by Oliver Letz
Wilbur was a true child of his surroundings. Bright eyed, fearless, easy to laugh and easy to love, smart, inventive, creative and for all intents and purposes Wilbur was a little crazy. One could have said that he pushed the believe in his invulnerability over the edge, literally, frequently. Wilbur was obsessed with the idea of flying. Even as a small child he would sit in the yard for hours and observe any critter in flight. Birds, butterflies, dragonflies, bees, bumblebees and many others alike could captivate his attention for as long as they remained aloft in his field of vision.
As Wilbur grew older he got increasingly impatient with the bounds of gravity, which tied him to the ground. Skipping and jumping and swinging from trees was not quite enough to quench his thirst for lofty heights. Wilbur knew about airplanes, big complicated machines that obviously allowed some people to escape the restrictions of gravity and soar through the skies. He had spent countless hours in front of the Lilly-Book, spell bound by video clips, photos and drawings of flying machines. Yet, there were no airplanes in Flugerton and he had neither means nor desire to go where airplanes might have been.
At the tender age of four, Wilbur launched his first attempt to take to the air for himself. He tirelessly collected every bird feather he saw lying on the ground, and some say he plucked out the odd one himself from its unwilling donor, to meticulously glue them onto his favorite shirt. Once he believed that the garment was sufficiently covered he used the neighbor’s ladder to climb onto a ten feet high branch of the family’s plum tree and without so much as a second thought he took the plunge. The short exhilarating flight was concluded with an ungraceful landing that broke both his legs and rendered him unconscious for the better part of an hour.
Wilbur was quick to heal and since the merciful blanket of darkness had covered the majority of pain associated with his injuries, fear did not enter the equation for his further pursuit of roaming the skies. Contraptions born of unbridled ingenuity and enthusiasm littered the chosen path he was on. Catapults and shoulder lacerations, bungee cords and a crushed pelvis, oversized paper kites and broken knee caps, build, fly, crash and heal was the chain of events that became second nature to Wilbur until one fateful day a stranger entered his horizon to change his life forever.
Wilbur was working on his latest invention which was supposed to shoot him out of an eight feet long barrel by the force of a small explosion and once he would achieve lift off he had planned to spread his arms in a suit that resembled the flying extremities of a bat to some extent and he would glide back to the ground in a controlled manner. For his life he could not understand why his parents, teachers, friends and pretty much everyone he told about it were so vehemently arguing against his maiden flight. He was convinced that all would go according to plan if he just found the right amount of explosives to light underneath his feet.
Everyone’s relief was palpable when the arrival of the four travelers from the South was the news of the day and word got around that they had made most of the trip in an airplane that was parked just two days from Flugerton in the foothills of the Ozark. Wilbur was ecstatic by the prospect of seeing a man who could not only fling himself into the air but, more importantly also get himself and his passengers back to the ground in one piece, what a novel idea.
Even though Wilbur had shadowed the group of guests for their entire stay, he had not been able to find the right opportunity to approach the captain of the airplane and talk aeronautics with him. All four of them seemed always busy performing some sort of procedure on life stock and plants, talking to farmers and ranchers and he didn’t want to get in the way of their important business. Wilbur wasn’t shy per se but he appreciated the air of urgency that surrounded the traveler group and he did not want to interfere until they would take some time off and relax a bit.
Two weeks later the guests were gone. They obviously had concluded their search and had left one morning without much of a warning. Wilbur was crushed. He believed to have missed his one chance to get any information about how to make this business of flying stick. He knew there was a way, he only needed someone to point him in the right direction. Wilbur retreated to his room upstairs in his parent’s house and contemplated for the first time if he should give up on the only dream he had ever harbored.
Four days later the captain was back. Every child in town knew his name now. They called him Geronimo. His plane had fallen out of the sky, brought down by lightning, but the captain had lived and his passengers were on their way home.
‘Can happen to the best of us,’ Wilbur thought while he promised himself not to miss his chance this time.
Next morning before sunrise, Wilbur slipped out of his parent’s house and with only a small backpack and rations for a view days he set out on a hiking trip south. He knew that if he stayed true to his intentions and did not let doubt or fear creep into his vibration, he would either find the broken airplane on his own or he would run into Jack and Jo Jack to show him the way. He was happy enough with either development.
Three days and three nights Wilbur tracked through the storm beaten forest all by himself before he stood with wide eyes and open mouth under the remains of the proud silver bird as it precariously remained suspended amidst dense, tall trees. The wings had been stripped away for the most part and the skin of the fuselage was burned and molten to shreds. The metal trellis was bent and broken in many places but the basic shape and construction were still obvious to the keen observer.
Fascinated beyond measure, Wilbur took mentally picture after picture of the intricate construction of this light and sturdy design. There were the cables that moved the control surfaces and some of the levers and wheels that were manipulated by the hands of the pilot. His imagination merged the missing parts back into place and suddenly he could see it. His mind’s eye perceived a clear picture of the stream of air acting on the hull of the airplane, how the profile of the wing would create lift and the propeller would pull the craft through the sky. Control surfaces, stabilizers, even the illusive landing flaps made perfect sense in the context of his years of studies of aerodynamics and mechanics.
The idea that formed in his head was as far fetched as any he had ever dreamed up. ‘I can build this.’ The thought was frightening in scope and reach and life summoning enough to last for decades.
“You like the bird,” Joe Jack’s remark was more a statement than a question.
Jack and Jo Jack had silently emerged from between the trees and found the boy contemplating the airplane in awe. Wilbur turned around not even the slightest surprised.
“Yes,” he agreed, “yes I do. Can you help me take it apart and bring it back to town?”
“Sure.” Jack and Jo Jack nodded their heads, turned around and disappeared in the direction they had come from.
...
“Knock, knock,” Lilly Ann cautiously opened the door to the tool shed, which Taylor had converted to his artist studio. She never knew when it was safe to walk in because of the more or less violent fabrication methods he used to create his masterpieces. “There is someone who would like to meet you, John.”
She opened the door all the way and Taylor walked out into the yard in a cloud of fumes and dust. He coughed a few times to get the smoke out of his lungs and turned to kiss Lilly Ann.
She threw her arms up in defense, “I think you need a bath and a shave before you come anywhere near me mister,” she joked and jumped out of his reach.
“This is Wilbur,” she introduced their guest, “he has been a fan of yours for a long time and he has something he wants to show to you.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Wilbur,” Taylor vigorously shook the young man’s hand, “so you like metal sculptures. Do you work in metal too?”
“It’s an honor, sir,” Wilbur replied very politely. He looked helplessly between Lilly Ann and Taylor a few times before he said a little embarrassed, “Well, sir, actually, I’m not so much a fan of yours as an artist but mainly as an airplane pilot
. You know, I want to fly too.”
“Oh,” Taylor chuckled, “sorry for being so assumptions. I haven’t done any flying since, well, you probably have heard since when. Come to think of it, for the first time since my sixteenth birthday my pilot’s license has expired a few months ago. Hm, didn’t even think about that until now. So, what was it you wanted to show me?”
“I’d rather not say but show you, sir” Wilbur avoided a direct answer, “If you don’t mind, sir” he added hastily.
“I’d rather you stop calling me sir, Wilbur,” Taylor said, “And no, I don’t mind. Would you want to join us for lunch first? I also need to clean up before I can leave the house.”
After a lightning fast all around grooming sequence the three of them sat at a picnic table in the yard and enjoyed their sandwiches.
“You know, John, Wilbur is somewhat of a celebrity himself here in town, aren’t you Wilbur?” she smiled at him warmly.
“Yeah, don’t mention it,” Wilbur murmured.
“Don’t be so modest,” Lilly Ann laughed, “Wilbur has even you beat for most broken bones and life threatening injuries. You see, John, there is probably not a single way of getting airborne that Wilbur hasn’t tried out already, with the exception of using an actual airplane of course.”
“Is that right?” Taylor looked at Wilbur with a mixture of admiration and curiosity, “So, what would you call yourself, determined or nuts?” He jovially slapped the young man on the back.
“A bit of both, I assume,” Wilbur admitted, “but these days are over. I have decided to get serious now.”
“Are you gonna jump off Eagles Cliff next,” Lilly Ann was all excited, “You’ll break your neck for good doing that.”
“No, Ma’am” Wilbur shook his head, “none of that foolishness anymore. Are we done yet? I can’t wait to show you and Mr. Taylor.”
“Well then,” Taylor stood up and shoved the last piece of bread into his mouth, “where to young man?”
“The old service station, at the big meadow up the river,” Wilbur jumped to his feet as well, “I’ll show you.”
The outlines of the Good-Year sign were washed out but still visible above the large sliding doors on the front of the abandoned automotive service station. The grass covering what was once the customer parking lot was trimmed short and tidy and the whole area made a nicely groomed impression.
“This looks so nice, Wilbur,” Lilly Ann clapped her hands as she climbed out of her van’s drivers seat, “Who cleaned up the mess around here?”
“I did, Ma’am,” Wilbur announced eagerly, “a few of my friends helped too.”
“Do you live out here?” Lilly Ann was curious.
“Yes, Ma’am, for the most part, but that is not why I brought you here.” Wilbur walked to the huge sliding door, which had recently been repaired with smooth wooden planks. He grabbed the wrought iron handle resembling a propeller and pulled the door open.
“This is why I brought you here.” The object Wilbur’s sweeping gesture enveloped left Taylor and Lilly Ann speechless. “Behold the Condor.”
“That’s an airplane,” Taylor stammered, stating the obvious, “it’s brand new. Where did you get this?” He turned to Wilbur, who grinned from ear to ear, giddy from his successful coup.
“I built it,” he drove the surprise to a new peak.
“You did, huh?” Taylor looked at him incredulously but the delight and pride in the young man’s face told him that he spoke the truth, “You did, didn’t you.”
Meanwhile Lilly Ann was besides herself from joy and excitement. She danced and skipped around the plane clapping her hands, chanting, “Wilbur built an airplane! Wilbur built an airplane!”
Taylor shook his head, still in shock, and stepped closer to the aircraft. He immediately noticed the resemblance with his old plane in proportions and basic construction. It seemed that this airplane was about three quarters the size his plane had been. It was entirely built of steel and wood frames covered with canvas. The control surfaces were not attached yet and the plane was missing the landing gear and an engine. Everything else was there as far as he could see at a first glance.
“This is good work,” Taylor ran his hands over the tightly stretched hull, “Do you actually want to fly this thing?”
“Hm, I don’t know,” Wilbur replied, “I was hoping you would help me finish it and teach me how to fly.” He looked at Taylor with hopeful anticipation. “If you are not too busy, of course, sir,” he added hastily.
“We would need an engine and wheels,” Taylor felt right in his element.
“All here,” Wilbur pulled back a tarp covering the salvaged engine and the deflated but intact main wheels. “I asked Jack and Joe Jack to help me get your airplane here. I also used much of the structural material to build the fuselage frame.”
“I thought that some of the parts looked awfully familiar,” Taylor smiled. “Did you do any stress tests on the wings and tail to see if it’ll hold together?”
“Yes sir,” Wilbur wasn’t going to give up calling Taylor ‘sir’ any time soon, it seemed, “we lifted the plane up with winches at the tips of the wings and then we piled rocks into the cockpit. We got at least three times the weight of the airplane including engine in there before I got scared. Do you think that would be enough?”
“That’ll do,” Taylor chuckled, “we’ll do another test once we have the engine and all the missing parts in.”
“So, you are going to help me,” Wilbur almost couldn’t contain himself.
“Well, I have to ask Mrs. Taylor first for permission, of course,” Taylor laughed nodding at Lilly Ann.
“Naturally,” Wilbur agreed and looked tensely at Lilly Ann.
“You don’t need my permission,” Lilly Ann laughed, “You boys with your toys,” she scolded, “Go finish the plane, fly it, have fun. I want to get a ride too.”
Taylor looked at Wilbur with raised eyebrows, “I guess you got yourself a partner, partner. Congratulations.”
Every morning 6 a.m. without fail for the next few months Wilbur’s pickup truck would stop in front of the Taylor house and he would patiently wait until his mentor appeared at the front door with a big smile on his face and a bag full of food and drink for lunch under his arm. Taylor had rekindled his love affair with all things flying. They had gone over the plane’s structure inch by inch, refining the design, loosing a few ounces here, adding a bit of strength there to ensure the integrity of hull and wings in flight.
They designed control surfaces and attached them to the stabilizers, routed cables through the fuselage and made them functional with proper flight controls in the cockpit. The mangled landing gear of Taylor’s plane was stripped of its valuable bearings, suspension and breaks to provide the necessary functionality to the newly thought out wheel assembly.
It took two young painters, Herb and Lilly-Fran, who were as much interested in each other as they were in painting the airplane, more than a month to apply sealant and paint to the canvas covering the entire plane. Taylor’s suggestion to just take a big brush and paint the whole thing white was met with disgust. Small deliberate brush strokes, many thousands of them, turned the plain looking craft into a gleaming proud bird, one intricate feather at a time. In the end it looked like it was soaring through the skies even when standing still on the ground.
The plane was almost finished were it not for that little detail that they had conveniently avoided to even discuss. The engine cowl still was ominously empty. One morning Taylor pulled back the tarp that had covered the engine for all this time.
“We have to look at this mess sooner or later,” he fought for encouragement for the both of them.
It didn’t look pretty. The entire engine was covered in thick oily soot and it was obvious that a few metal parts were badly bent out of shape from the heat and the impact.
“No use to whine about it,” Taylor got to business, “Let’s tear it down and see what we got.”
>
Wilbur had no trepidation getting his hands dirty and neither did Taylor. In less time than it takes to say, ‘internal combustion engine’ they were both covered in grime and grease while cautiously disassembling the precious heart of the airplane. Taylor was engulfed in a full-blown hurricane of emotions. He was delighted to once more have his hands on the old trusty machine that he had taken apart and put back together so many times, just as it tore his heart out to see the motor in such poor shape, damaged almost beyond recovery.
One part after another they disassembled the power plant cleaning every bit and piece and covering them in fresh oil. They cataloged the damage and sorted out what could be repaired by means available to them and where ingenuity would have to step in to make up for the right materials or tools.
“We are missing about a third of an engine,” Taylor concluded as he went over the list again.
“We have all the parts for four cylinders,” Wilbur suggested, “The Condor is smaller and lighter than your plane was. We could put weights on the crankshaft for balance and rebuild it as a four cylinder instead of six cylinder motor.”
“It’ll run a bit rough, but if we can get the counterweights right it might just work,” Taylor agreed, “Do you know someone who could do the calculations for the balancing?”
“I already did,” Wilbur handed Taylor a piece of paper covered with a mathematical formula that made his eyes swim, “Does that look right to you?”
“I couldn’t tell you if my life depended on it,” Taylor shook his head, “It seems that you are the genius between the two of us, so I’m going to trust you and we’ll see what happens.”
And so they did. Many days and most of the nights they built and took apart and built again until one early morning the two men stood exhausted, sleep deprived but proud and happy before their finished work. The stout little engine had been granted another lease on life. The odds that it would once again pull an airplane across the sky grew higher by the minute.
“Let’s fire her up after we got some sleep,” Taylor suggested. They pulled the garage doors shut and drove home for some well-deserved rest.
Not even five hours later Wilbur sat patiently in his truck in front of Taylor’s house and waited. He had been too excited to sleep, so he had decided to drive out into the woods to a friend’s place for a special pickup. Taylor and Lilly Ann finally made an appearance. It seemed that the missus would join them for the big moment of turning over their Franken-engine for the first time.
Wilbur jumped out of the truck and jovially pointed his thumb at the truck bed.
“I picked up something special this morning,” he announced with an excited grin on his face. He lowered the tailgate and pulled out a long object that was carefully wrapped in thick fabric padding.
“What is it?” Taylor asked, “Looks like a...”
“It’s a propeller,” Wilbur interrupted him unable to contain himself, “The one from your plane was all bent and broken, so Jack and I sliced it up into small pieces to have templates for the profile. Then Jack carved this.”
He pulled the wrapping apart and revealed a jewel of a wooden propeller. It was carved out of very dark laminated wood and had the hub of its predecessor already installed.
“Wow,” Taylor whistled as he saw the marvel, “this is beautiful. What kind of wood is it made of?”
“Well, we thought that we could use some extra strength,” Wilbur explained, “So Jack laminated thin pieces of old hardwood railway sleepers into a big block. They are very dry and hard as rock. It takes a big man to carve these.”
Taylor ran his fingers over the highly polished wood surface. He traced the profile of the propeller on various places and was impressed with the smooth flow of the shape.
“It’s balanced in all directions too,” Wilbur explained, “to a fiftieth of an ounce.”
“You are full of surprises my friend,” Taylor said full of admiration for his resourceful and ingenious protégé.
A small crowd had already gathered at the Flugerton airport, as Wilbur called his garage jokingly, and more spectators arrived as time passed. Rumors had been persistent that Wilbur and Taylor had actually succeeded in building this flying machine and everyone who had helped in any way had sung its praises. Most people in town did not have much desire to travel very far, and it would have taken a miracle to persuade them to take a ride in an airplane, but if young Wilbur was brave enough to give it another try, they sure wanted to be part of it and cheer him on.
With the big propeller under his arm Wilbur with Taylor and Lilly Ann in tow made his way past the clapping audience and pulled the door to the hangar open. An approving gasp could be heard from people who had not seen the airplane before as it appeared in the gleaming midday sun. Rather ceremoniously Wilbur raised up the propeller and slipped the metal hub onto the engine’s drive shaft. In a crisscross pattern that was ingrained into his brain from many repetitions Taylor tightened the bolts of the propeller assembly. Click, click, click, the torque wrench sounded to signal its approval for the correct tension of the bolts.
“That’s it,” Taylor simply said, “You got yourself an airplane.”
Their handshake and smile was all the expression of appreciation needed between the two men. Grease, sweat and curse words can form a bond that goes beyond spoken words.
Wilbur removed the wheel chocks to free the bird from its birthplace. He and Taylor grabbed opposite ends of the propeller and slowly pulled the airplane out into the open. They had decided to do a test run of the engine and take it from there. No use in making big plans and getting ahead of themselves.
Once the aircraft was outside and positioned so that the prop wash would not hit anything valuable they reattached the wheel chocks to the main landing gear to keep the plane from taking off on its own.
“You remember the starting procedure?” Taylor asked Wilbur.
There was no other way than to hand prop the motor at this time. Wilbur nodded, confident that he would not have any difficulty turning the motor in order to start it. Taylor climbed into the leather-upholstered pilot’s seat and loudly called out the switches and controls he manipulated according to their own checklist. All the way down the list he announced, “Ignition on, check.”
Wilbur pulled the leather gloves he was wearing tight one more time and stepped up to the propeller. With a quick look at his parents in the audience and at Taylor in the cockpit he placed both hands on the downward side of the propeller, pulled it slowly to the compression point of the first cylinder and with all his might turned it over and quickly stepped back to safety. The engine said plop plop plop and was silent again. Taylor nodded at Wilbur encouraging. Again Wilbur grabbed the propeller and rotated it. Plop bang bang plop was the engines response and a small white cloud puffed out of the exhaust stack. Taylor nodded again and Wilbur went to repeat the procedure. Plop bang - then a moment of silence - and with a loud BANG the engine came to life. It sputtered and protested against the inappropriate fuel mixture. Taylor reached around the windshield to adjust the idle setting on the carburetor and was rewarded with a much more compliant sounding power plant.
To the sound of wild cheers and hollering from the crowd and with an eye on young Wilbur standing in utter amazement of his own achievement, Taylor slowly increased the power setting of the engine. The speed of the propeller climbed with the angry growl of the motor, the plane straining against the shackles that locked it to the ground. The engine was running at what Taylor considered full usable power for about three minutes before he reached for the throttle control, reduced power to idle and killed the ignition switch. Silence, broken by the crackling of the hot metal rewarded his actions.
Taylor shut down the airplane in reverse order of startup and climbed out of the cockpit. Lilly Ann was hopping up and down clapping her hands.
“Is she ready to fly?” she asked excitedly.
Taylor smiled at Wilbur who hadn’t moved or said anything.
&n
bsp; “I think she’s ready to go,” he announced, “We’ll go over every inch of it again to make sure that nothing came loose from the engine vibration, then we’ll do a longer test run of the motor and then we are ready to go, whenever you are, Wilbur.”
He touched Wilbur’s arm to bring him out of his freeze.
“Sure,” Wilbur stammered slowly regaining coherence of thought, “whenever you say it’s time, sir.”
“Let’s get to work then,” Taylor assumed control of the situation.
He turned to Lilly Ann, “Do you think someone could go and get some food and drink for all these people, it’s going to be a long afternoon.”
“I’ll let Willie know,” she said without making an effort to get going.
“Right, thank you,” Taylor shrugged. He was not the least bit surprised when he heard the catering van from Schwyzer House rolling up the street twenty minutes later. He so hoped that he could get used to that kind of thing rather sooner than later.
The afternoon sun was slowly descending to the West when a crowd of people followed a small airplane, painted in otherworldly looking fiery feathers, that was carefully pulled by a handful of volunteers onto the meadow behind the service station just outside of Flugerton. The grass had been meticulously trimmed over a period of many months and all bumps and ripples on the surface had been flattened to provide a smooth field of grass. Flugerton airport was open for its first order of business, the maiden flight of the Condor.
The airplane was positioned at the western end of the landing strip and people lined up alongside the field to get a good look. The two pilots stood next to the plane and went over the tasks to be performed and over the flight plan one more time. They had fuel for about 30 minutes of engine runtime on board, so the plan was to have a ten-minute first test flight and try to get back to the ground in one piece. As the saying goes, ‘Any landing you walk away from was a good landing, if you can use the aircraft again, it was a great landing.’ So that was the plan.
Lilly Ann stood with her brother at the side of the meadow and waved at Taylor as he climbed into the cockpit for the third time that day. The starting routine looked like a well-rehearsed ballet by then and soon the loud sputter of the idling engine was heard throughout the area. Wilbur ran a big circle around the wing of the airplane, climbed into the second seat behind Taylor’s and fastened his safety belt. He touched Taylor’s shoulder to let him know that he was ready. Taylor reached back to squeeze his hand. They were in this together now, for better or worse.
Taylor had expected an emotional onslaught for the moment when it would become eminent that he was about to reclaim his place amongst the clouds. When the time came, however, it felt so natural to slide the throttle control forward and release the breaks that the only emotions he felt were relief and appreciation for the young man behind him and the good fortune their friendship had been blessed with.
The Condor slowly gained speed hopping and bobbing eastwards on its big wheels. The beautiful wooden propeller sung its song driven by the ingeniously resurrected motor, propelling the craft faster and faster. Soon Taylor felt the air pressure on the flight controls and the rudder responded to his input to keep the plane straight. Slowly the tail lifted off the ground affording the pilot and his passenger full view of the field they were racing across. There was ample room in front of them so Taylor forced the plane to stay on the ground for just a few seconds longer. The more speed they had available to turn into lift the safer the first take off would be.
Blink an eye, she rolled, blink again, she flew, just like that. The Condor had made the step into a new frontier. Soft backpressure on the elevator control put distance between the wheels and the ground. She flew for good. The crowd was quiet, almost in shock at first, only to burst into a frantic celebration of hugs and backslapping, laughs and tears. They couldn’t believe what they saw with their own eyes. One of their own had built this thing, and it flew. Wilbur had finally made it, he was a flyboy after all.
The careful calculations of weight and balance had paid off. It took only slight adjustments to the trim tabs for Taylor to stabilize the bird in a controlled climb. His plan was to get them at least a few hundred feet above ground before he would test maneuvering capabilities. A few minutes of slow but steady climb brought them to a safe altitude to level off and try to turn the plane for the first time. The very conservative wing profile and generous dihedral made for a very stable flying aircraft. The reaction to aileron input was smooth and predictable and the plane turned without complaint.
With the basic flight maneuvers successfully checked off the list there was one more procedure that had to be performed on their maiden flight. Taylor turned the plane back towards the airfield and set it straight and level. He raised his hand to the agreed upon sign and pointed his thumb to his back. After counting to five he released the control stick stretching his arms to both sides. Wilbur had to remind himself to soften his white-knuckle grip on the flight stick. He took a deep breath, consciously loosened his fingers and gently pushed the stick to the right. As the plane started to turn he applied a little backpressure on the elevator and just a hair of right rudder and as if it was the most natural thing to do in his life he directed the aircraft into a coordinated turn.
Not the slightest impressed by the bumps in its movements or the slight turbulence as they crossed over the forest Wilbur flew the airplane with intuition and gusto and a grin that seemed to have taken hold of his face for good. He felt like he had finally made the first step into his native element, and in a way he had done just that.
After having performed a few turns and circles Wilbur tapped Taylor’s shoulder, time to fly home. Taylor had enjoyed Wilbur’s show of talent immensely and with waving thumbs up to his copilot he took back control of the craft. The airplane had on purpose been designed with a mild mannered flight attitude in mind so the glide back to the ground was as satisfying as it was uneventful. They touched down only a few hundred feet from where their flight had begun and as the plane bobbed to a halt the crowd of spectators stormed the field to congratulate their heroes.
Chapter 19: Think And Feel
