Musings: Miracle flight

Whooping cough is a bacterial infection, which can last 10 weeks or longer, and it causes terrible coughing fits that can go an hour or more without relief. Children cough so hard that they vomit, break ribs, or stop breathing altogether. They cough continuously until their breath is exhausted and they must make a hurried gulp for a short breath. It got its name from the high-pitched gasp for air between coughing fits. It was like having the wind knocked out of you and struggling for a breath between spasms.

I lived with my mother and grandmother when I came down with the illness, and both were concerned about the threat of death as the disease persisted. Desperate for help, it was my mother’s main topic of conversation. She worked as a stenographer for an engineering and construction company, where her coworkers were troubled by the situation, too.

As it turned out, one of her friends was an engineer and pilot. He flew privately and on company business to construction sites around the country. Like most pilots of the day he read Flying magazine, and because the illness outbreak was so severe, the magazine ran a story on the possible altitude cure for whooping cough patients. It was thought that taking afflicted people up to an altitude of 10,000 feet for about an hour could cure whooping cough. The theory was that the reduction in oxygen at this altitude killed the whooping cough bacillus.

They placed me on the seat between them, and I recall seeing nothing but sky as I tried to see over the instrument panel of the taildragger.
Mom was the adventurous type and had flown with this pilot on several occasions, so it didn’t take long for the two of them to cook up a rescue flight. But the hard part would be getting it past my grandmother. She was a child of the previous century when folks admired a man that could plow 20 acres a day with a team of mules. So, airplanes to her were dangerous and terrible threats, and she certainly wouldn’t be in favor of letting the life of her grandson be risked in one.

Nevertheless, my mother prevailed, and the pilot picked us up for the drive to the airport. I’ll never forget the worry in my grandmother’s voice as she said goodbye, and the bear hug she gave me, as she could hardly let me go for what she thought could be the last time she would ever see me.

I think the airplane was a Cessna 140, because I remember the bench seat in the tiny cabin, and a small storage shelf behind our heads where Mom stowed an empty ice cream container. In those days, ice cream came from the store in a round carton and Mom figured it would be perfect to catch any vomit while we were airborne. They placed me on the seat between them, and I recall seeing nothing but sky as I tried to see over the instrument panel of the taildragger.

Without delay the pilot had us airborne. We climbed for what seemed like hours to a small child as the pilot circled over the city to reach the high altitude. The airplane seemed huge. My eyes were about level with the bottom of the instrument panel when I was seated on the bench seat, so all I could see was the maze of mysterious wires, tubes, and contraptions under the panel, and nothing but sky through the windscreen as the airplane was continuously climbing to get to the magic height. I watched the pilot work the pedals with his feet, and I remember being warm and comfortable.

Mom told this story dozens of times through the years, and she said we reached about 13,200 feet, which was about all the little airplane could do. She described the little cruiser as whirring around with its nose up but unable to get any higher. While we circled, she let me slip into her lap for a peek out the side window. I never have forgotten the fascinating sight of the tiny city below. My stomach fluttered a little as I grew accustomed to the high vantage point.

The flight itself was smooth. I vomited once on the way up. After that I never coughed or showed symptoms again. To this day we don’t know if the altitude cure worked, or whether the disease had coincidentally run its course that day. Most of us think it was the airplane ride.

So that’s the curious story of my first airplane ride. I would fly more times with the engineer-pilot during my youth, and there’s little doubt in my mind that these trips were the first sparks of my desire to be a pilot. A few years later, my grandmother and I even took a surprise trip together in a Bonanza with our pilot friend, but that’s a comical story of her bravery for another day.

Frank E. Cahill is a flight instructor with 3,000 hours in close to 50 years of flying.