a plan, or one good reason to stay out of trouble.”
“But there was a little airport two miles down the county road, and every afternoon I’d climb the fence and watch the planes.”
“One Saturday, I wandered into Hangar 3.”
“There was an old mechanic in coveralls under the wing of a Cessna, and he smelled like grease and coffee.”
“He looked at me for about three seconds and said, ‘Hold this light.'”
I felt my throat tighten.
That was my father.
Those were the exact words he’d said to me a hundred times, in the garage, when I was a girl and he was fixing my bicycle.
“I asked him if I could touch the plane,” Brock went on.
“He said, ‘You can do better than touch it, son. You can learn what makes it fly.'”
“By the next Saturday, there were three other boys in that hangar.”
