My dad had served in the Navy at the end of World War 2, but never saw any action. He was an aircraft mechanic with Lockheed (now part of Lockheed Martin) who sometimes worked on Air Force One, President Kennedy's plane.
"Would you put a plane up in the air that was not safe to fly?" I asked, sipping an iced coffee that was supposed to revive my spirits.
He chuckled. "Well, that's above my pay grade but of course not. Why would you even ask a thing like that?"
"I was just wondering," I replied. I did a lot of that.
After a moment, he mused, "I suppose that if an enemy plane were attacking and our only chance was for someone to go up in a plane that might have a weak wheel strut or some engine problem, I would do that."
"Would you tell the pilot?" I asked.
"Oh, sure" he replied.
"But what if the pilot was the only one who could fly the plane and he might not go up if he knew that there might be a problem? Would you tell him?" I asked.
"Sheesh, I don't know," he responded, getting a bit impatient with the twenty questions. "I'd have to tell him. If the pilot didn't want to go up, then we'd all die, including the pilot. But I'd have to tell him."
There was a simple clarity and pragmatism to my dad's moral code. There was an implied fraternity with other men who shared the same code. Many fathers in the neighborhood were about my dad's age - in their mid 30s to mid 40s - and seemed to subscribe to this unwritten, rarely spoken code that formed the foundation of some loose fraternity. I think they had all been in the service during the war, some seeing action, some not.
"Are we fixing up the basement so we can live down here if the Russians drop a bomb on us?" I asked. We lived in New York City, a prime target for the Russians, I had read. Life magazine regularly featured articles on bomb shelters.
"What? No, it's so we have a little more space for you guys." There were four kids. "We'll put a TV down here and a record player and you guys can listen to your own music or have some friends down here. We can have family over for the holidays and we can all eat together down here. Now come on, let's get back to it."
The Book of Knowledge was a multi-volume encyclopedia for kids. At our house, the pages were well worn because my parents' response to many questions from their kids was "go look it up in the Book of Knowledge." A few years earlier, I reasoned that if I read all the books, I could help people out with the answer to any question. Yet here I was at twelve years old with questions for which there were no answers in the Book of Knowledge.
For a short time in my life, my dad seemed to have the answers to even those more difficult questions.
