01 - Guatemala City

(Codes for this chapter are: female adult/female adult, consentual, lesbian, true story, oral sex, body modification.)

We mostly flew around the various Islands of the Netherlands Antilles, but we took other freight as well. There is a large refinery on Aruba. On occasion we would load 17,000 pounds of gasoline or other petroleum products contained in forty or so 55 gallon drums and fly them to various destinations. Like Guatemala City Guatemala...

“This is One-Six-Two-Point-Four-Five-Zero,” the recording said, “G-U-A, Guatemala City, Guatemala. The time is Twenty-Three-Thirty-Seven-Zulu,” that’s 6:37pm local, “the barometric pressure is Two-Niner-Point-Nine-Two.”

I reached over and flipped the altimeter to 29.92 and was pleased when the hands correctly showed that we were 4950 feet higher than the Caribbean waters that we will fly over on our nearly eight hour flight home. “It is eighteen degrees.” Divide by five multiply by eight add thirty-two, that’s 65 Fahrenheit. We get Royal Navy time, barometer given in inches and the temperature in Celsius. Makes perfect sense...

“Aeropuerto La Aurora, Curtiss November-Niner-Niner-Zero-Zero-Zulu, hold at X-X. You are three for takeoff on Two.” Runway “2,” twenty degrees on the compass rose.

“Lisa...” Punch said, as the radio crackled.

“Curtiss-November-Niner-Niner-Zero-Zero-Zulu, La Aurora, understand ... We are number three for runway Two, behind heavies and holding at intersection X-X.” I said into the mike while adjusting my Dick Clark headset to abate the sound of our paired Pratt and Whitney R-2800 eighteen-cylinder ‘Double Wasp’ piston engines. It wasn’t so important right now, but when we got up to the threshold and ran those bad boys up ... Well then it would be really important.

We have to wait for those two heavies, meaning really big airplanes, a Lockheed Ten-Eleven and an Airbus Three-hundred before we could taxi up to the threshold and do a final engine check, the run-up. A required and truly prudent first step to lifting our forty-year-old C-46 filled with snap-peas from good ‘ole terra firma. Departing this airport situated in a lush green valley five thousand feet above the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Without taking into account the slower climb up to cruising altitude and winds aloft which could either help or hinder our journey it would be a seven hour 42 minute flight back to Aruba, and Queen Beatrix Airport in Oranjestad.

I carefully closed my small black six ring binder containing the GUA airport pages and dropped it down into my black leather Jeppesen case next to my big light green thermos of steaming hot Guatemalan coffee and brown paper bag containing a scrumptious coffee cake from the mission. The children would be asleep when I got home, but I would see them before I went to sleep tonight, or rather tomorrow morning.

Aeropuerto Internacional La Aurora was one of my favorite destinations, unlike many of our other common ports-of-call it was just so real and so diverse. Young caramel-colored military conscripts that appeared to be fourteen or fifteen years old were everywhere in the terminal and on the ramp.

Each one had a different facial expression. In our flight uniforms and obviously being Norte Americanos we were never perceived to be a threat. Some were happy, many were bored and a very few were either boisterous or bossy in their berets, yellow neckerchiefs, polished boots and jungle cammies lugging their huge Spanish CETME rifles.

Something in them activated my ‘mom’ gene. Maybe the fact that they looked for all the world like a group of little Hispanic boys back home in Texas. All dressed up in their daddy’s duck hunting clothes and lugging his huge-to-them Remington semi-automatic shotgun with its long twenty-eight-inch barrel.

It made me feel an affinity for them. Or maybe it was the fact that they were to my nearly thirty-year-old brain merely weeks older than the oldest orphans at Eva’s mission that made me want to hug them and give them some of my delicious cake.

Guatemala City was a very interesting place to me, filled with open-air plazas occupied by many small-scale shopkeepers hawking their wares. Craftsmen, potters, weavers, often creating their goods in front of you. Farmers growing peas and beans in the mountains. Coffee plantations ... Tourists visiting Antigua with its 500-year-old colonial history; street kids begging or selling blankets.

There were also big fruit plantations down on the coast, but I had never been there. The coffee and the pastry in the city were absolutely wonderful. Perversely one of the best Italian restaurants that I ever enjoyed was located near the Hilton across Avenida La Reforma from the American Embassy in Zona Nueve.

As a big silver A-300 landed on runway Two-Zero in front of us, my beloved Punch - sitting in the Pilot’s seat for this flight - ran up the engines one at a time as we sat at the threshold. It was in his father’s little yellow cub that I earned my private license. In many things, including that cub, he was my teacher.

He was switching the magneto switch while intently watching the green sine wave on his oscilloscope for abnormalities. Finding none and satisfied that all engine gauges, manifold pressure, temperature, cylinder head temperature and the like were ‘in the green’ he tapped me and gave me a thumbs up. I called the tower.

“Curtiss-Noviembre-Nueve-Nueve-Cero-Cero-Zulu lista en Dos-Cero,” I said into the mike. ICAO says that we are all supposed to speak English, but in Centro Americano and the Spanish Islands they appreciate those Norte Americanos who bother to habla.

“Curtiss-November-Niner-Niner-Zero-Zero-Zulu you are cleared for takeoff,” came the heavily accented voice from the tower.

“Gracias, La Aurora, hasta manana,” I said as I turn forty-five degrees and proceed to the southern end of the runway.

“Vuela con Dios, mi amigo,” answered La Aurora.

As we started our takeoff roll, I could barely hear the tower’s response. As I said, the roar of those two gigantic radial engines producing four-thousand horsepower with water-injection at METO, Maximum Engine TakeOff power can be loud.

“Gear up,” I called to Stuart’s father in the left seat as soon as we are airborne, “flaps.”

“Gear up ... And locked ... Three green ... Flaps up,” Punch responded as soon as the appropriate instruments indicated their changed status.

I pulled the throttles back past their lock-out gates from ‘METO’ to ‘FULL’ and used the yoke to push the nose of the airplane down just a bit. I counted off the seconds. Two, three, four, it takes a while for the elevators located seventy feet behind me to disrupt the airflow and move the airplane. Then I reached down to flip the trim wheels a tiny bit to compensate for the decreased torque.

We will orbit the beautiful green bowl that Guatemala City resides in a few times to gain altitude. A voice from the tower came in and we were cleared to climb to “Angels-Fifteen,” ten thousand feet above the city, and given the frequency to contact the control center for the flight back home.

Eventually we reach an altitude of 15,000 feet and I level the airplane out and retrim the flight controls. I fine tune the engine’s power, mixture and propeller pitch re-synchronizing them. Punch stands up and steps away from the pilots seat.

Lillian sits down and taps me on the shoulder to get my attention in order to give me her estimates of time and fuel to Aruba. After we finish, she trades places with her husband and stands behind me playing with my nipple studs. Gently, one at a time, through the fabric of my white uniform shirt. Oh, that feels so nice, it is a shame I have to work.

We don’t need a third crew member on this trip. But usually someone wants to come along when we take whatever we have that will fit down to the orphanage at the mission near the lake south of the city. What will fit onboard after our payload of forty 55 gallon steel barrels of gasoline is loaded.

Meaning what will fit in the luggage compartments under the floor. On this trip we had bicycles, tricycles, some toys and lots of clothing together with a big box of new sports equipment. Growing up in Edwards Texas we didn’t have tons of material possessions, but the kids at the orphanage have almost nothing.

I thought of my own relationship with our children, at home in Aruba with Jamie, their other mother. I wonder if we aren’t spoiling them with unimportant material goods, serving them more than teaching them. It’s such a hard line to walk. Jamie, my love, she dotes on them.