The 'Lucky flight jacket'

Every once in a while, a ray of bright sunlight streams forth from the midst of the usual dreary cloud of every-day ennui that I, like so many of us, am usually enveloped within. Remember, I am a Schopenhauer pessimist by nature. Eeyore is usually my raging stallion whenever I ride, and like all would-be, sensitive artistic souls who are a few air-miles short of a free flight to Somewhere Neat, I usually walk around in the psychic throes of awareness that at age 72, it's really just a matter of waiting around for the grim reaper to drop by.

Yeah, yeah...I know most of you aren't so negativistic, so take this all with an appropriate gain of NaCl. I am probably quite atypical...

At any rate, it was colder today than the tail assembly on a Cessna 172 that's been left out in the snow overnight and I had to dress a bit warmer than the tank-top and gym shorts most Californios usually wear every day (just kidding, folks...only in the summer, hereabouts!). Looking into the closet, I checked out my array of jackets & coats and finally pulled a very old and most-favored bit of warmth to wear that is known to all US Naval Aviators as the WEP jacket.

The WEP jacket (sometimes known as the G-8 jacket) is made of olive colored Nylon and was, way back in the 1950s, the upper half of an insulating layer normally worn under a poopy-suit (anti-exposure suite) to keep you warm, should you have to ditch. During Korea, the WEP jacket came into its own as a flight jacket worn by US Marine Corps pilots and did more duty as a primary item of cold-weather apparel than as part of an anti-exposure garment assembly. It quickly gained quite a rep with the Gyreens, accordingly.

At any rate, this battered old WEP jacket has been with me through many, many adventures in life. It's flown on Concorde (at least three flights), it's been with me on a few flights taken in various military training aircraft (Vodochody L-29 and L-39 primary and secondary Czech jet trainers I got a few instructive hours in, and a Saab Draken J-35 two-seater), it's been used on almost all my more recent motorcycles and it went to Finland & Sweden in the early 90s when I was touring those nation's defense research establishments. It has god-only-knows-how-many hours of Lockheed L-1011 Tristar time (as just another one of the paying 'geese' in the back of the airbus) and it has toured all the old Finnish 'Winter War battlefields. When I left Finland, I accidentally left the jacket behind, but one of my entourage spotted it and sent it back to me in the US.

In fact, back in the 80s, when I was on one of my Germany/Austria holidays (from employment contracts in Saudi Arabia), it helped me land a one-night-stand with a drop-dead gorgeous young French student ballet dancer (named Danielle) in Munchen who taught me things that aren't even remotely hinted at in the advanced techniques section of the Kama Sutra. Since she spoke only French and German and I spoke only German and English, we both managed to communicate in German and I gather from our tortured conversations that she was quite taken wiz zee 'handsome American pilot' (hee-hee). Obviously, the jacket once again!

In short, it's always been a loyal companion and I came to regard it (despite being made of flammable and meltable Nylon) as my 'lucky flight jacket' (both in the air and in the company of fairer XX members of the female gender).

OK, cut to today, when I put it on to walk the pup and go get some groceries. The jacket is, in my opinion, one of the best looking designs every worn by either a USAF guy or a Navy Airedale, and whenever I wear it the ladies often remark on it (i.e. "That's a really cool-looking jacket", etc.). Keep in mind that I was never a rated pilot...just a flight medicine weenie-wannabe who never made it to flight school. Still, whenever I wear it I somehow feel just like some of my 'card-carrying' aviation friends who have 'been there, done that' in the skies over Europe, Vietnam or Afghanistan. Their very genuine glory generously bathes my ego in an aura of sorts at such times and before I know it, I...a mild mannered medical wonk who almost never struck a popular note with the ladies...am walking around like I've got thousands of hours in neck-snapping military fast-movers. It just does that to you.

So there I was, standing in line at the local Ralley's Grocery Store, wearing my WEP jacket. In my basket is a Christmas wreath, 6 bottles of red Rhone wine, a French baguette, some Brie cheese, a magazine about famous mysterious air crashes (picked off the magazine rack) and precious little else. I am in line, unloading my purchases onto the check-out counter when from behind a voice speaks. The voice has a sort of pleasantly honeyed & husky quality (much of like that of former NBC anchor Ann Curry) and the woman from whom it is coming is a brunette of about age 60, rather gorgeous and well-preserved for that age, attired in chic casual gym clothes. It's obvious she's very fit (no flab whatsoever), toned and nicely packed, and her genuinely warm (predatory?) smile is enough to knock down a MiG at 500 yards.

Not usually blessed with this sort of encounter over the veggies (or any other grocery consumables), I'm a little stunned to think that I am the object of this creature's attention. But nope, it's me she's focused on and we exchange a short conversation, at the end of which I fully realise she's...hitting...on...me! Duh! I probably looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights when that awareness finally sank in. However, after about 2 seconds of full military power reflection, I reached into my wallet and gave her my museum business card and suggested she look us up some time. It must have been reflexive!

Meanwhile, I've learned she's out here from Boston (obvious cultivated, from her articulate enunciation, clearly well-educated) and...yessir!...all the standard boomps (note: slang for 'bodily protrusions', usually characteristic of the female of the species) in the right places! Meanwhile, the other part of my mind that hasn't yet been stunned into complete silence is racing as I think upon the fact that here is someone who doesn't regard me as just another negligible 'older guy'. Holy crap! At my age!

All right. I'm back home now, thinking this amazing experience all over and I hasten to assure you all that I am a faithful, loyal married guy with a faithful, loyal (and excellent) wifie, with 32 years of marriage under the belt, so there's no way in a howling Hades hailstorm that I would ever respond positively (that is, encouragingly) to a prospect like this and follow-up on it! But, like almost every guy I know, there's always that niggling question lurking in the back of our insecure, geriatric male minds, "Do I still have the right stuff?" Can I still fly into the romantic danger zone with Top Gun elan, even after hitting that 7th decade barricade?

Apparently I can, and maybe God isn't a woman with a cruel sense of humor after all? Maybe that little old gratuitous ray of amorous sunshine that burst forth on me today in the supermarket is actually evidence of a higher, unfathomably mysterious power beyond my usual reckoning? Maybe it's finally time to come-to-Jesus, after all these years? 😱

I can tell you this: my ego, which is usually running on half-charge these days, soared into sub-earth orbit today because of this exchange with a classy female Bostonian and man, did it feel goooooood!

I had to share this with you all, since whenever I wear my 'lucky flight jacket' things like this somehow seem to materialise out of the ether. Sure enough, it happened again today! It makes me wistfully reflect even more that instead of having just been an also-ran aviation type, I might possibly have been a real member of the righteous brotherhood (read: left-seaters and military single-engine pilots, generally) years ago who probably had moments like this several times a day.

I hope all of you have similar occasional enlightenment (biophysical Satori?) when the glamorous, if unexpected, aura of winged-flight shines down upon us like this in unexpected ways!

Ooooogh! Eat yer heart out, Tom Cruise!

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Postscript (26 Dec 2019):

Ay-yah! Life in the 'modern age'! I recently found myself watching that somewhat irksome (to me, at least) TV program 'Stargate SG-1' in a moment of utter boredom and was immediately struck by the similarity the so-called SG-1 'Off Planet Jacket' the characters wear had to my prized 'lucky jacket' (technically a US Navy/Marine Corp WEP, sometimes called a 'G-8', as noted at the beginning of this essay). Incredible, so it seems, but yes, it was a cloth fabric iteration of my WEP. A short while later, also in a subsequent moment of boredom, I went online and put 'SG-1 jacket' into the searchline.

What I learned, therefrom, was that apparently a whole nation of Stargate 'fanboys' have discovered how cool the original WEP was, thanks to the TV series, and several sources have replicated the jacket (which Stargate SG-1 characters refer to as their 'off planet' jacket) for retail purchase. Not only that, but as a limited production item, each production run regularly sells out rapidly (now they're even taking 'pre-orders' on the next batch I located).

OMG. The younger mainstream generation has discovered 'my' jacket! No wonder so any sweet young things think it is cool and sexy apparel! Sigh. Whoda thinkit?