Word: plane
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Outside the trailer a stocky man says that he's Bruce Maclaughlin, the instructor and jump master that will who will later on be the one who goes up in the plane with us and gives us the push out the door. Maclaughlin is as sharp-eyed and as brusque as a boot camp sergeant. He spreads his legs, arching and throwing his head back yelling, "ARCHTHOUSAND, TWO THOUSAND, THREE THOUSAND, FOUR THOUSAND, FIVE THOUSAND, SIX THOUSAND, LOOK" he looks to his left heel. "LOOK." He looks to a release on his right pelvis, "PULL". He pulls the release. "PUNCH...
...thousand, eight hundred feet above the trailer a single engine plane stalls, glides and drops two black dots. They grow. Their parachutes don't open but Maclaughlin ignores the two plummeting people. He looks steely-eyed at his charges, each of us with our heads tossed back, eyes wide open, jaws dropped, certain the two divers will, in less than 17 seconds, bounce and splatter on the grass. "Ooooo, ooooo" we say as two chutes blossom and the jumpers silently glide toward earth. Maclaughlin's brows are down, his lips pursed, his eyes still locked in on his students. "Snap...
Maclaughlin laces his boots, puts on his jump suit, goggles and helmet. As jump master, he oversees the strapping in of the first three he will guide out of the plane. He picks three of us and indifferently directs us toward the suit up area. He kids us although we are grim faced and jokes with his comrades with the same type of wildness that would make him chuckle and shrug when hearing of a chain saw massacre...
...rigged for the jump my heart wildly pounds, my thoughts are on the first few seconds outside the plane...
...plane's engine coughs and sputters, its pilot sitting at the controls with a frayed Red Sox cap and a parachute. "Let's go," he yells. The jump master arranges us in a small Cessna with flaking paint. I sit next to the pilot, my back to the controls, staring out the window of the door through which I will soon exit. I watch as the plane rumbles down the runway, lifts and spirals over the center, the lakes, the large clumps and bands of trees and the long strings of high tension wires. The master standing at the door...