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BALLOON 11/1/2014 7:41:17 AM
BALLOON – Saturday – Nov 1, 2014
The other night I was watching Nova on GPBS-TV — a story about the Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland where Dan Brown once wrote a novel called The Da Vinci Code (later made into a movie starring Tom Hanks), the book selling 89 trillion copies and making Brown an even wealthier writer.
Toward the end of the Nova production there was a scene showing a hot-air balloon floating over one of the rear turrets of the chapel, and the narrator said, “Perhaps he is looking to see who occupies that turret, who thoughtlessly left a light burning in the window there!” To my memory, no other mention was ever made of the hot-air balloon.
But there was plenty of dialog on other subjects, mainly given by the current Lady Rosslyn, the young, attractive Scottish lass who owns the place. “This was either the House Where Jesus Christ Lived, or the Last Known Domicile of the Knights Templar, or a School for Apprentice Stone Carvers!” she said, in her American-educated accent.
The narrator, as if on cue, came back with “Let’s see if any of those hold up!” And until the hot-air balloon interrupted them, they devoted about ten minutes to a discussion of each and every subject of why the chapel was built in the first place!
When the balloon finally showed up, I commented to myself (my lovely wife had taken the dog out for a walk) on how similar the balloon’s gondola was to Jamie Latrosse’s before we ‘crash-landed’ it during my one-and-only hot-air balloon adventure.
Jamie had phoned me on a Thursday to tell me he’d had an unexpected cancellation and there was just enough space for me, for one of my size, to accompany him in his balloon at the Jamboree that Sunday.
“Wanna be my co-pilot? We fly from Perry, go over the Finger Lakes,” he told me, “and land on Honeoye Hill. Be at Perry by three.”
“Do I? What do I bring?”
“Just yourself.”
At the appointed time, I was there. Christine and five-year-old daughter, Alexandra, had driven me to Perry, about 50 miles from Rochester; we had made arrangements for them to meet up when we landed and have dinner at Shanesee’s Pub.
Introductions were made, and I shook hands all around, but I was sure they all knew who I was (from TV). Alex, I’m also sure, never expected to see me again. Talk about a nervous Nellie!
The first stop was at Keuka Lake where hundreds of small boats, pleasure craft actually, met us, their horns blaring at full volume:
AHHUGGNNAA! We had to wait our turn to touch down in their midst, one of many colorful balloons (ours was basically Red, White and Blue).
“Kick off your shoes and socks unless you wanna get your feet wet!” Jamie Latrosse shouted from the center of the gondola, where he was busy maneuvering the balloon into position. The gondola touched down, and an inch of water seeped into the basket between the woven strands.
I did as I was told, and I glanced over at Jamie in time to see him light the canister of flammable liquid that kept the balloon rising.
We began to rise at that point, and I had the absurd and erroneous notion that the pointing of the canister of flammable liquid in a particular direction made the hot-air balloon fly in that direction. Absent-minded, immature thinking on my part!
Nothing could have been farther from the truth — so much for the direction of the wind! The longer Jamie held the canister of flammable liquid under the center of the balloon’s opening the higher — and up faster — we went. So much so, we sent a shower of collected lake water upon the boats that had greeted us so joyously, setting off another raucous chorus: AHHOOGGAANN00GGOOSS!
Worse than that, we broke away from the other balloons that were following a mild air-flow mass of a north by east wind, and we began to follow a horrible south by east wind that would eventually take us into the top of Honeoye Hill at over a hundred miles per hour (my estimate, having no instruments or knowledge to back it up)!
”Grab the sides of the basket!” Jamie shouted; but Edwin Millar (who was over 90, I think) grabbed the front of his shirt, said, “Ah, ugh! Damn it all, anyhow!” and toppled over. A lady, whose name I never did catch but was a dead-ringer for Billie Burke, came over to me and asked, “What’s happening?” Then, she too toppled over.
Before I could think of an answer, we struck the top of Honeoye Hill, the gondola crumpled into a scattering of pieces, and a hunk of pine-stump came through the floor, catapulting me over the sides, unscathed through the guide-wires, and unhurt and conscious, I came to rest on my back, on the soft moss at the edge of a vast rocky area.
The last I saw of Jamie was a shadow of him, sitting in the hole of the balloon and the wreckage of the gondola and the entire machine all about him; as I climbed aboard again and found a canister of flammable liquid. I shook it and hearing nothing, I cast it over the broken railing. I found a fresh can in a kit that Jamie kept handy, and when I shook it, it too was empty. I tossed it aside.
All I could see of Jamie was a shadow on the ragged balloon sheath around him, and whenever he flicked the lighter, the sparks lit up the interior momentarily.
On the way down the hill, I met a cop coming up. “You guys crash on toppa the mountain? Anybody dead?”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
“Old guy. Named Edwin Millar.”
“Mills?”
“No, Millar. I’m Mills.”
“Thought you looked familiar. Anybody else?”
“Dead-ringer for Billie Burke.”
“’Nother guy, eh?”
I told the officer I was to meet my wife and daughter at Shanesee’s Pub. “Just keep on the main road for ‘bout five or eight mile west, ‘bout five miles north of here, ‘til you come to Honeoye Falls. Look over on your left, to the east. There’s Shanesee’s.”
He didn’t offer to drive me, but he told me to ask the other cop who’d stayed on the highway below to call for another car to take me on to Shanesee’s and help find my wife and daughter.
Christine and Alex were waiting for me in the parking lot. I thanked the officer for his help and got into my own car. We never did go inside for dinner.
It was a quiet ride back to Rochester that night, my first-and-only trip in a hot-air balloon that last Sunday in July, 1990 — the 29th, if memory serves. We moved to Atlanta two years later.
