Aroostook County in northern Maine is beautiful country. In late spring there is a profusion of wild flowers spread across rock-strewn fields; daisies, buttercups, devil’s paintbrush, thistles and flowering bushes beyond my naming. In early summer, these give way to magnificent fields of potato blossoms punctuated by spots of apple blossom, accentuating the rolling hills of green - forest-green and grassy-green.

But in winter, it can be very cold, with a deep, white blanket of drifting snow. Such was the weather during the biggest storm of 1938. My dad was Pastor of the Aroostook Larger Parish, an association of Congregational Churches, spread from Ashland, a small town some twenty miles west of Presque Isle (the only city in The County) and central to the north and south spread of the parish - from Buffalo in the north to the Oxbow Plantation in the south. Nine little congregations survived in those Depression days by pooling their resources and sharing one minister, my dad. The nine "preaching points" included four "real churches" in Ashland, Masardis, the Oxbow, and Portage. The others were one-room rural schoolhouses or living rooms of big farm houses. Roads in "The County" were mostly gravel, i.e., unpaved, and were not plowed in winter in those days.

So my story begins with the Big Storm of 1938. I think it was a Thursday when the phone rang in the Parsonage in Ashland. There had been a death in Buffalo. I think it was a member of the Bolsteridge family. My dad was needed for a funeral, which , in spite of weather or adverse circumstances, was always held on the third day in that time and tradition. That meant it should be held on Saturday.

A fifth grader, I remember listening, since school was closed by the storm, to my dad making innumerable calls, trying to arrange some manner of transportation to get him to Buffalo on Saturday and back to Ashland for the Sunday service there. My ears perked up like a forest critter responding to a new sound when I heard the name, Clair Morrow of Portage Lake. Clair was a young pilot/guide who would fly sportsmen, hunters and fishermen, to otherwise practically inaccessible lakes. He had a 1928 Fairchild, a four-place, single-engine aircraft on pontoons or skis according to the season.

If transportation from Ashland to Buffalo and back to Portage could be arranged, Clair Morrow would fly my dad back to Ashland. I could hardly contain myself! Before the front parts of the trip were in place I was asking to go with my dad. There was a popular song I remember hearing on the radio - or maybe a Victrola - in those days that went like this: "I went to the funeral just for the ride, just for the ride..." That was my unabashed request.

The Rev. Robert Haldane, Sr. was reluctant. My mother was firmly opposed. The weather was making this trip difficult and perhaps dangerous for an adult. It was not an excursion to include a young boy. But I played my trump card. We had a firm and unbreakable pledge between parents and children (my sister, Betty, and I) A promise is a promise. Neither party would think of breaking a promise made with that commitment.

"You promised me that the first time you flew, you would take me with you," I reminded my parents. "But this is not a pleasure flight, and the circumstances make it inappropriate," my folks argued. Nevertheless A promise is a promise was not a conditional agreement. Even mother reluctantly agreed that if all the arrangements could be made, I could accompany my father - who must have had some further promising to do with Mom!

Dad called the Dispatcher’s Office of the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad. Yes, a B&A freight train with a snow plow was scheduled to come through Ashland, headed for Fort Kent on Saturday morning. They would allow my father to ride in the Caboose for this emergency trip and would even allow him to bring his son! What a wonderful man that Dispatcher must have been! (perhaps a friend of Ray Rafford). "But," he warned, "if there is not a party waiting for you at Buffalo siding, we will not let you off the train and you will have to stay with us all the way to Bangor!" Dad said we would take the leap of faith.

Saturday dawned clear and COLD (-40 F). We dressed appropriately - long johns, heavy sweaters, wool pants and jackets, boots, scarves, and hats with ear muffs (not to mention double mittens.) A call to the local livery stable brought a pung (sleigh) to our door. Wrapped in buffalo robes we were conveyed by an animated horse to the Railroad Station.

Riding in a caboose was an experience that has stayed with me. Apart from the fact that this engine was breaking a path down the tracks through drifts so high and hard-packed by the wind that we wondered at times if we would be able to get through, the caboose itself was a wonder of "traveling living quarters" for the crew. Chugging past Portage that grand old steam engine whistled and stopped at Buffalo siding. As promised, a team and sled with buffalo robes and a pot-bellied kerosene heater awaited our arrival. With calls of "Thank you," "Good Luck," etc. we bade farewell to the train crew, and began the uphill ride behind a pair of Morgans to the little one-room schoolhouse where the funeral was to be held upon our arrival. In spite of a roaring fire in the Franklin stove, the room was not very warm even a few feet away from the fire. I sat by the stove.

After the service, the casket and pall-bearers, and Dad and I were back on the big sled (used for transporting barrels of potatoes) headed toward Portage. At the top of the hill overlooking Portage from the north there is a cemetery. Just inside the narrow gate is an old stone mausoleum where the dead were entombed in winter. When the frost went out in the spring there would be a flurry of committal services as each was laid to rest in a grave of his or her own. Dad read a verse of Scripture, said a brief prayer, and we were on our way down the hill to the Portage Hotel by the lake.

Standing stately by the lake this Portage landmark (which has since been replaced but carries on in tradition) was a most welcome sight. We were expected. The lady of the house took me in charge. I was ushered into the big kitchen, toasty warm and filled with the tantalizing odor of freshly baked molasses cookies. I was unwrapped, placed in a big rocking chair in front of the open oven with my feet on the oven door. Hot cocoa was provided to "wash down" some of those mouth-watering cookies. There I sat to "thaw out" for a rather long time while the engine of the Fairchild was being thawed out too, prior to the administering of warmed oil and then the fueling of the gas tank.

Once the engine was started, it was left to run for a full hour before Clair deemed it ready for flight. Doubly warmed - once by oven, cocoa, and molasses cookies, and again by excitement that sent my circulation to tingling effectiveness - I climbed into the plane. Dad sat in the "co-pilot seat" next to Clair and I sat behind him. My nose was as close as I dared to have it to the cold window. The plane, on skis, taxied from in front of the hotel out onto the frozen lake. A "runway" had been rolled, as I recall, smoothing out the drifts of snow to make it possible to attain lift-off speed across the lake.

The blur of white from blowing snow, frosty window, and merging color of lake, clouds, and sky made my first experience of lift-off quite different from future ones, yet I still remember the free feeling of flight achieved that made me thrill beyond dreams. We circled the lake, climbing for cruising altitude. The up-drafts and down-drafts buffeted the small plane. I remember thinking, "I know why they wear seat belts in airplanes." We had gained an altitude of less that 1500 feet when a sudden down-draft caught us and dropped the Fairchild 500 feet in a second. Clair said to my dad, "An air-pocket!" Dad turned to see if I was O.K. I remember thinking it was a silly question. I was having the time of my life. Dad said it was much too rough but I thought flying was just the greatest!

Below, between Portage and Ashland, the snow drifts peaked at tops of telephone poles and smaller pine trees. Fields resembled an ocean covered with white caps. Houses and barns appeared as if wrapped in waist-high cotton batten, and cattle were not outside their stalls! When we arrived over Ashland, the landing strip which Clair had planned on - a field down behind Sam Cheney’s Garage - was a mass of hard-packed ripples. "I can’t land on that," he declared. "Those snow drifts would break our skiis and might well cause us to ground-loop. It’s just too dangerous."

"Look for a place," my dad urged. "I have to be here for Church service tomorrow morning."

We circled the town again. "You are just going to have to return to Portage with me," Clair insisted.

"Try that place nearer the Garage," my dad suggested, "it looks smoother to me." We took another look. My dad was so determined and so sure God wanted us there, Clair finally dropped us down for a very low pass, took his "bush pilot skills" in hand, and set us down - kerthump, kerthump, kerthump the length of the field. He had served our need with his expert flying skill, but the wind increased and the temperature dropped even more, so Clair Morrow spent the next few days in Ashland - probably up in one of "Grammy" Stone’s rental Rooms.

While the plane was circling the town, looking for a place to land, Dr. Haggerthy took note of our arrival. He said to his son, Bert, "The Haldanes are about to land down by Cheney’s Garage. Take my snowmobile and go get them." A snowmobile in those days was not a recreation vehicle. It did not resemble sled or scooter. It was a large, converted automotive vehicle (this one may have been a Model A) with skiis on front and double rear axles, with lags - like a tractor. Bert picked us up and drove us home in the snowmobile. So, to travel a round trip of less than forty miles, we went by horse and pung, by train, by sled and team, by airplane and by snowmobile. Such was the saga of my first flight.

EPILOGUE

Only four years after my first flight our family had moved from Aroostook County to central Maine. Three months after we moved to Madison, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and we were at war.

On December 1, 1941, just a week before Pearl Harbor, the Civil Air Patrol (C.A.P.) was established as an Auxiliary of the United States Army Air Corps. In January of 1942 I joined the C.A.P. as a Cadet. One of our officers, a Pilot named Tomlinson, owned and operated a small grass air strip and a flight school in Skowhegan. At 14 years old I was still enchanted by airplanes and the desire to fly. Mr. Tomlinson recognized the eagerness in some of us in the Skowhegan Squadron. He made an offer which three of us from Madison immediately accepted . In payment for our labor on Saturdays that summer and fall he would give us flight instruction. I kept a journal of the experience. It began, "Today Robert Harding, John Hall and I began our flying careers."

The work we did included tearing down a barn which was being converted into a hanger, and, most fascinating for me, the sanding and polishing, and other unskilled labor - rewiring controls, etc.- on a 1928 Fairchild four-place airplane. I learned about the plane in which I had my first flight from the inside out, as Mr. Tomlinson restored it. Our "pay" came in 20 minute segments at first, and later in 30 minute periods of dual instruction. We alternated between two planes, each a two place, fore and aft, with throttles on the left hand by the window, dual control joys sticks and rudder pedals, and readily visible instruments which consisted of Altimeter, Turn and Bank Indicator, Compass and three gauges: Air Speed, Fuel, and Oil Pressure. One plane was a Piper Cub with a Franklin 50 hp engine and the second was an Aeronca with a Continental 65 hp engine. From swinging the prop to start the engine, to learning and endlessly practicing the coordination maneuvers, to spins and dives -and finally landing, we logged our time toward a future license.

The ground school was at C.A.P. meetings where we learned navigation, weather, and FAA regulations. This took second place in our enjoyment only to the Encampments of two weeks at a time in summers at Dow Field, a U.S. Army Air Corps Post. It was a port of embarkation during W.W.II for the 8th Air Corps and others going to the European theater. We mingled in the P.X. (Dow was still an Army Post) with those crews who were shipping out, and felt a part of the great war effort of the era.

EPILOGUE II

John Hall went on to West Point and the United States Air Force. I went to Bangor Theological Seminary and continued in the C.A.P. (now an Auxiliary of the U.S.A.F.} as a Chaplain. I retired in grade as a Wing Chaplain (Lt. Col.) in January of 1969. My only wings were not those of Pilot, nor Navigator, but of Observer. I flew many search and rescue missions as such, as well as to Regional Chaplains’ Conferences. My time at the controls has been limited to flying with friends - the only way to fit a minister’s pocketbook!

Rev. Robert Haldane, Jr.

More stories by Dr. Robert Haldane, Jr.

What God Ordains

An Overdue Encounter

Room for the Indians