Thursday, January 6, 2011

Don't Let Them Fly Solo:

My guess is it cost less than $5.00. From the looks of the truck parked nearby and the clothes the man and the boy were wearing, I conclude it wasn't THE present. I was out riding getting a little exercise. While cutting through a vacant parking lot I saw a boy--I'd guess about ten--and his dad flying an airplane. Not a high-end gas powered job, but what looked like a simple rubber-band powered craft.
I can pretty well imagine the conversation:
"Dad, let's go fly the plane Uncle Bob gave me."
At this point the father is calculating about how little time he has before he has to get back to work, and about the Christmas tree that has to be taken down and hauled away, etc. etc.  He has a new putter he wants to try out and there is a bowl game on TV. It's just a flimsy rubber-band plane. . . ."
He responds wisely, though, "Sure, son, I know a great place just down the road.

When I rode by the plane was still in the little guy's hands. I don't know whether it flew or not. That really doesn't matter. Something else was getting off the ground on that winter day. Times with dad flying a cheap airplane, the snippets of conversation going and coming, maybe a stop for some ice-cream (the scene was in the south) on the way home, this is the stuff of life. Don't miss it.

It's STTA.

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