Have you ever tried to teach a dog to dance? In rhythm? I’ve tried with all of our dogs. Never mind their grace in running, jumping, and snatching food from the air. Dogs are hopeless when it comes to rhythm. But watch this cockatoo, who could put many an inebriated undergraduate to shame. Now and then he even breaks into double-time. And catch his aplomb in response to the applause at the end.
How about a ride in a restored Stearman biplane for Father’s Day? Now, that’s what I’m talking about.
The Collings Foundation is a national organization that restores and maintains historic aircraft and automobiles. One of their locations is west of Boston in Stow, Massachusetts. They have a hangar full of gorgeously restored airplanes and race cars, including early biplanes, a World War II Avenger, a race car once owned by Paul Newman, a Rolls Royce Phantom, and lots more. They only open to the public a few weekends a year, and Father’s Day weekend is one of them.
They also offer rides in a pair of Stearman biplanes, and a T-6 trainer, taking off and landing from a lovely grass airstrip behind the hangar. We arrived late, but not too late for Allysen to hustle me over to the table where they sold the biplane rides. Yes, I could still get a ride.
I actually hold a private pilot’s license, but it’s been many years since I’ve flown, owing to a discrepancy between the cost of flying and the family exchequer. But really—a chance to fly in an open cockpit and feel the wind on my face? Not to be missed! (Alas, due to a nonfunctional intercom between passenger and pilot, I did not get a chance to take the stick and rudder. I would have liked that.)
Allysen took what video she could from the ground, and I took what I could from the cockpit, fiercely holding onto my cellphone, lest it go flying on its own. This is what I culled from our efforts. Let me just say, it was fantastic. I have the best family in the world.
This week I learned of the passing of not just one, but three former teachers. That sort of takes my breath away, and not in a good way. None of these deaths was really recent, but even in the days of the internet, it can take time for word to travel.
First, I heard from my brother Chuck, who read it in our high school alumni newsletter, that our old wrestling coach, Chris Ford, had passed away in January of this year. Coach Ford was, for me, the very model of what a good coach should be: encouraging, demanding, scrupulously sportsmanlike, respectful to his own team and opposing teams alike, and a builder of relationships in the wrestling community. I had the benefit of his coaching for just two years, before he left Huron (Ohio) High School to build a wrestling program from the ground up at Ashland College (now Ashland University). After creating at Ashland a nationally noteworthy wrestling program, he went on to do the same thing at Ohio State University, from which he retired in the mid-1980s. I still think of him as the youthful coach who led the high school team on which I wrestled.
I once wrote a science fiction short story about an intragalactic wrestling tournament, in which I depicted an annoying coach. Chris Ford was not the model for that coach, but he did set the standards against which that coach was contrasted. (The story was “Shapeshifter Finals,” and can be found in my story collection, Going Alien.)
Further down in that same alumni newsletter, I read that Coach Ford’s son, Brian, had died several months later. That just seems too cruel.
In the same damn newsletter, I learned that my high school Latin teacher, Marlene McKillip, had also passed away, at the age of 83. I did not have as close a relationship to her, but I do remember that she was stern, demanding, and fair. Veni, vidi, vici.
You’d think that would be enough for one newsletter. But no, down at the bottom, there’s an alumni membership signup form. And on the form are blanks where you can specify contributions to different scholarship funds. One of them is in the name of the teacher who probably influenced me more than any teacher in any school: Larry Zimmer. You don’t suppose, I thought. And I googled his name, to learn that he has been gone from this world for three years! I found this tribute, from another former student named Lesa, which says it as well as I could: “Larry Zimmer died on Thursday, and the world is a little less kind because of his loss.”
It was Larry Zimmer, Mr. Z, more than any other teacher, who encouraged me to write.
In my 1990 novel, Down the Stream of Stars, I had an AI holo-teacher for kids on a colony starship. The teacher was named Mr. Zizmer, or Mr. Z for short. I’m glad I was able to give him that tribute, but I wish I’d been home when he called to say how much he enjoyed it. He did not leave a return number. I was not very good at keeping up old connections in those days, and I never stayed in touch the way I wish I had. If wishes were horses…
My latest “spare time” project has been installing a rearview camera on my trusty Ford Ranger, a.k.a., the Landshark. When we were in Puerto Rico, our rental car had one, and we quickly came to wonder how we had gotten along without one all these years. The truck, especially with the cap over the back, has limited visibility when backing up, and I’m just grateful I’ve never backed over anyone, at least that I know of. On our return from PR, I did some research, and bought a kit with a camera for the back bumper, and a replacement rearview mirror that has an LCD screen hidden behind the mirror surface—a clever solution to the lack of any good place to put a screen on the dashboard.
The installation was, um, considerably more finicky than I had expected. And I’m used to doing things like patching new electronics into the fuse box, having already done that with a new stereo and subwoofer, a year or two ago. The lack of any instructions with the kit should have been a sign. But Crutchfield has a pretty good tech support department, and I muddled along, buying ancillary parts and tools along the way. I enlisted daughter Lexi to help with the splicing and soldering and wiring, and she got to crawl around under the truck, spitting out rust while stringing cable along the frame from the back of the truck to the cab. Hey, I’ve been there and done that stuff, and I didn’t need the experience! But that wasn’t the hardest part. No, the hardest part was aiming the little camera that came with no provision for adjusting the aim!
In the end, I got a camera that works, sort of, though not nearly as well as the factory-installed models. The little distance guidelines that you see in the view are weirdly and erratically inaccurate, for one thing. I called the manufacturer, and to their credit they are sending me a couple of alternate types of camera at no cost, so I can see if I can get better results from one of them. Stay tuned.
Here’s Lexi, helping me check the view in the camera. This is what you get when you hold a camera up to a rearview mirror, to take a picture of an LCD screen showing the image from a camera at the back of the truck, with the subject’s face about an inch from the camera lens. Don’t back up!
