Tag: flying

Some things make me wonder

“Man must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives.”
— Attributed to Socrates, Greek philosopher (470-399 BC)

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I wonder about things.

For instance, how Socrates envisioned “rising above the earth to the top of the atmosphere” 400 years before Christ? Way before TSA security checkpoints, photo IDs, and lost luggage.

Was he sipping some of that fabled undiluted red wine commonly consumed at the ancient Greek symposiums—social gatherings for drinking, philosophy, and poetry? Ethereal visions of some sort filled his mind the day that Grecian Gazette reporter covering the Lyceum lecture beat captured his famous quote for the evening edition.

Whatever the backstory, the noted philosopher nailed the feeling. Even today, top-of-the-atmosphere views from any flight foster a remarkably unique understanding of the world in which we live.

As a personal side note, window seat views are my second-favorite. My first choice for years was the pilot’s seat. I’ve really missed that view the last couple of decades or so,. And sadly, trying to book it through a travel agent gets really tricky.

Commercial flight window seats transform humdrum travel into awe-inspiring experiences. Panoramic views of living maps with miniature cities and patchwork landscapes, dotted with lakes and ponds. Majestic mountains, endless oceans, and intricate ribbons of rivers.

Visual experiences that make the journey as memorable as the destination.

Which makes me wonder about something else. Why would someone book a window seat, then lower the shade and slip into deep slumber or tiny-screen hypnosis?

Seeking answers at one time, I began my own research.

Sitting for hours packed like sardines with strangers has never been my idea of fun. Therefore, I make every effort to get acquainted with seat mates early in every flight. Collecting opinions from passengers like Darlene going to San Diego. “When I can’t get a window seat, I’m sad,” she said. “Window seats are my visual adventures.” I wondered if she might have been hinting that I defer my window seat to her?

Didn’t matter. I wasn’t about to budge.

Daphne on the way to Daytona seemed somewhat irritated. “People asking me to lower my window shade are crazy. I’m like ‘If you want control over the window, buy a seat with one, dude!’”

Mary, bound for Minneapolis explained, “I like to look down at cities and wonder what it would be like, living in places I may never get to visit.”

I really relate to that because I’ve looked down on places like the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, and the Great Salt Lake. I’ve seen Iceland, Greenland, parts of Eastern Europe, and the Swiss Alps from a window seat. And I always think about visiting those places … someday.

Well, maybe everywhere except Iceland. I don’t even like Texas in the winter.

On a winter’s night flight to Europe once, a young student named Elaine shared that she couldn’t sleep like all her classmates. She was too excited. As we talked about window seats, a faint orange glow slowly defined the horizon, separating black sky and terra firma. Mere moments later, a magnificent sunrise unveiled Amsterdam, and the Netherlands, below.

“Why would anyone want to sleep through something like that,” Elaine asked.

Sunrises and sunsets were my favorite view from the pilot’s seat. Take-offs around dusk, watching the setting sun during climbout. Landmarks fading into darkness spotted with patches of twinkling cities connected by trails of car lights.

I’ll never forget one August sunrise departure out of San Francisco, seeing the Golden Gate Bridge towers protruding through a fog layer covering the Bay Area.

Bob’s take on the topic was a great “pilot’s seat” observation on our way to Chicago. “After half my career as a military jet jockey and the other half as a commercial pilot,” he said. “I always had the best office window in the world. Every day was different and I never had a boring view.”

Greg, going to Las Vegas, may have said it best of all, though. “Consider this about window seats. Throughout the centuries of those who may have dreamed about it, we are the first to experience the view from a seat above the clouds.”

And now I’m wondering—Socrates dreamed about it, but what might he have had to say about a literal view from a seat above the clouds?

Even without a decanter of his best 400 BC undiluted Grecian red wine.

—Leon Aldridge

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© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2026. Feel free to use excerpts with full and clear credit given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling.’

Leon Aldridge is an “enjoying semi-retirement until a better gig comes along” newspaper editor and publisher, communication and marketing practitioner. His columns are featured in: The Center Light and Champion, 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.

A monument to the ‘taste of flight’

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
— Leonardo da Vinci (1452 –1519), Renaissance artist and inventor who documented theoretical flying experiments.

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As a licensed pilot, granted one who hasn’t taken the controls of an aircraft in many years, I can still feel da Vinci’s intoxicating longing for flight.

Even as a kid, my young eyes were turned skyward. Dreaming of a day that I might taste the feeling of flight.

That same longing obviously lingered in two little-known, long-ago aviators from Shelby County in East Texas. Their flying adventures were reportedly the subject of family reunion stories for many years—into the 1980s, for sure.

Standing for a long time as a “monument,” of sorts, to their tastes of flight was the abandoned frame of an old airplane in the Southern part of the county known as the Dreka community.

I first saw what was left of the rusty remains in Florence Duncan’s yard on a dirt road some 40 years ago. A stop at Mrs. Duncan’s house, while visiting family friends nearby, introduced me to her and to the fabled stories of the flying machine. Even then, it was already slowly succumbing to grass and weeds.

“It’s been there since ‘bout 1947,” she said of the old airplane’s skeletal parts. “I keep it there for sentimental value.”

“Two of the boys (family members Ernest Duncan and Duncan Rolland) bought the airplane and wanted to turn one of our fields in front of the house into a runway for it,” Mrs. Duncan reminisced. “My husband, Dean, and I told them ‘No.’ But you know what? They cut my persimmon tree and flew it there anyway.”

“It was an old airplane,” she continued. “Duncan said he gave $150 for it.

When they lit it out there that first time, they hit a terrace and broke one of the wheels.

“They fixed it with bailin’ wire before they decided to go to Center in it,” Mrs. Duncan continued. “They came back in a little while, but they didn’t set down on the field quite soon enough. The wheel they wired up didn’t hold, and the airplane crashed, almost flipped over.

“I was scared to death,” Mrs. Duncan recalled. “I went runnin’ out toward the field. The whole family was right behind me. When I got close enough, I heard Ernest say, ‘I told you we should have lit it down in Center.’ That’s when I knew they were all right. I couldn’t believe they crawled out of that airplane and walked away from it.

“After the crash,” she said, “Van Bertherd, a young man just down the road, thought he could do better. He worked on it and headed down to the corn patch with it. The corn was just coming up at the time, and the plane got stuck.

“We wound up havin’ to take the mule down to the field,” Mrs. Duncan continued, “then towed it to a level stretch on the road. Van got it off, just barely clearing the fence and the pine trees, but came right back. Said it needed lots more work.”

According to Mrs. Duncan, the wrecked aircraft was eventually dragged to a corner of the yard where children climbed and played on it. “Pretending to fly,” she said. “I went out there once and asked where they were flyin’. ‘Way up high over Dallas,’ they said.

“Duncan was shaken up for a long time by that wreck , but he admitted later to wishin’ the airplane had been salvaged,” Mrs. Duncan recalled. “Said it would be an antique now, worth a lot more than the $150 he paid for it.”

When I saw it in the 1980s, the wreckage of the Dreka flying machine had reportedly  spent years serving as a kid’s playground, target practice, and neglect. By then, little remained but the bare frame, which had once been covered in fabric that had long since rotted away. There were no wings or motor. By appearance, it was a small plane with a cockpit just large enough for a pilot and a passenger in tandem.

A visit to the area last week revealed no trace of the old airframe. I couldn’t even locate Mrs. Duncan’s residence in the heavily forested region. She reportedly passed away in the early 1990s.

I do remember her closing remarks during our visit back then, however.

“I’m glad Duncan and Ernest weren’t hurt in the crash,” she said. Then added, “About the only thing I’m still mad about is my persimmon tree.

“It never did come back.”

—Leon Aldridge

(PHOTO ABOVE — Mrs. Florence Duncan standing next to the Dreka airplane wreckage in her yard about 1981 or ’82. Photo taken by Patricia McCoy, a reporter for the East Texas Light during my first tenure at the newspaper as publisher.)

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, 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.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.