This will come as NO surprise to anyone who's looked at any of my pages or read any of my rambling thoughts. When I was a little boy, I waved at every airplane that flew over me. After a while, I realized that the pilots never saw the tiny speck on the ground, let alone his incessant waving, or hear his shouting. As I grew up and became a little older, I therefore waved only at planes that were taking off or landing. Luckily, my parents were cheapskates and one of our freebie family activities was to go to what is now Hobby Airport in Houston. It was simply "Houston International Airport" for many years and it was about a 30 minute drive from our house. Probably every month or so, Mom and Dad would pack themselves and all four of us kids into the Buick (this is not a metaphor for a generic big, family car ~ we were a Buick family from 1949 until 1966) and head for "the airport." As an aside, we had a more regular cheapskate activity: almost every day, my parents taking turns with other neighborhood parents (OK, so we lived in a neighborhood where cheapness was a prerequisite) driving a carload of neighborhood kids about ten blocks down the street and watch the famous passenger train, the Zephyr, scooting through our part of Houston every evening around 5 PM.

I digress...I remember the DC-3s, DC-6s, DC-7s, the occasional Constellation and numerous Cessnas, Pipers and Beechcrafts taking off and landing over one end of the main runway for the airport, where there were always cars parked. Yep, the Griffiths weren't the only people on cheap dates (as I got older, I noticed that just after sundown, some of the cars, always with a couple in the front or back seat or one couple in each seat, seemed to be more interested in themselves than the aircraft rumbling overhead - what idiots!).

There I go again! Anyway...I waved at every plane that passed overhead (not realizing that a plane passing directly overhead wouldn't have seen me if I had been the size of King Kong, but I still hadn't learned all of my laws of physics, etc) at "the airport." Every once in a while, a plane (always a small single-engine one) would rock its wings back and forth, and I just knew that they were waving back at me! Forget that the pilots were probably students learning how to handle crosswinds and the turbulence that was caused as the prevailing winds passed over and around the huge hangars and other buildings bunched around the end of the runway.

I wasn't the only kid waving at planes - of course my big brother was, but then again, I probably learned this activity from him in the first place. Nope, several other kids were waving and pointing. I made up my mind right there and then that if I ever became a pilot, I'd make sure to rock my wings at every kid (regardless of his or her age) that I saw on the ground. This would become what I call "The Pilots' Code."

It took over 40 years from those first plane-waving-at years for me to become a pilot and I haven't forgotten my promise to the kids of the world. In my first 100 or 200 take-offs and landings, there never were any little kids (or very many adults) on the ground at the little Houston County Airport (where I began my flying lessons and flew in and out of for over three years), which has a motto, "Dozens of Take-Offs and Landings Yearly." Additionally, for about the first year and a half, on my takeoffs and landings, I had an instructor in the right seat and it probably would have delayed my first solo flight longer than it did had I performed too much wing waggling. Besides, most of my early take-offs and landings probably included enough wing-dipping to qualify as waving at lookers-on.

After I soloed in November of 1997, I made many patterns at this little airport. When I took off from the end opposite the end which has the hangars and other buildings, this meant that I was more than 100 feet above the far end of the runway on my climbout, and I coul look down on anyone by the hangars or on the taxiways, etc. A couple of summers ago, a family of Mexican nationals had moved into one of the buildings at the airport. The dad was a laborer with the local crop-duster and there were three boys, ages about 5 to 10, who were outside and usually witnessed the 6 or 7 take-offs and landings "performed" by me during my weekly (when the weather was cooperative) flying sessions.

The first few times that I'd rocked the wings at them, when the situation allowed me to do so, they didn't do much. One time, though, I flew for a couple of hours around the county, and returned to the airport, making 7 take-offs and landings (rocking the wings on most of them, mainly because of a crosswind and little turbulence), and the kids reacted by waving back at me. I'd reached it! Little kids looked up to me and they even began to wave first! Who da man? I da man!