Delectations

Let me make it perfectly clear at the outset that I was not always an enthusiastic air traveler. I must have been the only Air Force officer in World War II who literally had to force himself into a plane, and whose palms were wet with sweat after every take-off. Granted, I was only a ground officer (“the chairborne infantry” we called ourselves), but I wore my hat without its grommet, in the traditionally casual Air Force style, and was not above letting impressionable young ladies assume that my reticence about my service experience masked horrible memories of the flak over Stuttgart. Yet secretly I dreaded the shortest hop.

An Air Force psychiatrist I knew (socially, that is) once told me that my nervousness over air travel was probably based on a profound reluctance to let anyone else-—in this case, the pilot— assume complete charge of my life. Looked at that way, the attitude at first seemed almost rational. How, after all, could I be sure that that wretch up front in the cockpit, whom I had never met and often had not even seen, knew his job or cared deeply about my welfare? Logically, of course, the worry wouldn’t hold water; one could certainly assume that the pilot cared deeply about his own welfare, which for the time being was inextricably linked with mine. The truth was that my fear was quite irrational—neurotic, in fact—and had no legitimate basis whatever.

WA

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William A. Rusher

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William F. Buckley Jr.

Let me make it perfectly clear at the outset that I was not always an enthusiastic air traveler. I must have been the only Air Force officer in World War II who literally had to force himself into a plane, and whose palms were wet with sweat after every take-off. Granted, I was only a ground officer (“the chairborne infantry” we called ourselves), but I wore my hat without its grommet, in the traditionally casual Air Force style, and was not above letting impressionable young ladies assume that my reticence about my service experience masked horrible memories of the flak over Stuttgart. Yet secretly I dreaded the shortest hop.

An Air Force psychiatrist I knew (socially, that is) once told me that my nervousness over air travel was probably based on a profound reluctance to let anyone else-—in this case, the pilot— assume complete charge of my life. Looked at that way, the attitude at first seemed almost rational. How, after all, could I be sure that that wretch up front in the cockpit, whom I had never met and often had not even seen, knew his job or cared deeply about my welfare? Logically, of course, the worry wouldn’t hold water; one could certainly assume that the pilot cared deeply about his own welfare, which for the time being was inextricably linked with mine. The truth was that my fear was quite irrational—neurotic, in fact—and had no legitimate basis whatever.