Meet Mike Marcon

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Every pilot and skydiver keeps diaries of a sort. They are called “logbooks.” I have a stack collected over the years beginning in 1962. They are so valued that I keep them in a bank safety deposit box. A pilot’s logbook is a written record that he or she keeps detailing many things; among those, hours flown, types of aircraft operated, certain official skills or certifications granted or achieved and other notable things pursuant to flight. The skydiver’s logbook shows the types of jumps made, when and where the jumps were made, the cumulative number of jumps a skydiver has, with whom, what equipment was used, the type of aircraft utilized and so-on. Moreover, skydiver’s logbooks often show incidental events such as attaining the status of “Cardinal Puff,” best party drop zones, dates that a “Beacon Ride” was performed and certain “No Shit.Thought I Was Gonna Die!” moments. Importantly, many jumper’s and pilot’s logbooks are the valued records of sky friends made across the years.

But logbooks are more than that.

Logbooks, for most pilots and skydivers, are the written records of their lives in the sky. The flights and jumps may have been made at or from tiny local airports, cow pastures or remote drop zones long closed or replaced by housing tracts or industrial parks; and the events recorded in those logbooks may have taken place in many locales that could range from the jungles of South America to the Arctic Circle to the dusty plains of Australia to the sunny skies of California – in other words, all over the globe.

But logbooks are even more than that.

For pilots and skydivers, logbooks are the running commentaries of their lives aloft. For many aviators and parachutists, life for them was or is considered the only part of living that is or was worth living. That’s because the time devoted to either activity is the time they feel the most “alive.”

And the entries in those logbooks are more than just commentaries and records. Logbooks contain the bookmarks of coveted memories ranking right up there with a child’s birth, the day of a wedding and the death of a friend. Newer pilots and skydivers eagerly make entries in the their logbooks as their sky adventures mark lessons learned while they climb ladders of experience that will, sooner or later, mark their status in the sky. The older more experienced active pilots and skydivers who keep logbooks are simply keeping a running tally and making notations in those pages as they build more time, make more jumps or experience greater heights. 

But down the road, at some point, most pilots and skydivers with age and infirmities will no longer sit at the flight controls or pull the ripcords. And this is the time where the logbooks kept over a lifetime will become the most cherished. For retired pilots, building flight time is no longer important, the time spent with an instructor is past, passing the next flight physical is no longer a concern; for an inactive skydiver, well, there are simply no more jumps to record. In each case then, the logbooks themselves are also retired to a desk drawer, a box in the attic, or in my case, a safety deposit box at the bank.

But it is never forgotten by the old jumper or pilot that each line and every column in those logbooks, every one, is a receptacle of memories – most good, some scary, others funny or remarkable. Each line and every entry is a door to a different room where another time dimension exists. Those entries are gilded records, memories of people and places, of routine flights, of a forced landing or an engine out, of a malfunctioned parachute, of a girl or guy met and loved, of jumps made for show. Each autograph or signature nestled within a logbook’s pages will evoke memories and incidents sometimes long forgotten. 

There is not a single older pilot or skydiver alive anywhere that has not, at some point, sat in a comfortable chair with one of his or her old log books lying open in the lap and become lost – a least for a short time – in those rooms of memories that logbooks proffer. If you watch that old pilot or old skydiver’s face closely as they peruse the pages of a weathered logbook, you will often see a smile break out and many times that smile will become an outright guffaw as the hilarity of a particular moment of the past resurfaces. Sometimes the faces will also mask the pain of grief. 

Within the lines and columns of every pilot’s or skydiver’s logbooks are the wonderful stories of the sport of skydiving and the act of flying. That’s what The Logbooks is all about. On this website, you will read stories taken from the pages of my own logbooks kept over a period of many years of flying airplanes and jumping from them. Each story will have its roots in the events that I recorded in my logs. Some are purely factual, some are fictionalized, others are excerpts from the pages of some of my published works that I think you might like; and some will be the stories from your logbooks. They will be posted as written and offered for you to read here. In due time, a collection of the best of them will be offered as an e-book and a printed version. If you would like to be notified when new stories are posted, please subscribe to my reader’s list. (See below.) I will also announce new story postings on my Facebook page.

I would like to make the The Logbooks project a collaborative effort. If you have a special episode in your logbooks that you think would make a great story, write me at mikemarconrocks@gmail.com. Simply tell me the gist of the story, and I will let you know if I am interested in including the story in The Logbooks. If I am, I will work with you to bring your story to life. Where available, photos will also accompany these stories.

Happy reading!

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