THE MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE by Tom Lyford
(published in WOLF MOON JOURNAL, Fall issue, 2008)
Your first encounter might have been at Dow Field, Owl’s Head, or one of the tiny community airfields on the outskirts of a neighboring town. It was a Saturday, or maybe a Sunday afternoon. You were one of the tourists packing the roped-off sidelines of the runway. You were wearing a baseball cap, aviation sunglasses, a 35 millimeter camera slung over the shoulder, and possibly one of those VHF air pocket-radio receivers clipped to your belt. You probably had the wife and kids in tow.
You were there for thrills— the thrill of speed, the thrill of power, the thrill of the deafening roar, and the thrill of witnessing chance tempted and death defied. You were there for the small vintage aircraft and the lumbering bombers, the sleek designs and the state-of-the-art. You were there because when you were a kid you were always going to be a pilot, and because (let’s face it) you never quite grew up.
Maybe he jostled you as he brushed past, or maybe some tourist in a Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, and sandals cried, “Jeez! Check out that guy!” Either way, you spotted him and a voice inside whispered, What’s wrong with this picture?
Two things— first, that glinting, brown glass longneck of Bud clamped in his mitt. Sure, it was sizzling on the tarmac and a cold brew would be just the ticket, but an air show is a public place, and there are cops. But yet, no surreptitious lifting of the cooler lid for an occasional swig for him! Nothing else would do but an occasional long, hard pull from the flagrant bottle, like sucking poison from a snakebite! And secondly, what the hell was this shit-heeled farmer doing out there in that crowd anyway? No, not some farmer all duded-up for a holiday weekend off the back forty, but a farmer in baggy, sun-bleached overalls, a farmer who pitchforks his hay onto the hayrick and treads the load, a farmer who slops the hogs—Farmer Alfalfa, Old Rivers, Tom Joad’s old man— he looked like every farmer you ever saw. Yup. The real McCoy. You looked back over your shoulder for the green and yellow livery of a manure-encrusted John Deere standing tall among the parked cars and pickups.
You noticed him, and so did a lot of others as he lurched through the crowd. Moms yanked their children out of his path. Husbands elbowed wives, winked, and nodded in his direction, their faces smirking at the radiant grin plastered all over his. But when this three-sheets-to-the-wind hayseed dipped under the restraining rope and began weaving across the runway toward the incoming Cessna, its engine just a buzz-saw blur and its landing gear down, then the tower took note of him as well. The P.A. system crackled with urgency, followed by an appearance of the boys in blue.
The cops were young and grinning. They nabbed him out there like red-faced nephews at the family reunion when Uncle John gets loaded and begins doing the striptease. Escorted by the elbows back past the rope, wearing his inane “happy face” like a mask, he wasn’t protesting. And then he was gone. Out of sight and almost out of mind. There was an air show to watch, and watch it you did. Planes taxied forth and took off, did loops and rolls, and delicately touched back down on the runway. And the sun continued to bake the day.
But then… a commotion off to your right! “Hey, Martha: look! There he is again!” And there he was, marching across the blacktop leaning into a pretty stiff invisible wind, the crowd behind the rope catcalling and pointing like Family Feud contestants, and the squawk box demanding that he retrace his steps, that police officers get out there and get this man off the landing strip “NOW!” (which is what they did). Déjà vu all over again.
And you hoped for his sake that the cops would “take him for a ride” this time, take him home, or tuck him into a cozy little cot down at the local hoosegow and let him sleep it off. Nobody wanted to see an old duffer get hurt. And this time it had been pretty obvious that he’d been heading for that vintage Piper parked off to the side in the field, apart from the sleeker machines. Hell, he’d been making a bee-line for it, like he would climb right on board and get himself killed if you didn’t watch out.
The Cub was as conspicuous here as the farmer, old and remarkably plain. Whereas the other models on the field sported streamlined, pin-striped fuselages, this contraption’s “torso” was unadorned and “boxy,” as in soap-box derby boxy. In contrast to the Crayola-bright fiberglass of the moderns, the skin of this machine appeared to be “coated” with a dull, rough cordovan shoe-polish, a rustoleum blend of blood red and dark, purplish maroon. And it perched on cartoonish balloon tires right out of a Heckle & Jeckyll comic book. Everybody says there was never a plane like the Piper Cub, but this one’s day had apparently come and gone.
The show wore on with take-offs and landings and fly-overs… and two more farmer vs. the gendarmes scenarios, the last of which belonged up on the silent screen with a player-piano accompaniment. There were no pies in the face, but it was definitely a Keystone Kops revival.
The “inebriated” Mr. Greenjeans makes one final charge, with the inept officers tripping over their own feet and each other in hot pursuit! The farmer yanks the cockpit hatch open and begins to haul himself inside, just as the Koppers clamp their official hands on his nearest ankle! The engine sputters to life, and a tug-of-war between police and plane, each at opposite ends of a tenacious farmer, ensues! The Cub lurches forward into a roll, kite-stringing blue uniforms behind it like squirming sausage links, one by one dropping off! And then the craft is miraculously airborne!
By this point, many of the “horrified” onlookers had begun smelling a rat for little while. Despite this, there is always something undeniably breathtaking about witnessing a take-off with no one at the controls, even more so with a human soul dangling half out the cockpit door! And this was not a movie or TV scene with the stuntman and editor providing the viewer with a flawless “take”— this was live! This was giving a new and personal meaning to the expression, “flying by the seat of your pants”! This was risk-taking, right up close… and you were nagged with the uneasy gut-feeling that something could, and might, go wrong.
You were witnessing the phenomenon known as “The Flying Farmer,” a legend of the air show circuit otherwise known as Robert Weymouth, and for the next twenty minutes you were treated to a series of hair-raising vignettes reminiscent of bygone barnstorming days. Playing the hapless drunk who couldn’t pilot a paper airplane, Weymouth staggered the Cub back and forth over your horizon like the daring young man on the flying trapeze. You froze as he careened “dangerously,” and gasped on one occasion as a wingtip brushed tree branches at the end of the runway. You saw him swoop down and hard-bounce his wheels off the tarmac, only to return to the sky. You watched him stall-out at the top of a climb, remain fleetingly poised in a standstill like some flying Mikhail Baryshnikov, and then plummet heavily earthward…the engine sputtering thank-God-back-to-life halfway down! He buzzed you once with his head protruding from an opening in the center top of the wing, and then buzzed you again seated backwards in the cabin, and waving. And you got your money’s worth... along with a very stiff neck. It was The Great Waldo Pepper, Those Amazing Young Men In Their Flying Machines, all of that!
Seeing The Flying Farmer the second and third time around was like watching a return engagement of The Harlem Globetrotters: you knew the routine, so the surprise element was gone. But nonetheless, The Trotters remain a perennial favorite, as did The Flying Farmer. The subsequent fun was in watching the new first-timers, the wide-eyed tourists and kids eyeballing a drunken old redneck with a bottle of Bud giving the Municipal’s Finest a hard time… and in the ultimate realization, of course, that some smirking “veterans” must have been watching you get set up on your first time with the scam.
They don’t make entertainment in that mold anymore. Oh, you might find some street acrobats or torch-jugglers out in front of Fanueil Hall on a weekend and, who knows, there may still be a little handful of barnstormers left out there somewhere, hunting the air show circuits around the country... but not many. You can get all the thrills and spills you want on DVDs today, but it ain’t the same thing, Ladeez and Gentlemen…
One thing you can’t do, however, is enjoy the madcap antics of The Flying Farmer in his J-3 Piper at your local air show. On May 25th, 1986, over the Berlin Municipal Airport in New Hampshire, a sudden rogue wind gust reportedly swept Weymouth directly over his crowd of fans (something his concern for their safety would never allow). In a desperate effort to get away from the crowd line, he banked hard, tightening up too much in the turn and losing altitude. His left wing contacted the earth and the plane broke up on impact.
Two hours later, Weymouth died in the Androscoggin Valley Hospital in Milan, New Hampshire.
I never met the man, although he brushed past me in a crowd on more than one occasion. But I mourn his passing, and that fragment of Americana that passed with him when The Flying Farmer ended a stunt career that had been thrilling fans since the early fifties.
1946 PIPER J3C CUB
When painted in “Cub Yellow,” the ubiquitous Cub was the airplane most commonly seen at airports in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s—truly, the Model T of the air. This purple Cub was flown by the Flying Farmer, Robert Weymouth. Imitating a terrified non-flyer, he would fly it facing forward, backward, and even while sitting on a strut outside the plane. He would stand the Cub on its wing tips, zoom into near vertical climbs, and turn so violently that he seemed to be flying sideways.
(published in WOLF MOON JOURNAL, Fall issue, 2008)
Your first encounter might have been at Dow Field, Owl’s Head, or one of the tiny community airfields on the outskirts of a neighboring town. It was a Saturday, or maybe a Sunday afternoon. You were one of the tourists packing the roped-off sidelines of the runway. You were wearing a baseball cap, aviation sunglasses, a 35 millimeter camera slung over the shoulder, and possibly one of those VHF air pocket-radio receivers clipped to your belt. You probably had the wife and kids in tow.
You were there for thrills— the thrill of speed, the thrill of power, the thrill of the deafening roar, and the thrill of witnessing chance tempted and death defied. You were there for the small vintage aircraft and the lumbering bombers, the sleek designs and the state-of-the-art. You were there because when you were a kid you were always going to be a pilot, and because (let’s face it) you never quite grew up.
Maybe he jostled you as he brushed past, or maybe some tourist in a Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, and sandals cried, “Jeez! Check out that guy!” Either way, you spotted him and a voice inside whispered, What’s wrong with this picture?
Two things— first, that glinting, brown glass longneck of Bud clamped in his mitt. Sure, it was sizzling on the tarmac and a cold brew would be just the ticket, but an air show is a public place, and there are cops. But yet, no surreptitious lifting of the cooler lid for an occasional swig for him! Nothing else would do but an occasional long, hard pull from the flagrant bottle, like sucking poison from a snakebite! And secondly, what the hell was this shit-heeled farmer doing out there in that crowd anyway? No, not some farmer all duded-up for a holiday weekend off the back forty, but a farmer in baggy, sun-bleached overalls, a farmer who pitchforks his hay onto the hayrick and treads the load, a farmer who slops the hogs—Farmer Alfalfa, Old Rivers, Tom Joad’s old man— he looked like every farmer you ever saw. Yup. The real McCoy. You looked back over your shoulder for the green and yellow livery of a manure-encrusted John Deere standing tall among the parked cars and pickups.
You noticed him, and so did a lot of others as he lurched through the crowd. Moms yanked their children out of his path. Husbands elbowed wives, winked, and nodded in his direction, their faces smirking at the radiant grin plastered all over his. But when this three-sheets-to-the-wind hayseed dipped under the restraining rope and began weaving across the runway toward the incoming Cessna, its engine just a buzz-saw blur and its landing gear down, then the tower took note of him as well. The P.A. system crackled with urgency, followed by an appearance of the boys in blue.
The cops were young and grinning. They nabbed him out there like red-faced nephews at the family reunion when Uncle John gets loaded and begins doing the striptease. Escorted by the elbows back past the rope, wearing his inane “happy face” like a mask, he wasn’t protesting. And then he was gone. Out of sight and almost out of mind. There was an air show to watch, and watch it you did. Planes taxied forth and took off, did loops and rolls, and delicately touched back down on the runway. And the sun continued to bake the day.
But then… a commotion off to your right! “Hey, Martha: look! There he is again!” And there he was, marching across the blacktop leaning into a pretty stiff invisible wind, the crowd behind the rope catcalling and pointing like Family Feud contestants, and the squawk box demanding that he retrace his steps, that police officers get out there and get this man off the landing strip “NOW!” (which is what they did). Déjà vu all over again.
And you hoped for his sake that the cops would “take him for a ride” this time, take him home, or tuck him into a cozy little cot down at the local hoosegow and let him sleep it off. Nobody wanted to see an old duffer get hurt. And this time it had been pretty obvious that he’d been heading for that vintage Piper parked off to the side in the field, apart from the sleeker machines. Hell, he’d been making a bee-line for it, like he would climb right on board and get himself killed if you didn’t watch out.
The Cub was as conspicuous here as the farmer, old and remarkably plain. Whereas the other models on the field sported streamlined, pin-striped fuselages, this contraption’s “torso” was unadorned and “boxy,” as in soap-box derby boxy. In contrast to the Crayola-bright fiberglass of the moderns, the skin of this machine appeared to be “coated” with a dull, rough cordovan shoe-polish, a rustoleum blend of blood red and dark, purplish maroon. And it perched on cartoonish balloon tires right out of a Heckle & Jeckyll comic book. Everybody says there was never a plane like the Piper Cub, but this one’s day had apparently come and gone.
The show wore on with take-offs and landings and fly-overs… and two more farmer vs. the gendarmes scenarios, the last of which belonged up on the silent screen with a player-piano accompaniment. There were no pies in the face, but it was definitely a Keystone Kops revival.
The “inebriated” Mr. Greenjeans makes one final charge, with the inept officers tripping over their own feet and each other in hot pursuit! The farmer yanks the cockpit hatch open and begins to haul himself inside, just as the Koppers clamp their official hands on his nearest ankle! The engine sputters to life, and a tug-of-war between police and plane, each at opposite ends of a tenacious farmer, ensues! The Cub lurches forward into a roll, kite-stringing blue uniforms behind it like squirming sausage links, one by one dropping off! And then the craft is miraculously airborne!
By this point, many of the “horrified” onlookers had begun smelling a rat for little while. Despite this, there is always something undeniably breathtaking about witnessing a take-off with no one at the controls, even more so with a human soul dangling half out the cockpit door! And this was not a movie or TV scene with the stuntman and editor providing the viewer with a flawless “take”— this was live! This was giving a new and personal meaning to the expression, “flying by the seat of your pants”! This was risk-taking, right up close… and you were nagged with the uneasy gut-feeling that something could, and might, go wrong.
You were witnessing the phenomenon known as “The Flying Farmer,” a legend of the air show circuit otherwise known as Robert Weymouth, and for the next twenty minutes you were treated to a series of hair-raising vignettes reminiscent of bygone barnstorming days. Playing the hapless drunk who couldn’t pilot a paper airplane, Weymouth staggered the Cub back and forth over your horizon like the daring young man on the flying trapeze. You froze as he careened “dangerously,” and gasped on one occasion as a wingtip brushed tree branches at the end of the runway. You saw him swoop down and hard-bounce his wheels off the tarmac, only to return to the sky. You watched him stall-out at the top of a climb, remain fleetingly poised in a standstill like some flying Mikhail Baryshnikov, and then plummet heavily earthward…the engine sputtering thank-God-back-to-life halfway down! He buzzed you once with his head protruding from an opening in the center top of the wing, and then buzzed you again seated backwards in the cabin, and waving. And you got your money’s worth... along with a very stiff neck. It was The Great Waldo Pepper, Those Amazing Young Men In Their Flying Machines, all of that!
Seeing The Flying Farmer the second and third time around was like watching a return engagement of The Harlem Globetrotters: you knew the routine, so the surprise element was gone. But nonetheless, The Trotters remain a perennial favorite, as did The Flying Farmer. The subsequent fun was in watching the new first-timers, the wide-eyed tourists and kids eyeballing a drunken old redneck with a bottle of Bud giving the Municipal’s Finest a hard time… and in the ultimate realization, of course, that some smirking “veterans” must have been watching you get set up on your first time with the scam.
They don’t make entertainment in that mold anymore. Oh, you might find some street acrobats or torch-jugglers out in front of Fanueil Hall on a weekend and, who knows, there may still be a little handful of barnstormers left out there somewhere, hunting the air show circuits around the country... but not many. You can get all the thrills and spills you want on DVDs today, but it ain’t the same thing, Ladeez and Gentlemen…
One thing you can’t do, however, is enjoy the madcap antics of The Flying Farmer in his J-3 Piper at your local air show. On May 25th, 1986, over the Berlin Municipal Airport in New Hampshire, a sudden rogue wind gust reportedly swept Weymouth directly over his crowd of fans (something his concern for their safety would never allow). In a desperate effort to get away from the crowd line, he banked hard, tightening up too much in the turn and losing altitude. His left wing contacted the earth and the plane broke up on impact.
Two hours later, Weymouth died in the Androscoggin Valley Hospital in Milan, New Hampshire.
I never met the man, although he brushed past me in a crowd on more than one occasion. But I mourn his passing, and that fragment of Americana that passed with him when The Flying Farmer ended a stunt career that had been thrilling fans since the early fifties.
1946 PIPER J3C CUB
When painted in “Cub Yellow,” the ubiquitous Cub was the airplane most commonly seen at airports in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s—truly, the Model T of the air. This purple Cub was flown by the Flying Farmer, Robert Weymouth. Imitating a terrified non-flyer, he would fly it facing forward, backward, and even while sitting on a strut outside the plane. He would stand the Cub on its wing tips, zoom into near vertical climbs, and turn so violently that he seemed to be flying sideways.
