For the Fun of It

摘要

"Hey kid," he yelled as he walked across the grass runway of the local flying club. "Didya ever see your house from the sky?" With that, an excited boy got his first ride in an airplane. Still only a pre-teen growing up in the early 1960s, I couldn't have been more thrilled than when the pilot said, "Get in. I'll help you with the seat belt." The encounter with the pilot of the yellow J-3 Cub wasn't entirely accidental. A resident of a small upstate New York village, I often walked the highways and byways throughout the area, and those travels sometimes included following a pair of railroad tracks that directly passed a rural airport-really little more than a mowed field, a couple of hangars and a handful of light aircraft. Often peering in wonderment into those cockpits, I was spotted on one of many afternoon visits by one of the flying club pilots and, instead of scolding me, he offered me a brief flight over my community.