Chickenhawk: Back in the World

Abe smiled. “You know, Bob, the Jews have a tradition. We try to turn misfortune into fortune. It’d be symmetrical, you know, if you could somehow turn it around—turn that bad experience into something good.”

I liked the idea, but I couldn’t see how making mirrors was part of any “symmetry.”

With sheer luck, business got better. A guy called and said he’d seen one of our mirrors that had a vintage Vogue magazine cover showing through the mirror. He wanted to know if I could do the same thing with a record album cover. I said sure.

When the mirrors were shown at the New York gift show, they were a sensation. The booth was swamped. Crowds of buyers actually pushed and shoved each other to order rock and roll mirrors. I couldn’t believe it. We had sales; now we had to make lots and lots of mirrors.

I had designed a fifty-foot monster machine that could crank out these mirrors at the rate of about three thousand a day. We’d built the thing to make the Vogue mirrors, but we’d never operated it at capacity. I hired almost everybody in the neighborhood, and the place started cooking. In a few months, we had to operate two shifts to keep up. I was making money. Ben Weiner was smiling.

I celebrated by taking a couple of sailplane lessons in New Jersey.

The instructor wanted to know what my experience was.

“Never had a chopper pilot out here before. Ever fly fixed wing?”

“Some. I learned to fly planes when I was sixteen.”

“Well, this sailplane stuff is pretty easy after you get into the sky. The big deal is being towed up by another plane: you know, on the end of a long rope. And when you land, you got this silly one-wheel landing gear; but it works fine.”

I nodded.

“Ever do any formation flying?” he asked.

“Lots.”

“Well, being towed is flying in formation. You just keep the sailplane at the right position, and you’ll have no problem.”

I took a few lessons. The guy was right. I could handle the tow just fine. The next weekend, I came back for more. On our first takeoff, I heard a snap and saw the tow line zing ahead. I was about two hundred feet off the ground, over trees. I spotted a clear farm field ahead and aimed for it.

The instructor said, “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to land up there.”

“I see what you’re up to. But you don’t need to go there. You can turn this thing around and land downwind.”

I looked down at the trees.

“Go ahead, turn around,” the instructor said behind me.

I shrugged. “Okay, it’s your plane. I don’t think we’ll make it.”

I banked hard and turned around, set up for a landing. I was amazed. This thing wasn’t sinking at all. If we’d been in a regular plane, we would’ve already been in the trees. If we’d been in a helicopter, we wouldn’t have had time to make the fucking turn. I landed. The guy got out laughing, said I sure knew what I was doing and how about taking it up again, solo.

The instructor towed me up. When I pulled the release at twenty-five hundred feet, I pulled back the stick and swooped up high. Hold it, hold it, stall, flip nose down. I was laughing. Tears flowed. I circled around the airport, cheering, playing in the thermals that pushed me up. A half hour later, I landed on the single wheel, rolled up to the flight line, stopped, balanced the plane level in the breeze for a moment before I let the left wingtip gently touch the ground. Fun.

We were shipping lots of rock and roll mirrors; I was making money, but how long could it last? Album cover mirrors were definitely novelty items and were about ninety percent of our total business. I was worried sick. We didn’t have any other prospects.

I was still messing around with mirrors as solar collectors in my spare time. I should mention that in 1976 the new president, Jimmy Carter, had declared that the need to develop alternate sources of energy was the moral equivalent of war. I agreed completely. It was the first rational idea I’d heard from a politician. I got involved, doing experiments with solar energy. After several tries, I built a toy car that ran directly off sunlight, to prove to a dubious engineer friend of mine, Ed Pollitz, that such a thing would work. I tested the car in Prospect Park and drew a crowd of kids who never knew it was pulling itself through the grass with just the power of light.

Solar energy was my big dream: Abe pointed out that that was all it was. He told me the difference between us was that I was a dreamer and he was a doer. I had no problem with that; the world needs dreamers, too. I still thought solar energy should be a Mirage project. I figured if we were making mirrors, why not get into the solar energy business?