring their way. The venerable Farmers Almanac is basically an analog version of the computer models they use for weather today. People manually wrote down pertinent statistics, interpolated them, and made annual or later semi annual predictions of future activity based on long term trends and recent past performance. That's weather forecasting in macro.

In micro, pilots need to know what the weather will bring their way on a daily or hourly basis, so they can fly around it or not fly at all because of it. The first weather stations were established for the airmail pilots in the 20s and 30s. Then the war brought about a massive technological investment in meteorology. In general, because of the Earth's rotation, weather patterns move from west to east. Stations were set up on the eastern seaboard and in the Atlantic Ocean to predict the weather in Europe, and stations were set up in China to predict the weather in the Pacific.

This information once collected is disseminated in a graphical form, maps. Thus one typical hot summer day in the rolling foothills of central Texas, we gathered. The facilities consisted of a row of "T" hangers with a small lounge used by the CAP squadron at one end and a bathroom with showers at the other. There were also a couple of travel trailers set up as the airport office and as a rental office and classroom. The classroom's rather inefficient window air conditioning unit wasn't up to the task of keeping the four of us cool, so we made up for it by taking off the few articles of clothing we were wearing once inside. It was naked ground school.

Lillian volunteered to be the map, so Jamie and I helped her up onto the table's wood surface. Just for fun we took some nylon rope and tried her face up and spread eagle to the table's four legs. Then Paul took out a black grease pencil and began to draw on Lillian's beautiful naked form. Pretty soon there were triangles on her areola, and numbers on her breasts. Her ribcage sported a curvy line with triangles and half circles on opposing sides, and her chest and belly displayed curved and straight lines, triangles and circles radiating dots.

"So Lisa," asked Paul, "what do you see?"

"Well," I responded, "there's an occluded front just south of Twin Peaks and north of Naval Lake moving toward the Russet Forest."

"Jamie, how tall are those mountains?"

"The west one is 2850 feet, the east one 2900.

"They're the same," said Lillian.

"Nope, one's always bigger than the other," I replied.

"That's okay, Paul said right before he took the westernmost peak into his mouth, playing with the little stainless steel stud near its summit, "they are both perfect as they are."

The earth gave a small tremor.

"I didn't label the high and low pressure centers," Paul said, handing me the grease pencil. "Could you add them?"

I located the proper locations, and there was more low scale seismic activity as I drew an "H" and an "L" on Lillian's chest.

Then came an announcement, "It's so hot, I'm on fire," the earth itself said.

"The fire must be here, in the Russet Forest" Paul said, before planting a kiss on it.

"We have to contain it," I said, before adding a second kiss.

"Oh, I think that I've located the 'hot spot'," said Jamie as her tongue finished a run through the canyon south of the russet forest.

Paul, Jamie and I took our turns trying to douse the fire. But saliva and pussy juice apparently make poor fire retardants. Whie our tongues dragged one after another through the deep ravine in an attempt to douse the flames, the smoldering bush became a fire and then an inferno.

We used our tongues and fingers to move the water at the bottom of the canyon up to the small hill above which seemed to be the epicenter. But with each application of liquid the fire, and the size of the hill itself, increased in size and temperature.

Then there was a foreshock and a geyser opened up dousing the canyon. There was more trembling, a larger earthquake and the fire was contained.