Better than a teddy bear.
When I was a kid, I was scared of thunderstorms. Really scared. Petrified. I used to follow my mum around the house at less than a step away whenever a violent (or mild) Southern Ontario thunderstorm would pass over our little house. I recall telling myself that I’d never move out when I became a grown-up because I may get caught alone during a storm and positively die. The fear was all-encompassing.
As I grew I developed coping mechanisms to wean myself of the fear. I begged for books on the subject of storms. I learned all I could about what thunder and lightning was, how it formed, and why storms were important and crucial to life on earth. Knowledge conquers fear, it always has. But it takes time.
Back when I was a kid in the early eighties, DC-8’s and 9’s were still numerous in the skies above. Low bypass turbofans were hung under the wings of planes everywhere and a vanilla Boeing 737 could sound like an F-16 if it had JT8D’s making her move. There often times wasn’t a lick of difference between the sound of an approaching thunderstorm and a plane climbing out of Pearson heading two-seven-zero en route to Vancouver. 8 year old me was counting on that. You see, sometime we all lie to ourselves. I’m not saying it’s the right thing or the smart thing, just that we’re all guilty of it. That’s what I did. Laying in my bed on a hot summer night with the window open I’d wait in fear of the next thunderstorm. I’d pray to fall asleep before it arrived so I wouldn’t have to experience it. If I knew one was coming it was over, so I’d keep my eyes clamped shut so I would’t see distant lightning flashing across my ceiling and tell myself that the thunder I heard was nothing more than a jet plane passing overhead. And if I tried hard enough, if held my eyes closed good enough, I’d believe my lie about all the jets flying over and fall asleep before the storm arrived. It’s funny, I never really considered how much my little heart was tied up to those planes in that way until now. Some kids hugged a stuffed toy (I did too), but sometimes it takes a Pratt & Whitney turbofan to get to sleep. So I get very defensive of old iron for this reason. Noise regulations have changed the mighty sounds of jets into the whispers of neutered vacuum cleaners. Yes the new generation of high bypass turbofans are remarkable in the their power and efficency, but just don’t sound as good.
This past February a day after returning from a trip from Prague, I took my 5 year old son Phoenix to say goodbye to an old friend. A 33 year old Boeing 737-200. It has those Pratt & Whitneys on it that lulled me to sleep all those years ago. It was leaving. My local airport had received so many complaints about this plane that the company that flew it decided to leave for good. I watched that bird make her smokey and thunderous climb many times in the early morning light after a night shift and smiled every time. It was like losing a friend. It’s been 9 months since I last saw her. My son still asks where it went.
In this day of noise sensitive people who inexplicably decide to live right off the end of runway 08, the reality is that these old birds are dying. Someday soon, it’ll just be those hushed vacuum cleaner sounds coming from jets passing overhead and old guys will wax poetic about how a “real plane” should sound like. That’s progress I guess. Until that day happens I’ll savour every last one of these smokey old birds that made their own thunder, and put me to sleep all those years ago because of it. -James Pindera-