By Conger Beasley Jr / Photos by Tim Janicke
Flight of Fancy
     Aboard Kansas City’s Connie,
          a writer takes the ride of his dreams.
  

’m sitting in the center of the world, the jump seat behind the pilot’s chair of a Lockheed Super Constellation.  The Connie, as it’s affectionately called, powered by four big round propeller engines, taxis toward takeoff at the Kansas City Downtown Airport.
  

     The seat is compact and snug.  I can’t move my legs and there’s barely room in my lap to take notes, but that doesn’t matter--sitting in this spot is the fulfillment of a long-standing dream.

     As a teenager in the 1950s, I used to ride in this aircraft, back when it was the primary carrier for TWA.  Even then, a pimply adolescent on my way to school back East, wearing slacks, tie, sports coat, and black Buddy Holly glasses, I’d look at this jump seat through the open cockpit door and think it had to be the coolest seat in the place, maybe the whole wide world.

     Now, actually sitting on the spot as the plane trembles at the head of the runway, I understand why.  The jump seat is elevated just enough so I can see over the pilot’s shoulder to the control panel and cockpit window.  I can see what the pilot and copilot need to do to coax the plane off the ground and keep it sailing through the sky.

     It’s a warm Friday afternoon in mid-June, and I am where I have wanted to be all my life, sitting just behind the pilot, with no responsibilities or obligations, letting him and the other crew members  do all the work, while I soar in fact and fancy through time and space on a journey that will take me back, not only to my own youth, but to a time when this bold, original aircraft was the big-plane boss of the skies.