You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

“Anything Once”

We were sitting around talking while the girls finished their meals. I told the other two student hashers in the kitchen of the AOPi sorority that I had nearly died the previous weekend of an overdose of peyote. When one of them asked “Why the hell did you take peyote? I justified my doing so with the explanation that I am willing to try anything once.

One of the other house boys, Troy, was a skydiver. He had been needling me to go skydiving with him. I would always politely decline. But hearing me proclaim that I would try anything once, he immediately said “Well then, you will go skydiving with me.” My immediate, unspoken, reaction was: ‘You mean jump out of a plane and trust a parachute which you packed? You must be out of your mind or think that I am.’ However, after pronouncing, that I am willing to try anything once, what could I say? So instead of telling him what I felt, I said “OK.”

Troy was no novice. He was a senior smoke jumper. He taught other firefighters the skills needed to jump into the forest to fight fires. “Don’t worry.” he said “I will train you”. My training began with learning how to land a parachute. Using a flight of stairs, which had no guard rail, He taught me how to jump from increasing heights and land safely. This was done employing the “paratrooper’s roll”. This is a maneuver that allows the impact of landing to be distributed onto several body parts. The first part to touch the ground are your boots which are held out in front with knees bent to absorb the initial shock. Having the legs in front causes you to fall backward. The next shock of landing is then absorbed by the back of the legs and buttocks. The last of the shock of landing is taken by rolling up on to your curved back with legs extended forming a counterweight. I practiced this technique from progressively higher stairs until I was jumping from around seven feet. He also taught me the procedures for exiting a plane. He explained how I am to exit the cabin of the plane. First I am reach out of the cockpit and firmly grasp the wing strut. Then I am to ease myself out of the plane placeing one foot on the step used to enter the plane and the other on the fender of the landing gear. “Once you are out” he said “you cannot reenter the plane. To attempt to do so is far more dangerous than jumping.” He carefully explained that when he signaled me to jump, with a swat on my butt. Why not just shout?” I asked. “You will understand when you are up there.” he said. “With the roar of the engine and the powerful wind of the prop wash, you cannot hear a thing.” He described the jump procedure as follows: “While continuing to hold onto the strut, lift your feet from the fender and step. Your body will be lifted by the force of the prop wash. Then, when you are in a horizontal position with arms extended, let go of my grip on the wing strut. Once you let go, spread your arms and legs slightly to create a stable fall. “ “If you are tumbling” he said “the chute is unlikely to deploy with out your becoming tangled in the shrouds. This is likely to end in disaster.” I would jump using a static line, which is a nylon cord connected to a steel rod which in turn is laced through the closure loops of the chute. The other end of the cord is tied to the plane. The cord is just long enough that it pulls the rod from the closure loops as you fall clear of the tail of the plane. “Another thing” he said “count ten seconds”. If the main chute has not opened in 10 seconds you are to hit the release plate on your reserve chute. “There is one important caveat about use of the reserve chute” Troy warned. “If it is opening while the main chute is deploying they will become tangled and not deploy correctly. The likely result is that you will fall, hitting the ground like a ripe tomato.” ‘Nice image I thought.’ Having learned all of this terrifying information, I was ready for my first jump. We waited several days for a favorable weather forecast. It finally came. Troy called me saying there would be scattered clouds but these should not be a problem.

On the evening before the jump day. I joined Troy at a local high school. Where, in the gymnasium, we joined several other skydivers who were packing their chutes. Troy carefully extended and folded the silk of my parachute. He arranged the shrouds, folding them first into the backpack, he then folded in the canopy. He explained to me that this was a surplus military chute. That it was smaller than sports chutes and it could not be steered as a sports chute can. As a result, you will fall faster and land wherever the breeze takes you. “By the way,” Troy said with a twinkle in his eye. “This chute is called ‘old 50-50’.”

The next morning I drove to the air field to meet Troy and his pilot friend. As I approached, I could see them working on the right side of the plane. It was a single-engine, four-passenger Piper Cub with a single wing over the passenger compartment. It was smaller than I had expected. As I came around to greet them I saw that they were removing the door from the plane. Seeing my surprise, he told me, “When we are jumping, we fly without a door because you can’t open the door in a 90 mile an hour wind. “ Troy helped me put on the parachute. He adjusted all the straps on the harness so that they would stay in place. The two straps which were around my legs are the most important as they are the ones that transfer the shock of the chute opening to my body. These straps abruptly stop me from falling at near terminal velocity to a few miles per hour.

Before taking off, I practiced exiting the plane. This is a very delicate maneuver in which I am to reach out and grab the wing strut which runs from below the cockpit up to the middle of the wing. My grip must be absolutely secure. I am not to ease up on it until my legs are extended behind me. My left foot is placed on the step used to climb up into the plane. My right foot is somehow to remain on the round and smooth fender over the landing gear.

We climbed into the plane. The pilot was in the front seat on the left side. I am in the other front seat next to the open door. Troy is in the passenger seat behind me. We take off and fly for ten or fifteen minutes. It is scary sitting next to the open door of a plane thousands of feet in the air with only a seat belt to prevent me from falling out. It is especially frightening when the plane is banking in turns.

We are flying just under the clouds and at the minimum altitude for a jump. When we were about a mile from the drop zone I was told this is where I am to get out of the plane. Once out there, I am reminded, there is no coming back into the plane. I reached out with my arm to grasp the wing strut. But my arm is blown back. I try again, struggling against the powerful wind to grasp the strut. Once I have a firm grip I then put my leg out of the plane reaching for the fender. It also was immediately blown back against the plane. After several attempts, and coaching from Troy, I was able to get out of the plane facing the tremendous cold force of the prop wash. Hanging onto the strut, trying to keep my foot from sliding off the fender, I was feeling panic and in disbelief that I had permitted myself to be in this situation. As we approached the drop zone, a five-acre pasture, we flew into the clouds. The prop wash became wet and cold. We could no longer see the ground to know if we were over the pasture or over the surrounding woodlands. I looked into the cockpit where I could see Troy and the pilot frantically shouting at each other. Though I was less than five feet from them, I could not hear a word. They were obviously very concerned. Troy turned to me and shrugged with an expression that conveyed his feeling of great regret, even remorse. The plane began to bank in a turn. We had been at the minimum altitude for parachuting as we first approached the drop zone in the expectation that we would be just under the layer of clouds. Now with the plane circling with me out there fouling up the aerodynamics, the plane was losing altitude quickly. By this time I was anxious to get out of the intense noise and cold wet blast of the prop even if it meant placing my trust in “old 50-50”. Again we were flying over the drop zone and now we were below the clouds and well below the minimum altitude for parachuting safely, Troy shrugged, as if to say, “Sorry old friend.” and slapped my butt.

While tightly hanging onto the wing strut, I kicked back. As soon as my feet were free from their tenuous purchase on the step and fender, my body was lifted up and back until I was in a nearly horizontal position with arms extended, I let go of the strut. I was falling. I felt a light tug of the rod being pulled out of the chute pack, but nothing more. OH NO! I thought. The chute did not deploy, and I had forgotten to count to 10. Quickly I counted 1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10. Nothing had happened. I thought that was too fast so again I counted 1-2-3-4-. The ground is coming up. I was falling fast. I reached for my reserve. Pulling my arms into my chest, when I am about to hit the reserve release, I feel a tug on my back, I hesitate, and WHOOM, the main chute opened. That event was met with a feeling of great relief and intense pain, relief that I was no longer in freefall towards the ground and great pain because the harness around my right leg had become loose and had slipped over my right testicle.

Once I recovered from the pain, I was able to enjoy the gentle swaying of the chute as it spilled air from side to side. Hanging there suspended in space, I watched the forested hills, which were closest to me, rise up to obscure the hills beyond and then the mountains in the distance. The land was coming up fast now. I cocked my legs to take the initial shock of the landing. I hit and rolled as trained. It worked. I lay on my back in the wet grass of the pasture, old 50-50 gently settling to the grown behind me. With damp cool grass of good Mother Earth below me and a cloud-filled sky above. Two thoughts consumed me. First was the blissful realization that I was safely back on the ground. The second was the firm resolve never again to utter the statement “I will try anything once”.

Upon seeing my chute open, Troy and the pilot left the drop zone and flew to the airport. They landed and drove to the pasture to collect me. I stood up from my pastoral bed. I removed my harness and gathered old 50-50. When Troy arrived we went over what had happened. The chute did not open because I was in a stable flat fall and the air rushing over my body held the cute down on my back. It deployed when I changed positions to reach for my reserve. Troy said that he had counted the seconds of my free fall. He reported that I had fallen the same amount of time that it would take for a man to fall from the Golden Gate Bridge to the water of San Francisco Bay. So now I can tell you, without fear of contradiction, that I am the only man, you will ever meet, who has fallen from the height of the Golden Gate Bridge, landed on one nut, and lived to tell his story.