JOSEPH N. BELL -- The Bell Curve

The glow of John Glenn’s ascension into space was wearing off for me

when a movie called “Space Cowboys” appeared here a few weeks ago.

Because anything that affirms the lasting power of old folks these days

has an instant attraction, I went to see it. In the afternoon. On a

weekday.

This is of note only because even after many years of setting my own

schedule as a freelance writer, I still have to put down guilt in order

to do something obviously frivolous during the working day. But my wife

was lukewarm about seeing this movie, so I went while she was at work.

And came out uplifted.

It’s certainly not a great movie -- especially the second half, which

is a little heavy on space stuff and symbolism. But it hit me in so many

places that bring back both memories and delight. And these old guys left

little doubt that all their systems are working quite well.

If you haven’t seen the film or read the reviews, the story has to do

with four aging Air Force pilots who are sent up into space to repair an

orbiting Russian satellite that is carrying a lethal load of nuclear

bombs about to fall to Earth. The old guys are needed because they

designed the archaic system that is failing and are the only ones who

understand it well enough to repair it.

The first shock to me was realizing that these geriatric pilots --

wrinkled, hobbled and unwilling to suffer fools gladly -- are about 10

years younger than I am and flew planes that didn’t exist when I was

flying. They are also younger than the original astronauts -- including

Glenn -- with whom I spent a good deal of time at the inception of our

space program.

This is a little tough on my flying fantasies which continue to recur

despite aging -- or maybe because of it. The most frequent is the

airliner fantasy in which both pilots are suddenly and mysteriously

stricken and the chief flight attendant goes on the public address system

and says, in this terribly frightened voice, “Is there a pilot in the

house?”

I leap to my feet, push forward, move the stricken pilot from his seat

and bring the bird down safely to an emergency landing in Sioux City,

Iowa, while the passengers cheer.

I play this fantasy whenever I feel or see something aloft that makes

me uneasy. If my wife knew this was going on, she’d probably never fly

again. This fantasy has become less vivid as technology has turned

piloting into button-pushing. I have a feeling, when I’m on the ground

and rational, that a flight attendant could probably bring the plane down

these days.

The training scenes in “Space Cowboys” redoubled this overpowering

sense of technology wresting the world away from people.

Some of the equipment on which the original astronauts trained at

Langley Field in Virginia could probably be found in toy stores today.

Their only exposure to the sensation of weightlessness, for example,

happened for about 15 seconds at a time in the cargo compartment of a

C-131 transport plane. The equipment in the movie -- which I assume was

filmed at a NASA training center -- was, by contrast, huge, exotic and

replete with lights, buttons and buzzers.

I probably related most to the scene, early in the film, in which

Tommy Lee Jones -- who is a bush pilot making a marginal living -- takes

a young man on a stunt flight and scares the hell out of him.

He is flying a tiny biplane designed for stunting that was identical

to the one in which I took my last open cockpit ride several years ago.

The video stunt ride out of Orange County Airport was a Christmas gift,

and I waited until two days before it expired before finding the courage

to use it. My wife, who didn’t want me to use it at all, brooded in a bar

while I indulged this fantasy with more bravado than I felt.

The hardest thing was stuffing my arthritic legs into the tiny

cockpit, but once we were aloft, I felt free. The pilot knew my military

history and offered me the controls. It had been 40 years since I stunted

an airplane, but it all came back -- and I have the video to prove it. He

let me land the plane, and my wife -- who never expected to see me alive

again -- regarded me briefly as heroic.

The dice, of course, are loaded in “Space Cowboys.” The old guys sent

off into space, while crotchety, bullheaded and difficult, are almost

always right. Which is clearly the way it should be. And mostly isn’t.

I wondered on the way home if the attraction of this movie for the

geriatric generation grows out of yearning for evidence that the energy

and certainty of youth is still within reach. Or, perhaps, for younger

generations, a yearning for assurance that aging and senility aren’t

synonymous.

We are bombarded daily with cliches about aging. Clint Eastwood and

his pals in this movie tell us that we don’t have to accept them when

they don’t apply. Which is reason enough to use a workday afternoon to go

and see it.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.