Back in the ‘Burg for a bit

One night early this week, I arrived back in what I’ve long called my hometown. 

It feels good.

Born in Galesburg, Illinois, I spent the first fourteen years of my life living on farms in nearby communities, then moved to the ‘Burg for what stretched day-by-day into more than 30 years. 

These days, I make my home on the banks of a big lake in the middle of Missouri. My parents and many other family members still live in Galesburg. 

As I write this, I am sitting in a relative’s home, looking out on a tree-lined street, hearing the sounds of train whistles in the background. 

This morning as I pulled out of my parents’ drive  to go to a local grocery store for luncheon provisions – and caffeine and chocolate to cure my anticipated mid-afternoon slump – I ran into an old friend at the store, a frequent occurrence in the ‘Burg, but infrequent in my new community.  There I may stumble upon new friends, occasionally. Old, not so much. 

It felt right.

As I drove on the street named after my hometown’s native son, Carl Sandburg, two Stearman biplanes, in town for the community’s annual fly-in, crossed overhead. 

Boy, do I love that sight!

Then, turning down one of the major north-south residential thoroughfares, Broad Street, I saw a runner, a pair of women walking and talking, and a couple of bikers.  

Galesburg  is that kind of place. 

Its streets are a welcoming environment for exercise. It does the heart good and I’m not just talking the physical benefits.

From Broad, I turned off on one of the city’s few one-way streets (I still love that about Galesburg – that it doesn’t have many), and traveled it for a couple blocks until I reached the street where we had our first home. It –and the neighborhood – are different, but still the same. I’d still choose that street – maybe even that house – as a place to call home.

I also passed Ronald Reagan’s childhood school, just steps from the home where my parents and I lived when we moved to Galesburg, and smiled as I continued my travels and I saw that a neighborhood corner still held a barber shop. I smiled even more when I saw that the barber whose name is on the building these days is the granddaughter of the man who gave my husband the best cuts he ever had and has cut my dad’s hair for about four decades. 

As I sit here writing, I hear some of the same sounds I hear in my new community – a lawn mower, a dog barking, the purr of a Harley passing by – and there are sounds I don’t hear, such as a duck quacking, geese honking or a jetski flying too fast down the cove. 

I like those sounds, too, and that place, but it sure is nice once in a while to come back here, where my mother still turns down the covers before I go to sleep and my dad makes room in the garage for my car. 

There are lots of reasons I still love my hometown – and those two people rank right up there at the top of the list. 

It feels like home.

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2012   

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Eager anticipation and antique biplanes

About 40 years ago, I remember hearing that a Galesburg pilot and some other airplane enthusiasts were organizing a fly-in for fellow lovers of Stearman biplanes. 

Back then, I was busy working and didn’t make time to see the planes dotting the sky over the Midwest prairie and my hometown. 

But, a few years after the fly-in started, I moved to a subdivision about a mile northwest -- as the Stearman flies -- of the Galesburg airport. 

As I drove on the highway we now call “Old 34” each day to and from my job at a grocery store on the east end of  the ‘Burg, I looked longingly at the planes, lined neatly on the airport’s grassy fields. 

Work and raising a family always came first back then, though, so I never did take time to go to the airport and see the planes “up close and personal.” From time to time, I’d watch them from our yard or out a window as they flew overhead – and, to this day, the sound of a Stearman biplane overhead is as recognizable to me as a Harley Davidson motorcycle or the voice of one of my own children calling out. 

One of my favorite experiences was hearing the sound of the engines warming up early on a Saturday morn for a dawn patrol to Monmouth. One year, I stood on my lawn taking photos of the planes as they flew over our yard. 

Another year, camera batteries charged, I looked out the window and the smile fell from my face as I saw a wall of fog so thick that the planes wouldn’t be taxiing down the runway, let alone taking flight. All I could think was, “If this makes me sad, how much more disappointed must it make those poor pilots, itching to take to the sky over those fields like the barnstormers who went before them?”

Finally, last year, come fly-in week, no longer living a mile from the Galesburg airport, I made a journey of 100 miles across an Illinois interstate highway, picked up my then 17-year-old grandson, drove to the Galesburg airport, and joined the Stearman Restorers Association. 

Camera in hand and flight line pass on chest, we walked the flight line, talked with pilots from near and far, and savored the fly-in experience. 

Still, though, this Baby Boomer who remembers watching planes in the 1950s flying over the fields near her family’s Central Illinois home, had not taken to the air in an open-cockpit vessel. 

As I write this, I am soon to hit the road again, this time from the shores of the lake in Mid-Missouri where I now make my home. I’ll pay my association dues again, look longingly at a rainbow of lovingly restored and maintained birds of flight, and walk the flight line. 

Oh, and I’ll do one more thing – something I always wanted to and vowed I’d do once I read my favorite author Richard Bach’s books, “Biplane” and “Nothing by Chance,” which capture the joy of barnstorming and mention the nearby skies though which these Stearman fly and the towns over which they soar. 

I am about to ride, wind blowing through my hair, in a Stearman over that yard in which I stood, looking up, thinking, “I do love those biplanes!”

Years ago, I tried to paint a picture of these planes with a camera, feet planted firmly on the ground. 

This week, once my feet step back from that cockpit to the planet on which it drops for a momentary rest, I’ll try to paint once again -- with words -- the experience for which I’ve waited so long. 

I cannot wait to tell you all about it here. 

Please, come back to savor the jubilation with me when I do.

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2012  

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Richard Bach’s unexpected landing rewritten

Whether you’re a reader or an aviator, a Richard Bach fan or someone who has never heard of the bestselling author who flew to fame on the wings of a soaring seagull named Jonathan, you’ve probably heard of an event in which Richard and his plane went down less smoothly than usual this week.

I am a journalist. I use Associated Press (AP) Style every day, so I know that AP Style has certain guidelines – and that most newspapers and magazines write their stories following certain rules. I also know Richard Bach, as my favorite author, an experienced and cautious aviator and an encouraging mentor to others who share his passions – flight and writing. 

Bear with me as I break a few of your rules, oh Journalism Gods, and write the story of Richard’s little adventure the way I think he’d like it to be told. 

Actually, I am quite certain that Richard would rather this story had not been told at all. He’s never liked being in the limelight. 

And, yes, calling him Richard instead of Bach is the first rule I’m breaking. A surname just seems too impersonal when writing about someone whose words and example have impacted my life and life’s work in such a positive way. 

As for breaking the rules, Richard once walked away from a corporate job just so that he could, put, his, commas, where he wished. (Not his exact words, but you get the idea.) As a mentor, he’d approve of my rule breaking if it made the story better, so I will Go. For. It. 

The problems with the accounts of an event that happened in what Pacific Time called Friday afternoon are several. In Richard’s world, time really isn’t all that necessary. Richard’s work has drawn to it a family of readers worldwide. Time isn’t important, nor is place. 

What matters to Richard is that somewhere close to him are blue skies in which he can soar, green fields in which to land a plane and waters nearby in which to splash down with his beloved Puff. 

“Puff” – that’s her name.

When Richard Bach had an unexpected landing – which his family of readers is convinced he’ll call yet another “adventure,” he wasn’t in just any “single-engine amphibious aircraft,” as some papers reported. 

Richard was out playing with his friend Puff. 

Readers of Richard’s books will remember that some of his planes had names and some didn’t. He’s owned many, but we’re not so sure Richard has danced with, nurtured and pampered any other as much as he has Puff. Richard loves that little SeaRay, one of a family of like-souled vessels, most with owners who are, too, a family. 

Newspaper and television accounts of Richard’s landing use words I won’t to describe his time in this dimension, his “condition,” and more. 

What journalists don’t get, because they may not have read his work, is that “age” doesn’t exist in Richard’s world. An injured body or a crashed plane – blah, they’re but illusions. 

Flying alone? Not Richard. 

He may have been the only mortal soul in the cockpit, but he wasn’t alone. He was with Puff – and his family of readers and fellow aviators are with him on every flight. As Richard soars, he takes us along. Often, he later puts his adventures in words as only a scribe and aviator as proficient as Richard could. 

Here’s your story, wire services and TV stations, the way I think Richard would have it told, if must it be: 

Richard Bach, an advanced being with a childheart, and Puff, a soul whose physical body includes appearances of metal, rubber and more, are at work on the latest chapter in their series of adventure stories. 

In a land with blue water, bluer skies, green grass and emerald trees, the duo’s unusual acrobatic landing on a recent afternoon was a magnet for coincidence and an opportunity for a rescue tale of Bachian proportions. 

In the world of appearances, Richard, whose words have given flight to kindred spirits worldwide, was transported to a place where loving beings with gifts different than his own will provide him with experiences to put on a page that are unlike any of which he has written.  

Meanwhile, as they are adventuring separately, Puff is gathering her own stories of love and tender care, which she can’t wait to share with Richard and their family of readers. 

Don’t forget, though. As Richard's family of readers will attest, this adventure and everything you’ve heard about it may be but an illusion. 

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2012  

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Want to say ‘thanks’? Do it, please

Ever read an article or book or hear a song and think, “Wow, that’s amazing”? 

Yeah, so have I. 

Did you ever take the time to find contact information for the journalist, author, artist or songwriter and to drop a note to say “Thanks”? 

You haven’t? 

Why not? 

I know. You probably thought all of the same things I did, things like, “That person wouldn’t even read my mail, let alone care what I think.” 

You might be surprised.

In an interview, Richard Bach, who wrote “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” once said, “Writers rarely hear back from readers. It’s usually a one-way communication. Your ideas and the way you sing them go out into the world and you don’t know, but you can be absolutely guaranteed that your family of readers will find what you have written and they will be touched, as you were touched by the idea when it was first handed to you.”

Almost 25 years ago, I looked forward every day to two things in my local newspapers – a column by a Peoria journalist, Rick Baker, and the humor columns of Erma Bombeck. I was so addicted to those two writers that I begged my family to at least let me read their columns before I began preparing supper. 

Once, after I’d been reading Baker’s work for a decade or so, he was to come to my hometown for a book signing. I, however, had to work that afternoon at a grocery store. The signing was to end at 4 p.m. – the same time I got off work. I made a beeline for the time clock and nearly ran to my car at the end of my shift, hoping that I could catch the investigative journalist and thank him for his work. 

As I rounded the square, I saw Baker walking along the side of the bookstore headed to his car, parked in a lot behind the store. I slowed to pull into a parking place in front of the big church across the street with its large stained-glass windows, but kept on driving instead. 

Why? 

Because I thought, “Ann, you dummy! If you go running after him now, he’ll think you’re a groupie!” 

A short time later, Rick Baker, a young dad with a lot of paragraphs left to put on the page, was killed in a car crash. He never knew that a writer-wannabe working in a grocery store was studying his storytelling skills with hopes of being a writer herself someday. He never knew that his words made a difference in her life. 

After Baker’s death, I vowed that next time I had a chance to thank someone for his or her touch on my life, I’d do it. 

But I’m a slow learner. 

A few years after Baker’s blank column – the one the paper published to commemorate his passing – Erma Bombeck wrote her last column. That woman who made us all laugh once said, “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.’” 

I suspect Bombeck may not have had a chance to use it all – the talent that was her special gift – and I know for certain I didn’t take time to thank her for the way her words brightened my days. 

Back then it wasn’t so easy to thank an author or an artist for his or her work. A book signing, a lecture, or a chance encounter were often the only in-person opportunities, and most authors only received communication from fans through their publishers. 

Today, social media has changed all of that. Many authors and musicians are on Facebook, Twitter, or have websites or blogs. Often, they will respond to their readers. 

I can tell you first hand, because I know people who make their livelihood hunched over keyboards, pounding out the pages of newspapers, novels and non-fiction books, that readers’ words make a difference, provide a shot in the arm when the words are hard to get on the page, and offer hope that “Yes, these words do touch people just as they touch  me.” 

Living in Galesburg, Illinois, I had a chance to meet playwright Edward Albee and Carl Sandburg biographer Penelope Niven and  to thank them for their work. On visits to Abraham Lincoln events in Springfield, Illinois and Gettysburg, I’ve met a number of Lincoln authors, and thanked them for the way their books help me with my research.

Social media helps me to keep in touch with them and others.

A couple of years ago, through a chance encounter on Twitter, I had a chance to thank my favorite author, the same Richard Bach  I quoted earlier, for the way his books have touched my life.

Today, I write for a living – because of writers like Baker, Bombeck, Albee, Niven and Bach. 

Some of them know that. 

I don’t know if it matters much to any of them, but it does to me.

On Friday, Aug. 31, Bach, who loves flying as much as he loves writing, had an unexpected event when he was landing his beloved Searay airplane, Puff, on Washington State’s San Juan Island. As I write this, Bach lies recovering in a Seattle hospital. 

This author who first touched my heart with a “soar–till-it-hurts” seagull more than forty years ago and who motivates me to pursue my highest right still today, can  bet his aviator’s scarf that this reader touched by his ideas is rooting for his healing and recovery, as are many in his family of readers.

Who do you need to thank for the way their work has touched your life? 

Take time today. 

Do it.

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2012  

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