Just For the Fun of It
MONDAY. RAINING. I'm glad. Can't go flying. So I don't have to choose between you guys and self-indulgence. And I can avoid a head-to-head with a messed-up fuel tank (the filler gadget is defective!) in the new Eagle. What will I write about? I am thinking of farmers and levers-and the radio is playing Sentimental Journey, which Bucky Taylor sang endlessly as we gallivanted in a Super Cruiser. A "30" appears-writer's code for "end." Having tossed its rider, my Hermes heads for the barn and the oats. Sentences appear like the printout of some faraway computer that pleaded insanity.
Just For the Fun of It
THINGS ARE FUNKY on the Funny Farm. We moved three houses down the block. The Oregon Trail should be so long. The slumbering cat, the source of my aerodynamic insights, has declared the desk off limits. The workshop is a shambles. I am grounded. It is 97º again. Is the flying season that I enjoy over before it began? The desk reminds me of Louis Garami's workbench. Louis never cleaned anything. He'd push everything against the wall. A sneeze set off fearful avalanches. So Louis would do a breast stroke with his hands to clear a spot no bigger than the one on which my Hermes sits, and there he'd build a classic like the Strato Streak.
Just for the Fun of It
HOW DO YOU define "fun?" I don't have a marimba band in my shop. My eyes don't dance when I think of flying, building, or, horror of horrors, maintenance. The three-letter word fun is short to look up. The dictionary says: providing entertainment, amusement, or enjoyment. "Enjoy" sounds right. And there was a note: ". . . a person to be with." Joe Wagner is a person to be with. I have not met Joe face to face. But he has been with me a long time. Joe is the Dakota man. That versatile little all-balsa biplane lives on and on. Joe is an authentic pioneer in FF Rubber, FF Gas, and CL Stunt. Long ago he was a designer/production engineer for Veco. He is not "above" RC, a man of surprising interests, beyond modeling. Thanks to the April issue writeup by Ed Whitten, you probably know about his fun organization, Fun Flyers. Joe does know how to "enjoy," as you will see from his comments and pictures.
Just For the Fun of It
FOR A GUY who "never" builds, my planes appear from nowhere. I keep getting water on the Gremlins. I have a crazy airplane, another new one, in spite of draconian efforts to get rid of old ones. With today's radios I never seem to totally crash anything. I don't deserve such luck. The rafters are filled with dust gatherers, heirlooms as hardy as attic trunks. I did take a saw to a cardboard monster which loomed like a dinosaur in the Museum of Natural History. I dish out airplanes to helpless victims. Nondescript vagrants are scattered from here to New England, and two are beyond the Mississippi. Some gather dust in other guys' rafters, but some sail on like the Flying Dutchman. Three that are actively flown are over 20 years old. You can't take them with you! Every cannibalized radio adds one more hulk to the graveyard of ships. Ever meet yourself coming and going?
Just for the Fun of It
THIS IS A "rainy day" column-but the sun is shining. "They" dragged me off for two weeks in "solitary"-the first back-to-back, do-nothing weeks in 39 years, spent appropriately in Kitty Hawk, NC. No TV, no radio, no phones, no models. I took along two untouched fat folders of "Fun" letters. The Outer Banks swarm with sea and sun worshippers and funny plastic kites flown with two handles. Somehow I doubt that few of these frolickers felt the haunting presence of the "Brothers" in the wind and mist. I reached four to five degrees above mental absolute zero, the residual temperature of the 15- to 20-million-years-ago Big Bang.
