Bax Seat: Log of a Pasture Pilot

by Gordon Baxter

A collection humorous essays from Gordon Baxter's "Bax Seat" columns inFLYING Magazine. Together, the form "the story of how a good ole boy from southern Texas found himself working with the blue-pencil, New York-based clickers who edit the world's most widely read aviation magazine."
"Bax Seat" is a reference to the fact that many antique planes are flown from the back seat, and the passenger sits up front.

212 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[John Sperling]

There's some good-ol'-boy values and humor here which don't quite fit nowadays, but there is also some beautiful prose which transcends time and space.

[KennyO]

This is a collection of Baxter’s columns, published in Flying magazine for some twenty years beginning in 1970. Woven into the collection are introductions, background stories and observations he made about the columns and his interactions with pilots, editors, people and the occasional airplane or animal. The reprinted columns and articles are here in sans serif font and the intros and commentary use serif font. To get the most out of reading Bax Seat it is helpful to be a pilot. Absent that, you should be fairly well-read on topics in aviation. We who are nearer (as in “in”) our “golden years” have the advantage over youthful readers by our familiarity with things that are no longer common around airports.

It’s a delightful read.