chapter 001 about aviation.

June 6th, 2020

When did I begin noticing airplanes? It was probably in San Mateo, the Hillsdale district. We lived on a hill and I could sometimes see the airplanes in the pattern for San Francisco International Airport. They would make the turn by the Dumbarton Bridge on the aviation frequency they call that Dumba up near Menlo Park and fly mostly straight on their final approach to the airport. The planes were mostly 2 or 4 radial engined planes with propellers. That was to early, in 1954 and 1955 for jets I think. We still had steam locomotives on the rail line down by the El Camino Real.  We used to take my dad to the station so he could take the train to his job in San Francisco.

Sometime in 1955 we moved from San Mateo to Los Altos CA a rather upscale small town. My parents were purchasing a new house there, just been built right in the middle of an apricot orchard with a walnut orchard still next the next plot over with an old barn where mushrooms grew and they had a rail cart with high sides we could push and jump into that ran the length of the barn in the mostly dark with some light provided by missing planks on the roof and walls. I remember it was like up in the loft.   I remember when we looked at houses there in the new development. We looked at the yellow one up the street, a two story, but they didn't want that one. It had a second story as an architectural feature with like an A frame roof. 

It is important to know about living and seeing airplanes as there were different ones to hear and see. Los Altos is just a little northwest of Mt. View which had the Naval Air Station built back in the day when the navy had dirigibles. At the time we lived in Los Altos, the navy had A-4 Skyhawks and they flew regularly over our house and often we could hear something breaking the sound barrier. The A-4 was a subsonic plane and didn't go that fast. However, there were often visiting planes and the Navy flew the Gruman F11-F1 which was also a carrier plane and the Blue Angels flew them from 1957 to 1968. The did go supersonic and I remember regularly hearing sonic booms and thought Awesome. Apparently the encroaching civilization didn't like them much and petitions were filed along with complaints to the Navy and A-4's were moved down to Lemoore Navel Air Station.  We called them sonic booms, but the people in the new housing developments got testy about the booms and complained enough that the navy moved the A-4's to Lemoor Naval Air Station out further, but still habituated by folks.