Anyone can do the job when things are going right. In this business we play for keeps.

Are we lost, or are we found at last? On earth we strive for our various needs, because so goes the fundamental law of man. Aloft, at least for a little while, the needs disappear. Likewise the striving. In the thoughts of man aloft, food and evil become mixed and sometimes reversed. This is the open door to wisdom. Aloft, the earth is ancient and man is young, regardless of his numbers, for there, aloft he may reaffirm his suspicions that he may not be so very much. This is the gateway to humility.

The air is annoyingly potted with a multitude of minor vertical disturbances which sicken the passengers and keep us captives of our seat belts. We sweat in the cockpit, though much of the time we fly with the side windows open. The airplanes smell of hot oil and simmering aluminum, disinfectant, feces, leather, and puke ... the stewardesses, short-tempered and reeking of vomit, come forward as often as they can for what is a breath of comparatively fresh air.

It doesn't look nearly as big as it did the first time I saw one. Mickey McGuire and I used to sit hour after hour in the cockpit of the one that American used for training, at the company school in Chicago, saying to each other, 'My God, do you think we'll ever learn to fly anything this big?'

There are two kinds of airplanes - those you fly and those that fly you . . . You must have a distinct understanding at the very start as to who is the boss.

Flying is hypnotic and all pilots are victims to the spell. Their world is like a magic island in which the factors of life and death assume their proper values. Thinking becomes clear because there are no earthly foibles or embellishments to confuse it.

As the years go by, he returns to this invisible world rather than to earth for peace and solace. There also he finds a profound enchantment, although he can seldom describe it. He can discuss it with others of his kind, and because they too know and feel its power they understand. But his attempts to communicate his feelings to his wife or other earthly confidants invariable end in failure.