Fault Lines - John Knoop

circled the hayfield next to the farmstead and landed up-hill, up-wind through some freshly
windrowed hay.
We walked to the house and found no one home. It was a hot, humid evening at the end of
May. The air was still and the light beginning to fade when I decided to take off. I had a choice:
up hill with only a light, occasional puff of breeze, or down hill, taking a chance on no breeze. I
bet on the latter, and poised at the top of the field watching the grass along the fencerow until
there was no movement, then I gunned it. At the bottom of the field I didn't have enough lift to
clear the double fencerow. As we plowed through the wire I switched off the engine to diminish
the chance of fire, then climbed out and picked up a chunk of the splintered wooden propeller and
smashed it over the engine cowl in disgust. Then I turned to Kit and gave him a fierce shake,
saying, “It’s all your fault; without your extra pounds I would have made it.” Then I laughed and
hugged him. He grinned and laughed his wry laugh and said, “ I’m sorry. Real sorry we didn’t
make it over the fence. How are we going to get home?”
The right wing hung limply, disengaged from the fuselage by a blow from a fencepost.
When Lindy arrived a few minutes later, he drove us home. No one said much. I developed some
fancy theories about convection currents and inversion layers caused by the hot weather and
topography of the hayfield and about the new prop Moose had sold me to increase my cruising
speed. Really, I knew I’d made a poor decision: the field was too short for a windless take-off and
my luck had simply run out just before I reached the fence. It would have been much worse if
either of us had been injured.
A few days later Moose arranged the sale of the Piper Vagabond for two hundred dollars
to an A&E mechanic who had it flying three weeks later. He hauled it out of the hayfield and I
reimbursed Lindy’s boss for the fence repair. I joined a flying club, which gave me access to
three Cessnas at low hourly rates. I flew a 170 to pick up my sister Janet and her friend Seaweed
at Carlton College in Minnesota. Over the next year I racked up nearly two hundred hours of
flying time before leaving the farm for New York City. I was a lucky farm boy living my dreams of
being a pilot, but ready to trade them for the Big Apple.
I had a pretty good year at Columbia after dropping all the required courses at the
beginning of the first semester. I was able to join a lecture course taught by critic Lionel Trilling
and a junior class seminar on American literature with Quentin Anderson, the son of playwright
Sherwood Anderson. These classes dealt with the territory that interested me. I had already
disqualified myself from graduating when I dropped out of the required weekly lecture on the
history of the University, failed to sign up for physical education and repeatedly absented myself
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