Everyone Loves a Good Story

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I used to hang out with some people who wanted to be writers. We would get together and read our work to the group, get feedback, and learn from one another. I can’t tell you how many successful novels and memoirs, short stories and magazine articles came out of that group. Really, I can’t. Once a year we held a banquet – a potluck lunch actually – and gave each other awards for things like most inspirational story, best character development, most unexpected plot twist, and so on. There was one category I aimed for though, and this is it. You love a good story? Too easy. How about a bad one, really bad? That takes grit. Presented for your reading pleasure: the winning essay of the 2005 South Bay Writers Composium’s Bad Writing competition.

It was a dark night, not stormy but very dark, darker than any night Captain Rod Steele had ever heard of. It would be stormy too, in due time, a time that would come due soon enough when the storm would be coming in. The gathering storm was far off on the horizon off to the east like the far east where he had so recently and just barely escaped with his life, his life of a strong, bold airline captain when so many helpless lives were in his hands, those manly hands he looked at now, firm and strong and not shaking even a little even with the fearful memories he harbored deep in his soul, fearful that is they would be for most mere men but Captain Rod’s soul was so deep and so strong that the memory of those times of barely escaping the steely grip of near certain death was unshakeable, strong and hard like his deep, deep soul and his strong, manly hands, hands that had guided so many complex and powerful aircraft on such missions of near impossible carryings of passengers whose very existence not to mention the success of their very travelings depended on.

Contact! He called out. His copilot Roger, a man much younger than he himself was at the present moment but certainly no younger than he had been when he had commanded his first flight so many long years ago, having been only a young greenhorn, he that is, not Roger, back in those days younger than any other raring young buck of a pilot, those early days of high adventure when airplanes were held together by baling wire and pilots were made of iron and their wings were covered with fabric and to spit into the wind was something you soon learned not to do, he had been as brave as that even then, or even braver, and Roger, almost as brave as that even now, expertly flipped the ignition switch on. The passengers, under the watchful yet beautiful eye of the buxom stewardess Betty peered anxiously out the windows to watch as the mighty Wurlitzer 409’s leaped into straining, full-throated fury and revved up higher and higher until all their horsepower howled like mighty thunder waiting to be unleashed at the command of the captain and his faithful young copilot whom he had placed such trust in. Stewardess Betty’s breasts heaved achingly with anticipation that she dared not, at this critical moment, think of.

“Captain Rod Steele calling Modesto Tower, Captain Rod Steele calling Modesto Tower, destination San Jose, request clearance to taxi and take off, repeating over again, request clearance to taxi and take off, over.” “Captain Rod Steele, this is Modesto Tower, roger wilco on your request for clearance to taxi and takeoff over to destination San Jose, you are cleared for taxi and takeoff, affirmative cleared for taxi and takeoff and then you are cleared for landing and taxi over there and again to take off, and so on. Use caution, there is a storm gathering east of where you are cleared to, over, out.”

Captain Rod smiled on. He had seen such storms as nightmares are made of. Storms of sheer concentrated terror and furious energy of enraged electrical power raining hailstones the size of his manly fist, or at least the size of the fists of his copilot Roger, slightly smaller perhaps but very loyal and surely to be watched out for. He had seen storms that can tear the ships of lesser captains to shreds and then tear the shreds into bits, bits smaller than the fists of his copilot Roger if not smaller than his own massive strong manly fists, or about that size if one were to use a comparison such as the size of a fist to describe the size of the bits a storm could tear an airplane into. Very small. And he had lived through the terrors of them all, terrors that would make ordinary men wake up screaming, soaked in cold wet nightmare sweats, no matter what they had put him through. Storm indeed, the power of nature is to be respected and tamed, not to be feared like a lion tamer might fear a lion if he is not a masterful tamer and the lion senses it somehow, and that is how so many lion tamers have gotten their heads bitten off.

He smiled again, and winked his mind’s eye, laughing silently at fate and at the danger he was faced with. It’s now or never, do or die, all engines full steam ahead, press on! At long last, into the dark, dark abyss of night, off the plane took.

Theme Illustration “Captain Rod Steele at the Helm” by Bruce McDonald and ChatGPT 

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