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Momma said I had to go to school so I could learn to read, write and cipher. I wasn’t very big and the school was on top of a hill. You could see the whole town from there, not that there was much of a town there. But first, I had to get up the stairs at the front of the school. It was quite an effort for a young boy with short legs to get up those stairs.
It’s still an effort to get up those stairs, but that’s because I am no longer a young boy.
Aunt Fanny always read from her prayer book. She needed her glasses to read and the two were always very close together. On her last night she finished her prayers, put her glasses in her case, but didn’t have the strength to close the case. She went to Jesus that night, her glasses and prayer book on the table next to her.
I knew these airplanes. I knew them from books I owned and from the Revell models I made of these warbirds. I remember the heady aroma of the Testor’s Liquid Cement we used to assemble the plastic models. No longer 1/40 scale, they were right in front of me; the real deal; life size, metal and rubber, close enough to touch.
One of the images that didn't make it into A Boy's Dream, the folio from the Erickson Airplane Collection. The Curtis P-40 is almost always restored as one of General Claire Chenault's Flying Tigers. They just seem to look best that way.
James Henry Harris. Your little sister said that you picked up that paint brush down at the mill and you painted your name on the wall. What in heavens name possessed you to be so vain as to think that people would want to see your name? I sent you to get the corn milled, not write your name on the wall. I would hope you leave more of a mark on the world than having your name painted on a wall. Who knows how long that paint will last? Imagine what people will think or say about that?
