The rain is, if anything, coming down even harder than it was a few minutes ago. The bench I’m sitting on is covered in puddles, and the stream of water cascading off my umbrella has completely soaked my legs and sneakers. The field where the big event is supposed to take place is quickly becoming a muddy morass, and I can’t help but wonder if all 35,000 of us have taken collective leave of our senses, enduring this much discomfort for the long and unlikely chance of witnessing a few wobbly seconds of flight.
But even as that thought registers, I find a trace of a smile creeping across my rain-streaked face. For it occurs to me that there’s actually a weird kind of lovely justice at work here. The committee organizing the centennial celebration of the world’s first sustained, powered, controlled, heavier-than-air flight had planned a precisely timed, Busby Berkeley-choreographed extravaganza to mark the moment. The event was designed to be movie-perfect, complete with a presidential appearance, marching band, Jumbotron television monitors, a host of carefully orchestrated significant gestures, country and rock concert music blaring through a network of basso profundo speakers and, of course, a re-creation of that first flight precisely on cue, at a moment determined by schedule instead of nature.
