Balsa Wood and Tissue Paper

Airplanes... I love them. I love to fly in them. I like watching them take off - I like watching them land. I always try to take a window seat when I fly so that I can watch outside as the mechanical bird's engines rev to what seems like their breaking point to allow the bird to begin it's ascent. I'm always like a seven year old on his first flight... nose pressed against the cold glass watching the cars become ants. I'm so very very afraid of heights, but have never felt that awful queasy feeling when in an airplane. Airline food? THAT makes me queasy.

I used to be a UPS driver in New Jersey and a job I had at one point was to travel to the airport (Newark Liberty International Airport) each day with mis-routed packages. I'd swap them with drivers from other "hubs" who also had mis-routed packages for my "hub." I would drive there early in the morning, go to the UPS facility there and drive my truck right up to the airplanes. I was always fascinated with them... by their size... by their shape... by the technology used to maneuver them... by the idea that that massive piece of steel and aluminum and plastic and fiberglass was capable of going into the sky and travel to other places faster and more efficiently than could be done on the ground.

My dad loved airplanes and I'm sure that's where my fascination and love of them comes from. He served in the US Army during World War II and was an airplane mechanic. He used to fly in the nose of the B-17 while they test flew them after being serviced. I could always see the sparkle in his eyes when he told me the stories... I knew he loved it. He also loved model airplanes; he started building radio-control airplanes when he was about 16 years old and continued to build them his whole life. He was fascinated by the physics of how airplanes flew and I guess that's why he loved to build and fly them. He always said that if his eyes had been better, he'd have liked to have been a pilot. I wish he could have been. I always remember his airplanes hanging on the ceiling in the basement and his workshop... some were finished, others in various states of completion and every once in a while the remains of a wreck would be there after a not so fortunate afternoon of flying. Some had names: there was "Schoolboy" and Schoolgirl"... there was "Lil Rascal"... there was the Cub and a biplane, and then there were some that had no names. They were always around.

His airplanes are all gone now, but the memories of them live strong in my mind. I miss my dad, but I think of him whenever I see a model airplane... especially when I look at Lil Rascal hanging on the ceiling of MY workshop!