Don't Tell Mom: Stuka

Longview, 1953.
Five years old. Pine country. A redhead mama who could stop a tornado with a look, and a Marine daddy who woke me before dawn and whispered, “We have a DTM Mission.”

Don’t Tell Mom.

We hunted snakes. We crossed a swing bridge till the ropes complained. Then one Saturday the lie got bigger. We were not fixing a friend’s boat in Marshall. We were pushing a red Bellanca with black-striped wings to the edge of a hidden strip, Mom’s clothesline tied to the tail wheel, and flying.

Dad called it driving a car, just in the sky. I filled her pillowcase with rocks and we dove on logs in Lake Cherokee like Stukas. “Bombs away.” When the engine quit over the dam, he set us down on a strip of concrete barely wider than the wings and bought five gallons from a farmer who thought we were a seaplane.

Mammy found out. Mom took the keys. The Stuka became a gray Lincoln Dad called a Sherman Tank.

Stuka is a true Don’t Tell Mom tale of a boy, a Marine, a plane that should never have been ours, and the woman who knew the lie and still let him keep his face.

Every time the grass is fresh-cut, I am back in that cockpit.

Don’t tell Mom.

JE Warr writes West Texas the way it was lived: secret missions, worse ideas, and the people who loved you enough to let you fly.