Clyde Edgerton - Solo: My Adventures in the Air

[A] spare, heartfelt celebration of the flying life.... One of the great pleasures of this modest, winning memoir is [Edgertons] rediscovery of his youthful passion. In Annabelle, a funny-looking, high-nosed three-person plane, Mr. Edgerton finds true love the second time around. Its a match made in sky-blue heaven, with just enough room, in the back seat, to accommodate a happy reader.

The New York Times

A perfect read for anyone who wishes they could skip security and proceed right to the cockpit.

MSNBC.com

Edgerton is either the best living novelist to fly planes or the best living pilot to write novels.... He casts his cockpit exploitsfrom flying combat missions over Laos during the Vietnam War to piloting a Piper Super Cruiserin the same droll Southern prose that has garnered him a cult followingand gives readers an intensely rewarding aerial view of war, passion, and 400-mph adventure.

Mens Journal

[An] engaging memoir.

Washington Post Book World

Anybody who has ever flown, or served in an air force, will find that Clyde Edgertons Solo brings back many memories, some of them pleasant, others terrifying. I found my years in the Royal Air Force coming back to me in one big gush, as exhilarating as ones first ride in a military aircraft. If you like flying, youll love this book.

Michael Korda, author of Charmed Lives and Man to Man

Give[s] you a whiff of the bedewed infield grass at dawn, and the sensation of what it feels like to take on and enjoy a thing totally alone, the way we hardly do anymore.

The Raleigh News & Observer

I reveled in this true story of an Air Force pilots love affair with the skies.... With vivid recollections, Edgerton gives a candid account of his passion for flight, displaying his trademark humor.

Southern Living

Even if you dont give a hoot about airplanes, Edgertons graceful, witty writing is likely to seduce you.

The Charlotte Observer

In this memoir, Edgerton hasnt really traveled all that far from his roots as a writer of fiction. In it one will find that impeccable sense of timing and inflection that marks his dialogue and that subtle humor he often slides our way.

The Durham (NC) Independent Weekly

Solo is a fantastic bookspellbinding, exciting, funny, informative, moving, and beautifully, beautifully, beautifully written. Count me among the blessed legions of Clyde Edgerton fans.

Tim OBrien, author of The Things They Carried

Edgerton has written a most intriguing memoir of his love affair with flying and how he fulfilled it as a combat pilot in Vietnam.... Edgertons vivid but laconic style should captivate Vietnam and aviation mavens and general readers alike.

Booklist

Clear and truthful, this is what it was like, bringing back all you did or wish you had.

James Salter, author of Gods of Tin

Solo covers flying from Piper Cub to supersonic fighter and the Vietnam War. Pilots will feel a tug of pleasant nostalgia, and nonpilots will find it entertains while it teaches.

Bob Buck, author of North Star over My Shoulder

Solo

Also by Clyde Edgerton

Raney

Walking Across Egypt

The Floatplane Notebooks

Killer Diller

In Memory of Junior

Redeye

Where Trouble Sleeps

Lunch at the Piccadilly

CLYDE EDGERTON

My Adventures in the Air

R

A SHANNON RAVENEL BOOK

Published by

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Post Office Box 2225

Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of

Workman Publishing

225 Varick Street

New York, New York 10014

2005 by Clyde Edgerton. All rights reserved.

First paperback edition, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, November 2006.

Originally published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 2005.

Printed in the United States of America.

Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.

Illustrations by Laura Williams.

Design by Anne Winslow.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Edgerton, Clyde, 1944

Solo : my adventures in the air / Clyde Edgerton.1st ed.
p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-426-4; ISBN-10: 1-56512-426-X (HC)

1. Air pilotsUnited StatesBiography. 2. Air pilots, MilitaryUnited StatesBiography. 3. Vietnamese Conflict, 19611975Aerial operations, American. 4. NovelistsUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

TL540.E3734A3 2005

629.13092dc22

[B]

2005041094

ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-546-9; ISBN-10: 1-56512-546-0 (PB)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Paperback Edition

For Shannon Ravenel

With thanks to the boys,

Johnny Hobbs, Jim Butts, Hoot Gibson,

John Barker, Jim Schellar, Dave Grant, Butch Henderson,

Lynn Snow, Tom Wright, and Fox Batistini

In memory of

Bill Katri, Danny Thomas, Rick Meacham,

Dick Olsen, and Terry Glavin

And thanks to Louis Rubin; Liz Darhansoff;

Tonita S. Branan; Margaret Bauer;

Rachel Careau; P. M. and Hannah Jones; Tom Purcell;

Sterling and Anita Hennis; my daughter, Catherine;

and especially my wife, Kristina

This book is not for flying instruction. Some detailsdrawn from memorymay be inaccurate. And exceptions surely dot the landscape of my generalities about flight and flying. Those seeking technical accuracy should read the appropriate flight manuals, and for those needing a detailed, enlightened book about how airplanes behave, I suggest the classic Stick and Rudder: An Explanation of the Art of Flying by Wolfgang Langewiesche. Furthermore, the most consistently technical and how-to parts of this book are all together on pages 1137 (The Cherokee 140 and the Basics, Lessons, and Cross-Country). So, if youre not looking for nuts-and-bolts reading about flying, then you may want to skip those pages.

Most conversations in this narrative have been re-created from memory. Though all the people are real, most names (and radio call signs) are made up. Some facts may have become slightly distorted by the fog of time.

Many women pilots fly today, but none were present at flying events described in this book, and so none are included here. In any case, I respect womens piloting abilities and significant contributions to aviation.

Finally, thanks to Karl Polifka, Jack McMahon, Bruce Williams, and Lloyd Kaufman for pointing out technical errors in the hardback edition of this book.

YOU STAND AT THE end of a long dining room table that is bare except for a single toothpick lying there in the middle, pointed toward you. The toothpick is a runwayfrom two thousand feet up. You are alone in a little airplane. You are sweating, just home from your first solo cross-country flight. And as for that toothpick: you must somehow get a big spoon (your airplane) to land on it and stay on it or you will die.

I dreamed of coming home from a solo flight soon after I was old enough to look into the sky and see an airplane.