New Horizons – Part Three
Kaz Travels North
We talked it over for a long time and it was finally decided that the best thing to do was to bring Kaz to Oklahoma City to stay with me until I graduated from the Academy. Unfortunately, this, I thought, was almost an exact replay of what Sharon had experienced with my mom those many years ago when, as a result, I had been forced to fly my pregnant wife from Houston to Reno.
Luckily, this time around I had the money, as the FAA was paying my salary plus, I had received a healthy advance on my per diem. So we made plans for Kaz to fly to Oklahoma City and move into my apartment. Because she still couldn’t drive, we knew and accepted that it would be hard for her to spend all day by herself while I was in school, but with her usual “can-do” attitude she told me not to worry—she would make sure to stay busy by tidying up the apartment and making sure dinner was always on the table when I got home. A few days later she made the short flight from Houston and we settled comfortably into the shared apartment.
I didn’t want to make Kaz more uncomfortable than she already seemed regarding her and my mom’s disagreements, but one evening while we were out to dinner, I casually prodded her on what she thought had brought on the initial discord between them.
“Well,” she said, resting her chin in the cup of her hand, “I don’t know. But you know, I noticed she stopped being nice to me right after she got the perm.”
“Perm? What perm? My mom got a perm?”
In all the years I’d lived with my parents I had never seen my mom visit a hair salon, much less pay money to have a hair stylist give her a perm. In her pre-church days I recall her giving herself what in those days was known as a “Tony”—a home-administered permanent that came in a box filled with various rollers, papers, and solutions and was usually sold in drug stores. The brand name “Tony”, meaning “sharp” or “classy” (in the vernacular of the late 1940’s and 1950’s) was marketed to those women who couldn’t afford, or wouldn’t set foot in a hair salon.
After she became a devout Pentecostal, giving herself a Tony was entirely out of the question as it was considered vain and sinful. Instead, she had settled for wet pin curls and creative brush-ups with lots of bobby pins.
“Yes,” Kaz replied. “And the perm she got…well, it was very…uh, very…curly.”
When she first mentioned the perm, I had imagined my mom’s still dark brown hair in gently flowing waves, with maybe a little pompadour in the front. But curly?
“What do you mean, curly? You mean wavy?” Thinking that maybe Kaz had used the wrong word.
“No! I know wavy. She wasn’t wavy, she was curly. You know, like koko-gin (negro) hair. You have English name for new style…I think maybe it’s called an “Afriko” hairstyle.”
“Afriko? There’s no such thing, unless you mean ‘Afro’.”
“Yes! Hai! That’s it! Afro!! She got Afro permanent!”
“You’ve got to be kidding! You mean it was all kinky and round?”
“Oh yes, and very black. She color it too. She show me when she got home and she thought it look pretty good. She very proud. But not me. I think it look awful.”
“Ahh…you didn’t say anything to her about that, did you?”
“Sure!” she said emphatically. “I told her she look silly. That hairstyle not for old ladies…it was for young girls and look better on koko-gin anyway. Young koko-gin! It’s natural for them, you know.”
“Oh my God, Kaz! You’ve got to be kidding me! How could you say that to her?”
“Well, so what? It very true. She look silly in stupid (pronounced, “stupee”) Afro. Then she got all mad when I told her that.”
“What did you expect her to do!?”
“I don’t know. It was truth. All I did was tell her the truth. I cannot lie about that. Somebody have to tell her she look stupee.”
Now that’s one thing that Kaz had going for–and against her. She did not believe in lying about anything; during our marriage it would prove to be both a blessing and a curse. In her formative years she had apparently never learned the art of diplomacy, subtlety, or tact. Her mind and her mouth had no filter when it came to expressing her opinion; when we were in mixed company I was constantly on guard hoping that she wouldn’t blurt out something insulting or insensitive when she was just trying to be truthful.
“Kaz! I can’t believe you said that to her.”
“Well, I did. Then she run into her room and stayed there for long time. I thought maybe her head hurt with new curly hair, so I thought I’d do something nice for her and I went to kitchen and began to clean refrigerator and freezer. When she finally come out she was all mad and told me she didn’t want me to touch anything in her kitchen anymore. I don’t understand why she act so mean to me.”
“Well, you insulted her!”
“About what? I clean her refrigerator!”
“No, not that! You insulted her when you told her she looked stupid with an afro.”
“That not insult. That was truth!”
“Okay, now listen. You have to learn that sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth. Sometimes people do silly things that deep inside they may regret and feel sorry for, but the last thing they want to hear is other people saying things to them that may reinforce that feeling of shame and regret. Understand?”
“No. Why they don’t want to hear the truth? If they hear the truth maybe they don’t do those silly things again. No, I don’t understand. Americans are silly. Wakara-nai, mo…” (I don’t know).
“All right, how about this? From now on, when you feel the urge to say something to someone who you feel needs to hear the truth, try not saying anything at all. Just keep it to yourself. In fact, how about just holding the thought and telling me about it later when we’re alone. Then we can talk about it and I can help you decide if it’s wise to say something. I know you’re still trying to figure out our American culture and I think that’ll go a long way to achieving that goal. What do you think?”
“I still think it’s silly, but I will try. American culture is very strange.”
“I know. Now we have to figure out how to fix this thing with mom. Next time I call her—and for sure before we go back down to Houston—I’ll try to explain that you meant no harm. I don’t know if that’s going to do it but I’ll do my best. Mom is sensitive about a few things—and as most women—very sensitive about her appearance.”
“Why she so sensitive? She’s old woman! She should accept her age and know she no look so good anymore!”
“Ah…just take my word for this, OK? Please never mention anything about my mom’s appearance to her face anymore. We have an old American saying that goes like this: If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”
“Hah…stupee American saying.”
***
As it turned out, Kaz’s arrival proved to be a bit of a boon to Bill in the beginning. Whereas before I would have to constantly remind him to not leave his crap all over the shared living room, dining room and kitchen, Kaz would spend each morning tidying up and mostly trashing Bill’s leftover pizza boxes and empty soft drink containers. More often than not he’d leave some article of clothing, like a Tshirt or his flip-flops on the floor and she’d push them up against his bedroom door so she could vacuum the floor.
When I found out that she was doing this I had a hard talk with Bill, reminding him that my wife had not been sent for to be his personal maid. Afterwards he took more care and stopped leaving his stuff around but his hygiene continued to be spotty.
A couple of weeks after Kaz arrived, Bill told us that his wife would be flying in from New York to spend the last couple of weeks of our training at our apartment. He was beyond giddy and suggested that for our first weekend together we should plan a Sunday barbecue. We all thought that would be a great idea, and after Bill insisted that he would buy and grill the steaks, we volunteered to supply all the rest of the fixings.
Marilyn was scheduled to arrive on one Friday afternoon and Bill hurried after class to pick her up at the airport. Since our class had planned to celebrate at a restaurant that evening anyway after having completed the next to last set of complex problems (actually they were what would be considered final examinations), Bill said he’d just meet us there after picking her up.
Kaz and I were anxious to meet Marilyn after everything Bill had told us about her. She was a ravishing beauty, her parents were wealthy and lived in upper New York State, and supposedly had been dead set against their eldest daughter marrying Bill. He bragged about how he’d won her over in spite of her parents’ resistance and how he’d gone out of his way to intentionally antagonize them during family visits. I imagined that spending an evening in close proximity of Bill after he’d not showered or changed underwear for a few days would probably antagonize just about anyone.
After we’d finished our drinks and were in the process of ordering dinner, Bill showed up with Marilyn. She was not unattractive, but definitely a letdown after all of Bill’s bragging about her ravishing beauty. Tall, blonde, with cold blue eyes, a sharp nose, and tight thin lips, her deportment reminded me of a stern unsmiling English teacher who was about to ask for that homework assignment she knew I didn’t have completed on time.
We shook hands all around and proceeded to order our meal. To our surprise Bill loudly instructed the waiter that the dinner and drink check should come to him, then beamed gleefully at Marilyn who seemed to ignore him while intently studying her nails.
Kaz looked at me questioningly and I, with a rapidly growing sense of apprehension, prayed that she was not getting ready to make some truthful statement about Marilyn turning out not to be as pretty as Bill had made her out to be. Mercifully, she must’ve seen the growing sense of panic on my face and instead smiled sweetly, squeezed my hand, and took a dainty sip from her drink.
***
As promised, Bill and Marilyn left the apartment early Saturday afternoon to do the grocery shopping for our grilled steak dinner later on that afternoon. Kaz and I had volunteered to pick up salad fixings, potatoes and corn on the cob, but Bill had insisted they’d pick up everything since they were going out, then we could prepare our part while he and his wife cooked up the steaks.
“We’re going to buy the very best and biggest steaks we can find!” Bill had promised as they walked out the door. Meanwhile we also left the apartment to do a little shopping for ourselves and the rest of the dinner items.
As it turned out, we stayed out a little longer than what we’d planned, and by the time we got back we could already smell the charcoal grill going in the small patio just outside the kitchen door. We walked in with bags loaded with potatoes for baking, salad for tossing, and pie and ice cream for dessert. Bill and Marilyn were both standing in front of the sink with the water running full blast as Kaz and started emptying out the loaded grocery bags.
“Sorry we ran a bit late,” I said as I pulled out four huge baking potatoes, “but it won’t take us but a few minutes to rinse these babies off and pop them into the oven. Let me know when you’re done with the sink.”
“We’ll be done in just a few seconds,” Marilyn said over her shoulder. “These steaks are just about done.”
It took me a couple of beats for that to sink in.
“Uh, what’re you doing with the steaks in the sink?” I asked, almost cautiously.
“We’re rinsing them!” Bill said, as if I should’ve known.
“You’re what?”
“Rinsing them!” Marilyn repeated, a little annoyed. “And they’re just about ready to cool off in the fridge.”
I walked over to the sink and to my sheer amazement saw them rinsing and squeezing four large slabs of meat.
“What in the hell are you guys doing to those steaks?” I asked, almost not believing what I was seeing.
Bill held one up and said, “We’re washing them off and squeezing all the nasty blood out of them. Why?”
“Well…‘Why’ is what I should be asking you. Are you crazy?”
“No,” Bill said, arching his eyebrows. “We always do it this way. You never know who had their hands on the meat, and they’re all still full of blood and stuff. If you cook them with all that blood inside it just leaks out on your plate when you cut into it. It’s gross, isn’t it honey?” Marilyn nodded sagely while looking at Kaz and me as if we were savages.
“Uh Okay, I guess.” As I stared at the meat I noticed something even stranger. “Bill, what cut of meat is that?”
“Cut? It’s steak!”
“What kind of steak?”
“Oh, well we just looked for the package that looked the biggest and we picked these out. They were in the steak section of the store. They look great, don’t they?”
“Well Bill, those are beef, but I don’t think they’re steaks for grilling. What did the package say?”
“I don’t remember exactly, but it said, steak.”
Where’s the package they came in?”
“I don’t know! I think we put them in the trash under the sink.”
I gently pushed him out of the way and dug out the white plastic tray with the cellophane wrapping. I looked at the label and saw that they’d bought four round steaks.
“This cut of meat is going to be really chewy unless you marinate is for a few hours,” I said, as Bill stood there with a round steak dripping in his hand. “Worse, you’ve squeezed out and washed away all its natural juices by rinsing and wring them out. When they come off the grill they’re bound to be as tough as shoe leather.”
They both stared at me blankly.
“Is this the way you guys grill your steaks at home?” I asked cautiously.
“Well….” Bill stammered. “To tell the truth, we don’t eat steak that often. And Marilyn doesn’t cook that much. So…..”
I instantly felt bad for the way I’d hammered them, and I just stood there holding the wrinkled piece of cellophane in my hand. Surprisingly, it was Kaz who broke the uncomfortable silence.
“No problem!” she said, cheerfully. “We can go out and eat big hamburgers then come home and eat pie and ice cream! Tomorrow I can make something with the potatoes! OK?”
Marilyn’s pointy nose began to wrinkle upwards, but Bill quickly spoke up. “Great! And tell you what. Because it seems we screwed up the steaks we’ll pay for the burgers! Won’t we honey?”
Marilyn looked like she wanted to say no, but seemed to quickly decide otherwise. “Sure, why not.”
As we started to head out the door I suddenly remembered the grill. “Oh hey! We can’t leave the grill smoking like that. Let’s at least take the cover off and let the charcoal burn itself out.”
Bill and Marilyn looked quizzically at each other. “Grill? What grill?
“But I thought I smelled burning charcoal when we pulled in the driveway” I said.
“No, that wasn’t us, it was the couple next door. They’ve had their damn grill going all afternoon and the smoke is coming over the dividing fence.”
I stopped just outside the door and asked, “So you guys never lit our grill?”
“Oh, heavens no,” Marilyn said icily, “We planned to cook the steaks in the oven in the kitchen. Cooking over charcoal is just so nasty.”
“Oh, well of course.” I said and grabbed Kaz by the arm before she decided to say something truthful. “Let’s just help them clean up and get ready to go back out.”
In a few minutes, with very little said we all went out the door and piled into Bill’s car.
As it turned out, the burgers were great, and the pie and ice cream were fabulous.
Finals and Fear of Failing
The last two weeks at the academy were devoted to reviewing all we’d learned the previous seven weeks of training and taking the final set of complex problems. The bar was set extremely high—all the problems would have to be passed with absolutely no separation or confliction errors.
There were five sets of problems, each consisting of three separation scenarios of increasing complexity. They were taken in a room resembling an actual airspace sector at an air traffic control center. The academy had an assigned cadre of mock “pilots” whose job it was to sit in another room and request clearances, changes of altitude, permission to depart and land, and in short, respond to each student controller’s instructions as real pilots would do. Communication between “pilot” and controller were made via a continuously open telephone line hooked up to each participant’s headset. Although the problem consisted of many different aircraft types, the one mock pilot acted out all the parts.
Each student, while working the problem, was monitored by two instructors: one, watching the student’s strip marking techniques and phraseology (that is, correct usage of all the ATC approved writing shortcuts, and spoken language), while the other instructor carefully judged whether or not the student was employing proper separation minimums between aircraft and applying the correct rule thereof. Each problem was approximately an hour in duration and consisted of between ten to twenty simulated aircraft.
Although each problem was designed to last an hour, many times it would last longer. Time was determined by a clock that was started at the beginning of the problem and stopped at its termination. However, if either of the instructors noted an issue that he/she wanted to discuss with the student during the problem, the order to “stop the clock” was immediately issued. Time was therefore immediately suspended while the student was interrogated as to why a particular type of separation was being utilized, asked to quote the exact separation rule that was being used, or to explain why no rule of separation was needed between two seemingly conflicting aircraft.
Once his questions were answered correctly the instructor would order “start the clock” and the problem would resume. If, however, the student was not able to provide a correct answer—or a confliction between two or more aircraft had occurred—the instructor would declare that the problem was over. This always meant that the student had failed this particular problem—and if it was a final problem—was out of the program. The shouted phrase “Stop the clock!” would literally make a student almost jump out of his seat.
To say the pressure to complete a problem successfully was extremely intense would be an understatement.
To prepare for this final set of problems it wasn’t enough to just put in the time in the classroom; one was required to put in countless hours after class and on weekends. This was one of the reasons the FAA required there to be two students housed in one apartment unit. We were given sheets of practice problems to take home and administer to one another. The more time one devoted to studying and working these problems at home the better chance one had of passing the finals.
Unfortunately, for some of our classmates it made no difference how much time they put in studying and working practice problems. They just didn’t get it. I have often answered those who’ve asked me what it takes to be an air traffic controller by simply saying this: To be a successful controller, one must not only be able to memorize and instantly recall and apply one of thousands upon thousands of rules and regulations, one must also be able to mentally visualize five, ten, fifteen or twenty aircraft at different locations and altitudes—all going in different directions at the same time. In my opinion, this has little to do with intelligence and more to do with just having the knack, or instinctive ability, to do so.
There is no doubt that my roommate Bill, regardless of his lack of hygiene, was a highly intelligent individual. He had graduated college with a relatively decent GPA, and been a fairly effective Naval Aviation pilot, flying one of the most complex fighter jets in the military. Yet for all his intelligence, most times he was at a loss on how to separate two aircraft converging towards one another at the same altitude. Perhaps if he’d been given a radar scope where he could visually see the potential confliction, he would’ve been more successful, but in our initial training the radar scope had to exist in our imagination.
During the last week of finals Bill and I spent countless hours late into the night going over practice problems in our apartment while our wives slept soundly in their respective bedrooms. Time and time again Bill would commit the fatal error of clearing two or more imaginary aircraft into conflicted airspace without realizing he had done so.
For me, it was maddening that he couldn’t see the situation developing. For example, he would have a flight plan for a flight on the ground requesting to depart and asking to climb to five-thousand feet. At the same time, there would be another aircraft due to overfly that same airport at five thousand feet. The obvious thing to do was to clear the departing aircraft to four thousand feet and wait until the conflicting aircraft was clear to climb the departure to five thousand feet. But to Bill, that made no sense. He would try to explain to me that there was no way the departure would conflict with the overflight because the departure would see the other plane and avoid a collision by staying at four thousand until he was clear. He explained that when he was flying in the Navy, he’d done this many times.
He just wouldn’t listen nor, would he try to reason this out. I just knew he was going to fail the finals.
***
I was scheduled to take my final a few hours before Bill. If I was successful, I would have a couple of days of down time before the course was completely over and I was looking forward to having some time off—regardless of the outcome.
My test time was at 1:00 pm, right after lunch. I was so nervous that I spent the lunch hour mentally going over every scenario that had been presented to us over the past few weeks. Although I was confident that I could “see traffic” (the ATC term for being able to detect and project conflictions) I wasn’t so sure that I could quote each rule if made to do so.
At the appointed time I was asked to enter the one of the four mock control rooms and take my seat in front of the slanted boards—called bays—holding twenty or so flight progress strips. The room was just big enough to allow two controllers and four instructors to sit in front of the bays. Above the bays were aviation flight charts depicting the make-believe Oklahoma Center airspace, complete with airways and navaids. Although they were there to provide assistance in case the controller needed confirmation regarding an airway or a navaid, during a final the maps were covered with a cloth shroud.
The two instructors already had their headsets plugged into their receptacles and as I took my seat they handed me my headset. Once plugged in I heard the mock pilot give me a radio check.
“Oklahoma Center, this is your pilot, how do you read?”
“Pilot, loud and clear,” was my response. My mouth was dry, and I sorely needed a drink of water.
“OK, Frank,” one of the instructors behind me said. “Just do what you know how to do. We’ve watched you for all these weeks and we know you are good at seeing traffic, so all you need to do now is work the board just like you have in the past.”
“OK.”
“Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Pilot, are you ready?”
“Affirmative!”
“OK, let’s start the clock.”
I reached up and flipped the switch, activating the clock.
“Oklahoma Center, this is N7432R checking in at seven-thousand.” My first radio call.
“N7432R roger, this is Oklahoma Center. Report over Ponca City, altimeter is 2980.”
“Roger altimeter, and we’ll report over Ponca City.”
The problem had begun, and for the next fifty-eight minutes I was totally immersed in the world of imaginary airplanes all trying to run into each other.
“OK! Stop the clock!”
Those words shocked me to my core and my stomach tightened in sheer panic.
“Great job, Frank! You’re going to make a good controller. Congratulations!”
I sat back in my chair and slowly pulled the headset off my head feeling my heart begin to slow down. “Is it over?” I asked tentatively.
“Yup, you’re done.”
I turned around and saw my two instructors beaming at me and each other. I felt a trickle of sweat roll down the side of my ribcage and I stood up.
“You really did well, Frank,” one of the instructors said. “Now clean up your board and go take a well-deserved break.”
***
There were about a half dozen students in the breakroom and the mood was jovial as all had passed their finals. I looked for Bill but then remembered that his test time was scheduled right after mine. He would be in one of the control rooms now taking his final. I did not feel confident that he would pass—especially if he started arguing with one of the instructors over what he thought was or was not a confliction.
Further, as a problem got more difficult, he would begin getting so nervous that he’d start stammering and mixing up aircraft call signs. Whereas I would hate it when during our practice problems an instructor would stop the clock to explain how perhaps a particular type of separation rule might work better than the one I’d used, Bill frequently asked the instructor to stop the clock if for nothing else but to gain time regather his thoughts.
About an hour later Bill finally walked into thea break room. He had failed his problem.
“Oh no!” I exclaimed sympathetically. “What’s gonna happen now?”
“They have to get approval from headquarters, but I’ll probably get to go back to Houston on a probationary basis.”
“But you’re not fired, are you?”
“No, not yet. I was told I probably wouldn’t be fired from the FAA, but that I’d be reclassified and sent to a non-ATC facility like a flight service station.” (This type of facility provides weather, airport, and flight information to VFR flights.) “But all that won’t be done here…it’ll be done in Houston after I get back.”
“Oh Bill. I’m so sorry.”
“That’s okay, I guess. It’s just that I was never comfortable trying to do this job anyway. But I did it for Marilyn. I did it all for her.”
“Well, she loves you and she’ll understand what happened. Look, it’s not the end of the world. The FAA will get you another assignment and you’ll do just fine.”
“You don’t understand. She told me that if I failed, she was flying back to New York.”
“No, that can’t be true!”
“Yes, it is. You don’t know her. If I didn’t make it as a controller, she told me she didn’t want to be with me. She’ll never accept being married to a failure.”
“Bill! The FAA will take care of you.”
“And what? Get me a job at a flight service station in Cotulla, Texas? Marilyn would never live there. She made it perfectly clear that the only way she’d live in Texas, or the southwest, was if I was working in an air route center making good money as a controller. Now, I’ll never get any higher than a GS-9.”
“Bill, she loves you and she’ll understand. I know she will.”
“No, you see I’ve already called her. She said she was flying back to New York tomorrow. Her parents will wire her a ticket. I’ll be coming back to Houston by myself.”
“Oh no…” Suddenly I felt so terrible for Bill. And although he and I had had our moments of discomfort, I truly felt bad for him. It dawned on me that not only had he forever lost the opportunity to be an air traffic controller, it seemed that now he’d also surely lost his marriage.
Later that afternoon, while I mingled with all the other successful air traffic control trainees at a nearby bar to celebrate our fortune and bright future, I couldn’t help but wonder what Bill might be doing right then.
To be continued…