Finally

When I started this class, I would read when I found it interesting or when I found it necessary. During the school year, I would only read for class. During the summer, I was fairly independent and would be drawn into my reading. However, during the school year, I would only read when I had to and would mostly read for six hours on Saturday while sitting on the toilet. During the summer, I would read about anywhere but the car.

This semester, I have read numerous nonfiction books and only one fiction book. I have read books that are helpful or that I find interesting. I take long enough reading a book that I do not have trouble finding books to read, although at times, I have had trouble getting my holds to come into the library on time. This semester, I have only found one book that I could not stick with, and that was because the over-the-top imagery turned my stomach. In fact, I found the descriptions difficult to believe. Although I stick with my reading, I have found it difficult to lose myself in my reading because I am a page counter. I am always doing math with the number of pages I have read and have left to read. At time, getting through reading can become laborious because I just want to know the story and do not want to wade through reading the words. I do talk about my reading with my family, but my interests are different than those of my friends, so I find it difficult to talk about my reading with them.

I have not changed the speed of my reading or how I approach my reading, but I have come to no longer despise reading for class, although I still find text-book reading boring. My choice of what type of writing to read has not changed much either. I mostly prefer prose because poetry confuses me. I like nonfiction reading because of the realism. I also still only like to read what I find helpful or interesting. I will still be just as likely to read during the summer. Every year, I always participate in the summer reading program. Next, I will most likely read a book about personality types.

Chuck Yeager was finally awarded a fur coat for Glennis after flying 2.4 Mach in the Bell X-1A.

When Yeager decided that he wanted to go back to flying fighters, he figured that he had better figure out when his luck would run out:
"I asked Ridley if he could calculate on his slide rule how many more flights it would take before the law of averages made it impossible for me to survive. Jack pretended to figure it out on a pad, then he began to laugh. 'According to my figures,' he said, 'Major Charles E Yeager died three years ago.'"
-Yeager

Two interesting things that I learned Chuck did were test Flying a MiG 15 and being friends with Jacqueline Cochran.

            Apparently the X-1 had a little bit of trouble dropping from the bomb bay at times. On one such occasion “a big red-headed sergeant, came down the ladder with a hammer. That dedicated nut stood on the fuselage of the X-1, poundin on the safety pin stuck in the shackle release. He wore a chute and an oxygen mask, but if he did knock out the pin, we were going to drop as a team. I watched him from the cockpit window, thinking, ‘Man, that guy is pure guts.’”

            The X-1 also had a couple of engine problems. A few times in a row, the engine caught on fire. This was one thing that actually scared Chuck. This was one problem that Chuck inadvertently brought home. Glennis would wake him up from as sleep as he was trying to crawl out of their bedroom window thinking that he was crawling out of the cockpit of the X-1.

            Yeager was not enamored with getting trophies and awards. In fact, all the mail that he had to fill out answers for was a drain on him. Carl Bellinger remembered one time seeing how Chuck Yeager used his Collier trophy:

“Chuck Yeager was a car tinkerer, and I was always tinkering with model trains. I remember driving out to his place one Sunday morning to borrow some tools. We went into his garage, and I was startled to see the Collier Trophy, which he had received at the White House, sitting on his work bench. He was using the most prestigious award in aviation to store his nuts and bolts.”

            Chuck and his family lived quite meagerly. They were only given the regular Air Force pay, and for a while they lived in a one bedroom adobe. Later on, they moved to a two bedroom ranch, but there were holes in the walls, the base was forty miles away, and their nearest neighbor was sixteen miles away. Glennis frequently feared running out of milk and bread, because it was a one and a half hour round trip to the store and back. Later on, they were able to live closer to the base, but their house was four walls and a roof on a concrete slab.

            After years of flying as a test pilot, Chuck was forced back into test pilot school because of some course work he had missed. Chuck wasn’t much of an academic, so school was difficult for him. Along with that, his teachers were out to fail him. In the end, it came down to General Boyd telling the school, “Goddamn it, I’m in charge of this school. You will pass him.” And that’s how Chuck Yeager got his diploma.

            Chuck was not very impressed with Scott Crossfield of Neil Armstrong because they acted like they knew everything and they still had a lot to learn. Armstrong was flying a plane with Yeager and decided to check out the lakebed by doing a touch-and-go. Yeager told him not to do it. Armstrong touched, but he didn’t go. Crossfield taxied an airplane through a hangar.

            As I’ve continued to read Yeager, I realize that Chuck Yeager has an interesting way of writing at times. There are instances where Chuck writes as if the reader is the one doing the things that he actually did. He tells the reader how he or she is to feel and what it’s like. It has a real way of drawing the reader. It’s the realism that makes it interesting.

            It strikes me that the Air Force did not have a place for Yeager to stay with his wife. They could either live in separate quarters on the base or live in a home that they paid for. Even if they live on the base, they had to pack up the bags every three days, walk out the door, and then walk back in in order to stay on the base. I suppose this is why Yeager approached his superiors after he broke the sound barrier and said that he would at least like to buy Glennis a fur coat.

            Aparently, Yeager was not very organized and tended to make messes:

            “Chuck wan’t easy for an orderly person to live with. He never picked up his clothes, left them all over the house, no matter how much I’d nag. So, one day I decided to teach him a lesson. I began picking up his clothes and just dumped them on the floor in the hall closet. I dumped and dumped until that closet bulged. Finally he asked me where a blue windbreaker was. My big moment! I said, it must be in the hall closet. He opened the door and this enormous pile of clothes just dumped on him. He kicked through the pile, found the jacket in the mess, put it on, and left. That man showed no surprise and never said a word. I was so damned mad I could’ve spit nails.

-Yeager by Chuck Yeager

            As Chuck continues his story, he brings up a reported situation in which the pilot avoided hitting a schoolyard and then fatally crashed. Chuck calls it a load of crap. He said that in a situation like that, the pilot would be thinking about one thing only – survival.

            When Chuck was flying the X-1 the windshield frosted up. Their fix at the time was to have Dick Frost guide Chuck Yeager down to a safe landing. Later on, their solution was to put Drene Shampoo on the windshield.

Fire

So beautiful!
So bright!
It mezmerizes me.
Dare I touch it?
Flames jump
and lick
at the logs they burn.
Blue flames. Yellow flames, Orange flames.
Another log here or there.
A crackle and pop in my ears.
Sparks rush, flying like fireflies.
Fire.

Currently

I read 113 pages in Yeager this week.

Quotes of the week:

• "Freedom is nothing more than the constant, thrilling awareness that you are free, that you choose your own atttitude from moment to moment - and that you can't control other people's choices." 

 -From Welcome to the Jungle by Hillary Smith

I liked this quote because it is all about controlling your actions. It pretty much says to control what you can control and relinquish what you can't control. This is very important in one taking responsibility for their actions. I enjoy this freedom to choose my own attitude by picking an attitude that benefits me.

• "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day."

-Genesis 1:31

It strikes me that God called his creation good. That means that there was no imperfection when we were created. God is a perfect god and could not allow that to happen.

• "Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God."

-Genesis 6:9

What is so striking about Noah was that he was the only righteous man of his time. The entire world besides Noah and his family was wicked, and even they later sinned. It is only because of God recognizing Noah that he could be saved. Nothing that Noah did could save him.

As Chuck Yeager retired from being a fighter pilot and got stationed in Dayton, Ohio, he came to enjoy his job as a maintenece officer. He met Bob Hoover, and this is what he had to say about him:

“He loved practical jokes. He went over to a little airport in Dayton and signed up for flying lessons. He took the course taught by a really sharp-looking blonde, and when the time came for him to solo, a bunch of us went out to watch. He took off, climbed above the field, then dove straight down, did a roll and barely missed the hangars, looped and spinned, and turned everything loose. His instructor hid her face in her hands and almost passed out, but when she saw us standing in our uniforms and laughing like hell, she knew she’d been had.”

-Yeager

Chuck then got into talking about his time learning to fly the Bell X-1. He had a lot of briefing and classroom time. In one instance, this is what happened:

“Liquid oxygen was a tad chilly, like minus 290 degrees, and to illustrate the point, they picked up a frog with tweezers, dipped it into the vat, then dropped it on the floor. The frog broke into five pieces.”

-Yeager

As I was reading today in Yeager, I got to a lot of discussion about being a fighter pilot. It appears that Chuck Yeager’s biggest asset to him in World War II was his 20/10 eyesight. He was very happy to become a leader in his squadron even though he wasn’t an ace or a commissioned officer. I can tell by Yeager’s nostalgic tone and keen memory of events that he had a heyday in World War II as a fighter pilot.

One thing that I’ll never understand is how pilots can go along, have their buddies killed, and still be happy about the war. If it were me, I would be missing my buddies like crazy, but Chuck can talk about his buddies nostalgically and then matter-of-factly end the story with “he augered in” or “he bought the farm.” Other people, I’ve seen come out of war and be mad at the whole world. Yeager on the other hand just seems to enjoy his victories that he had in the war and move on. Aside from fondness, his only other emotion is anger at the stupid people who get themselves killed. One guy from Yeager’s squadron “shouted over the radio, ‘Tell Ma I’m coming home.’ He did a victory roll over the field and augered into a tree.”

Chuck was attracted to Daddy Rabbit’s airplane, and after Rabbit’s last trip, Chuck had arranged that he would get Rabbits airplane and fly it as the Glamorous Glen III. Rabbit’s parting words to him were: “You won’t let anything happen to me on my last ride. You want my airplane too much.”