Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

He says, “How high do you want to go?”
The runway, oh it was a long one, about a mile,
and there were big oak trees for eight or nine
hundred acres. It was good rain country. I got in the
front, fastened the belt; felt like that old propeller
was right in my face.
“Okay, here we go,” he says. We was off the ground
and I didn’t even know it! I could see the oak trees
going by just like that. It didn’t look to me like the
plane was moving, the oak trees were just going by
backwards, and pretty soon I couldn’t see no oak
trees, just blue.
He says, “How are you, Tom?”
I says, “Where the hell are we at, where’s the
trees?”
“Look over there towards the bottom, right down
there about a thousand feet.”
You know, that scared me then. We got up there so
quick I never even noticed it. I could see the Salinas
Valley for a long, long way and the ridge of the
mountains across the valley.
He said, “See King City?”