the Wings of man

From the Chapter "Deep Roots"

After my grandmother died, Grandpa started spending a large part of each winter in South Georgia with my parents.  The South Georgia winters were much milder than the Colorado winters.  I talked him into flying from Denver to Atlanta with me the first time he spent the winter in the South.  He had never flown, and was very apprehensive about the whole air travel process.  He considered flying to be an unnatural and an unsafe act.  I flew out to Fort Collins to pick him up and accompany him back to Atlanta on his first flight.  The night before we were to leave he told me he had changed his mind and that there was no force on earth that could get him on an airplane. 

There was no way I was going to return to Georgia without him in tow.   I for sure was not going to take a train, or rent a car and drive back.  I hated to play the good-looking woman and free liquor card, but I was desperate.  I told him, “Grandpa, we’re flying first class and those fine, good-looking Eastern Airline stewardesses will serve you all the Jack Daniels and anything else you want, free.”  We took off from Denver at 9:30 the next morning. 

He was white-knuckled for the first few minutes, but when we got above the weather and hit our cruising altitude he calmed right down.  He put a serious dent in the Eastern Airlines’ sour mash whiskey inventory on that flight to Atlanta .  The stewardesses, who were definitely fine and good-looking, loved him and carried on and flirted with him the entire flight.  I, on the other hand, received no such attention.  As we taxied to our gate in Atlanta he told me how he believed he just might be able to fly back to Denver when it was time.  I thought he sure got over his fear of flying mighty quick.