Boys’ own blogs.

Without intending to, I see that I’ve given a “boys’ own” theme to most of last week’s blogs. Great buildings! Tearing around in a Hummer! Battles to the last man!

Well, in keeping with that theme, it’s time to tell of Riding in an Airship!

True story. I was an associate editor of “Advantage” magazine in Nashville in the mid-80s. Another magazine owned by the same company was “Contemporary Long-Term Care,” whose editor was an entertaining fellow named Steve, who was about as old then as I am now. One day he described making a list of things he wanted to do before he died — things within reason, not flying to the Moon — and how he had been pursuing that list since. I don’t remember how it came up, but one thing on his list was taking a ride in the Goodyear Blimp. Which, he said, he had done a few years earlier.

I was all ears. I have early memories of the Goodyear Blimp. I remember standing in my grandmother’s front yard one evening in the summer of 1968. There was a World’s Fair in San Antonio that year, and the Blimp must have been visiting for that event. There it was in the twilight, flying low enough to seem huge, and so close I could hear the hzzzzzzz of the engines as it crawled across the sky. The icing on the cake was the flashing letters on the side of the Blimp, the kind of letters you might see on the scoreboard at a sports stadium. I don’t remember what the message said — no doubt an advertisement — but it didn’t matter.

Flash forward to 1986. Steve had ridden in the Blimp. How was this possible? He was a newspaper reporter then, and they had invited him, he said.

Very interesting. I returned to the editing tasks at hand. Only a few days later, however, I looked out a window, one that had a fine view of West End Avenue heading away from downtown, and what did I see? — the Goodyear Blimp.

This was in the days before Google (heck, we did our writing and editing work on typewriters), so finding out exactly whom to call took some persistence. Eventually I got Goodyear’s HQ number in Akron. I talked to their media relations department there, who referred me to the public relations man who traveled with the Blimp. (Who would have thought?) Somehow or another I got in touch with him that day, and explained that I was a member of the Nashville media, and was interested in riding the Blimp. I was fully expecting him to brush me off.

“All right, you and an associate can fly tomorrow at 10 a.m.,” he said. “Come to the Smyrna Airport and ask for me.”

I’ll finish this story tomorrow…