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TwitThisThe Flight to Fame
RD: Tell me about your parents.Travolta: The more I learn about life, the more I think, I'm so lucky. I was the sixth child. My mother was an English and drama teacher. We would be put to bed with plays and stories. You'd come home from school, and she'd be reading, and laughing at a stage direction! I could read and write before I got into kindergarten.
RD: And she let you drop out after 10th grade to pursue acting?
Travolta: She knew nothing was going to stop me. But she wanted that 10 to 11 years of basic education in there.
RD: Your mother was Irish, your father Italian. What was the predominant culture in the house?
Travolta: Irish. My dad was second-generation Italian, and I think he'd had enough of the Old World. It was like, "Enough with the spaghetti." He wanted to be modern, and American.
RD: What did he do for a living?
Travolta: He was partners with my uncle in a little store that recapped and sold tires. It had been my grandfather's barbershop. My uncle had the majority share; my father would make maybe $150 a week, then get a bonus.
RD: How did they get by with six kids?
Travolta: My parents never limited their thinking. We had an aboveground pool in the backyard. We had a barbecue, indoor pit. We had a nightclub in the basement. These are things my dad and I created together. We built barbecue pits, pool decks, fences, airplanes. A new pool in those days cost about $500; with a filter, it would be an $800 proposition. Instead, we got a used pool where the liner was $70 and the outside $50. My mother would buy secondhand clothes. She said, "I can put my son in a Christian Dior suit for $10 at the Church of Atonement. If I buy it brand-new, that would be $300. Or I could buy a really cheap suit for $20 that will fall apart." All my clothes were beautiful, because they were the wealthy people's hand-me-downs. My mother was a smart woman.
RD: Your childhood home was under the LaGuardia flight path. And looking around, it seems like your life here is a lot about airplanes.
Travolta: I like the idea of waking up and seeing the planes. It's like people who love seeing their boat parked outside the kitchen door. There's this thrill that you get seeing it.
RD: Your home is on a runway, the way some people live on a golf course.
Travolta: It's a jet-ready place. I have an airliner and a corporate jet right on the site. I would prefer to be near the water, honestly, but when you fly this kind of equipment, you have to go where the runway is. I fly 400 hours a year -- 200 in the 707 and 200 in the GII. I like the idea of an airport home.
RD: What first fascinated you about flying?
Travolta: It was the wonder of flight. It was the design of the aircraft; they made my heart pound, the way they looked. I get almost a romantic feeling about that. Who was on board? Weren't they lucky to be going someplace? Anywhere would have been exciting, as long as they were in a plane.
RD: Are you ever afraid up there, and have you ever had a near miss?
Travolta: No. I had an electrical failure in 1992 in the Gulfstream. But I go to school every six months, so I know how to handle it. When you're trained, it's not a big deal.
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