“Whoa! Stop. You would not do that to your lawn mower.” I hear this over the din of the engine and next feel a firm left hand atop my sweating right hand. The left hand slowly pulls my tightly clenched right hand and the throttle on the Cessna 150 toward the idle position. As opposed to the inelegance with which I’d rammed the throttle open, this diminution was all grace and smoothness.
It was the summer of love in San Francisco, where I was living for the season, but I wasn’t inhaling reefer at the Fillmore; after work I was driving over the Bay Bridge to Oakland, where I was learning to fly. It was 1967. It was Runway 9, where, in the late afternoon, the sun bore directly into the eyes of this young pilot wannabe. It was the Fourth of July weekend. Two weeks and nine hours of instruction later, I soloed.
