Buy the book Growing Up Itchy

The winter months found the boys playing with their new bow whenever they could. On cold days when the arrows were all lost, they stayed indoors and drew pictures of airplanes, rockets, and space ships. Mom would get out the scissors and they would carefully craft three-dimensional creations; houses, trucks, and airplanes. Mostly airplanes. That spring the brothers decided they had been earthbound long enough, and something must be done about it. Weeks of study had prepared Grey for the multi-role of pilot, architect, designer, and crew captain. Ash, being younger, took it all in stride. Someone had to keep perspective after all. He didn’t feel left out, he still had plenty to do.

Plans were drawn up, paper models were made, and the idea grew. Flight was possible, probable even. All they had to do was construct a plane and fly it. The concepts were easily understandable. Books were carefully studied and Grey absorbed knowledge of Blériot, the Wright Brothers, and Lilienthal; among others. He learned what made planes move (the propellers), what allowed them to gain lift (slightly curved wings), and how they were controlled when in the air (hinged flaps.) The ideas were laughably simple and Grey figured that if they hadn’t already been invented, he and Ash would have thought of these things on their own, eventually. Why, turning a plane was a basic matter of deflecting the air off to the side. This was going to be a piece of cake. He and Ash would fly, and soon.

The mountainside warmed up and snow melted. White patches retreated before the advancing tide of buttercups and new green grass. Cold Canadian winds turned aside, making way for flocks of migrating birds, calling out joyfully in myriads of voices. Deer gave birth to fawns, and cows had their calves.

“I have an idea,” Ash said one spring morning. “We can fly it off the shed.”

Grey thought this was a stroke of brilliance, as it would probably be impossible to get their plane up a tree, and he knew deep in his heart that their first prototype would be more of a glider. Just like the Wright brothers before them, Grey and Ash lacked a small engine that was both powerful and lightweight.

To be more precise, they had no engine at all.

No problem! An airplane without an engine is simply a glider. Gliders flew all the time.

He and Ash took paper airplanes up to the shed roof and launched them off – great advances in airplane engineering were made that day. They built a ladder from old scraps of wood that Dad had left over from the house. Now, they could easily climb up onto the shed roof – if that wasn’t advancement, Grey didn’t know what was. Ladders were the very definition of defeating gravity.

The build phase was exciting. Planning over and done, the brothers relished the wielding of hammers, saws, and screwdrivers. Scrounging around was fun too, and absolutely necessary. They dug through Dad’s old piles of board scraps, deciding which ones could be used. Most of the lumber they found was in bad shape. Some would be almost perfect once a few nails had been pulled, and perhaps a rough corner sawed off here and there. The boards all came from scraps left over by Dad’s construction efforts up on the mountainside. His monuments to engineering, education and self-improvement dotted the sunny slopes. The chicken coop, the rabbit hutch, the shed (future launch site), and the small house they all lived in. Each of these projects generated a nice collection of scrap lumber, and the boys dug into the weathered heap with gusto.

First, they found two matching boards – long ones. These would be the fuselage, which is nothing but a fancy word for the “body” of the plane. They chose the flattest patch of ground they could find for the build site, and set the two long boards down, side by side. Two short pieces were nailed across the ends, and they had a completed fuselage. It was coming together nicely. Perhaps an outside observer would have had safety concerns, but they would have been easily convinced that this is what modern aviation would look like when boiled down to its purest form – raw and unencumbered by unnecessary gloss and shine.

Ash, straddling precariously atop the pile of board scraps, pulled out another long piece. This would be the main wing spar. It was carefully laid across the fuselage and Grey firmly nailed it down – can’t have that getting loose in flight after all. They were quite safety-conscious, as anyone could see.

Grey was a little better with the hammer and nails than Ash, perhaps because of their age difference; so it was his job to pound in the nails. He gave it his best. Holding the nail carefully in the place he wanted it go, he tapped it with great care until it stood up on its own. The next blow was the fun part of the procedure. He would aim, let fly, and WHAM. The nail would either go flying, bend, fall over, or sometimes move down a little into the board. When the nails flew, Grey didn’t pause to ponder their trajectories. This was the mountainside after all, and the ground was vast, covered in endless wild grass. The nails always vanished. Not even worth searching for.

Little by little the airplane took shape, resting there in the grass like a lame bird. A simple board seat was nailed on, nails carefully bent over to increase the pilot’s com- fort during flight. An old bicycle reflector was located and put into service as a tail-light – there was no sense in risking collisions from the rear. Safety first. Old wheels from the ruins of a tricycle made great landing gear. The rumor was that the old trike had been left in the driveway by a certain small someone, and then run over by a certain large someone in a truck.

The boys were fortunate to have easy access to such an abundance of building materials, as the stuff littered the property.

They found some pieces of tin that would work for wings. Tin was something that was flat, wide, and metal – perfect material. After all, real planes were made out of tin too! The tin they locate was corrugated and curved, so they would definitely generate loads of lift. They had hoped for plywood, but none of the plywood scraps were big enough, or even curved. Thankfully Dad used tin when he made the shed. If not, the boys would have been out of luck, and would not have tasted the freedom that can only be experienced while piloting an aircraft high in the sky.

Grey enjoyed the smell of rusty nails and broken boards, and relished every minute of the project. The day went quickly. Time flew as evening snuck up on them like the dastardly Red Baron, machine-gunning the construction crew with such indoor responsibilities as eating dinner, brushing teeth, saying prayers, and finally going to bed.

The boys whispered about the airplane until Dad yelled at them to be quiet and go to sleep. They whispered even more quietly, until at last, restless sleep was achieved. Grey dreamed, certain that tomorrow would be The Great Day of Flight.

Morning stormed the house with an attack of soggy oatmeal, water, and the charred smell of burnt toast. Sunshine beckoned through the hazy plastic-sheet windows, pulling the boys out into the day. Nothing could spoil the completion of their airplane, and they poured themselves into their work like a pilot pours on speed for takeoff. They were determined to fly before the sun went down.

The airplane’s controls were giving the boys a little trouble, but Grey knew they could figure out how to make them work, and they did – after some trial and error. All they had to do was deflect air, and that meant hinges and little flat boards. Lots of flat board pieces lay around, but hinges were hard to find – the budget did not cover them (or anything else that needed to be bought with actual money.) In the end they made do with loops of wire and more than a few bent nails. A little ugly, yes; but purely functional. Deflecting air to one side or the other might be science, but it was not rocket-science.

Finally the craft was complete. They stood back and admired it. They each took turns, as the Wright brothers surely did, sitting on the seat and working the controls. Grey beamed with creative pride as he watched Ash test out the steering yoke; moving it from side to side made the rudder move back and forth. It was a brilliant piece of engineering, a combination of art and science.

Noon rolled around and hunger called – it could not be ignored. The boys ran and skipped inside to eat. Mom smiled and praised the boys in turn as they bragged of their success, important details of the project flowing over her in a tsunami of words. They gobbled down their peanut-butter sandwiches, made with thick, crumbly homemade bread, crammed a few crackling handfuls of yeasty-yellow popcorn into their hungry mouths (their popcorn was always seasoned with brewer’s yeast), and ran outside again.

As Mom sat with Beth, who was eating at a much slower pace, she said a quiet prayer for the boys’ safety. “Lord Jesus, give them the good sense not to do anything too foolish!”

The boys, back at the shed again, stood calculating. The craft needed to be hauled up onto the roof of the launch platform – Dad’s dilapidated shed. Grey ignored a tiny, uninvited thought that suggested perhaps they should have built it up there in the first place. There was no profit in self-doubt at this point. What’s done was done, and forging ahead was the only option. Aviation’s great pioneers forged ahead, so history books had said, and his teeth clenched in determination. We’ll fly today or I’ll eat my shoe.

They had their ladder, but they needed a rope. The sheep had ropes, but those ropes kept them from running away, and the boys knew better than to let one loose. So they went to digging around in the dark corners of the shed until they found some scraps of bailing twine. It wasn’t as nice as good thick rope, but it would have to do.

Together they lifted the nose end of the plane and rested it onto the second step of the ladder. Grey climbed over the plane and up to the roof. The plane feels a little heavy, the tiny voice in his head told him. Again with the tiny voice. Forge ahead!

As they tied the twine onto the nose of the plane, Grey worked his mind over the task. We built the plane as light as we could, he thought. He knew the plane would soar higher if they could keep it lightweight, so they wisely skimped a little in the construction. Not too much, mind you. It still had to have some structural strength.

Ash lifted the plane’s blunt nose to the third rung of the ladder, and Grey pulled hard on the twine from his position up on the roof. His fingers burned and he grunted with the effort. No problem. But getting the plane up past the fourth step of the ladder was super hard.

“Prop it up!” he gasped.

Ash sensed the emergency and snatched a nearby stick. He wedged it under the plane just as Grey’s fingers decided the searing pain was too much, and let go. The airplane sagged, but did not fall; resting now on Ash’s stick, with the nose leaning high up the ladder.

Grey shook off the pain from his hands and stared down at the plane. It’s heavier than it looks. This was a challenge to be sure, but at least they weren’t on the beaches of Kitty Hawk with gale-force winds hammering them as they worked. The Wright brothers had it really tough!

It was also probably good that Mom couldn’t see their dilemma through the plastic sheet windows.

“I have an idea,” Grey said. “Throw me the hammer.”

He held his hands out, ready to catch.

Ash, watching the plane as it perched halfway up the ladder, stepped back with care and picked up the hammer from the ground. His other hand remained stretched out to steady the plane should it start to fall. He gave the hammer a one-handed toss, throwing it straight up. He had to leap aside as it came straight back down. It needed to be thrown higher… and perhaps not quite straight up.

Ash tossed up again, this time a clean throw right at his brother on the roof, who at the last minute decided to step aside. Grey let it clatter onto the corrugated tin. He did plan to catch the hammer, but seeing it whirling up toward him gave him second thoughts. He didn’t trust himself to catch the handle.

Grey scrambled, but the hammer immediately slid down the sloping tin and flew right off the roof. Grey found himself unwilling to lunge for it in fear of flying over the edge himself.

“Watch out!” Grey hollered.

Ash’s hands flew defensively to his face as he stumbled back away from the falling hammer. He tripped on a tree root and fell over backward as the hammer thudded to the ground. He lay on the grass, on the verge of abandoning the whole dumb project, maybe to go inside for a snack. This was turning out to be harder than he thought it would be, and getting hit by his own hammer was not going to win him any engineering awards.

Ash stood and brushed the ants off his legs. The boys paused a moment, both working over the problem in their heads. They had to do this some other way.

“Throw me up some twine.”

Ash tossed it up, and Grey lowered one end of it back down. Ash tied the twine to the hammer and Grey hoisted it safely up.

Getting back to his plan, Grey pulled a nail from his pocket.

“Hang onto the airplane a minute” he said, and Ash steadied it.

Grey drove a nail part way into the roof of the shed, through the tin and into one of the rafters. The shed creaked and shook, clanging with each blow of the hammer. Grey missed the nail a time or two, putting big round dents into Dad’s tin roof. Ash flinched – looking up at the noise, a bit nervous. Grey took the twine and wrapped it around the nail a few times. Now he could pull the plane up with less pain, and it wouldn’t slide back down as easily.

At last it was time to try again. He pulled hard on the twine while Ash pushed. The plane rose a little higher each time, and Ash wedged the stick under the plane whenever it was time to rest. He had to go find a taller stick before too long. They worked at raising the plane up onto the shed roof, sweating in the heat as flies buzzed around their heads. So far this had been the hardest and most disagreeable portion of the project.

The sun, heading on its journey towards the western horizon, showed about four o-clock when the airplane finally perched on the roof. The plane’s bulk rested right on the edge, like an ungainly baby bird about to be pushed from its nest. The wind was steady out of the south, the warm smell of mountain grasses hung everywhere as the green blades baked in the afternoon light. Distant lowing of cows and the ever-present hum of insects were heard as the brothers stood together at last, on the roof of the shed, pausing for a moment of reflection. Ash looked over the edge while Grey inspected the plane for damage.

He figured he should be the pilot, but only because he was older. Neither of them had piloted before. Ash quickly agreed, not wanting to be the first over the edge. He was usually more adventurous than this, but perhaps he didn’t fully trust his knowledge of flight control systems.

Grey sat down in the seat and tested the rudder. It was in good shape, and moved right and left as expected. He toyed with the steering yoke and examined the twine control lines for problems, real or imagined.

Everything seemed fine, and he dismounted the plane again, and stood staring at it. Maybe Ash should be the first pilot, he’s lighter.

It was ready to go, and he could think of no more reasons to put off the big launch, no matter how hard he tried. Ash stared at the ground, hands on his hips, wondering when they could push it over the edge. Grey looked down at the dirt, twelve feet below.

“Maybe we should give it a test-glide before we ride it,” Grey said, nonchalant – “to make sure it flies good.”

Ash shrugged. “OK.”

The boys each grabbed opposite ends of the wing. With a careful pull, the plane screeched across the remaining inches of corrugated tin. A final horrible metallic scrape rang out, and the plane soared off the edge of Dad’s shed, free of gravity at last.

The maiden flight was exactly twelve feet. The boys stood there on the roof, looking straight down at the wreckage of their airplane. They were silent for a moment. Grey was secretly glad that he wasn’t in the pilot seat.

“Did you see if it caught any air?” Grey asked.

“Naw. Let’s see if dinner’s ready,” Ash suggested.