OOTS News’s First Ever Bad Weather Writing Contest – Send Us Your Worst Weather Writing

[...] OOTS News's First Ever Bad Weather Writing Contest – Send Us Your … [...]

The temperature was 98 with 75 percent humidity. It felt like I had stuck my head into a hot oven while pouring hot water (from my 75 degree instant hot water dispenser) over my head. It was the kind of weather when your roll-on deodorant simply rolls off, drips onto the sidewalk, and cooks into a hard-boiled egg.

To compare the outside temperature to other really hot places (then the outside temperature would feel cooler for a minute or so,) I visited places that were “really hot!” – such as standing in front of the open ovens (at least three) at a pizza shop when the air conditioner wasn’t working, there were no fans, and the door was stuck closed. Or, laying in a swimming pool on an inflatable raft, with the sun baking my face like braised chicken….and there’s no water in the pool.

And, it was a dark and stormy night, too.

It was a steel gray day in Louisville, a Friday as I recall, when I meandered the suburban streets to the obscure Bowman Field where Dick Mulloy operated one of the largest pilot training schools in the mid-west. Dick was a very reserved, seasoned flying survivor of flying the “hump” in the China Burma India Theater for three years of that big war. I had left work at the Shell Oil district office a bit early that day to meet my scheduled final dual flight training cross country exercise. This was my last mandatory instructional flight that would enable my first solo flight.

Our destination was Columbus Indiana, about sixty miles due north of Bowman Field; a chip shot for anyone but a rookie pilot like myself with about ten hours of dual flight instruction. After doing the required weather briefing, and performing the aircraft check out, there was the last minute organization of flight chart, radio notes and a few personal reflections about what Dick Mulloy had always referred to as the pilot’s last thought before climbing into the cockpit: “preparing for an opportunity to stare down death, eyeball to eyeball”.
As we taxied to the take off runway, I mentioned my concern about the weather briefing I received, having now observed that the clouds to the north did not match up very well with the forecast. He dismissed my concerns and said it was a go. And so we did.

Leaving the runway in a northeasterly direction, I turned to the plotted northbound heading. We were at about 500 feet from the ground, approaching the Ohio river when it happened. The ground just disappeared, and we were flying in what appeared to be an endless ball of cotton. The instructor screeched aloud “oh my God!!!” and grabbed the overhead framework, and I thought for a moment that he was going to freak out and wrestle the controls from me, but he did not. Just one glance showed that he was absolutely paralized with fear. White as a sheet paralyzed.

I do not recall much detail of our limited exchange at that time, but I did remember Dick Mulloy’s “veteran” advice about staring, and immediately made a decision. I had no choice but to begin a 180 degree (compass) turn back in the general direction from where we came while diving down to ground visibility trusting that no high voltage lines would be in our path, whatever direction that might now be. What was only a matter of seconds seemed to be an eternity before we could see the ground, trees first, and that snow had already obliterated the streets and roof tops. Leveling off the airplane at abo150 feet above the ground, the engine began to cough and sputter. We had a full tank of gas, so I pulled the knob that added heat to the carburator air intake just, as taught to do when carburetor icing was suspect. It worked, the engine smoothed out just at the time I noticed a wide, snow covered clearing ahead. It was the airfield.

The instructor finally came to, and kept quiet as we proceeded. The only thing he suggested ws that we try our best to land into the wind, as would be proper under normal conditions, but this situation was far from that. As we proceeded, soon the hangar, control tower and other buildings were visible, but the runways were not because of their 2″ blanket of heavy, wet snow. Quietly ignoring the instructor’s suggestion I aimed the ship toward in a southerly direction, downwid, and maintained flying speed while quickly descending to a surprisingly smooth touchdown. The snow on the grass made it virtually impossible to taxi that tail dragger airplane to the parking apron, so we abandoned it there,in the middle of the field, and walked to the hangar office, about a half mile away.

Dick Mulloy was standing at the door when we trudged inside. We exchanged only glances. I immediately excused myself and went to the men’s room to relieve myself. When emerged, Dick asked me what happened and I told him “not much; we just kept sight of the field and worked our way in, never mentioning the conduct of my instructor. How I covered my fear is yet unknown, but I left there as quickly as possible, drove to the nearby Air-Devil’s Inn promptly swallowing a few beers just for good measure.

The lessons learned were these: Never trust a weather forecaster, and never doubt yourself when the chips are down. Follow your training and your instincts. I remember this event whenever I’m in a tight spot, now fifty years after it happened.

It was a hard rain. The kind of rain that pelted a man, that drove him down. Each drop was like a hammer. But a very small hammer. The kind of hammer a jeweler might use, if a jeweler had any use for a hammer. Did jewelers use hammers? Simms didn’t know. But as the drops pelted him he thought, if a jeweler used a hammer, and that hammer was to hit a man repeatedly, over every inch of his soaked and salty skin, that hammer would be like this rain.

But not the hammer in general. That was too vague. The head of the hammer. The flat part that hit the nail, or whatever it was that jewelers hit with hammers. That was the part the rain resembled. The whole question really had Simms stumped. It clouded his thinking, shrouding him in fog as jet and inky as the night. Suppose a jeweler did use a hammer? What would he hit the hammer with? A tiny nail? But what use would a jeweler have for a nail? His confusion was like . . . like what? Like a driving rain? No. It was not like that. The rain was like a hammer. He was getting ahead of himself.

To clarify: Each drop of that hard rain struck with a certain force, but that force was limited, necessarily, by the tiny size of each raindrop. Each drop might have been the tears of an angel, splashing against the lost and unwanted souls of the world, but Simms wasn’t thinking about angels. He was thinking about jewelers with tiny hammer, hitting on tiny nails, in some imaginary world awash with rain.

It had been like this every since Simms and Julie had stood on that cliff, the hurricane in the distance, lifting the water from the ocean and swirling it around in the sky like . . . like what? Like a jeweler with a hammer, thought Simms, that’s what. And then the hurricane had come closer, and Julie had said, “Shouldn’t we perhaps seek shelter? There’s a Marriott nearby, with a fake Parisian boucherie. They serve a mean prime rib.”

But no, Simms had said it would be better to stay on that cliff. It had been selfish, he knew. And also irrational. Simms knew, from his extensive professional training, that the absolute worst place to be in a hurricane was on top of a tall cliff. And yet he insisted. Even when Julie pointed out that they served the prime rib with a baked potato, and you could have extra sour cream just for asking.

And so the hurricane came, and he clung like a jackel, or a beaver (did beavers cling? More questions!), to the vines on the hillside, just above the clif, and when the storm passed Julie was gone. He called out. He searched everywhere. But she was gone.

And since that day, the rain had always bothered him. It had rattled at the cage of his soul, like his soul was a cage, maybe a cage worked on by a jeweler, a jeweler with a hammer, who knew? I mean, anything was possible. But why would a jeweler be working on a cage? A cage for what? The questions. They had haunted Simms, along with the rain, since that day on the cliff, and they always would.

bad weather:

She was cold as ice. I was as hot as a tropical sun. She was young as an early spring. I was old as a late Fall.

We were trapped in a sweltering Summer elevator in the hottest city in the world.

We eyed each other as if we were the last living creatures on a dying Earth. As she began to thaw, I began to glisten. As she began to melt, I began to stiffen. As our temperatures fused, we fell together in a puddle of love.

Years later, our daughter asked us how she was made. We always smile and answer: “Bad weather, baby. Bad weather.”

[...] Fox is the first place winner of OOTS News’s Bad Weather Writing Contest, with this short, wonderfully overwrought story of bad weather and failed [...]

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