Aviation meets abstract photography. It scares the hell out of passengers.
The story begins!
Back in the golden days of aviation — we’re talking way back, like when a "mile high club" just meant you'd passed out from oxygen deprivation — airplanes were basically flying lawnmowers with wings held together by hope, duct tape, and the dreams of caffeine-fueled inventors named Orville and Wilbur.
People in those days didn’t just fear flying… they prayed through it. Church attendance spiked every time someone bought a ticket. Boarding an aircraft in the 1910s was seen as either a courageous act or the last desperate attempt of a man avoiding his in-laws.
The planes themselves were wonders of early engineering — if by “wonders” you mean “wooden kites with engine noises that sounded like a sick donkey trying to yodel.” Passengers would arrive at the airfield in their finest hats and overcoats, only to find that the "airline" was just a guy named Clyde with goggles, a mustache, and a suspicious grin who said things like, “I haven’t crashed this week!”
Security was simple: if you could survive the screaming rattle of the propeller starting, you were allowed on board. Seatbelts? Ha! More like loosely tied ropes and stern encouragement. Safety demonstration? “If we go down, flap your arms and scream prayers.”
One woman, Ethel Bigglesworth of Peoria, famously brought a live chicken onboard as her “safety emotional support bird.” When asked why, she responded, “If it flies better than the plane, I’m switching midair.”
The pilots weren’t exactly calm professionals either. Most of them learned to fly by watching birds and drinking heavily. One pilot, known only as “Crashin’ Carl,” once reassured passengers with the words, “Don’t worry folks, I landed this thing drunk in a cornfield last week. Today I’m sober!” Half the passengers fainted. The other half demanded to be drunk too.
Still, despite all this, people kept getting on these death-defying contraptions, probably because it was still faster than waiting for a train — which often stopped for cows, divorces, or the occasional duel.
So the next time your flight is delayed by 12 minutes and you’re sipping a complimentary ginger ale while watching in-flight Wi-Fi cat videos, take a moment to thank those brave souls who climbed into a flying tin can that sounded like it was powered by gremlins with hammers. They walked so you could fly… with peanuts.
