By then I had had enough, but Jackie had her second wind. We flew back to Spain, arriving late at night over Madrid in some of the worst weather I've ever seen. St. Elmo's fire danced along our wings, and Jackie gave me the controls and went back to the passenger compartment to tell her worried entourage, "Don't worry. The best pilot in the world will get us down." Man, I had to be the best that night. When we landed there were six inches of hailstones on the runway.
We spent three days resting, then flew back to Paris for the annual air show. On our last night there we ate at a four-star restaurant, and Jackie got edgy watching the rest of us enjoying a perfect meal and excellent service. That's when she really got dangerous because complacency drove her nuts. But then, she saw her opening: a woman at a nearby table was feeding scraps to her poodle, and Jackie, who had a cleanliness fetish, went into a rage. The French love to bring their dogs to restaurants, and who in hell cared. Jackie called for the owner. "You're not going to allow that, are you?" When told that he sure as hell was, Jackie staged a big scene and stormed out.
On the homeward leg, we headed north to the Arctic Circle, and flew along the ice cap at 10,000 feet on a sparkling clear day, one of the most beautiful sights I've ever enjoyed in my years of flying. It was a tough but interesting trip, with a lot of hard flying and navigating, and when I got home, having been gone nearly two months, I told Glennis: "Goddamn it, that's it. Never, ever again." But I always said that after going on a trip with Jackie.
COMMANDANT FOR SPACE
When I was ill carrying Susie, my folks came to Edwards to help out and stayed several months, until Chuck finally began to complain about a lack of privacy. I told him, "I'll make a deal. If you'll do the grocery shopping, I think I can manage on my own." He agreed. To this day, he still does a lot of our shopping. That is, he kept his word as long as he was at home to do it. But especially during his years as squadron commander, he was gone a tremendous amount: three months in Spain, two months in Tripoli, two more at the gunnery meet in Nevada, and several months flying all over the place with Jackie. I wasn't happy about it, although I certainly couldn't blame him for being away so much. That was the nature of his job.
Being gone, Chuck might be the one who missed out the most-watching his kids grow up-but he probably didn't realize it. The kids accepted the fact that he was always gone because they lived around military bases where most of the other fathers were away a lot too; so, it wasn't one of those deals where the boys would complain: "Jimmy's dad was at my game, why couldn't my dad be there?" Heck, Jimmy's dad was probably off flying somewhere with Chuck. On the other hand, my children were exposed to so much more than the average kid, in travel, living in foreign countries, and some childhood memories that are really unique. For example, when Jackie moved into our place to go for her speed record, I took the kids down to her ranch, with the exception of Don, who was still in school. He stayed with neighbors until school was over, then his dad sneaked him in a P-84 jet fighter, strapped him in his lap, and flew him down to Indio. Chuck taxied to a deserted part of the field where nobody would see and handed Don to me. That boy's eyes were like saucers. He told me, "Dad flew us right over the trees."
But I'd get mad because when Chuck came home he was like a favorite house-guest. The kids would say, "Hey, Dad's back! Great! Now we can have some fun." Mom wasn't so great; I was the one stuck with all the disciplining. But fathers who are absent a lot try to make up for lost time, and Chuck must've seemed like Santa Claus, taking them out hiking and fishing, building things with them, and doing what I didn't have the time to do. Then, too, he kind of lost touch with the kids' capabilities, and especially when the boys were very young, expected too much of them at times. When he said no to something they wanted to do, that was it. No appeals. And he never changed his mind. If he said he wouldn't take them fishing unless they cleaned their rooms in fifteen minutes, and it took them twenty minutes, they were out of luck. But they lived through it. The kids understood him, knew his faults, shortcomings, attributes, the whole nine yards. Their Dad was just stubborn as a mule.
Chuck never had a game plan for his career. When the time came we just went where he was sent. A few times he bitched and moaned about a particular assignment, but he never tried to get his orders changed, and was happy as long as he could keep flying. Before his career ended, we had some wonderful experiences overseas, meeting new people and learning their ways. Chuck was always the catalyst for doing things. In the Philippines, for example, he learned that some farmer was growing a new kind of rice and had to go out in the boonies and see for himself. Once I got out, I enjoyed it, but getting me to go was like pulling teeth. I was just cautious and methodical. With him, it was always a wild-goose chase to try something different, and he would goad me into going along. Just like his Air Force career: had it been my career, I would have planned each step of the way. Chuck just let it happen, and somehow things always fell into place.
But an Air Force wife's life is an emotional rollercoaster. The military life is rough on marriages, and fighter pilots are not ideal husbands. I got to know the wives in Chuck's squadrons and helped them handle personal problems. The men were away an awful lot and many took advantage of the situation. The wives told themselves it didn't mean anything and went along by keeping their mouths shut, until something happened they couldn't ignore- maybe a perfumed letter arrived for a husband, or lipstick discovered in the wrong place and the wrong shade. They had to convince themselves it wasn't important or get out. That's what it came to.
Over the years in the military, I saw a heck of a lot of wrecked marriages. I've seen wives dropped by the wayside; I've known some who had affairs of their own, either because they were lonely or wanted to get even. I've also known of three suicides among abandoned wives who had no place to go and no prospects. I couldn't understand women who put themselves in that kind of helpless position. If you raise a man's children and run his household, you're an equal partner and deserve to share equally in his income. I just decided, half is half and that's how it's going to be. I insisted on having my own savings account and had property in my own name. It wasn't much, but if I had to I could hack it on my own. I didn't expect to be dumped, but I couldn't stand the idea of being helpless and beholden.
I knew wives who went into a deep depression whenever their husbands flew off on a long deployment somewhere because they knew what would happen. True, the men were probably going to shack up every chance they got, if they were inclined to do that. But there was a big difference between having a fling and getting seriously involved with another woman, and the wives most fearful of desertion were those who didn't even know how to write a check, who let their husbands do everything for them. They were literal balls and chains around a husband s neck. They probably guessed right that he was of a mind to dump them, and they would find themselves out on the south forty.
I was only twenty-one when we had our first child, and twenty-six when the last one was born. I was only forty-three when the last one left home to go out in the world. When the kids finally left, I aimed to start a whole new phase of my life. I wanted to complete my education, really get into my music, maybe establish a small business. Chuck had his career, and I wanted a part of my life to be separate from my marriage and family. I would do it for me, not for some kind of insurance or security. Chuck respected me for that.