Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

The Fly In

The Fly In

On Saturday my wife and I went to a flying field North of Marshfield. She dropped me off and went to visit friends promising to be back in two hours. She forgot her cell phone which meant we would not be able to talk, like in Wall-Mart when we have to call to find each other.

Anyway I walked on and there was the usual crowd of participants, some flying and others gathered in clusters talking up the sport. There was one flyer that had a nice trailer with some large scale models he was flying. Driving up I had seen his airplane, so large in the sky it appeared real. I don’t know who he was but he was surrounded by a host of onlookers and was holding court.

It began to get cloudy and spit rain and finally there was only one person left on the flight line flying. He was a thin, short middle aged guy with the look of a working class handyman. He was flying an aircraft he had clearly built at home. It was a narrow fuselage design with short stubby wings cut out of Styrofoam. What captured my interest was that he was flying it quite well, twirling and looping with nobody paying attention as the thunder clouds rolled in.

After watching him for about five minutes he landed and walked back into the common area. I approached him, asked some questions about his plane and commented on how well he flew it. He immediately began telling me how he had made it in his garage and the flight handling characteristics. The guy seemed genuinely surprised and happy that somebody had stopped and taken the time to talk to him.

By the simple investment of a few words I found someone interesting to talk to and we struck up a nice conversation. Now I am not telling this to my “Army of Readers” to show what a cool and compassionate guy I am. I only want to make a point. I could have gotten in the cue and had a few words with “Mr. Big Airplane” and might have gotten the time of day. Instead noted something unusual and out of the main stream… instead of treading a well plowed field I took a different direction. It paid off.

Later in the day Linda and I stopped at a car show. There were several hundred vehicles some which had $10K paint jobs. I never pay much attention to these preferring to seek out those that are home made in somebody’s garage. I am particular fond of “Rat Rods” which are old style “Hot Rods” true to the original idea of making a ride as inexpensively as possible. I love to look at these and talk to the owners/builders for the same reason I talked to the thin guy on the flying field.

As a writer we need to be attuned to our surrounding and look for things out of the ordinary. Often right under our noses are the coolest things imaginable that in our zeal to follow the obvious never rise to the awareness level on our bio-processors. Keep your eyes open and pay attention. There are some real nuggets lying just off the beaten path.