The privilege of knowing my Uncle Carl was never mine, and yet, he became one of my childhood heroes. I do not know what kind of person he was, what he thought, or what he felt, but then, children do not focus on these things. Memory recalls his picture displayed on top of the piano in our family living room among the many others displayed there. He was a handsome man. In childhood fancy I thought I favored him, or at least hoped that might be so.
Carl served in World War II. He died as a crew member on a test aircraft that crashed into a mountain in the Mojave Desert. With these little pieces of knowledge there developed in my unconscious mind a concoction of ideas, impressions, and imaginative embellishments over the years. A “golden myth” took root in me, a myth that would significantly impact my life in the years to come. A golden myth is a fiction or half-truth that forms (consciously or unconsciously) and becomes a part of us. The golden myth about George Washington cutting down the cherry tree is one example, lifting one of our Founding Fathers as an ideal for our society. There is no evidence to support the story as truth, but we have made it so. Our lives are lived out of such myths, knowingly or unknowingly, and become part of our journey.
The myth I developed about Carl, colored in many different hues over time, took on unreal dimensions as all myths do. I recognize the myth now for what it is—a myth. I’m conscious of how that myth worked its way into my life journey. This awareness has not diminished the essential core of the myth. My Uncle Carl remains a hero. And I think of him each time I come to Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert and see Shadow Mountain in the distance where Carl’s plane went down, and the Joshua trees that he must have seen too. Here I am this morning, “looking out into another kind of time altogether, where everything that ever was continues not just to be, but to grow and change with the life that is in it still."
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