Pilot Remarks
Images courtesy of Brittany Bronson.
By Brittany Bronson
In my father’s Senior Pilot Logs, Las Vegas first appears as a destination in late 1981. Although based in California, my father worked for Honda, and he regularly flew across the southwest to visit dealerships in Nevada and Arizona. In addition to dates, destinations, and durations, the logbooks contain pilot remarks – a variety of additional details he felt compelled to record about the flights. On many of his Las Vegas trips, my father commented on the winds. He categorized them as light, average, or strong. He also documented other weather including, “light chop,” “rain showers over the Sierras,” or a “Beautiful Day.” Sometimes, my father mentioned his passenger, like my mother, or his old business partner, who when I was young, I referred to as Uncle Ron.
Only one flight in the entire logbook contains an asterisk. It occurred on April 8, 1982, several years before I was born. My father departed the North Las Vegas airport in a Beechcraft Baron B55 when his trip was cut short. According to his pilot remarks, he had to, “Abort Due to Engine Problems.” Just like when he was alive, my father’s telling is factual, undramatic. I do not know if he felt fear or panic, but six entries later, he is back in the same plane, “after maintenance [was] performed on fuel gauge and r. eng[ine].”
As a writer, I recognize a music, a mystery, and a magic in my father’s logbooks. Although he never intended them to be, they are a historical record of his life. They document over 8,000 hours of flights. In the opening pages of logbook number 1, which he started at the age of 24 in 1968, the name of his first flight instructor populates the remarks. Forty-three years later (in logbook number 3), it is my name strewn across those final pages, because we recorded 22 hours together as he taught me how to fly. It was an ambition that was cut short after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, the disease that six months ago, finally took his life.
Since my father’s funeral, I have fixated over the 10 pages where Las Vegas is mentioned as a destination. When I first considered moving here, it was my father who convinced me that this city was a good place to make a life. During our flights together, we discussed my potential move to Nevada, because I had been offered a chance to study creative writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Looking back, I wish I had probed my father more about his Vegas visits, but I was younger then, and I had not yet learned to ask the right questions. The Las Vegas of the early 80s is one I wouldn’t recognize, and of the many things I now mourn, I’m sad to have missed my chance to see the city I love through my father’s eyes.
About 16 months ago, I did start asking questions, but by that point, my father had entered the final stages of his disease. Dementia had stolen his history from him. Still, he had asked me to write down the story of his life, so in our final conversations, I gathered everything I still could, although his answers were scrambled with dates and fragmented details. Now, I am finally able to line it up cleanly—see where he lived and when, the places he traveled, and sometimes, why he went there and with who—thanks to the work he did before me through the detailed entries of his logbooks.
A historical artifact is defined as an object made or given shape by humans. The fact that these logbooks have taken their final form, that there will be no more shaping, is a painful truth that I have not yet fully accepted. But knowing that my father was once in Las Vegas too, living and moving through the same patches of earth and sky, offers me something tangible to hold onto in my grief. Plus, my father was always a history buff, and I know he would want me to get the details right, so I keep turning the pages. I step outside to feel the Las Vegas winds. I pay attention to whether they are light or strong. I make sure to take note of the most beautiful days.
Images courtesy of Brittany Bronson.
Brittany Bronson is a writer based in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Times of London, and others. She has received awards and recognitions from the Nevada Arts Council, the Pinch Literary awards, and TalkPoverty.org. She earned her MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 2014.