I once went to church in a congregation with several airline pilots. One of their wives told us that all pilots are daredevils.

I believed her. I could see it in the blunt, go-ahead-make-me attitude of these men. But not until reading Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff did I understand how daring.

You’ve probably seen the movie, but nobody can tell the tale of the Navy test pilots-turned-astronauts as delightfully as Wolfe can.  These were men who constantly asked, What can this machine do? Can it go this fast? Can it go this far? Can it land on this big aircraft carrier? Oh, $#&$*(, the boat, down there! It’s tiny! Oh, $#(*&^#, that thing heaves in the waves! How’m I gonna . . . .?

They may be daredevils, but not everybody has The Right Stuff to make it to the top. A lack of split-second thinking, the slightest lapse in courage, a blip in your luck and — you’re out.

And sometimes, that means you’re out all the way. What can this machine do? Oops, it can’t do that. And now we are gathered at the funeral of our good buddy . . . .

Would it surprise you to know that the guys who didn’t wash out walked around like the cockiest jocks on the planet? Yeah, me neither.

This was in the ‘50s. As the test pilots merrily broke records, suddenly the Russians shot rockets all the way into space. Goaded by the Soviets’ prowess, America leapt into the race. She turned to her air jocks. Were these daredevils keen on going into space? Why or why not? You’ll have to read to find out.

And then there were the wives. What a life! — moving every few months to the most dismal outposts in the U.S., living in crappy leftover base housing (a certain college dorm comes to mind). If your husband has The Right Stuff for flying into space, then the news media wants to come into your living room and watch how you take it all. Will she chain-smoke? Bite her nails to the quick? Stare at the TV with a balled-up Kleenex over her mouth?

On the flip side, somebody famous might invite you to tea so, there’s that.

It’s all great fun, especially because every page carries Tom Wolfe’s wit and class. We lost Mr. Wolfe this year, and the world will never be the same. What a talent!

Photo credit: IslesPunkFan on Visualhunt / CC BY-NC