followed by the sound of snapping wood. A sixteenth of an inch could be the difference between success and failure, and if he thought his work wasn’t perfect he would destroy it.
The plane was like a baby in our family, the sibling I never had but always wished for. Just like a child that you see everyday, it can be easy to miss the subtle way that the child is changing. It takes an out of town relative to come for a visit and exclaim how much the baby has grown before you step back and see for yourself that progress is happening. The same was true with the plane. It wasn’t until we brought everything out into the backyard that we would all see how much had been done in a year.
Some families take pictures for their Christmas cards in front of trees bursting with fall colors or with Mickey Mouse on a trip to Disney World. Not us. We took pictures beside the plane in the back yard. After the pieces were assembled, we took turns posing individually with the plane, then my parents together, then me with each of my parents. We would ask one of my friends or our neighbors to take the family photo. Jan, David, Sarah and the airplane (which Dad frequently referred to as ‘The Little S.O.B.’), completed our happy family.
I grew up alongside Dad’s plane; from age ten to sixteen those annual pictures show both of our awkward stages, including but not limited to bad haircuts, skin malfunctions, missing pieces, gangly limbs. I often teased Dad that the plane was the favorite child in the family. We kept pictures of the plane on the coffee table instead of family photo albums.
Mom explained to me once that the airplane wasn’t more important than me but that, perhaps, it was as important. “You’re not going to be a kid forever. When you’re gone, living your own life, Dad will need something to keep him busy,” she would say, reminding me that like the plane, I too was growing up.
The airplane resided in our basement from 1994 to 1998. All my friends had finished basements with foosball tables and televisions. They had pull out couches for sleepovers and extra refrigerators with soda and Capri Suns. I didn’t know anyone else besides us that didn’t have a family room for entertaining in their basement.
In 1998, when the plane finally outgrew our basement, I was sure we would remodel to have the same fun basement my friends had in their homes. I spent a lot of time daydreaming about the sleepovers I would have now that there would finally be a place where we wouldn’t wake my parents up at 3:00 a.m. with our talking and laughter. Whether they didn’t have money or didn’t see the need, once that plane moved out, the basement remained a bare room with a cement floor and walls of pink insulation. It was as if the plane went off to college and we weren’t making changes right away so it would always have a place to come home to.
The plane wasn’t ready to go to a hanger at an airport, so logically, we moved the plane into the garage. For two years, throughout two Minnesota winters, my parents and I parked outside while the plane was comfortably shielded from the elements. Mom would curse Dad and Dad would curse his plane on the mornings that they spent twenty minutes chiseling their windshields out from three inches of ice in -25* weather.
Winter aside, I think Dad really enjoyed having the plane in the garage. For the most part it stayed assembled year round, and once set up in the garage it truly looked like an airplane. Instead of taking apart windows and setting it up piece by piece, when the summer rolled around we just slid everything forward a few feet on to the driveway. “Now you get to meet the neighbors that live on this side of the street,” Dad would say, lovingly patting the nose of the plane.
Having an airplane in your driveway is a sensational conversation piece. When the weather was nice Dad would work with the garage door open and neighbors on their evening walks would slow down and
The plane was like a baby in our family, the sibling I never had but always wished for. Just like a child that you see everyday, it can be easy to miss the subtle way that the child is changing. It takes an out of town relative to come for a visit and exclaim how much the baby has grown before you step back and see for yourself that progress is happening. The same was true with the plane. It wasn’t until we brought everything out into the backyard that we would all see how much had been done in a year.
Some families take pictures for their Christmas cards in front of trees bursting with fall colors or with Mickey Mouse on a trip to Disney World. Not us. We took pictures beside the plane in the back yard. After the pieces were assembled, we took turns posing individually with the plane, then my parents together, then me with each of my parents. We would ask one of my friends or our neighbors to take the family photo. Jan, David, Sarah and the airplane (which Dad frequently referred to as ‘The Little S.O.B.’), completed our happy family.
I grew up alongside Dad’s plane; from age ten to sixteen those annual pictures show both of our awkward stages, including but not limited to bad haircuts, skin malfunctions, missing pieces, gangly limbs. I often teased Dad that the plane was the favorite child in the family. We kept pictures of the plane on the coffee table instead of family photo albums.
Mom explained to me once that the airplane wasn’t more important than me but that, perhaps, it was as important. “You’re not going to be a kid forever. When you’re gone, living your own life, Dad will need something to keep him busy,” she would say, reminding me that like the plane, I too was growing up.
The airplane resided in our basement from 1994 to 1998. All my friends had finished basements with foosball tables and televisions. They had pull out couches for sleepovers and extra refrigerators with soda and Capri Suns. I didn’t know anyone else besides us that didn’t have a family room for entertaining in their basement.
In 1998, when the plane finally outgrew our basement, I was sure we would remodel to have the same fun basement my friends had in their homes. I spent a lot of time daydreaming about the sleepovers I would have now that there would finally be a place where we wouldn’t wake my parents up at 3:00 a.m. with our talking and laughter. Whether they didn’t have money or didn’t see the need, once that plane moved out, the basement remained a bare room with a cement floor and walls of pink insulation. It was as if the plane went off to college and we weren’t making changes right away so it would always have a place to come home to.
The plane wasn’t ready to go to a hanger at an airport, so logically, we moved the plane into the garage. For two years, throughout two Minnesota winters, my parents and I parked outside while the plane was comfortably shielded from the elements. Mom would curse Dad and Dad would curse his plane on the mornings that they spent twenty minutes chiseling their windshields out from three inches of ice in -25* weather.
Winter aside, I think Dad really enjoyed having the plane in the garage. For the most part it stayed assembled year round, and once set up in the garage it truly looked like an airplane. Instead of taking apart windows and setting it up piece by piece, when the summer rolled around we just slid everything forward a few feet on to the driveway. “Now you get to meet the neighbors that live on this side of the street,” Dad would say, lovingly patting the nose of the plane.
Having an airplane in your driveway is a sensational conversation piece. When the weather was nice Dad would work with the garage door open and neighbors on their evening walks would slow down and
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