Bartel Part 2

In the summer of '66 I had just turned 17. My senior year was coming in the fall. The most exciting thing in my life was that I had a drivers license. I had no car, and limited access to the family car. I rode a bicycle. I was a paperboy. I mowed lawns in the neighborhood. I hadn't ever been away from home for more than one week. I had never kissed a girl. Strangely, all I could think about was girls. During this mundane innocent summer I was to go from a student pilot with not one logged hour to a pilot with 40 hours and a federal Private Pilot's license. I was in the blazing 90 degree heat of South Carolina. Six teenagers in each hotel room. No girls. A blue surplus Air Force school bus to drive us to and from the hotel. A World War II aerodrome with it's classic triangular shape and obligatory clumps of sod growing up through the tarmac. I ate grits for the first time in my life. The sixty of us were dressed in fatigue uniforms with combat boots and silly hats. We would have looked like prisoners had we not had colorful patches and emblems and ranks and insignia. The civilian instructors took one look at us and changed the uniform: Lose the silly hat and baseball caps are optional. Lose the combat boots. Wear tennis shoes. (they were called sneakers). Lose the fatigue shirt(it was called a blouse). So our new uniform was a clean white T shirt, fatigue pants, and tennis shoes. We were there to fly, not drill. I knew no one there. Except Bartel. Bartel was the first kid launched. He was the first kid to solo. Every instructor took a turn flying with him. He was a legend by the third day. Due to alphabetical order, I could not room with Bartel. My five roomates were animals. Teenagers can be mean children. I was glad I was on a rollaway instead of one of the double beds. These guys were gross. But I learned a lot when they talked about girls. I was afraid I would be the last cadet to solo, but as usual, I was somewhere in the middle. As I have always been. I would see Bartel during the day at school. We would get sessions to study in the air conditioned trailer. This would be when I could talk to Bartel. It was like he was at a different flying encampment than I. I would ask about his five roommates. He would just say what fine gentlemen and pilots they were. That they would study together and write letters home and play chess. Bartel wasn't sweating in the heat. I was dying. Bartel also wasn't sweating the big graduation checkride. I was permanently nervous. And I did fear that my roommates would kill me for the fun of it some night. One day we were leaving the hotel on the Air Force school bus as usual. But Bartel, my seventeen year old classmate was driving the bus. I thought I must be dreaming. This is impossible. Cadets don't drive cadets in any vehicle! Against regulations! Lawsuits! Training requirements! Maybe I was just tired and nervous. I got out of my seat and walked up to the front of the bus. Maybe it was just an adult who looked like Bartel. After all, Bartel looks like and acts like an adult. But it was Bartel and I was saying how the heck do you get to drive the bus? But he told me we should talk about it later because I should be seated while the bus is in motion. Damn it Bartel! When I had my free study sessions in the air conditioned trailer I usually put my head on the desk to sleep. I was going through a growth spurt. I was five eleven going on six foot one. Bartel would study in the trailer. When I would look at what he was studying, it would be aerodynamics, or instrument flying. I was tired of the lunch sandwiches we were eating. White bread and peanut butter. Or white bread, peanut butter, and banana. I had never had that. I complained to Bartel about lunch. He said he'd been eating chicken salad mostly because he had access to the instructors cooler and also the cadets rations had some chicken and tuna which ran out fast, but his roommate was in charge of that. He told me the hotel gave him an apple and/or orange every day too. You just had to ask for it. I just said, "Damn it Bartel". I had learned to cuss. Also, I had started smoking. Actually I had been smoking since I was eight years old. But I just blew the smoke out without inhaling. But now I was inhaling. One cigarette a day with the five roommates. These guys were Neanderthals. Bartel was the first Cadet of the Encampment to take his checkride and be issued an FAA temporary Private Pilot Certificate. He didn't just bask in the glory and now goof off and drive the bus and go to town. He still had a week or more for the rest of us to get checkrides. He helped some cadets with their pre lesson reviews. But he started hanging out at the other end of the field where the gliders were. He was trying to get a ride in the tow plane or possibly a check out. But that wasn't going to fly, even for Bartel. But he got some access to money from home, which must have been tough as he is one of nine children and his parents had already paid his room and board for five weeks in Carolina. He started taking lessons in the two seat Schweitzer glider. There was a Cadet program going on for gliders. You could tell a glider Cadet by his scarf. A Cadet in the glider solo school might have a red scarf. A blue scarf would designate a glider student in the glider private certificate program. Graduate helpers might have a white scarf. We called them scarfs, actually they were bandannas. You couldn't wear a scarf in the heat. The heat that we suffered from was the same heat that was generating these huge invisible columns of air that started at the hot ground and slowly at first rose into the cooler air aloft. Thermals. That was all these glider kids talked about. In their kerchiefs. Thermals can be somewhat predictable and this area in South Carolina was known for its Thermals. Because a huge high pressure system would stabilize the air over the variably heated ground and create a cycling thermal machine until a new weather front would come and chase it all away. It is called the "Bermuda High". After it's source. Some of these glider kids were 15 years old. You only have to be 14 to solo a glider. As I got near my checkride I was only flying once a day. We would "rehearse" the checkride. So I would have time to hang out at the glider tents, and once in a while I would walk a wing, or go fetch a tow rope, or get the tow pilot a coke. Also some Maryland kids had shown up for glider school. And Bartel was there and he had a bandanna on. I had to ask him about that. It was green and white or something. He told me he was a special category. A Cadet graduate renter. A graduate renter? Damn it Bartel. When Bartel had his first solo in the glider I happened to be hanging out in my usual spot in the glider area. So we were watching because he was our powered school ace. So he gets towed up on his first solo. At about 400 feet the tow plane's engine revs, then sputters and quits. The prop stops cold. The tow pilot pulls his release to get rid of the glider and the rope. He turns a bit to stay over the field and gets the super cub down with a bounce and a good job, on another runway. Out of gas. Bartel found himself in the emergency for which he had just been practicing. 400 feet is enough altitude to turn the glider around and come in downwind. We all watched this and it started to look like Bartel was headed for us as he started getting set up and maybe overshooting a bit. So again I was in a dream. Was it in slow motion? Was I delerious from the heat? Cadets were running around pushing sailplanes further back toward the tents yelling things like "it's Bartel, he's downwind comin in" "He's gonna hit us" "he's gonna crash!" Bartel got lined up, dropped the rope like a pro and set the lumbering "222" down like a feather. He was mobbed like Lindburg and when I finally got to talk to him all I could say was "Damn it Bartel". My checkride came and I was so nervous I was afraid I wouldn't remember anything. And Ray Clark was the examiner. He ran the flight school. Everyone revered him. For some reason he liked me. It wasn't because I was any kind of ace like Bartel. But somewhere around day 10 of the school Ray Clark was flying over to Greer which was a big control tower field at Greenville SC. I was admiring his brand new Cherokee Six. This was before there were "Lances" and "Saratogas". Ray Clark asked if I wanted to go with him. I said yes and he stuck me in the left seat. This thing had radios and an autopilot and a controllable propeller. This was way better than eating dust with the glider kids, or sleeping in the trailer. I was Bartel for a day. But now it was time for Ray Clark to give me my checkride. It went well. He spent time giving me touch and goes and short and soft and go arounds. That was the stuff I loved, and I was OK with. Where I was weak was in navigation, chart pilotage, etc. As soon as I would leave the pattern I would be "almost lost". So I got my Temporary Airman Certificate. And I was not the last guy to get it. Now I had a few days free, and could hang out with the glider guys etc. Bartel had made arrangements with the school to rent one of the trainers and he wanted me to go flying with him but he wanted me to share in the rental. I was pretty much broke. He was taking this kid "Johnny Hutchins" who was about 9 years old. The kid was a local. He would hang out every day. Bartel put Johnny Hutchins in the right seat and me in the back. We took off and cruised around. Bartel wanted to show me this quarry and lake that he liked to fly over. We circled it for a while and then he buzzed it right on the deck. I was scared. Scared of crashing and scared of getting in trouble. But Bartel seemed calm enough. We landed and Bartel didn't rent the plane any more. And Johnny went home. And Bartel asked me if I thought he got too low over the quarry, and if I thought anyone would turn us in. I said "Damn it Bartel".