“You can have whatever you want if you believe in yourself and keep your feet firmly planted on the ground.”
— A. J. McLean – American singer; founding member of pop vocal group Backstreet Boys
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Writing a weekly column becomes second nature if you do it long enough.
Arriving at a topic is typically the only trick. Some weeks, a thought takes off with ease. Others, you rush toward deadline, praying for air under the wings hoping something will take flight. And some I call “Biblical inspirations.” Like the way the Bible relates genealogy. “And unto Enoch was born Irad: and Irad begat Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methusael: and Methusael begat Lamech …” and so on for centuries.
The piece published a couple of weeks ago chronicling my grandmother’s first and only airplane ride begat this week’s offering. Reflecting on that time Granny took her feet off the ground to fly was with me piloting the aircraft. A day of miraculous memories. One, I was 20-something with a brand-new pilot’s license on which the ink was still wet. I passed my FAA check ride just the day before with a logbook recording scant few entries of hours flown.
And two, no one even blinked before accepting my offer. “Anybody wanna go for an airplane ride?”
You’d have thought someone would have said, “Ahhh, that’s all right, you go first. If it all works out, I’ll think about it.”
Dad was the first to climb aboard. No questions, no hesitations, no fear. At least none he admitted. We flew around the area, over the newly constructed power plant and lakes, over to Pittsburg where he grew up, back around Omaha — just sightseeing. I didn’t know if he had ever flown. I assumed not, but I never asked. And he never said.
Later that afternoon, Mom and Granny followed suit. Mom flew once commercially from Texas to Kentucky in the early 1950s. Took me with her. I was a preschooler. Still have the “First Flight Certificate” and wings I was given for the trip on a Lockheed Constellation, known to aviation enthusiasts as a “Connie.” To this day, the most gorgeous propeller-driven airliner ever to grace the skies.
We circled Pittsburg for Granny to see her home on Cypress Street, completely unaware at the time that we may have been flying over the same ground as a Texas airship built at the P. W. Thorsell Foundry in 1902. A year before Orville Wright achieved powered flight in 1903 with his brother Wilbur running alongside him on the beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
History doesn’t record it, but I’ve often wondered if Wilbur might have told Orville, “Ahhh, that’s all right, you go first. If it all works out, I’ll think about it.”
Three of Cannon’s employees reportedly built The Ezekiel Airship said to have been inspired by the Biblical book of Ezekiel, chapter 1, verse 16, “The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the color of beryl; and they four had one likeness; and their appearance was as it were a wheel within the middle of the wheel.” And, verse 19, “And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them … And when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.”
It was reportedly destroyed in a storm near Texarkana as it was being transported to St. Louis for the 1904 World’s Fair. Plans and other documents were later destroyed in a fire, common in foundries and sawmills during the day. And after that, Cannon gave up on building another airship.
A full-size replica of the Ezekiel Airship was built by Pittsburg craftsman Bob Lowery and the Pittsburg, Texas, Optimist Club in the 1980s using one surviving photograph. I saw it once displayed in the Pittsburg Hot Link Restaurant, where it resided until 2001 before being relocated to its present location just down the street in the city’s Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Center and Museum. It remains there today, along with artifacts related to the craft and Cannon, including Cannon’s Bible, displayed with pages opened to the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel.
With no physical evidence of the flight, most historians discount claims that the Pittsburg, Texas airship ever flew.
My fledgling family flights over East Texas and Pittsburg decades ago were never repeated. Dad, Mom, and Granny were all presumably satisfied with their excursions that one time, placing their trust in me to take them up and get them back down safely.
With my apologies to A.J. McLean, I suggest that to have whatever you want, you not only have to believe in yourself, but you also sometimes have to get your feet off the ground.
Oh, and beget trust to your pilot.
—Leon Aldridge
Photo credit: The Ezekiel Airship replica on display at the Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Center and Museum in Pittsburg, Texas. Wikipedia Commons. Author: Michael Barera.
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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.
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