Another year, another week at Oshkosh for the grounded pilot.
I love Oshkosh -- or at least the week when there's the big air festival here known as AirVenture. I've been coming long enough now that there are a lot of friends I want to catch up with. A handful stopped by the campsite (a big campsite this year because I'm holding a big barbecue for everyone on Wednesday night).
But the nest never seems so empty to me as the first day I arrive. Oshkosh is one of those things I've kicked myself for not coming to earlier. We've lived in the Midwest since 1992, and I think 1999 was the first year the whole family came over; and we had a great time. The kids were mesmorized by the air show. A year or so later, they were mesmorized by the girls.
By a few years ago, the "magic" disappeared for them. They didn't reconnect with people they had met the year before, and the last time they were here, they were at the age when kids can be real jerks to each other.
But, still, as I sit -- with wireless this year -- in the tent here, I'm hoping that someday, we can all do a few days over here one more time.
I'm here on a media pass this year. I'll be writing stuff for the RV Builder's Hotline and also trying to scrounge some stories from Minnesota folks who are here so I can do a Web piece for Minnesota Public Radio.
I'm covering a news conference on Monday when I think Cirrus is going to unveil their VLJ -- very light jet. This is the big thing in aviation now and, I guess, there's a market for this. Imagine taking all those little piston airplanes out of the sky, and giving everyone a jet instead. That's where the world is going.
On Thursday, I hope to meet Morgan Freeman and also Apollo 13 pilot Jim Lovell. They've both got news conferences scheduled.
I took last summer off from work, cashing in my banked 6-8 weeks of vacation time. It was one of the best things I ever did.
This summer, I'm working every day in a business that slows considerably in the summer, and yet it's zipping by at record speed.
Time is moving at the same speed it always has, but it has never felt faster.
I want it to slow down.
Next Friday, I'll leave for a week at Oshkosh, which is usually the highlight of my summer and I suspect it will be again, especially since the rest of the summer has been -- so far -- completely routine and without highlights; certainly without the highlights of a year ago.
I usually try to go back to New England in the summer, but it's beginning to look like there won't be time. But why? I'm not doing anything special, it's boring at work, and yet as I look ahead to August, it feels as though it's spoken for.
I thought when my kids left home, that I'd have a lot more time to do things and go places. But I don't. In fact, we seem to have less time now, or -- more accurately -- less motivation.
When we had the kids at home, we had to do things -- or thought we did -- with them, including heading back to New England for two weeks, which had to include time at the beach. Now, the kids are gone, and, man, do I ever miss the beach.
It's the part of the empty nest I had no idea existed -- the part that if you're not careful, you'll slip into a pattern of frenzied boredom.
This week, ESPN Sportscenter has been presenting a series of Make A Wish stories, in which sick or -- in the worst cases -- dying kids are granted a wish to meet some sports star.
OK, I get that ESPN and Disney probably has motives that extend beyond plowing some of their mammoth profits into doing something decent, but the fact is they did something decent and if that's what it takes for more decency in the world, then that's what it takes.
Put that aside for a moment, though, and you're left with very gifted athletes -- very, very rich athletes -- doing something decent too.
This morning's segment was with New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees. (Watch) Over on the right side of the page you'll see links to the other segments this week.
We have been talking in the newsroom the last few days about the way we cover stories. I can't go into the particulars, but part of it is based on this concept of Public Insight Journalism, and part of it is based on an idea MPR's news bosses have for me to give up the online editing gig, and go write about what I see; more or less.
One of the problems that's been keeping me up at night is I can't think of a way to cover things in the way that's been described.
Here's how I'd do it and, trust me, I'm not stealing this idea. Throw a dart at a map, go to the town, let the phone book fall open, pick a name, do a story.
Why? Because I've always felt that if you give me 6 questions, I'll find something interesting about you that others will find interesting too.
Almost without exception, people think they are not "newsworthy." Almost without exception, they are wrong.
What kind of story would I like to do before I die? This kind.
It's been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I think the best picture is the one that leaves you speechless.
This is a picture I've had folded up and in my wallet since 1991, and I have no idea who any of the people are. Now, 16 years later, I'm trying to find out.
This is the family of a dead American soldier from the first Persian Gulf war. I cut it out and stuck it in my wallet for a number of reasons.
For one, my kids were still small and I anticipated they'd go through the phase of glorifying war and I thought it would be a good reminder that the war movies on TV are relatively antiseptic portrayals of the real thing.
I had no interest in giving them my political thoughts on war -- I'm not sure what they are myself -- just that there can be no argument that in a war, there are usually families like this.
The other reason I cut it out is because that was a quick war, the war that would usher in a "new world order," and it didn't cost much -- only 147 American soldiers, a quarter of whom were killed by friendly fire. This was referred to as "minimal casualties," a phrase the media and politicians used, but one that I detested. I also thought the "minimal" casualties would turn us into a country with unrealistic expectations of war where casualties are concerned.
Minimal? Look at the faces.
I don't believe I ever had cause to pull the picture out of my wallet to show either of my sons. I pulled it out once in a news meeting to try to convince other editors in the mid '90s to do a story on our country's bravado and attitude toward war. But they looked at it, passed it along, and then made their assignments for stories about the corn crop and the State Fair instead.
And now I've pulled it out again, because I want to find these people. I want to find out who they are, where they're from, and what has become of them on the day when -- their faces said -- they looked at their past, and wondered about their future.
It is a gorgeous morning in Minnesota, its beauty enhanced by the fact that most of its populace is still asleep. The cardinal is singing, the lawn and trees are a vibrant green from a week of rain a week ago, the sky is a deep blue, my coffee is the finest wine I've ever made and from my observation point -- the backyard deck -- I see that God has a wry sense of humor to give us such a glorious day on the darkest day for some people.
Bob Reha, a reporter for many years at Minnesota Public Radio died yesterday after a battle with leukemia that consumed not only him, but a large legion of my colleagues who did everything that music, food and silent auctions can accomplish in such cases. I did not know Bob very well. We'd occasionally exchange stories about the Cardinals -- the baseball kind -- on his rare trips to St. Paul, but that was about it.
Last night my wife's best friend called to say her mother has gone into hospice.
These are difficult times for the baby-boom generation, a generation that has never been anywhere near as gifted at handling difficult times. Our parents, and our friends, are passing on to another stop on their journey and we have never been particularly good travelers.
And God keeps giving us glorious mornings. Funny stuff.
I have wrestled over the years, like many others, on the meaning of faith -- not as practiced by the show-it-alls on Sunday morning, but by people like me. The un chosen; the people who haven't been absorbed by the religous groups who have intentionally hijacked good religion with bad politics.
I am not a regular church-goer. I am a believer. I have never felt that I needed church to have a relationship with God. Why do I need a middleman? If you believe the Bible, God gave us 10 simple directions. Church? It's a nice social occasion, but what don't you get about 10 simple directions?
At deaths, we mourn the living, it seems to me. We are unhappy because we don't get to walk with the departed anymore. There's nothing wrong with that, but if one is truly faithful, how does one feel anything but awe for a person who, in this case, spent a career seeking out stories, who yesterday got the biggest one of all -- the answer to what it all means?
I often wonder whether the sadness surrounding death is a rare peek into the doubt we have about the existence of God.
And yet the grass and trees are green, the cardinal is singing, the sky is a deep blue, there is a universal concept of time that applies to everything, and it is utterly illogical to conclude that it's all accidental.
The word "sucks" was invented to honor the Cleveland Indians teams in the 1970s. That's a little-known fact you're free to use at your next cocktail party to impress your guests. No charge.
The Indians put in another lackluster performance on our last day in town, losing to Detroit by a score of... well, I don't really know the score because we left after another failed rally in the 8th so that we could get at the airport in time. I still think it's interesting that you can be sitting in a baseball stadium in Cleveland watching a ballgame at 5, and be back on your living room couch by 9:30.
So... to what do we attribute this weekend's disaster? The '70s. The same thing we blame everthing else on. And with good reasons. The '70s were certainly the worst decade of my life and I'd have to say disco just barely passes the Nixon administration at one end of the decade and the Carter years at the other for top spot.
For reasons I don't completely -- or even incompletely, that implies some level of understanding -- understand, the Indiand declared this '70s weekend, honoring disco and wearing the same type of uniforms they wore in the '70s; the kind they lost massive numbers of games in.
But for an editor, it gets worse. See the problem here on the scoreboard?
70's weekend? Ummm, no. that's the possessive and this weekend -- try as this team might -- belongs to the, umm, '00s. The proper spelling would be '70s weekend.
I just can't get away from being an editor.
We got to the park early today, about a half hour early. And where on earth was everyone? Maybe this is a true recreation of attendance at a Cleveland Indians ballgame in the '70s.
See that person in the middle? Let's zoom in and see if we figure out who that is.
Oh, right, I forgot, only on "24" can they enhance a satellite photo to zoom in on a person;s hand to determine whether there are 3 -- or is it 4 -- grains of a particular soil under someone's fingernail -- and display it as the concept of digital resolution is for losers.
Anyway, that's Patrick. They were fine seats too, right behind home.
Tonight's Indians game didn't have the Patrick luck. Pity. But I've learned over the years when you pitch poorly and make three errors in an inning to a good team, you're probably going to lose. It's particularly painful when your team takes 4 hours to show its, on this night, ineptitude.
Of course, we visited our 'brick' first and then Patrick tried his hand at seeing how fast he can throw a baseball.
He can throw it 54 mph.
The Cavaliers were playing the Detroit Pistons next door to the Jake for the right to go to the NBA Finals. There were large screens set up on the plaza and a huge crowd was there.
We watched for awhile but with the Cavs leading late, we decided to head back to the hotel in case any "spats" broke out between Detroit and Cleveland fans. Strolling back we saw a couple of Indians ballplayers leaving the park.
Early rising for us tomorrow. We'll check out, head across the street for a day game then come back, pick up our luggage and head to the airport and home.
Back when I was a young buck without a pickup truck -- that would be around 1971 -- my favorite song was "American Pie" by Don McLean, which was his ode to Buddy Holly. I was 17 then.
Fast forward to, I'd guess, 1998. Along with my regular day job, I'd get up each morning around 3 a.m. to deliver papers, to raise money to buy the first components of this airplane I ended up building. Occasionally, one of the kids wanted to go with me, and I'd usually give them the day's cash because it was fun to have them with me.
I remember the feeling one day when I'd parked the car and was walking from house to house on one side of the street and Patrick -- or maybe Sean, but I think it was Patrick -- was doing the other side of the street. It was early, people were asleep, it was dark and from down the street I could hear a kid singing...
Bye, bye Miss American Pie Drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry.
I remember thinking, "wow, that's really weird.
I had the same feeling today visiting the Rock n'Roll Hall of Fame because there were quite a few -- let's call them -- "older" people and their grown children. For them, music serves the same purpose baseball always has for me.
We sat in a theater watching George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh. Patrick knew the songs, but not necessarily the artists. Close enough. Unfortunately, you can't take pictures inside, so I have none to show you.
Around downtown, there are ceramic "guitars" everywhere, similar to the "Peanuts" statues that have dotted St. Paul in recent years, and cows in Chicago.
This is an 'alligator' guitar outside the Hall of Fame.
Here's one Patrick liked dedicated to the computer.
And I like this one so much -- kind of a BMX/skateboard theme -- that I decided to try to "play" it (you'll have to click for the larger image)
Cleveland's waterfront is looking pretty fine these days.
There was a very enlightening comment at the museum I heard in one of the presentations. Rock n' roll reminds you that life is fun. So many people are caught up worrying about how to pay the rent or putting up with a crummy job, and then some kid comes by listening to some music, sloshing through puddles and you remember that life is fun.
I'll have to try to remember that thought when the punk with the big bass in the car drives by at midnight.
I've heard it said that there's nothing quite so thrilling as to be traveling in a foreign country and hear the Star Spangled Banner.
I grew up a Cleveland Indians fan in Massachusetts and many years later I became a Cleveland Indians fan in Minnesota. Let me just suggest that when you talk about a lonely existence, a Cleveland Indians fan in the '60s in Massachusetts qualifies. Heck, at that time it was a lonely existence being a Cleveland Indians fan in Cleveland.
So when you find yourself suddenly surrounded by 41,000 similarly-minded folks, well, it's thrilling; thrilling to have it reaffirmed that you are not walking this planet alone in this particular endeavor.
My youngest, son, Patrick, also became a Cleveland fan. We haven't been to Jacobs Field since 2000. For Christmas this year, my wife and I gave him a brick, which is only slightly better than a lump of coal.
My oldest son got a high-definition TV, and so even though he neve actually said it, I could feel Patrick wondering, "hey, Sean, got an HDTV and I got a brick. What's up with that?"
Except this is a commemorative brick placed in the new Heritage Park inside Jacob's Field -- the home of the Indians. With it went a trip to Cleveland to see Patrick's brick.
Today, Patrick and I flew to Cleveland, to see the brick, and attend games tonight, tomorrow and Sunday against the Detroit Tigers -- a rivalry not unlike the Red Sox and Yankees -- what with Detroit being so close an all.
I'll tell this story chronologically, but suffice it to say, it qualifies for one of the best days I've ever had.
Patrick and I tried to pick the series we'd come to before the season started. We thought about the White Sox on Labor Day, but figured that the Indians might be out of the pennant race by then. So we settled on Detroit since they won the division last year, and yesterday was my birthday and Sunday is his.
I put the trip together and found a hotel, across the street from the Jake. We arrived at 5, changed and headed to the game. This is a picture of the two of us, only I didn't aim the camera right. (Click on any picture for a big copy)
The first stop was the team shop to buy a jersey -- a Grady Sizemore jersey -- for Patrick. Then we found heritage park, which -- like the similar park at Yankee Stadium -- is out in centerfield. Patrick's brick is in the Nap Lajoie section.
I found the brick, but Patrick wouldn't get on the ground next to it and let me take his picture. So I did.
The brick commemorates Patrick's long-standing optimism. He did not get it from my side of the family. But back in 2001 -- or sometime around then, click on the picture to see the exact date -- the Indians were playing Seattle on national TV and were down 12-0 when Carolie and I gave up and went to bed. Patrick stayed up because he had faith in his team. The Indians rallied over the last three innings and as they got closer, he kept running into the bedroom shouting, "Now they're only down 6! Now they're only done 5!" etc. They eventually won 15-14. It was the greatest comeback in the history of Major League Baseball. Now, I don't know how optimistic the most optimistic person in the world is, but I'm going to suggest that thinking your team is about to make the biggest comeback in the history of Major League Baseball is right up there. Remember that because in a minute I'm going to tell you a story about tonight.
A nice woman offered to take our picture, as we told her the story of our trip from Minnesota today. So she took our picture of our feet on Patrick's brick.
And then she took a picture of us.
Everywhere we looked there were Indians fans. Just like us. Cool.
We headed for our seats.
The Indians are in first place -- the latest into the season we've been in first place since 2001. But things got off to a rocky start for our heroes. The Tigers scored two in the first and 1 in the 4th to take a 3-0 lead. All-Star catcher Victor Martinez homered in the 4th to make it 3-1. It's fun to cheer for the Indians and not have people turn around and look at you.
The Detroit-Cleveland rivarly is great fun and there were, as you might suspect, a lot of Tiger fans there. They started chanting "Let's go Tigers..." (same tired old chant like the Red Sox and Yankee fans use). And everyone else would "boo."
Detroit came back with 2 more in the 6th to make it 5-1 and I thought our two game Jacob's Field winning streak would end (Carolie and I brought the kids to a game on the way to Massachusetts in 1994...and Patrick and I came once years ago).
Without much to cheer about, I started playing with my camera and wondering how a picture of the exteemed Mr. Sizemore in centerfield would look if I put the camera up to the new binoculars Carolie bought me for my birthday.
Not too bad.
Anyway, in the bottom of the 6th, the Indians got 4 runs. Jacob's Field was rocking, and the Indians fans turned to the Detroit fans who earlier had earlier been chanting "Let's go Tigers," and started chanting "Cleveland Rocks," after the Drew Carey Show theme.
However, because our bullpen is almost as inept as our manager (he had nobody warming up while Tom Mastny was giving up 3 hits and two walks and every single run of the 4 the Indians had scored moments earlier. It was 9-5 now. But in the bottom of the 8th, Cleveland scored two more to make it 9-7.
Hey, we're still in this thing. Except that our bullpen is almost as inept as our manager and it immediately gave the two runs back. 11-7.
But remember: Patrick is Mr. Lucky.
In the bottom of the 9th. We're down 4, and Grady Sizemore grounds out to cap an awful 0-5 night for the first out.
Casey Blake singles. Then Travis Hafner walks. Victor Martinez hits a ball to left that is going...going...and goes over the wall for a three-run homer (his second homer of the night). We're down now 11-10 and the Jake is rockin'. So is Patrick.
But now there's nobody on, until Jhonny Peralta doubles, bringing Ryan Garko the plate. He whiffs and there are two down.
Detroit closer Todd Jones walks Trot Nixon intentionally and up comes Josh Barfield, a fairly anemic hitter so far. But he hits a line drive to Magglio Ordonez in right. From the upper deck, it looks catchable, but Ordonez doesn't catch it and -- unbelievably -- this game is tied 11-11. Un - freakin' - believable.
David Dellucci takes a called strike, two balls and then singles to centerfield. Trot Nixon scores, the Indians win 12-11, the ballpark explodes, and I'm screaming "I can't believe this." Storybook. Absolutely storybook.
Ten minutes later, everyone is still screaming. And the good part? The show ain't over. In addition to being dollar-hot-dog night, it's also fireworks night, and so they turned off the lights...
And we get a 15-minute fireworks show set to '70s music (It's '70s disco weekend here). (I'll put up a video shortly)
Here's the video (sorry about the view, turn your monitor on its side, I guess)
Tomorrow, we hit the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame and then another night game across the street.
After tonight's game, I rubbed Patrick's head and reminded him he's our lucky charm, because he's the luckiest person I know.
I'm a big fan in the power of the bench. Unfortunately for my airplane-building project, I'm not talking about my workbench. And unfortunately for my youngest son's auto insurance (which I pay), I'm not talking about the judicial bench (my day of RV airplane building last week got eliminated by the need to race around Stillwater, Minnesota, trying to get his motorcycle out of impound after he got stopped for riding it after dark.).
I'm a big fan of the power of the park bench. My family gave it to me a few years ago for my birthday. It's your basic Home Depot-Menard's model. Lots of other people have the same one, but after several years, I notice theirs are all weathered and unused.
Mine, on the other hand, is gorgeous and used all the time. Why just last Sunday, my canopy frame work was cast aside while I dragged it up out of the basement (where it spent the winter), and began sanding and refinishing it, and then spent several days applying several coats of polyurethane, so it can withstand this summer's weather.
See, you flying-RV folks have your "magic carpets." I've got my bench. In a way, we accomplish the same thing. We go places.
As I mentioned last week, I'd be flying by now if I didn't stop so often to look up at planes flying over. It's not just that. I'd be flying by now if I didn't daydream so much.
But I don't feel particularly bad about it because I like daydreaming; certainly more than I like deburring canopy frame rails.
My bench is an integral part of my RV building tool-kit. There it sits on my front lawn (I believe backyard decks and central air conditioning have singlehandedly destroyed American communities). It's there I've sat for hours -- over the life of the project -- studying the plans and reading the manual ... partly to understand what it is I need to do, but partly for the pure joy of reading the manual and studying the plans. It's there I sat with a stack of wing ribs, deburring each one by hand after my old air compressor had broken. (That, by the way, was the low point of my project. I never want to deburr wing ribs again!.) It's there I've sat with large fuselage skins, deburring each hole and sanding the edges smooth.
But, more often than not, it's there that I've daydreamed and watched the parade overhead. I live in a really great spot for airplane watchers. Lake Elmo (21D) is 7 miles to my north. South St. Paul (SS)) is 6 miles to my south, and St. Paul Downtown (STO) is 8 miles to my west. And overhead, the MSP Class B begins at 1,400 AGL, so everyone is scrunching down underneath.
Usually I see Cubs and Cessnas from the flight schools. Occasionally -- but not occasionally enough -- an RV will zip by and I'm reminded again what a little hotrod the things are. They're unmistakeable when they fly over because I react the same way when a Harley drives by with that deep-throated engine. Or when the "cool kids" drove by in high school -- the football players on their way to the ice cream shop with the cheerleaders.
When you're flying an RV -- take it from those of us on our benches -- you're one of the cool kids.
In the gentle breeze of a prevailing wind and the welcome shade of my ash tree (now being decimated by some varmit insect that's sweeping the country), I dream about where I'll go in my RV after it finishes building itself -- apparently -- in my garage.
Fortunately, I've had some assistance in this area. I'll sit on my bench and leaf through old issues of Pilot Getaways Magazine. A few years ago, it had an article about the little airport at Hampton Beach, N.H. Some of my most joyous moments as a kid were spent on Plum Island in Massachusetts. We'd go over to Hampton Beach a lot. Yes, that's where I want to go. I want to fly my RV over the beach I played on as a kid, and then land my RV at that fantastic little strip, and have lunch at the airport cafe.
Since my family is mostly in New England, I dream a lot about flying back East. I've printed out some RVers' trips in that area and sat on my bench. Dreaming. Dan Checkoway's flight around New England a few years ago was ... well... the stuff dreams are made of, I tell you.
Yes, I'd like to fly over places I'm familiar with. But I also dream of going to places I've never been before. Paul and Victoria Rosales' trip reports are fabulous for this, and my yearning for more of their work was answered this week when I noticed they've added a new trip -- to the Turks and Caicos Islands. Yes, that's a trip I've long dreamed about.
In fact, years ago -- before I had my pilot's certificate -- I was a big Microsoft Flight Simulator fan. We had a group on the old CompuServe (when CompuServe was today's Internet and Web). Our group would fly the route in real-time and as we arrived in Puerto Rico, we called in to connect to CI$ (as it was then known), and, using some function available in MSFS at the time, allowed the "controller" to "see" my plane on approach. After 18 hours of "flying" over several days, though, I accidentally spilled my beer at my desk in my Berkshires hideaway and as I raced to clean it up, I hit my joy stick and I crashed for all to see.
When my RV and I are making this trip for real, it'll be hard not to be thinking of that moment. Memo to self: When landing in my RV, don't spill the beer.
I've never traveled much in the southwest -- or even the far west, for that matter. So Larry Pardue's travel stories fill in the gap there. In fact, this week, I found a recent one from the Carlsbad RV-6 driver. Sitting on my bench in "flyover country," flat and plowed and all, it's hard to imagine the earth is so different, just a few hours -- as the RV flies -- from here.
These are all places I hope to see someday. But from the sanctity of my bench (and thanks to WiFi) , I've been to places I'll never actually get to. The west coast of South Africa, and Botswana come to mind.
Occasionally, my daydreaming is interrupted by a screaming Lear heading East out of St. Paul. Where are they going, I wonder? So I fire up the laptop and check. I imagine who they are, and why they're going.
I can't ever remember watching an airplane flying overhead and thinking -- sometimes out loud -- "there's a guy having a good day."
If I were ever to start another RV online project -- and I don't intend to -- I'd build a whole site of nothing but RV travel stories. No forums, no threads about primers, no questions about how to get part A to fit into part B... just flying stories; dream-makers, if you will.
To be sure, my bench is for more than just flying-related dreaming. I've sat there at midnight, some summer nights, after my children left home, wondering how they would fare. I've watched birds tend their young and wonder if they think about them and their futures the way humans do. I've looked at Monarch butterflies, and rabbits, and all other things of nature and thought about time. If there isn't a higher power, my question goes, then when did time "start"? Who started it? And why is everything subject to it? Who or what started the clock and why have a clock at all?
As builders, we are told -- and wisely so, I guess -- to "get back out there and pound those rivets." But I've never looked upon my project as something that had to be finished by a date certain; I've got enough of those projects. I call them "work." My RV project is a process, and I value everything that surrounds it.
Even if it's sitting on the bench, doing nothing but day-dreaming.
Notes: I'll be in Cleveland next weekend -- June 1,2, & 3 -- to watch the Indians play the Tigers. If there are any RVers in the area who'd like to get together, I've got an extra ticket for each game. Just let me know, and it's yours.
I was going to sit down this morning and write a hysterical piece about the stuff kids bring home for Mother's Day. But I ran out of time. Maybe tomorrow. In the meantime, I need your Mother's Day stories... either as a recipient or giver, preferably at a young age.
Answer in the comments section and I'll take it from there.
(This originally was published on Gather.com last week)
If you read enough of my essays, not just here but in other places where I ply my trade these days, you've probably figured out that I'm pretty much all about fathers, specifically the two I know best -- me... and my father. Though I swing mostly to the left-center politically, I'm pretty conservative when it comes to the role of fathers, mostly because I'm the son of a Greatest Generation father. Maybe you know one. They were dashing young men who we knew only as old men (fathers are always old to us, even when they're really young), who -- sometime long ago -- went willingly off to a brutal war, won it, then came home to start businesses and families, and spend the rest of their lives saying very little about what they did in the war, while teaching their sons how to be fathers. Don't get me wrong, I'm not into hero worship. They had plenty of warts, as we all do.
This week, we rented Flags of our Fathers at our house, so you'll have to forgive me a bit for what I'm about to put you through. It made an impression, especially the end when the father lay dying, wishing to his son that he'd been a better father. Funny, no matter how great the father, he always thinks he could have or should have been better at it.
Mine was a father who worked. Hard. He had five kids to feed. When I was very young, he started a grocery store in Medfield, Massachusetts, which was about 50 miles from where our house was. So he often stayed over at the store, or at least came home way after my bedtime. Occasionally, the family would help out on Sundays (when stores were still closed). My twin brother and I were too young, so my even-harder-working-mom would make a little bed for us on the checkout belt, and there we slept while the family worked.
Later, he was in the insurance business, which meant he had appointments with people in the evening. He'd come home late, usually too late for me.
His was a generation that showed their love to their families by taking care of them, and exchanging their youth and life's energy, for a chance for their children to have a better life. It fell to the kids of this generation to understand the "code" that fathers speak.
As young men, we charged into our parenting years, determined to be better parents than the ones we had. Within a few years, if not months, we caught ourselves sounding like our parents, and when we finally gave in to the obvious, we acknowledged that we are our fathers. Over more time, we warmed to the honor of that fact.
When I was home to visit my mother a few months ago, I leafed through -- again -- a diary he kept during World War II. He was a corpsman, and he took care of the flyboys who came back to England from missions over Germany. He could tell how the war was going, he wrote, by the condition of the men coming back. He wrote that a man, a boy really, from California, was doing better since the transfusion my Dad gave him the night before. My Dad never spoke of such things.
Every day I breathe as a father, I begin to understand more what my father felt toward his children, something I couldn't possibly understand in my youth and ignorance. It is a monumental tragedy of life, however, that we cannot recognize ourselves in our fathers until comparatively late in life.
We cannot begin to understand the sacrifices our parents make on our behalf, not to mention their incredible love for us, until we are faced with the daily choices between personal gratification, and the sacrifices being a father demands. We live in a material world, of course, and that's not a bad thing, until we fail to recognize that our "toys" in life can wait for our time and attention.
Some things in life can't.
This, of course, has been a difficult week for our country, and for any parent. The waste of talent that could -- and probably would -- change the world for the better is incalculable. The tortured soul that others might see only as evil, I see as a reminder that the brain is the most mysterious and vulnerable part of a body, capable of breaking, just as any limb, and that it's time for us to approach this form of illness in a more intelligent way.
Though, I'm talking about what happened in Virginia this week. I'm also talking about what happened in the homes where a father walked away, leaving wives and children to fend for themselves. I'm talking about what happened in, sadly, every other city and town in America, where fathers missed a T-ball game, a band concert, a quiet moment with a struggling son, in exchange for a few more minutes at work, chasing something that ultimately has no value to creating a life well-lived. I'm talking about the increasing disconnect between fathers and their children, which makes it more difficult to detect that early sign of mental illness, until it's too late.
Today, we wish we had recognized the signs of mental illness in one person, even as we continue to ignore those signs in people around us.
Today I am watching video of what's being called "a shooter's manifesto," which has made it easier for us to blame evil, and find a degree of rationality, in an individual who no longer had the capacity for rational thought. I fear this makes it easier for us to ignore our failures -- our failure to reach out with help, and caring, and love while it can still make a difference.
This is a day that makes me look away from the television, and glance in the mirror. This is the kind of week when I'm reminded that at our age, and with our role, we are the fathers of our country.
This is the kind of week when I wish we were better at it.
This weekend I started the gardening and lawn care work. Nothing serious. Just raking. I'm starting to reach the stage where I wonder what I really get out of doing the same thing over and over again? It used to be I'd get a bit of satisfaction from vacuuming the house on Saturday and emptying the bagless filter. I could see the product of my work: lots of compressed dust and dog hair. My victory against the unseen germs! But now I take it out and wonder what's the difference? The dust and dog hair will be back by next Saturday. Who will ever know I've been here if all I do is vacuum and, in this case, rake? Nobody ever comes over to see it anyway.
No matter how nice the gardens end up looking -- or not -- it'll all be covered by snow again next year.
So this is always a good time to head to one of my favorite spots: the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum on the other side of the Twin Cities. If ever decide that my ashes shouldn't be scattered around Home Depot, the Arboretum would be my backup.
It was sunny and quite warm today so Carolie headed over, anxious to do a little birdwatching. But by the time we got there, rain and thunder had moved in, so we walked around in the rain, not quite as smart, I guess as the birds, who headed for cover and silence.
The flowers and shrubs there are a little ahead of me. My forsythia bushes are in full blossom, theirs are past. Their daffodils are out, mine are barely up.
I like theirs better. As always, click the image for a bigger view.
We found this guy -- or maybe it's a woman flower, I forget -- around some ground cover. We have no clue what it is, but it's cool.
Every year, the Arboretum has a "theme" of color throughout the zillions of acres. Last year I think it was reds and oranges, the year before that red, white, & blue. This year it's whites and yellows.
We're going to go back in a few weeks. By then, hundreds of Lady Slippers should be out.
I also like the Arboretum because of all the benches around the property. I love benches. I thought it would be cool to get one to honor my mother and father. But today I found out you can do that -- for $10,000. I don't like benches that much.
Like just about every other major issue facing America, I am -- apparently -- the only resident of the U.S. turf that is conflicted on the issue of Don Imus.
This morning I'm watching the usual suspects claiming victory after CBS fired the longtime broadcaster yesterday for calling the Rutgers women's basketball team, well, you know what he called the women's basketball team.
CBS, apparently woke up, and realized at some point -- probably around the time Imus' advertisers were jumping ship -- that they were shocked -- shocked -- that Imus apparently offends people.
There is no point in discussing whether Imus' comments were offensive. They were. Case and argument closed.
My discomfort, however, has to do with how we react and what we demand from the offensive in our society. And it is here that I am conflicted. I don't think the offensive among us should continue to be offensive, especially if they have a following of idiots, all willing to join the Sacred Army of the Offensive.
But I don't necessarily think they should be muzzled either. And that's the kneejerk reaction, muzzle them. A few months ago, a former NBA basketball player said he hated gay people. The reaction was swift and predictable, until -- days later -- the former player said he was sorry and apologized, leaving those of us who aren't keeping score to ask, "what are you apologizing for?"
In these situations, it's the one question the media doesn't immediately ask, which is too bad because it's the only answer that really matters. Are you apologizing for saying, in the above example, that you hate gay people. Or are you apologizing because you hate gay people?
I have always thought that racism is weakest when it's exposed. And it is at its most powerful when it goes underground.
I fear that we in the name of exposing racism and sexism, we are giving it a power it does not deserve, and I have no clue what to do about that.
If I were ever to do the whole fatherhood thing again -- and for the record, I'm not -- I would learn to relax; possibly even exhale on occasion.
Once, around the stage between the point when I was a hero to myr kids and the point when they hated me for ruining their lives, my kids became addicted to their computers. My twin brother, Bill, gave us all laptop computers for Christmas one year and thus began my short stay as the network administrator for Company Collins.
Once a kid has a computer, they can never be without a computer again -- ever. So when the computers reached their life's end, they had to be replaced. But not before several holes were punched in the drywall, collateral damage of an unanswered "why won't my computer work?" question.
There was a period right around then when the telephone was ringing constantly. Although I found it mildly irritating, it also comforted me to know that other kids were interested in socializing with mine, and I'd come to expect not being able to get a clean line for calls at that stage of their lives anyway.
And one day, the telephone stopped ringing.
This was before either of them had cellphones, so I figured something was up; perhaps they'd been ostracized and, what with me being me and all, I began to fret that my children would end up in their rooms, alone, forever.
They spent more and more time on their PCs, coming out occassionally for food and drink, and then going right back, often bringing their food back in with them.
I'd been told to expect that around 15 years old, your kids go into their rooms, and come out a few years later to tell you where they intended to go to college. But it was no solace to me. My kids were in there, alone, while all of their friends, no doubt, were down at Starbucks or Best Buy or wherever it is that kids hang out these days. Part of me wanted to say, "why don't you go out drinking with your friends and speed down the road without seatbelts on like all the other kids?" But that would've involved communication with them.
I'd wake up at 3 in the morning and find both kids asleep, their PCs still on and Warcraft or some other game that was destroying their brains still running on their computers.
One night, it got to be too much. Around 1 in the morning, I told them both to "get off the computer" and go to bed. Then, in my pajamas, I went out into the cold night, around the side of the house, and unplugged the cable connection to the house. I went back to bed, feeling pretty good that I'd liberated the family.
My son, Sean, figured out what was going on in about 5 minutes, and went outside and hooked us back up.
So I did what any baby-boom father would do. I gave up, resigned myself to having lost my children's mind to the evil of the computer, and started figuring out how to plan my work schedule around visiting days at state prison.
See here's the thing: We have a picture of how our children are going to grow up and, usually, it looks a lot like the way we did. And when they deviate from that picture, we fret and worry and assume the worst. Not for a moment do we stop to consider that there are usually several routes to the same destination.
My kids didn't come out of their room at 18 and announce they were going to college. One of them didn't even graduate high school when I thought he would. And neither of them went off to the big university. Neither did they go to state prison or end up lonely and addicted in their parents' home. In fact, both moved out and onto their own by the time they were 18.
Here's what was happening: The phone didn't ring because kids don't use land-line phones anymore. Other kids weren't at Starbucks or Best Buy or -- with a few exceptions -- driving drunk down Highway 19 without their seat belts on. They were in their bedrooms on their computers, talking to each other with Instant Messages. Constantly. They were doing all of this while playing Warcraft, and browsing the Internet. They were socializing in the way kids socialize today and while it's not my cup of tea, it's not the evil the professionals have made it out to be.
About the time holes stopped appearing in my oldest son's room, he was developing an ability to troubleshoot computers, the little box that literally had become his lifeline. In fact, he started building his own. And he had more friends around the world than he'd ever had in Woodbury. My other son, two years younger, had followed his brother into whatever far off cyberland everyone was hanging out in and, suddenly, the two siblings that used to try to kill each other, were relating and strategizing and talking in a way I'd never seen before; a good way.
The same thing happened a few weeks ago, we were all back in the Berkshires for my mother-in-law's 80th birthday and at dinner, all the cousins who no longer had much in common, suddenly discovered that each of them "played" Warcraft and the restaurant came alive with chatter and laughter, as everyone younger than 40 spoke a language I couldn't understand.(Photo is of that group) But they all reconnected and rebonded, in a way I hadn't seen in 15 years.
Late last week, my employer, offered my oldest son, a full-time job in the information technology department, with full benefits and a salary for a 21-year-old that is higher than what the same company paid me 15 years ago at age 38. And it comes with a motivation to get back into college too.
My youngest son? He's just been accepted to the ambulance squad position for Allina Health Systems, full pay and benefits, and assistance getting his paramedic credentials, which is exactly how he'd dreamed it would be.
They're now off the grid.
As with that moment when you teach your kids to ride a bike, you hold it for them while they pedal, and then you let go and run alongside, and, finally, they pedal faster than you can run, and you stop and stand in the middle of the road, while they pedal down the street, and you realize that things will never be the same.
This is a good thing -- certainly a normal thing -- and yet you hold your breath until that moment, 15 or 20 years later, when you can finally allow yourself to exhale, not immediately acknowledging the irony that when you want to tell your friends about it, you head for a quiet room, and a computer.
I was supposed to be on Fox News Channel's "Fox and Friends" on Sunday morning. I didn't tell too many people because these sorts of things, especially given the topic I was to discuss, often get bumped. And it did.
That's the problem with being booked into the "kicker" segment -- the short segment just before the end of the show, usually about something witty and/or clever.
I'm supposed to talk about the Fantasy Legislature application we came up with (if you're not familiar with it, Google "Fantasy Legislature" and then click the "news" results and you'll see.
Fox says they'll want me on next Sunday at the same time, but that will probably get bumped too.
This was written for a column on the RV Builder's Hotline
A week ago, I was cutting the aluminum stock that forms the rear spar doubler on my RV-7A's right wing (I had messed up the original). I was using my father's old Delta bandsaw. When I finished, I looked at the piece and said, "thanks, Dad." See, although my father died in 2004, he's helping me build this airplane.
Last summer, I cleaned out -- or started to -- the workshop in the barn that my Dad used for years and even though I've got a cheap old Harbor Freight bandsaw, his Delta bandsaw was still new enough, and well-made enough, that I figured I'd drive it back to Minnesota, clean it up, put a new blade on it, and make it part of the airplane factory in my garage.
It's only a 9" bandsaw -- less than the Harbor Freight model -- and I've only been able to find a 1/8" width blade for it, one that will cut aluminum -- not as sturdy as the 1/4" Harbor Freight blade -- but there's a big difference between the cheap model and the Delta: The Delta was his. And so was the tap-and-die set I used to make the flap pushrods. And so I like to think that my Dad made the flap pushrods and my Dad made the trim on the rear spar and to the extent I'm not the greatest builder in the world but I want to be, well, that was my Dad's handiwork too.The sign in my workshop that says, "you're only a failure if you don't try," once hung in his.
My plane's registration number will be N614EF, and while you might think that's 6-1-4-echo-foxtrot, it's really June 14, Eileen and Fred. The day they were married. I figure it's their airplane too. They helped build it, so their "day" should be on it.
In the years before he died, he didn't get around too much, but I'd talk to him from time to time on the phone and when the subject came to building an airplane, he'd always say, "well, just make sure you're careful."
If you have a father from the Greatest Generation, you learn to speak "Dad talk." You know that line in the Dixie Chicks song where the daughter is leaving home and as she's pulling out, Dad says "check the oil."? That's Dad talk. And it doesn't mean "check the oil," any more than "Gee, the Patriots didn't play too well today" in our conversations meant something about football.
These are the connections that I find all over Planet RV. And while folks may not be saying it; they're "speaking it" just the same. Sons aren't saying to Dad or Mom , necessarily, "this plane belongs to you." Well, at least they're not saying it with words. But they're saying it nonetheless. Sometimes it's an N number, sometimes it's just a ride in an airplane. But they're saying it.
Saturday morning is my favorite day of the week, and not just because it's the time when I realize I don't have to get up and go to work (when you're an online editor for a company whose core media is radio, you're always at work).
Nope Saturday is the morning I get to sit around and read my e-mail. The pressure of scrounging up something to stick in the Hotline (which is how most of my mornings begin) is gone, the issue has been sent out, and the time is all mine.
And once I get through all the spam, there's usually a couple of personal e-mails from RV friends, most of whom I haven't met personally.
Now, you've probably realized by now that this particular column each week isn't about how to build an RV; I focus mostly on the personal connections we have because of these projects, either to the projects themselves, each other, or someone else. This week is no different.
Last Thursday night, I got a note from Walter Tondu, who has a terrific Web site for RV builders , indicating that he'd signed up his father, Larry, to receive the Hotline. My mind immediately snapped back to one of my favorite RV-themed videos. The one where Walter -- and his Dad -- moved his project to the airport.
It's my favorite video, not so much because of the process of moving the plane, but because there was a segment in there featuring Larry. Now maybe it's because I'm a proud father, or because I like to think I once had one, but I easily detected the face of a proud dad along with one very infectious laugh, and an obvious great sense of humor.
"I'm the proud one," Walter said about his Dad when I told him that. And, darned, if that isn't obvious when he flew his plane home to Michigan last year after Oshkosh.
Oh, there's more. This week, I was patrolling the various EAA chapter sites and came across the nifty shot you see over on the left. It's a photo of Mark Navratil and his Dad. They can wear the sunglasses, but you can't mask the pride. This shot, according to the EAA newsletter, won in the General Aviation category of the Iowa Department of Transportation photo contest.
Although we don't seem to be a bunch that talks about these things much, there seems to be a lot of "Dad" in a lot of RVers and aviators. And many times, a lot of moms too.
A few years ago, my Mom came out to visit. She's 85 years old now, and I was renting a Piper Warrior. That's the one-door-and-you-have-to-walk-up-on-the-wing Piper Warrior. My mom was in no condition to walk up the wing, but there was no way she was missing her first-ever ride in a small airplane, especially one piloted by her baby boy. So she sat on the wing and pushed herself up and into the cabin.
We launched for a flight over fly-over country and she told me how, when she was a girl, she wanted to grow up and be Amelia Earhart.
"The plane's yours," I said, and an old lady got a chance to live a dream of flying a plane for a few seconds, and a middle-aged man finally figured out where his love of flying came from.
Then there's Gerry Humphreys of Limerick, Ireland. He had his first flight in his RV-7 on Tuesday. He sent me the picture you see here. Aside from the fact his family appears to be postcard perfect, check out the look on his Mum's face. She's holding the bottle of champagne. Isn't that priceless?
And so, being a news guy, I had to poke into this a little bit more, and asked Gerry to tell me about her.
"My mum is a retired anaesthetist, has has been living with my obsession with flying since shortly after I was born when my Dad, an ex-RAF WWII era fighter pilot, 'flew' me around the room in his arms," Gerry wrote. "He left flying in the late '50s and started farming when his uncle left him the farm here in Limerick, about 18 miles East of Shannon airport in South West Ireland."
"I only discovered he was a pilot when I was about 7 and found some old photos in a drawer. He never talked much about flying, but I made up for him! I dreamt about flying and aeroplanes when I should probably have been dreaming about girls, and started building models as soon as I could. Mum and Dad always encouraged me and over the years paid for more than their fair share of engines, radio gear, fuel etc."
"They were both proud when I got a scholarship from the RAF in my last year of studying Aeronautical engineering at Queens University in Belfast. I spent 20 years in the RAF mostly flying Harriers and retired home to the farm when we discovered my dad had cancer and 6 months to live. That was in 1997, and since then I have been farming organic beef cattle and found a way to stay flying with the local flying club at Coonagh, noteworthy as probably the shortest, narrow licensed strip where prople learn to fly in Europe (400 x 9 m)."
"I met my wife Vicky in the RAF, so she is used to aircraft, in fact I ejected from a Harrier the day after we got engaged; I was supposed to be leading a 4 aircraft formation over her station and did not show up. I had a generator failure followed by engine failure on short finals at Yeovilton down the road. I had a 0.4 sec parachute ride, fortunately no-one was injured and they found a mechanical fault next day."
"We are very lucky to live here on the farm, lots of space, and of course, an airstrip, which was one of my first projects when I took over the helm. I started flying professionally for a local company www.pacnetair.com and after the strip was complete the obvious next step was to build my own aircraft. The RV7 was the obvious choice, and so the last few years have seen me with plenty to do in my spare time!
We are always happy to see visitors, so drop by if you are in this part of the world!"
Yep, that's a mighty fine airplane that your Dad, and Mum, and wife, and children built, Gerry.
I recall a thread on VAF a year or so ago where someone maintained you have to be a "special" person to build an RV. I thought it was enough to scare off a newbie who thought there was something magic about this process, and that much of the character -- persistence, patience etc. -- is something that we can mostly acquire through the building process.
But I suppose, looking back, there are obvious traits in an RV builder -- they come from a solid line of hearty, airplane-building-character stock. Sure, a lot of what we know once we build these things we acquired in the process. Sometimes it's a result of some fancy book learnin'. But all of the time we can thank the gene pool and some people who served as role models.
We build these planes ourselves. But we never build them alone.
One of the things I like to do in my real job is to figure out how people consume information vs. how we -- the media -- give it to people. The two are quite often not the same. Surely the recent decline of the newspaper industry has told us that.
In the '80s, I used to preach the downfall of commercial radio news to various broadcast groups with the theme, "who killed radio news? Radio newspeople." Since I was speaking to radio newspeople, that usually didn't go over big. And I'd love to tell them all "I told you so," except they're, you know, extinct. I imagine 20 years from now, nobody will be able to gloat to a polar bear, "you know, you probably shouldn't have gotten use to living on an ice flow." But I digress.
If you want to see people roll their eyes in a newsroom, propose this idea: Fantasy Legislature. It's based on the same principle as fantasy baseball and fantasy football. People build teams of real legislators and earn points from what they really do.
This was tried last year with Fantasy Congress, but I didn't really like the interface. And it also allowed people in the same league to "own" the same lawmaker. That's dumb. Plus it doesn't do what I think Fantasy Legislature could do. And that is, give people actual news content, but in the form of a game, because that's how people are consuming information now and the age of radio newscasts pontificating and pronouncing as if it was a tablet from Moses is over. (Shhhhhhh!)
I think it was a good idea. Newspeople didn't much care for it, but that's only because part of a newsroom's nature is to chisel tablets. But the farther you go from the core of the newsroom... the more enthusiasm within my core media company developed. That should tell us all something.
Maybe that's changing, because apparently the idea has gotten some notice.
As I continue to get use to life in an empty nest, I'm trying to figure out something. Does everything seem perfect with my kids because everything is perfect (You have to realize that "perfect" has a very broad and inclusive definition here.)? Or does everything seem perfect -- comparatively speaking -- because I just don't see them every day the way I used to?
You know the old saying, "I don't want to know" when someone tries to tell you something you don't want to hear? Or "ignorance is bliss." I don't know if I'm ignorant or not but if I am, I kind of wish I were ignorant a long time ago.
It's gotten pretty busy at work, what with the Legislature starting again and me trying to get a new application (Fantasy Legislature!) off the ground. So I haven't even had time to sit and look through the Christmas pictures. Until tonight.
The picture above is now one of my favorites because what you have there appears to be pure joy. Sean and Patrick have given Carolie an angel for the top of the tree.
The angel at the top of the tree has a long history in the Collins household. When I was growing up, we had this plastic, but lighted angel with real angel hair. The problem is, she looked kind of slutty. And as time went on, she looked even worse. She became known as the "whorey angel." We have no idea where she is now.
So we have a new one here now and I just checked. She has her eyes closed and looks very peaceful and happy; not like she's hoping to get lucky.
I ordered my RV-7A slow-build kit in the spring of 2001. Like many airplane builders, I wasn't sure I had the skills to build an airplane. I wasn't sure I had the money either. As I get started on the finishing kit five -- almost six -- years later, I'm still not sure where the dough is going to come from for my pay-as-I-go project. It's a balancing act to make sure there's not more "go" than "pay." But so far, so good, so slow.
What intrigues me about the slowness of the project is how many life forms it has taken on. I talked a few weeks ago about how the project is building me too, but the project has also been quite transformative.
When I first contemplated a homebuilt, I thought it would be a great way for my kids to be involved in something with me. At the time, they were 15 and 12 and, looking back, I probably should've started it earlier. But, of course, there wasn't the money to do so because, among other reasons, there were two kids who were 15 and 12.
Long-term, I viewed an airplane as the way to visit the kids when they went off to college in the far-flung corners of the universe. I saw the plane as the magic carpet for Dad.
The kids were as excited as I was when the tail kit arrived. They enjoyed helping to unpack everything. But as I started the project, it was rare to find more than one of us in the garage. The 12-year-old made a few more appearances during the original construction of the "H" jig to build the HS (at that time), probably because 12-year-olds are more "Dad-friendly" than 15-year-olds, who are starting to discover girls, TV, sleeping late, videogames, and one-word answers to any conversation the old man should initiate.
So the project became an occasional solo act. By the time the wings came along, things had changed. We realized one of my sons had some special needs at the time and it was a difficult time for all of us. The annual trip to Oshkosh with him, and his occasional bit of help on the plane turned the project into "therapy" for a short time, and between it and me, the strings that connect a father and son, though frayed, never broke. Never.
When things got worse, however, enthusiasm for the project waned because life was getting in the way. It's hard to be excited about flying, when your child is in pain on a near daily basis. And so, in a fit of my own desperation, the project was put up for sale. Fortunately, it didn't sell and I listened to someone on a bulletin board who said, "just roll it into the corner." Since it was a pay-as-you-go project, leaving it alone for awhile didn't cost me anything. And so, my project became an abandoned project.
As a few months went by, the ups-and-downs of family life started to stabilize a bit and work resumed on the project. From time to time, my youngest boy, then 15, helped me buck the rivets on wing skins. And my oldest son would take a crack at it too, and proved quite good at it.
I started treasuring more, those times. I started treasuring more, the dings or dents that they helped me make in my wings (OK, I made most of them by myself!). When they would help me with a particular section, I would have them "autograph" the inside of the part with a Sharpie pen. I have quite a few autographs and messages that will be there forever. I'll never erase them. And so now, my project was a father's scrapbook.
Just this morning I was downstairs finishing up putting some nutplates on the wing skin (where the fairing attaches) and I started looking over those wings that have sat in the family room for the last 3 years. I cringed at one bad rivet on the rear spar doubler, and then started looking inside the skins and finding the messages from both kids on the days they helped shoot some rivets. "World's best flush rivet," one said. Another just said, "Sean," in his barely-legible signature that didn't mask his pride at mastering something. Anything. Something propelled him on his road to adulthood, past the minefields of adolescence. I think a few well-shot rivets deserve credit.
When the fuselage kit arrived, both of my lads were becoming young men -- fine young men. I realized as I looked back on the project, that there's a parallel between building an airplane and raising children. Plenty of people tell you it can be done with patience and a lot of money. That you'll start out trying to get the hang of it, make your share of mistakes, but pressing on and doing the best you can, you'll get better at it. And by the time the finishing kit arrives, you'll realize you were better at it than you sometimes thought, often wishing that you could go back and do the parts again, armed with the knowledge you didn't have before. Sometimes you'll look at other builder's projects and wonder why theirs are so perfect to the naked eye, but then they note that they made mistakes too, and you feel better. Your project is another of your children.
And then the first flight comes and your project is a finished airplane flying on its own power, and you burst with pride -- and maybe some tears -- at your accomplishment and the beauty of your project. The folks who said, "it'll get better" when you were folding over rivets, were right. It does. It gets darned near perfect and the occasional poorly-executed task in the past seems insignificant, no matter how much sleep it caused you to lose at the time.
My sons are out of the house now. They're flying on their own. My oldest son, now 21, isn't pounding rivets with me anymore, but he is working with me at my place of business, and it's been a great time. My youngest son, 18 and counting, shares an apartment with the brother he used to battle on a daily basis, and is Minnesota's youngest EMT, working on becoming an advanced EMT and paramedic. He's going to school and working full-time. I didn't build them by myself, but I did some of it.
And so now my airplane project is my youngest child; keeping the old man company and reminding me on a daily basis that when I'm gone, it, the dings, the dents, the autographs, and the eventual flying magic carpet, will remind someone that I was once here. Doing the best I could, making my share of mistakes, and loving every minute of it.
I dream of the day my project will be fully grown, and we can go flying with its siblings.
I'm late getting to this but when MPR did its election-night party in November, a talented gentleman named Bo Hakala produced three segments on how blogs have changed the way we cover politics (yeah, I know, the header says I don't cover politics here.).
I wasn't aware they'd been subsequently posted online but here they are. I'm discussing Polinaut, which I started last December, and how, ummm, it was accepted -- or not -- by a mainstream newsroom.
My wife and I have a lot of stuff; we don't need any more stuff. So this year we're not buying a bunch of Christmas presents for each other. And the kids are grown now, so for the most part they'll get one big present each. And my siblings and I have never exchanged Christmas presents. So our stress when it comes to shopping is at a very low level.
Instead, this year, we're buying as much stuff as we can for the kids in pediatric mental health facilities. You know, the places where the athletes with TV cameras in tow rarely visit. We're also buying Christmas presents for a man and his little girl that my wife knows that barely has enough money to keep the lights on.
Every year, we've both always taken a day off from work and gone shopping at the Mall of America, mostly because we like to watch people, and it's usually a nice time with a relaxing lunch to boot. This year was no exception.
At every turn there was a good memory. One time we took my mother and father there. Dad was in a wheelchair and he'd wave his cane (jokingly) to clear people out of the way.
Today, we stopped to watch some kids in a band set up and play. I like kids in bands. Don't ask me why; I was never in one. But I do remember the first time I saw my son, Sean, play at one of those elementary school band nights. He played the trombone and, I guess, he played it well, even though I don't recall hearing him practice. But the particular night I went -- it might've been 5th grade or 6th grade -- it was the first time I saw my son as someone other than my son. It was the first time I recall seeing him master something I never mastered and realized this kid really was his own person.
The same is true for Patrick. He played the trumpet, although -- again -- I never heard him practice. Now, you have to understand elementary school bands. First, they have too many clarinets and, second, because they have drums... everything they do has to have drums in it. So if they did Beethoven's 5th... it always comes out as Beethoven's 5th march.
And you can also sort of hear the kids saying "1-2-3-4-" in their heads as they played. Patrick was different. He grooved on the trumpet thing. He'd swing his head back and forth, the way a trumpet player should. For all I know, he couldn't play a lick. But it doens't matter. Band is like golf. It's not important to be good; it's only important to look good.
That's what I was thinking about as I watched the kids get ready. And then they played the theme from the Nutcracker and Carolie remembered stuff too. One time she was decorating a tree at home and listening to the Nutcracker CD. Carolie being, well, Carolie, she started dancing as if she were a ballerina. Patrick, quite young at this age, was astonished. "How do you know all the steps?" he gasped.
"Dare me to start dancing," she said to me today when the kids started playing.
"Yeah," I said.
So she did. She walked up to the front of the atrium hall where a huge Christmas tree was and started the whole "ballerina" thing. I was laughing so hard I couldn't get my camera to work right (picture is a re-enactment). And because we were laughing so hard, we had to excuse ourselves from the concert and continue our shopping.
There are times, I guess, when we're embarrassed by our children. I know when my oldest son was very young and learning how to talk, my wife was embarrassed because he couldn't say "truck" quite right and he'd take him with her to the town square Post Office, which, unfortunately, has a fire station next to it. When the fire truck would go by, Sean would point and say "fire truck," only it was one syllable and didn't sound like truck.
Then there are times when you want to scream, "this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased."
Such a moment occurred just a few minutes ago.
I work for a large corporation; a corporation which pays its employees well and gives them all the benefits they can eat. This afternoon an ice cream social was held for the company's annual giving campaign; basically, throw some money out of your paycheck each week to a charity, such as a homeless shelter, or a food shelf, or a community health organization.
I was not quite surprised to find a near-empty reception area, but I was delighted to see my son, Sean, eating some ice cream, and filling out a form to contribute some of his money.
Sean is an intern here, gets no benefits, is not well paid (but he's not complaining), and, like any kid just out on his own, there's usually too much month and not enough money. And yet, there he was, giving it away.
"You make me proud," I said to him, reminding him that karma will surely come into play.
Of course he was reminded that when he gave up his place in a line for concert tickets because there was only one left and a girl really wanted to see the act, the ticket-seller told him he will be rewarded via karma.
"I went back to my car and it was towed away," he reminded me.
"He didn't say you'd be rewarded today," I said, even though I was.
Bob worked for Minnesota Public Radio for 27 years, until his retirement in 2019. He now lives to give baseballs to kids as an usher at Target Field, works on an airplane he is building, and a camper he bought for Oshkosh.
It's my favorite video, not so much because of the process of moving the plane, but because there was a segment in there featuring Larry. Now maybe it's because I'm a proud father, or because I like to think I once had one, but I easily detected the face of a proud dad along with one very infectious laugh, and an obvious great sense of humor.
Oh, there's more. This week, I was patrolling the various EAA chapter sites and came across the nifty shot you see over on the left. It's a photo of Mark Navratil and his Dad. They can wear the sunglasses, but you can't mask the pride. This shot, according to the EAA newsletter, won in the General Aviation category of the Iowa Department of Transportation photo contest.
