NOTHING BY CHANCE

I just ran across this copy of the 1975 documentary, “Nothing by Chance”, adapted from Richard Bach’s 1969 book “Nothing by Chance: A Gypsy Pilot’s Adventures in Moden America.”

It’s about how Bach and a group of old airplane fanatics decided to find out if it was possible to go back in time 40 years to the 1920s and tour for a summer as barnstormers - “pick a field and land for a night.” They called themselves the Great American Flying Circus.

The red and yellow biplane is Bach’s famous 1929 Parks 2A. The airplane is now in process of being restored to flight status by a guy who became a pilot because his mother gave him a copy of Bach’s book when he was 10. That’s the kind of story this aeronut likes.

"Nothing By Chance"

“Fast or slow, quiet or deafening, pulling contrails at forty thousand feet or whishing wheels through grasstops, in barest simplicity or most opulent luxury, they are all there, teaching and having taught. They are all a part of the pilot and he is a part of them. The chipped paint of a control console, the rudder pedals worn smooth through twenty years of turns, the control stick grips from which the little knurl diamonds have been rubbed away: these are the marks of a man upon his airplane. The marks of an airplane upon the man are seen only in his thought, and in the things he has learned and come to believe.” – Richard Bach, Biplane (1966)

This is from a series of photos of “The Reluctant Messiah’s Travelaire” from Bach’s book, “the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah.” It’s actually the late Larry Davis’ 1929 Travel-Aire 4000. Larry met Bach at the Merced Antique Airplane Fly-In in the late 60s, and he remembered the airplane for the book. These were taken in 1978; we flew over from Sacramento to Morgan Hill airport just after dawn, and got some California Biplane Country Magic Hour shots. The bottom one became my first cover, for Air Enthusiast Quarterly in 1979.

This is Richard Bach in a 1934 Kreider-Reisner, taken at dawn at the Merced Fly-In in 1979. I like the shot because it is timeless - it could be 1934, it could be 1979, it could be yesterday.

And this is Jim Nissen’s 1917 Curtiss JN-4D “Jenny.” I got 30 minutes stick time after we did the shoot. A Jenny doesn’t fly anything like a modern airplane.

“The sun dropped into low gold on the horizon, and there was a faint mist through the valley that caught the color and sprayed it across the countryside. We had a crowd of twenty people around us, but all had either flown or had no wish to fly.

”They had no idea what they were missing; this would be a magnificent sunset from the air.

“Come along, folks,” I said. “Sunsets for sale this evening! The Great American Flying Circus guarantees a minimum of two sunsets this evening, but only if you act now! Watch the sun go down here, then up in the sky to watch her go down once more! A sight you will never see again, as long as you live! Prettiest sunset all summer! It’s a burnt-copper afternoon—right out of Beethoven’s heart! Who’s ready to step up there into the air with me?”

 “One lady, sitting in a car nearby, thought I was speaking all to her. Her words came clear in the soft air, louder than she meant. “I don’t fly unless I have to.”

 “I was angry, sad. The poor people had no idea; with their caution, they were passing up paradise! How do you convince them of good? I made one last appeal, then, meeting no response, started the engine and took off alone, just to fly and to see the land from the air.

”It was more beautiful than I had promised. The haze topped out at less than a thousand feet, and from 2,000 feet the earth was a silent lake of gold, with a few brilliant emerald hilltops rising to be islands in the crystal air. The land was all a golden dream, where only good and beautiful lived, and it was spread out below us like a tale from Marco Polo, with the sky going deep-velvet black overhead. It was another planet, that Earth, one never seen by man, and the biplane and I held the splendor of it all to ourselves.

”We started our first roll a mile in the air, and the biplane did not stop rolling and soaring and diving and singing strong in her wires until the ground was dark and the mist was gone and the gold had disappeared from the sky.

”We whispered down into the grass and swung to park, shutting the engine into hot-ticking silence. I sat alone for a full minute, not wanting to talk to people or to hear them or to see them. I knew I’d never forget that flight, and I wanted a quiet moment to lay it carefully away in my thought, for I would be coming back here many times again, in the years ahead.

 “Someone said low, in the crowd, ‘He has the courage of ten men, to fly that old crate.’ I felt like crying. They didn’t understand … I… could …not make … them … understand.”

(From “Nothing by Chance: A Gypsy Pilot’s Adventures in Moden America.”)

So there’s an old airplane fix for the other aeronuts at TAFM.

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